the first one, Mr. Clarke said to me,
"You have touched too many chords." After hearing my thesis on "Duality
of Character," he took my hand in his, and said, "Oh! you sweet soul!"

Mr. Emerson was not among my hearers, but expressed some interest in my
undertaking, and especially in my lecture on "The Third Party." Meeting
me one day, he said, "You have in this a mathematical idea." This was in
my opinion the most important lecture of my course. It really treated of
a third element in all twofold relations,--between married people, the
bond to which both alike owed allegiance; between States, the compact
which originally bound them together. The civil war was then in its
first stage. The air was full of secession. Many said, "If North and
South agree to set aside their bonds of union, and to become two
republics, why should they not do it?" Then the sacredness of the bond
possessed my mind. "Was an agreement, so solemnly entered into, so vital
in its obligations, to be so lightly canceled?" I labored with all my
might to prove that this could not be done. I remember too that in one
of my lectures I gave my own estimate of Auguste Comte, which differed
from the general impression concerning him. I am not sure that I should
take the same ground in these days.

Whether my hearers were the wiser for my efforts I cannot say, but of
this I am sure, that they brought me much instruction. I learned
somewhat to avoid anti-climax, and to seek directness and simplicity of
statement. On the morning of the day on which I was to give my lecture,
I would read it over, and a curious sense of the audience seemed to
possess me, a feeling of what it would and of what it would not follow.
My last corrections were made in accordance with this feeling.

A general regret was expressed when my little course was ended, and Dr.
Lothrop wrote me quite an earnest letter, requesting me to prolong it if
possible. I could not do this at the time; but while the war was at its
height, I made a second visit to Washington, where through the kindness
of friends a pleasant place was found in which I repeated these
lectures, having among my hearers some of the chief notabilities then
present at the capital. In my journal of this time, never published, I
find the following account of a day in Washington:--

"To the White House, to see Carpenter's picture of the President reading
the emancipation proclamation to his Cabinet. An interesting subject for
a p