who gave him his daily loaf knew how he was living.  During all that time, he never slept in a bed, never ate with friends at a social board.  So acute was his sense of honor, so delicate his ideas of propriety, that, although himself the most generous of men, he never would accept from acquaintances the slightest favors or courtesies which he was unable to return.  He told me once of a severe struggle between inclination and a sense of honor.  At a period of extreme hunger, he met a friend in the street who was just starting from the city.  He accompanied his friend into a restaurant, wishing to converse with him, but declined taking any refreshment.  He represented the savory fragrance of his friend’s dinner as almost maddening to his famished senses, while he sat there pleasantly chatting, and deprecating his friend’s entreaties to join him in his repast, on the plea that he had just dined.

[Footnote A:  Arthur F. Devereux, Esq., now in command of the Salem Zouave Corps, Eighth Massachusetts Regiment, distinguished for the gallant part borne by it in opening the route to Washington through Annapolis, and in the rescue of the frigate Constitution, “Old Ironsides,” from the hands of the rebels.]

What would have killed an ordinary man did not injure Ellsworth.  His iron frame seemed incapable of dissolution or waste.  Circumstance had no power to conquer his spirit.  His hearty good-humor never gave way.  His sense of honor, which was sometimes even fantastic in its delicacy, freed him from the very temptation to wrong.  He knew there was a better time coming for him.  Conscious of great mental and bodily strength, with that bright outlook that industry and honor always give a man, he was perfectly secure of ultimate success.  His plans mingled in a singular manner the bright enthusiasm of the youthful dreamer and the eminent practicality of the man of affairs.  At one time, his mind was fixed on Mexico,—­not with the licentious dreams that excited the ragged Condottieri who followed the fated footsteps of the “gray-eyed man of Destiny,” in the wild hope of plunder and power,—­nor with the vague reverie in which fanatical theorists construct impossible Utopias on the absurd framework of Icarias or Phalansteries.  His clear, bold, and thoroughly executive mind planned a magnificent scheme of commercial enterprise, which, having its centre of operations at Guaymas, should ramify through the golden wastes that stretch in silence and solitude along the tortuous banks of the Rio San Jose.  This was to be the beginning and the ostensible end of the enterprise.  Then he dreamed of the influence of American arts and American energy penetrating into the twilight of that decaying nationality, and saw the natural course of events leading on, first, Emigration, then Protection, and at last Annexation.  Yet there was no thought of conquest or rapine.  The idea was essentially American and Northern.  He never wholly lost that dream.  One day last winter, when some one was discussing the propriety of an amputation of the States that seemed thoroughly diseased, Ellsworth swept his hand energetically over the map of Mexico that hung upon the wall, and exclaimed,—­“There is an unanswerable argument against the recognition of the Southern Confederacy.”