"By most unseemly mirth and wassail rife."
He came to see me, at my office and at my lodgings, frequently during the season, and never came when he did not appear to me to be one of the purest and most devoted, yet gentle and most unostentatious, of human beings. It is hoped his labors were not without some witness to the truths which he so faithfully taught. But, as soon as the straits were relieved from the icy fetters of winter, he went away, never, perhaps, to see us more. He now writes to apprise me of the spread of a rumor respecting my personal interest in the theme of his labors, which had, without permission from his lips, reached the ears of some of my friends at Detroit. Blessed sensitiveness to rumor, how few possess it!
Having said this much, I may add that, in the course of the winter, my mind was arrested by his mode of exhibiting truth. The doctrine of the Trinity, which had seemed to me the mere jingle of a triad, as deduced from him, appeared to be a unity, which derived all its coherence and vitality from a belief in the Second Person. The word "Lord" became clothed with a majesty and power which rendered it inapplicable, in my views, to any human person. The assiduity that I had devoted, night and day, to my manuscripts, in the search after scientific truths, and the knowledge arising from study, did not appear to me to be wrong in itself, but was thought to be pursued with an intensity that withdrew my mind from, or, rather, had never allowed it properly to contemplate and appreciate the character of God.
23d. A literary friend writes: "I am rejoiced to learn that you have made such progress in your new work. I hope and trust that the celerity with which you have written has not withdrawn your attention from those subjects connected with literary success, which are more important than even time itself."
"My prospects of seeing you at the Sault, this season," writes the same hand, "grows weaker and weaker every day. I cannot ascertain in what situation Col. Benton's bill is, for the purchase of the copper country upon Lake Superior, nor the prospects of its eventual passage. Our last Washington dates are of the 8th instant, and at that time there was a vast mass of business pending before both Houses, and the period of adjournment was uncertain. Mr. Lowrie and Governor Edwards have furnished abundant matter for congressional excitement. It really appears to me that, as soon as two or three hundred men are associated together to talk at, and about one another, and everything else, their passions and feelings usurp the place of their reason. Like children, they are excited by every question having a local or personal aspect. Their powers of dispassionate deliberation are lost, and everything is forgotten but the momentary excitement."
25th. Commercial View of Copper Mine Question.--M.M. Dox, Esq., Collector at Buffalo, writes:--
I have long had it in contemplation to write to you, not only on the score of old friendship, but also to learn the feasibility of a scheme relating to the copper mines of Lake Superior. This subject has so often annoyed my meditations, or rather taken up so considerable a proportion of them, that I have been disposed, with the poet, to exclaim--
'Visions of (copper [42]) spare my aching sight.'
[42] "Glory."--Gray.
"I have just met Mr. Griswold, from whom I learn that you made some inquiries in reference to the price of transportation, &c. I will answer them for him. Copper in pig, or unmanufactured, is free of duty, on entry into the United States; its price in the New York market is, at this time (very low), sixteen cents per pound. Copper in sheets for sheeting of vessels (also free), about twenty-five cents per pound, and brazier's copper (paying a duty of fifteen per cent, on its cost in England), equal to about two and a half cents per pound. Until this year, and a few previous, the article has uniformly been from thirty to forty per cent, higher than the prices now quoted, that is, in time of peace. In time of war (in Europe) the price is enhanced ten or twenty per cent. above peace prices: and in this country, during the Late War, the price was, at one time, as high as $1.50 to $2.00 per pound.