"I had intended leaving here yesterday, but our friend, General Warren, invited me for dinner Sunday. I find him in a handsome house in a fashionable quarter of the city. Mrs. Warren inquired kindly about you. She has two charming sisters of our Gordon's age.
"What will you think when I tell you that several gentlemen suggest to me to settle here? Dare I 'then, to beard the lion in his den—the Douglas in his hall!' Not in his 'hall,' certainly, unless I am very specially invited by him, but I might in time wrestle with him, in a court-room. I have a mind to try it. 'The world is all before us where to choose.' I shouldn't like the Douglas to find out I have forgotten all the law I ever knew. Neither would I like my good old Professor Minor (if he reads the N. Y. reports) to make a similar discovery."
Close upon this letter followed another.
"I am not yet determined when to return. I was to leave this morning, but Mr. Ben Wood of the News has requested me to remain a day or two that he might have a talk with me. What this means, I am not sure. I conjecture he will propose some connection with his paper. By the last of the week you may expect me with you."
The last of the week found him still in New York. Early in October he wrote:—
"I have accepted Mr. Wood's proposition for the present. The only difficulty I see is the fact that they refuse me a pardon. If they learn that I am writing for the News, they may send me to keep company with John Mitchell. I understand that charges are constantly made against me in Washington. Whatever they are, they are false, trumped up to serve some sinister purpose. Yet I am resolved not to degrade myself by any abject submission. I have never solicited 'pardon,' and I mean to approach them with no further overture.
"I am so glad you liked the box. Don't scold me for extravagance. You have suffered long enough for the mere decencies of life. I am going to work like a beaver and with no other purpose now than to earn a living for my dear wife and children. Ambition! The ambition of my life is to have my darlings settled in comfort. May God assist me in the endeavor!
"My room is at 47 West 12th Street. There you must send my winter clothes—and we must try, whatever is left undone, to send the boys to school."
But after a week or two he became discouraged at the cost of living in New York, and wavered again.
"I feel I cannot bear a long separation from my dear family—my darling little ones. And yet how can I maintain them here? Is it not a cruel fortune which tears us asunder when our delight in each other is about the only source of happiness left us in this world? I shall lose, in this hopeless grind, all the elastic energy of my mind. I cannot live without you! Do you advise me to continue my connection with the News? Twenty-five dollars a week is a pitiful sum, but how can I do better? If I can only procure the comforts of life for my family! That is my only object in life—fame, ambition, office, all these things I have renounced forever. Is it not hard that one should be baffled in so reasonable an endeavor? I can leave here at any moment, my connection with the paper being that of a mere contributor. I am not at all responsible for its course, but only for my own articles."