Memoirs of John Adams Dix; comp. by his son, Morgan Dix.

1821-1828.]

A MEMORABLE INTER VIE W.

71

cile myself to my fate.... I of course need not say that, in abandoning
my new profession, I again become dependent on my commission, which
is that of Captain of Artillery. My regiment is to be stationed in New
England in the spring, so that I shall be in some city in my native section of the country and the neighborhood of my friends.... For myself
I cannot be idle, and I must seek in the army that preferment for which
my health has forbidden me to hope in another profession. Perhaps I
could not be better provided with facilities for re-establishing my health
than by my New England destination; but I have now an unlimited
furlough for its recovery."
The cause of the despondency betrayed in this letter was
ultimately removed. It was after this that he fell in with his
medical " guide, philosopher, and friend," in London; and an
improvement in health encouraged him to take the long-meditated step and retire from the army.
There was another desire in his heart, to which it is next in
order to refer. I read with tenderness the idyl of my father's
youth; it became the life-poem of his fifty-three years of manhood and old age, for the vision never faded away. It began
when he was on the staff of General Brown. His relations
with that distinguished officer were not merely those of an
aide-de-camp, but also of an intimate and confidential friend;
in the general's house he was as one of the family. It so
happened that, in the year 1822, a daughter of the general's
was in New York, at a celebrated school of the period kept
by Mademoiselle De'sabeye, afterward known as Madame
Chegaraye. The major, having been sent one day by his
chief with a message to his daughter, saw while there, in the
school parlor, a young lady who was receiving the visit of a
friend. My father always gallantly insisted that it was one
of those cases in which the first sight decides the future, and
that he made a resolve at that moment which, some years
later, he was so happy as to be able to fulfil. The name of
this young gentlewoman was Catharine Morgan; she was the
adopted daughter of John J. Morgan, then a Member of Congress from the State of New York, and at that time absent at
Washington. I must pause in this narration and say a few