' So that your comparison of me to the 'prodigious son' will hold
good in nothing, except that I shall probably return penniless, for I
have had no money this six weeks.... The President's message is not so
severe as I expected. I perceive that he thinks I have been led away by
the wicked ones, in which, however, he is greatly mistaken. I was full
as willing to play as the person he suspects of having enticed me, and
would have been influenced by no one. I have a great mind to commence
playing again, merely to show him that I scorn to be seduced by another
into anything wrong."
I cannot but emphasize with my own words the manly, clear-headed
attitude of the young student in these remarks. He has evidently made up
his mind to test the value of card-playing for wine, and thinks
himself--as his will be the injury, if any--the best judge of the wisdom
of that experiment. A weaker spirit, too, a person who knew himself less
thoroughly, would have taken shelter under the President's charitable
theory with thanksgiving; but Hawthorne's perfectly simple moral sense
and ingrained manhood would not let him forget that self-respect lives
by truth alone. In this same letter he touches lesser affairs:--
"I have not read the two novels you mention. I began some time ago to
read Hume's 'History of England,' but found it so abominably dull that I
have given up the undertaking until some future time. I can procure
books of all sorts from the library of the Athenaean Society, of which I
am a member.
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