When young James was asked if any thing in his experience in the family in which he lived, would justly lead him to such a conclusion, he answered: “No, sir; oh, no; no indeed. But this is an exception, and only serves to prove the rule. You are to me a father. My gratitude to you and your family can never die. I know I am treated with the greatest attention, even to tenderness.” The tears came to his eyes; he sat down and pressed his handkerchief to his face, until it was literally wet with weeping. After awhile he spoke, saying, “Yes, sir; I will go to Ohio and read law with Mr. McLean. I will do any thing that it may be your pleasure for me to do. I should indeed be an ingrate to thwart your kind designs towards me in any thing. But the seal is upon my destiny!” When the time was fixed for him to go, day after day he still lingered, so great was his reluctance to leave home, and father, and mother, and sisters and friends, to become, as he believed, an alien evermore. But he went, and in about half the time usually occupied in acquiring this profession, he was ready for the bar. He was a Choctaw, and when he had finished his studies he returned to his people, on a visit to his mother. Whilst there he was chosen one of a company of delegates to come to Washington on business, and Mr. Calhoun and others, who were engaged with him in transacting it, were astonished at his powers and his acquisitions. But his adopted parent saw with the deepest anguish that he was endeavoring to blunt his keen sensibilities, and stifle the conflict in his bosom by the intoxicating draught. He could not endure that one so gifted and so beautiful should be thus destroyed, and sought many opportunities of remonstrating with him. At one time he reminded him of the days he had spent under his roof—those days of innocence, and honor, and bliss. He sprang to his feet and exclaimed, “Spare me! oh, spare me! It is that thought which makes me so miserable. I have lost that sweet home and its endearments; the veil which was so kindly placed between me and my Indian caste has since been torn away. I have been made to see since that I cannot, whilst such anomalous relations exist, as do exist between the red and the white race, be other than a degraded outcast.” He was invited to go back to that loved spot, and assured that the same welcome awaited him there that he had always experienced; but he said, “Oh, name it not to me, sir; I can never go there again! The very thought of those haunts where I was once so happy, and of the kindness shown me there, being met, as they are, and crushed by the consciousness of what I now am, distracts me.”