All doors were open to me.

I had many friends.

Going back to Tennessee in the midsummer of 1861, via Pittsburgh and Cincinnati, there happened a railway break and a halt of several hours at a village on the Ohio.
I strolled down to the river and sat myself upon the brink, almost despairing--nigh heartbroken--when I began to feel an irresistible fascination about the swift-flowing stream.

I leaped to my feet and ran away; and that is the only thought of suicide that I can recall.
IV Mrs.Clay, of Alabama, in her "Belle of the Fifties" has given a graphic picture of life in the national capital during the administrations of Pierce and Buchanan.

The South was very much in the saddle.