On a night when Dorothy and I were dining with Douglas and Mrs. Douglas, Dorothy and Mrs. Douglas conceived the idea of going off to see the play of Charlotte Temple; for we had overflowed the lesser talk at the dinner table by our discussion of railroads.  Accordingly they left us, and Douglas and I settled down to an intimate evening, of which we were beginning to have many.  We set a quart bottle of whisky between us, drinking from it from time to time as the evening progressed.  Both of us had a fair capacity.  And without either of us becoming more than well stimulated, we nearly consumed the bottle by the time Mrs. Douglas and Dorothy returned.

This evening I studied Douglas with more than usual care.  I had been struck at dinner by his great devotion to Mrs. Douglas.  He treated her with a high-bred chivalry, a constant kindness.  I was really trying to get at the emotional side of his nature as to things that did not relate, for example, to an ocean-bound republic.  After all, his attitude toward men was one of guarded friendship.  He attached men to himself with ardor and loyalty.  In turn he gave loyalty and a certain ardor too.  But he was really analytical of men.  He was suspicious of disinterested friendship.  He saw selfish considerations as the social bond.  Hence he had less and less patience with New England.  The radicals who talked God and benevolence and fraternalism were anathema to him.  They had nothing to lose; therefore, they could chant a goodness as to the loss of others; they could praise self-sacrifice, having nothing themselves to sacrifice.  As for human love, what was it but the feeling evoked by consideration?  Pay a man well and he will love you.  Give him good working conditions and he will tolerate the service.  Put him to the test by short pay or bad conditions and he will hate you.  All of this pointed to the love of men and women.  I tried to draw him out on this.  I do not know what the lack of his mind was, whether of subtlety or imagination.  At any rate it was a realm of thought to which his face was a blank, and to which his mind seemed to have no reaction.

He turned now to the Oregon settlement.  He was still furious over it, still indignant at Polk.  He had stood for 54:40 as the northern boundary; he was chagrined at the 49th parallel.  Why had Polk fulminated first for 54:40 and faded off to the 49th parallel?  England!  He hated my mother country with a deep and rancorous hatred.  Coming from Vermont he had taken into his bones a poison for the British atrocities of the Revolution; he loathed England for her conduct of the War of 1812, the ruthless burning of Washington, with all its priceless records of the early days of the republic.  He was eager, restive to fight England.  England’s invulnerableness tantalized him; her habitual luck infuriated him.  Her ownership of the right thing at the right place and time mystified him.  Concretely now there were the Mosquito Islands off the coast of Honduras