“I eat and drink to live,—­not live to eat and drink.  Social glasses of wine are my aversion; public dinners are my abomination; all species of gormandizing, my utter scorn and contempt.  When I am hungry, I eat; when thirsty, drink.  Wine or viands taken for society, or to stimulate conversation, tend only to dissipation, indolence, poverty, contempt, and death.”

This was an immense advantage, which he had in common with several of the most mischievous men of modern times,—­Calhoun, Charles XII., George III., and others.  Correct bodily habits are of themselves such a source of power, that the man who has them will be extremely likely to gain the day over competitors of ten times his general worth who have them not.  Dr. Franklin used to say, that if Jack Wilkes had been as exemplary in this particular as George III., he would have turned the king out of his dominions.  In several of the higher kinds of labor, such as law, physic, journalism, authorship, art, when the competition is close and keen, and many able men are near the summit, the question, who shall finally stand upon it, often resolves itself into one of physical endurance.  This man Bennett would have lived and died a hireling scribe, if he had had even one of the common vices.  Everything was against his rising, except alone an enormous capacity for labor, sustained by strictly correct habits.

He lived much with politicians during these years of laborious poverty.  Gravitating always towards the winning side, he did much to bring into power the worst set of politicians we ever had,—­those who “availed” themselves of the popularity of Andrew Jackson, and who were afterwards used by him for the purpose of electing Martin Van Buren.  He became perfectly familiar with all that was petty and mean in the political strifes of the day, but without ever suspecting that there was anything in politics not petty and mean.  He had no convictions of his own, and therefore not the least belief that any politician had.  If the people were in earnest about the affairs of their country, (their country, not his,) it was because the people were not behind the scenes, were dupes of their party leaders, were a parcel of fools.  In short, he acquired his insight into political craft in the school of Tammany Hall and the Kitchen Cabinet.  His value was not altogether unappreciated by the politicians.  He was one of those whom they use and flatter during the heat of the contest, and forget in the distribution of the spoils of victory.

He made his first considerable hit as a journalist in the spring of 1828, when he filled the place of Washington correspondent to the New York Enquirer.  In the Congressional Library, one day, he found an edition of Horace Walpole’s Letters, which amused him very much.  “Why not,” said he to himself, “try, a few letters on a similar plan from this city, to be published in New York?” The letters appeared.  Written in a lively manner,