To have been torn from the study would have been as death; my time was entirely occupied with art.

All trembling, I reached the Falls of Niagara, and oh, what a scene! My blood shudders still, although I am not a coward, at the grandeur of the Creators power; and I gazed motionless on this new display of the irresistible force of one of His elements.

Almost every day, instead of going to school when I ought to have gone, I usually made for the fields, where I spent the day.

My heart swelled with uncontrollable delight.

If I can procure three hundred good substantial names of persons, or bodies, or institutions, I cannot fail to do well for my family, although I must abandon my life to its success, and undergo many sad perplexities and perhaps never see again my own beloved America.

To repay evils with kindness is the religion I was taught to practise, and this will forever be my rule.

The worse my drawings were, the more beautiful did the originals appear.