ued his legal studies he has set down in a diary which he kept
for a little while. He began it on his twenty-second birthday. "I do
this," he said, "because it seems pleasant to be able to look back
upon our past lives and note the gradual change in our sentiments and
views of life; and because my life has been, and bids fair to be,
such a jumble of strange incidents that, should I become anybody or
anything, this will be useful as a means of showing how much suffering
and temptation a man may undergo and still keep clear of despair and
vice."

[Illustration: ELLSWORTH IN THE SPRING OF 1861, WHEN HE WAS A
LIEUTENANT IN THE REGULAR ARMY AND JUST BEFORE HE RECRUITED THE
REGIMENT OF NEW YORK ZOUAVES.

From a photograph by Brady in the Civil War collection of Mr. Robert
Coster, by whose permission it is here reproduced.]

He was neat, almost foppish, in his attire; not strictly fashionable,
for he liked bright colors, flowing cravats, and hats that suggested
the hunter or ranger rather than the law clerk; yet the pittance for
which he worked was very small, and his poverty extreme. He therefore
economized upon his food. He lived for months together upon dry
biscuits and water. Here is a touching entry from his diary: "Had
an opportunity to buy a desk to-day worth forty-five dollars, for
fourteen dollars. It was just such a one as I needed, and I could sell
at any time for more than was asked for it. I bought it at auction. I
can now indulge my ideas of order in the arrangement of my papers to
their fullest extent. Paid five dollars of my own money and borrowed
ten dollars of James Clayburne; promised to return it next Tuesday.
By the way, this was an instance in a small way of the importance of
little things. Some two years since, when I was so poor, I went one
day into an eating-house on an errand. While there, Clayburne and
several friends came in.

"As I started to go out they stopped me and insisted upon my having
an oyster stew. I refused, for I always made it a practice never to
accept even an apple from any one, because I could not return like
courtesies. While they were clamoring about the matter and I trying to
get from them, the waiter brought on the oysters for the whole party,
having taken it for granted that I was going to stay. So to escape
making myself any more conspicuous by further refusal, I sat down. How
gloriously every morsel tasted--the first food I had touched for three
days and three nights. Wh