Note 125 — Chapter IX · The War in New York.
Reading edition
While a lad, in a counting house at Santa Cruz, he wrote, “I contemn the grovelling condition of a clerk, to which my fortune condemns me. I would willingly risk my life, though not my character, to exalt my station. I mean to prepare the way for futurity. I am no philosopher, and may justly be said to build castles in the air. I wish there was a war.”