The years went by and the parental distrust slackened very little. The boy was slim and slender and his hair was tow-colored and his head too big for his body. He had gotten a goodly smattering of education some way and was intent on being a lawyer. He seemed to know that if he was to succeed he must get well away from the parent nest, and out of the reach of daily advice.
His desire was to go "Out West," and the particular objective point was Auburn, New York.
The father gave him fifty dollars as a starter, with the final word, "I expect you'll be back all too soon."
And so young Seward started away, with high hopes and a firm determination that he would agreeably disappoint his parents by not going back.
He reached Albany by steamboat, and embarked on a sumptuous canal packet that bore a waving banner on which were the words woven in gold, "Westward Ho!"
And he has slyly told us how, as he stepped aboard that "inland palace," he bethought him of having written a thesis, three years before, proving that De Witt Clinton's chimera of joining the Hudson and Lake Erie was an idea both fictile and fibrous. But the inland palace carried him safely and surely. He reached Auburn, and instead of writing home for more money, returned that which he had borrowed. The father, who was a pretty good man in every way, quite beyond the average in intellect, lived to see his son in the United States Senate.
And the moral for parents is: Don't worry about your children. You were young once, even if you have forgotten the fact. Boys will be boys and girls will be girls—but not forever. Have patience, and remember that this present brood is not the first generation that has been brought forth. There have been others, and each has been very much like the one that passed before. The sentiment of "Pippa Passes" holds: "God's in His Heaven, all's right with the world."
In Eighteen Hundred Thirty-four, Seward was the Whig candidate for Governor of New York. He was defeated by W.L. Marcy. Four years later he was again a candidate against Marcy and defeated him by ten thousand majority.
Seward was then thirty-six years of age, and was counted one of the very first among the lawyers of the State, and in accepting the office of Governor he made decided financial sacrifices.