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when we left Boston. Was not my mind stronger & better developed? My memory of course serves me little. In another case it does much. 1840 I left Bangor, after a year or two of hard study, my mind full of Latin & Greek; my brain stretched with thinking all it was able to think: ?page folded over it did not amount to much at that. And a season of more perfect Mental indolence & inactivity than followed in my mind ?page folded over one has experienced. But how was it? did my mental energies in that season of inactivity, rust out and decay away? No: When I look back it hardly seems possible that two or three years could make so much difference, could so much, bring forth, envelope , & strengthen the intellectual powers. I can hardly realize it the same mind I carried from Bangor, which accompanied me to Foxcroft and to the halls of Old Bowdoin I return to your letter. You ask my opinion of Mexican Affairs I am absolutely and diametrically opposed to the present War on all grounds and points; its commencement, its pretences, its honors, its glories, its reasons, its causes, its effects, its prospects, its future progress, its all. But you ask how to get out of the scrape. It becomes me not to say. doctors disagree. The mightiest minds of the Country, perhaps of the world, have brought forward their plans, different plans. John & Henry & Daniel have spoken: their arguments I may not gainsay, their facts I cannot dispute. If they do not agree upon conclusions, am I competent to decide. The word, I hope you do not use in its common, universal sense. Honor, National honor. Private honor is usually understood, even that, Old Falstaff told it nearer the truth than the ten thousands that have laughed at him. But National honor; what is it. - the falsest, meanest thing that man - man, the politician - has ever invented, the abominable pretence of governments, the ridiculous bugbear of foolish subjects; the worst enemy of humanity - let the very word be accursed among peoples.