CHAP.

I. A new England mother and her family.

II.  Nature worship—­early religious experiences.

III.  An American education.

IV.  College life.

V. Art study in America.

VI.  Art study in England.

VII.  On A mission for Kossuth.

VIII.  An art student in Paris.

IX.  Spiritism.

X. Life in the wilderness.

XI.  Journalism.

XII.  Cambridge.

XIII.  The Adirondack club—­Emerson and Agassiz.

XIV.  Lowell.

XV.  The Adirondacks and Florida.

XVI.  England again.

XVII.  Switzerland.

XVIII.  Paris again—­the civil war in America.

XIX.  My Roman consulate.

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A JOURNALIST

CHAPTER I

A NEW ENGLAND MOTHER AND HER FAMILY

A theory is advanced by some students of character that in what concerns the formation of the individual nature, the shaping and determination of it in the plastic stage, and especially in respect to the moral elements on which the stability and purpose of a man’s life depend, a man is indebted to his mother, for good or for ill.  The question is too abstruse for argument, but, so far as my own observation goes, it tends to a confirmation of the theory.  I have often noticed in children of friends that in childhood the likeness to the mother was so vivid that one found no trace of the father, but that in maturity this likeness disappeared to give place to that of the father.  In my own case, taking it for what it is worth, I can only wish that the mother’s part had been more enduring, not that I regret the effect of my father’s influence, but because I think my mother had some qualities from which my best are derived, and which I should like to see completely carried out in the life of a man, while I recognize in a certain vagarious tendency in my father the probable hereditary basis of the inconstancy of purpose and pursuit, which may not have deprived my life of interest to others, but which has made it comparatively barren of practical result.  As a study of a characteristic phase of New England life which has now entirely disappeared, I believe that a picture of her and her family will be of interest to some readers.