CHAPTER XIV
DILETTANTISM (1865-1866)
THE campaign of 1864 and the reelection of Mr. Lincoln in
November set the American Minister on so firm a footing that he
could safely regard his own anxieties as over, and the anxieties
of Earl Russell and the Emperor Napoleon as begun. With a few
months more his own term of four years would come to an end, and
even though the questions still under discussion with England
should somewhat prolong his stay, he might look forward with some
confidence to his return home in 1865. His son no longer fretted.
The time for going into the army had passed. If he were to be
useful at all, it must be as a son, and as a son he was treated
with the widest indulgence and trust. He knew that he was doing
himself no good by staying in London, but thus far in life he had
done himself no good anywhere, and reached his twenty-seventh
birthday without having advanced a step, that he could see,
beyond his twenty-first. For the most part, his friends were
worse off than he. The war was about to end and they were to be
set adrift in a world they would find altogether strange.
At this point, as though to cut the last thread of relation,
six months were suddenly dropped out of his life in England. The
London climate had told on some of the family; the physicians
prescribed a winter in Italy.
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