The Life and Adventures of Major Roger Sherman Potter | Page 6

to think the people of New York singularly rich and liberal,
seeing that they trusted their surplus money in the hands of persons
who were so loose of morals that they could find no other method of
spending it than suppering and serenading men of my obscure stamp.
But if my father was alarmed lest my morals should suffer by these
temptations, my mother would have answered to heaven for my virtue,
though a dozen damsels were setting snares for me. And this will be
shown in the next chapter.

CHAPTER II
.
WHICH TREATS OF HOW I LEFT MY NATIVE CAPE, AND
SUNDRY OTHER MATTERS.

I HAD no sooner disclosed to my father my musings with Fame, and
the aspirations she had excited in me, than he went right into a passion,

and set me down as extravagant and mad. He had entertained hopes of
making me a schoolmaster, perhaps an inspector of fish, in which office
excellent opportunities for increasing one's fortunes were offered; but I
had been rendered quite useless to the parish ever since the New York
politicians had taken me into their favor. Anybody, he said, might go
out upon and know the world, but few had the courage and daring to
grapple with its difficulties. And then, the world was so wicked that
men of reflection instinctively shrank from it. Notwithstanding my wild,
visionary plans, he yet had hopes of me. But if I sought distinction in
the political world, it would be well not to forget that it had at this day
become a dangerous quicksand, over which a series of violent storms
continually heaved. And these storms, by some mysterious process or
other, were incessantly casting up on the shore of political popularity
and making heroes of men whose virtues were not weighty enough to
keep them at the bottom. "Be an humble citizen, my son," said he:
"learn to value a quiet life. You are not given to loud and boisterous
talking, to lying, or to slandering; which things, at this day, are
essential to political success. Worthy and well disposed persons are too
much afraid of being drowned in the violence of the storm politicians
with shallow brains and empty pockets create, by their anxiety to take
the affairs of the nation into their own keeping. Remember, too, that if
you fail in the object of your ambition (and you are not vagabond
enough to succeed), the remotest desert will not hide you from the evil
designs of your enemies. You may seek some crystal stream; you may
let your tears flow with its waters; but such will not lighten your
disappointment, for the persecuted heart is no peace-offering to the
political victor. Politically vanquished; and you are like an unhappy
lover who seeks him a rural deity and sings his complaints to the winds.
Your eye will become jealous at the fortunes of others, but your sighs
over the cruelty of what you are pleased to call human imperfections
will not bring back your own. Stay quietly at home, my son, and if you
cannot be a schoolmaster, chance may one day turn you up President of
these United States. Let your insanity for writing books not beguile you
into crime; and above all, I would enjoin you, my son, never to write
the 'Life and Character' of an in-going President, for then, to follow the
fashion of the day, and make for him a life that would apply with equal
truth to King Mancho, or any one of his sable subjects, will be

necessary that you write him down the hero of adventures he never
dreamed of, and leave out the score of delinquincies his real life is
blemished with. If you do this, wise men will set you down a scribbler
for charity's sake."
Thus spoke my venerable father. But I remembered that he had several
times before said that if I would so square my morals as to become in
favor with the matronly portion of the parish he would even try and
make a parson of me, which was, in his opinion, a promotion still
higher than schoolmaster. Having got a parish, and chosen the richest
damsel of the flock for my wife, there was nothing to hinder me from
snapping my fingers at the world and its persecutions.
My father, I would here observe, in justice to his memory, was much
given to the study of religion, and would not unfrequently invite to his
house the parson of a neighboring village, that he might debate with
him on matters appertaining to the creed, which he had been thirty
years narrowing down to the finest point. And yet he always kept a
vigilant eye to his worldly affairs, nor ever let a man get the