Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/170

JAMES H. PERKINS. James Handasayd Perkins, the youngest child of Samuel G. Perkins and Barbara Higginson, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, July thirty-one, 1810. His early life was spent in mercantile pursuits, but stocks and trade were not congenial to his tastes, and as soon as he was at liberty to act for himself, he abandoned them. He felt that devotion to ledgers and exile from study, would convert him into a mere copying machine. He longed for more earnest and congenial intercourse than could be sustained with his companions amidst the excitement of business. Nor did he feel conscious that he possessed the love of money-making which is the prerequisite of worldly success. His eyes gradually opened to the true character of competitive commerce. This filled him fii'st with dismay, then with disgust. For a time he became a comjilete cynic. The spectacle of hollow conventional customs, the pride of the opulent and the cringing concessions of the needy, with the fawning flattery that vitiates the courtesies of fashionable life, awakened iu his heart a feeling of sad contempt. He grew plain and blunt in his speech, careless in his dress, utterly neglectful of etiquette, reserved, almost morose in manner, and solitary in his ways. In 1832 he determined to come to the West to seek his fortune, and in February of that year arrived in Cincinnati. While making arrangements for the selection of a farm, he became interested in the study of the law, and entered the office of Timothy Walker as a student. In the language of his friend, Wm. H. Channing, " The genial atmosphere of the Queen City presented a delightful contrast to the frigid and artificial tone of Boston society. In the place of fashionable coldness, aristocratic hauteur, purse-pride ostentation, reserve, non-committalism, the tyranny of cliques, and the fear of leaders, he found himself moving among a pleasant company of hos- pitable, easy, confiding, plain-spoken, cheerful friends, gathered from all parts of the Union, and loosed at once by choice and promiscuous intercourse, from the trammels of bigotry and conventional prejudice. He breathed for once freely, and felt with joy the blood flowing quick and warm throughout his spiritual frame. He caught, too, the buoyant hopefulness that animates a young, vigorous, and growing community, and mingled delightedly with groups of high-hearted, enterprising men, just entering upon new careers, and impelled by the hope of generous service in the literary, pro- fessional, or commercial life." Mr. Perkins was admitted to the bar in the spring of 1834, and early in the follow- ing winter was married to Sarah H. Elliott, a lady whose tastes and character were in admirable contrast to his own, thus furnishing a basis for a rare intellectual har- mony, which proved an unfailing spring of happiness and improvement during his subsequent life. His commencement in the practice of law revealed a higli order of legal talent, and argued the most brilliant personal success. But he remained only a short time in the harness of jurisprudence. He found the practice of law entirely different ( 154 )