23d_. It is announced that Mr. Geo. B. Porter, of Lancaster,
Penn., is to be the new governor.
_Oct. 4th_. The last mail brings me a letter from an early and esteemed
friend, a Prof. in the Med. Col. at New York, offering me
congratulations on the moral stand recently taken by me. Approvals,
indeed, of this act reach me from many quarters. The way seemed open,
with very little exertion on my part, to run a political course. But my
impressions were averse to it. There is so much of independent honest
opinion to be offered up by politicians--such continual calls to forsake
the right for the expedient--such large sacrifices to be made in various
ways to the god of public opinion, that a political career is rather
startling to a quiet, unambitious, home-loving individual like myself,
one, too, who is largely interested in other studies and pursuits, the
rewards of which are not, indeed, very prompt, very sure, nor very full;
but they are fraught with gratifications of a more enduring kind, and
furnish aliment to moral conceptions which exalt and purify the soul.
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