ARRIVAL AT HARTFORD—MY OCCUPATION THERE—RESTLESSNESS—MY FRIEND GEORGE SHELDON.

I now enter upon a new era in my life. Early in the summer of 1811, I took leave of Danbury, and went to Hartford. On my arrival there, I was installed in the dry-goods store of C. B. K——, my father having made the arrangement some weeks before.

My master had no aptitude for business, and spent much of his time away, leaving the affairs of the shop to an old clerk, by the name of Jones, and to me. Things went rather badly, and he sought to mend his fortune by speculation in Merino sheep—then the rage of the day. A ram sold for a thousand dollars, and a ewe for a hundred. Fortunes were made and lost in a day during this mania. My master, after buying a flock and driving it to Vermont, where he spent three months, came back pretty well shorn—that is, three thousand dollars out of pocket! This soon brought his affairs to a crisis, and so in the autumn I was transferred to the dry-goods store of J. B. H——.

My new employer had neither wife nor child to take up his time, so he devoted himself sedulously to business. He was, indeed, made for it—elastic in his frame, quick-minded, of even temper, and assiduous politeness. He was already well established, and things marched along as if by rail. For a time we had another clerk, but he was soon dismissed, and I was the only assistant; my master, however, seldom leaving the shop during business hours. Had the capacity for trade been in me, I might now have learned my business. I think I may say that I fulfilled my duty, at least in form. I was regular in my hours, kept the books duly journalized and posted. I never consciously wronged arithmetic to the amount of a farthing. I duly performed my task at the counter. Yet, in all this I was a slave: my heart was not in my work. My mind was away; I dreamed of other things; I thought of other pursuits.

And yet I scarcely knew all this. I had certainly no definite plan for the future. A thousand things floated before my imagination. Every book I read drew me aside into its own vortex. Poetry made me poetical; politics made me political; travels made me truant. I was restless, for I was in a wrong position; yet I asked no advice, for I did not know that I needed it. My head and heart were a hive of thoughts and feelings, without the regulating and sedative supremacy of a clear and controlling intelligence.

I was then eighteen years of age. I had been sufficiently educated for my station. My parents had now removed from Ridgefield to Berlin, a distance of but eleven miles from my present residence, so that I had easy and frequent communication with them. My uncle, Chauncey Goodrich, then a Senator of the United States, lived in an almost contiguous street, and while in the city, always treated me with the kindness and consideration which my relationship to him naturally dictated. In general, then, my situation was eligible enough; and yet I was unhappy.

The truth is, I had now been able to sit in judgment upon myself—to review my acquirements, to analyze my capacities, to estimate my character, to compare myself with others, and to see a little into the future. The decision was painful to my ambition. I had all along, unconsciously, cherished a vague idea of some sort of eminence, and this, unhappily, had nothing to do with selling goods or making money. I had lived in the midst of relations, friends, and alliances, all of which had cultivated in me trains of thought alien to my present employment. My connections were respectable—some of them eminent, but none of them rich. All had acquired their positions without wealth, and I think it was rather their habit to speak of it as a very secondary affair. Brought up under such influences, how could I give up my heart to trade? It was clear, indeed, that I had missed my vocation.

Full of this conviction, I besought my parents to allow me to quit the store, and attempt to make my way through college. Whether for good or ill, I know not, but they decided against the change, and certainly on substantial grounds. Their circumstances did not permit them to offer me any considerable aid, and without it they feared that I should meet with insuperable difficulties. I returned to the store disheartened at first, but after a time my courage revived, and I resolved to re-educate myself. I borrowed some Latin books, and with the aid of George Sheldon, an assistant in a publisher's establishment, and at this time my bosom friend, I passed through the Latin Grammar, and penetrated a little way into Virgil. This was done at night, for during the day I was fully occupied.

At the same time I began, with such light and strength as I possessed, to train my mind, to discipline my thoughts, then as untamed as the birds of the wilderness. I sought to think—to think steadily, to acquire the power of forcing my understanding up to a point, and make it stand there and do its work. I attempted to gain the habit of speaking methodically, logically, and with accumulating power, directed to a particular object. I did all this as well by study as by practice. I read Locke on the Understanding and Watts on the Mind. I attempted composition, and aided myself by Blair's Rhetoric.

This was a task; for not only was my time chiefly occupied by my daily duties, but it was a contest against habit—it was myself against myself; and in this I was almost unaided and alone. I was to lay aside the slipshod practice of satisfying myself with impressions, feelings, guesses; in short, of dodging mental labor by jumping at conclusions. I was, indeed, to learn the greatest of all arts, that of reasoning—of discovering the truth; and I was to do this alone, and in the face of difficulties, partly founded in my mental constitution, and partly also in my training.

I did not at first comprehend the extent of my undertaking. By degrees I began to appreciate it: I saw and felt, at last, that it was an enormous task, and even after I had resolved upon it, again and again my courage gave way, and I ceased my efforts in despair. Still I returned to the work by spasms. I found, for instance, that my geography was all wrong: Asia stood up edgewise in my imagination, just as I had seen it on an old smoky map in Lieutenant Smith's study; Africa was in the south-east corner of creation, and Europe was somewhere in the north-east. In fact, my map of the world was very Chinese in its projection. I knew better, but still I had thus conceived it, and the obstinate bump of locality insisted upon presenting its outlines to my mind according to this arrangement. I had similar jumbles of conception and habit as to other things. This would not do; so I re-learned the elements of geography; I revised my history, my chronology, my natural history, in all of which I had caught casual glimpses of knowledge. What I read I read earnestly. I determined to pass no word without ascertaining its meaning, and I persevered in this, doggedly, for five-and-twenty years.

My friend Sheldon was of inestimable service to me in my studies. Possessing advantages over me in age, experience, and education, he made many rough places smooth to my stumbling feet. Especially when, during my early efforts in thinking, my mind was assailed with doubts as to the truth of the Christian religion, his clear intelligence and sincere faith did much to help me through my difficulties.