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Cilley declining to give the categorical answer demanded, was immediately challenged by Graves. The challenge was borne by Mr. Wise, a Representative from Virginia. On the same evening, Mr. Jones then a delegate and later a Senator from Iowa as the second of Cilley, handed the note of acceptance of the latter to Graves.
There were only two principal societies at Bowdoin, which continued through the college course the Peucinian and the Athenaan, and the difference between them might be described by the words "citified" and "countrified," without taking either of those terms in an objectionable sense. Pierce was already a leading character in the Athenaan, and was soon followed by Cilley, Bridge and Hawthorne.
Then he proceeded to discourse of politics, taking the opposite side to Cilley, and arguing with much pertinacity. He seems to have moulded and shaped himself to his own whims, till a sort of rough affectation has become thoroughly imbued throughout a kindly nature.
This gift was sometimes displayed in class meetings, when measures important to those concerned were under discussion; sometimes in mock trials at law, when judge, jury, lawyers, prisoner, and witnesses were personated by the students, and Cilley played the part of a fervid and successful advocate; and, besides these exhibitions of power, he regularly trained himself in the forensic debates of a literary society, of which he afterwards became president.
Jonathan Cilley once said: "I love Hawthorne; I admire him; but I do not know him. Long-continued thinking is sure to take effect at last, either in words or in action, and Hawthorne's mind had to disburden itself in some manner. So, after the failure of "Fanshawe," he returned to his original plan of writing short stories, and this time with success.
Hawthorne appears to have sent the letter to Bridge, who replied: "I doubt whether you ever get your wine from Cilley. His inquiring of you whether he had really lost the bet is suspicious; and he has written me in a manner inconsistent with an intention of paying promptly; and if a bet grows old it grows cold.
Hawthorne did not make his acquaintance until some weeks later, but he proved to be the best friend of them all, and Hawthorne's most constant companion during the four years they remained together. Pierce, Cilley and Bridge were all born politicians, and it was this class of men with whom it would seem that Hawthorne naturally assimilated.
"Four or five years ago," said he, "there came to this house a man with his hands and face dripping with the blood of murder, the blotches of which are yet hanging upon him, and when it was proposed that he should be tried by this House for the crime I opposed it." After this allusion to the killing of Mr. Cilley in a duel, Mr. Adams proceeded to castigate Mr. Wise without mercy.
In short, Cilley behaved in this matter much in the style of a tricky Van Buren politician, making a great bluster of words, and privately intending to do nothing. He was running for Congress at the time on the Van Buren ticket, and it is quite likely that the expenses of the campaign had exhausted his funds. That he should never have paid the bet was less to Hawthorne's disadvantage than his own.
There must have been some fine quality in the man which is not easily discernible from his outward acts; a narrow- minded man, but of a refined nature. Jonathan Cilley was an abler man than Pierce, and a bold party-leader, but not so attractive personally. He always remained Hawthorne's friend, but the latter saw little of him and rarely heard from him after they had graduated.
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