“I hope so. The Fish House punch is strong.”
I went home thinking of Miss Darthea Peniston, and filled with desire to lead a wiser life. It was full time. My aunt’s lavish generosity had, as I have said, given me means to live freely among the officers, who were, with some exceptions, a dissolute set. To be with them made it needful to become deceitful and to frame excuses, so that, when I was supposed to be at my aunt’s, or riding, I was free that past winter to go on sleighing-parties or to frequent taverns, pleased with the notice I got from men like Montresor and the officers of the Scotch Grays.
I have dwelt not at all on these scenes of dissipation. It is enough to mention them. My father was wrapped up in his business, and full of cares both worldly and spiritual; for now Friends were becoming politically divided, and the meetings were long and sometimes agitated.
My good mother was neither deceived nor unconcerned. She talked to me often, and in such a way as brings tears to my eyes even now to think of the pain I gave her. Alas! it is our dearest who have the greatest power to wound us. I wept and promised, and went back to my husks and evil company.
I have no wish to conceal these things from my children. It is well that our offspring when young should think us angels; but it were as well that when they are older they should learn that we have been men of like passions with themselves, and have known temptation, and have fought, and won or lost, our battles with sin. It is one of the weaknesses of nations, as well as of children, that they come to consider their political fathers as saints. I smile when I think of the way people nowadays think of our great President, as of a mild genius, incapable of being moved to anger or great mirth, a man unspotted of the world. They should have heard him at Monmouth, when Lee failed him in a time of peril, or seen him, as I have seen him, soberly merry over his wine with Knox. But some day you shall see him as my friend Jack and I saw him, and you will, I trust, think no worse of him for being as human as he was just.
The day of my more honest repentance was near, and I knew not that it was to be both terrible and of lasting value. I sometimes reflect upon the curious conditions with which my early manhood was surrounded. Here was I, brought up in the strictest ways of a sect to which I do no injustice if I describe it as ascetic. At home I saw plain living, and no luxury, save in regard to food, which my father would have of the best money could buy. I was taught the extreme of non-resistance, and absolute simplicity as to dress and language. Amusements there were none, and my father read no books except such as dealt with things spiritual, or things commercial. At my aunt’s, and in the society I saw at her house, there were men and women who loved to dance, gamble, and amuse themselves. The talk was of bets, racing, and the like. To be drunk was a thing to be expected of officers and gentlemen. To avenge an insult with sword or pistol was the only way to deal with it. My father was a passive Tory, my aunt a furious Whig. What wonder that I fell a victim to temptation?
VII
The next day, having seen to matters of business in the morning, I set out after dinner in my finest clothes to join my friends. I fear that I promised my mother to be careful, and to be at home by nine o’clock.