.MTA1MA.NzAxMjc

Gist is lame - was so, I believe, from infancy, like Shakespeare, Byron, Scott & other great geniuses - and like Socrates, another philosopher, he was troubled with a wife whose capacity was very limited & who did not enter into his ambition. He built him a cabin apart from his family & there would study & contrive. His habits were always silent & contemplative & probably now his wife heard & saw less of him than ever. To this cabin he confined himself for a year, the whole charge of his farm & family devolving on his wife. When all his friends had remonstrated in vain, his wife went in and capped the climax of her reasonings by flinging his whole apparatus of papers & books into the fire, & thus he lost his first labor; but like Peter the Great, he only answered "Come, it must be done over again" and after two more years of application compleated his work. All speak highly of his drawing & of his silver works, his spurs, buckles, to being in great request. When he had taught his child, he was very proud of showing her. He was about 40 when he began his work.