een honorably discharged,
with some small means, from the army. He visited Detroit in May to renew
his stock. Symptoms of aberration there showed themselves, which became
very decided after his return. Utter madness supervened. It was
necessary to confine him in a separate building, and to chain him to a
post, where he passed five months as an appalling spectacle of a human
being, without memory, affection, or judgment, and perpetually goaded by
the most raving passion. It appeared that the piles--a disease under
which he had suffered for many years--had been cured by exsection or
scarifying, which healed the issue, but threw the blood upon his brain.

_23d_. A functionary of the general government at Washington writes me,
to bespeak my favorable interest for the wayward son of a friend. Arwin,
for I will call him by this name, was the son of a kind, intelligent,
and indulgent father, dwelling in the District of Columbia, who had
spared nothing to fit him for a useful and honorable life. The young man
also possessed a handsome person, and agreeable and engaging manners and
accomplishments. But his love for the coarser amusements of the world
and its dissipations, absorbed faculties that were suited for higher
objects. As a last, resort, he was commended to some adventurous
gentleman engaged in the fur trade on the higher Missouri; where, it was
hoped, the stern realities of life would arrest his mind, and fix it on
nobler pursuits. But a winter or two in those latitudes appeared to have
wrought little change. He came to Mackinack, on his way back to
civilized life, late in the fall of 1834, exhausted in means, poor and
shabby in his wardrobe, and evidently not a pilgrim from the "land of
steady habits."

I invited him to my house, in the hope of winning him over to the side
of morals, gave him a bed and plate, and treated him with courteous and
respectful attention. He was placed under restraint by these attentions,
but it was found to be restraint only. He was secretly engaged in
dissipations, which finally became so low, that I was compelled to leave
him to pursue his course, and thus to witness another example of the
application of that striking remark of Dr. Johnson, "that negligence and
irregularity, if long continued, will render knowledge useless, wit
ridiculous, and genius contemptible."

_Nov. 29th_. The rough scenes required by a missionary life on the
sources of the Mississippi, are depicted in a letter fro