LETTER XXX.
Frederick Douglas to Arthur Howard.
Glenalta.
Dearest Arthur,
Our letters to and fro, seem all to have reached their several destinations in safety, and yours have truly been a rich resource this winter in our retirement. Little did I imagine when we parted, that you and I were likely to meet in a foreign territory before we shook hands once more at Glenalta; but this letter is actually to be your manifesto of full power to treat in my uncle’s name for all such accommodations as may suit his circumstances and the number of our party at Turin, whither you are directing your steps, you say, and where you may expect to see us all, Mr. Oliphant excepted, in two months, should no unforeseen interventions mar the present plan of proceeding.
How extraordinarily the most unlooked for events come round, and sometimes turn up the very thing that we most desire, and which seemed the least within our own power to accomplish!
My college course just finished, my degree taken, and the mind experiencing the pains of liberty, not its pleasures, how delightful is this new direction of its activity! I cannot describe the feelings with which I paid my last accounts to Alma Mater, and took leave for ever of a heap of books which now that I am not obliged to read, I dare say I shall never be likely to open again.
Well, man is surely a perfect enigma! Venteroli, La Place, La Croix, all those volumes with the red, blue, and yellow, covers, which when lying on my table you used to call my parterre of tulips, and at which I have often worked till my mind was reduced to a state of complete inanition, became objects of affection when the task was finished,—not that I had any inclination to continue the toil, when the necessity for it had ceased; but I regretted the absence of that necessity, and sat mournfully gazing on those books which I had longed so often to lay upon the shelf. I felt exactly, I dare say, as a piece of clock-work would tell us that it does, were it able to speak, when the main spring, after being wound up to the utmost extremity of tension, is suddenly let go, and flies back with proportionate and painful velocity. In short, I know not how to express the collapsed, unstrung, nerveless condition of my mind, which I suppose was somewhat over wrought by study, and the repose for which I had so often sighed, had so little rest for me when it arrived, that I should gladly have preferred the labour of a coal porter to the relaxation which I had been anticipating with such impatience.