MEMOIR. xlk 



Mr. Downing was annoyed by this continual carping and 

 bickering, and anxious to have the matter definitely ar- 

 ranged, he requested the President to summon the Cabinet. 

 The Secretaries assembled, and Mr. Downing was presented. 

 He explained the case as he understood it, unrolled his 

 plans, stated his duties, and the time he devoted to 

 them, and the salary he received. He then added, that 

 he wished the arrangement to be clearly understood. 

 If the President and Cabinet thought that his require- 

 ments were extravagant, he was perfectly willing to roll up 

 his plans, and return home. If they approved them, he 

 would gladly remain, but upon the express condition that 

 he was to be relieved from the annoyances of the quarrel. 

 The President and Cabinet agreed that his plans were the 

 best, and his demands reasonable ; and the work went on 

 in peace from that time. 



The year 1852 opened upon Downing, in the gar- 

 den where he had played and dreamed alone, while the 

 father tended the trees ; and to which he had clung, with 

 indefeasible instinct, when the busy mother had suggested 

 that her delicate boy would thrive better as a drygoods 

 clerk. He was just past his thirty-sixth birth-day, and 

 the Fishkill mountains, that had watched the boy depart- 

 ing for the academy where he was to show no sign of 

 his power, now beheld him, in the bloom of manhood, 

 honored at home and abroad no man, in fact, more 

 honored at home than he. Yet the honor sprang from 

 the work that had been achieved in that garden. It 

 was there he had thought, and studied, and observed. 

 It was to that home he returned from his little excur- 

 sions, to ponder upon the new things he had seen and 

 heard, to try them by the immutable principles of taste, 

 and to test them by rigorous proofs. It was from that 

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