t
considerable lucubration of the winter, on the darkest problem in the
philosophy of life and history, "the ministry of error and evil in the
world," to wit, Polytheism, Despotism, War, and Slavery. . . . Always
my poor mind and heart are struggling with one subject, and that is the
great world-question.

You speak of my opportunities here. Perhaps I have not improved them
very well. I am not very enterprising in the social relations, and half
of the winter I have not cared for Washington, nor anything else but
what was passing in my own mind. . . . I have met some admirable persons
here, of those I did not know before. Crittenden and Corwin and Judge
McLean have interested me most; men they seem to me of as fine and
beautiful natures as one can well meet. I have had two interviews with
Calhoun that interested me much; [189] and the other evening I met
Soule, the Louisiana senator, and had a long conversation with him,
chiefly about slavery,--a very remarkable person. There is no face in
the Senate, besides Webster's, so lashed up with the strong lines of
intellect; and his smile shines out as brightly and beautifully from the
dark cloud of his features.

To his Daughter Mary.

NEW YORK, May 23, 1847.

DEAR MOLLY,--I thought M. E. D. made you m-a-d; but you shall have
it hereafter, if it makes you "demnition" mad; no appreciation of my
delicacy in leaving out the E,--which stands for error, egotism, eggnog,
epsom-salts, and every erroneous entity extant. Yes, the E,--have it,
with all its compounds. The fact is, I suppose, that when people
retire up into the country, they grow monstrous avaricious, and exact
everything that belongs to them; lay up their best clothes and go
slip-shod. I'm preparing for that condition, mentally and bodily.
You see I begin to slip already in language. Your mother is trying to
persuade me to buy a dressing-gown. A dressing-gown! when I don't expect
to dress at all. As if a beggar who never expects to dine were to buy a
service of plate, or a starving man should have his picture taken, and
give a hundred dollars for famine in effigy. I have ordered a suit of
summer clothes, to be sure, because I feel very thin, and expect to feel
very light some five weeks hence. I shall get some cigars by the same
token, because all things with me are vanishing into smoke. And if
thin clothes can't live, can't be distended, filled out, and look
respectable, upon smoke, let 'em die, and be crushed befo