Morning misty but cold. The fog seemed to attach itself to every thing and freeze as it came, so that every thing presented a white and glossy appearance in the Streets. The grass had the white frost on it which we so often see in the Autumn and the Trees were clothed with uncommon beauty. I went to the Office and was engaged in overlooking my Workmen in the business they were about. They go on pretty briskly. But I heard something so much against the character of my Tenant that I felt very much depressed about it, and to counteract any danger of the kind drew up a Lease which will bind him. My satisfaction is that my repairs must sooner or later have been done, and so I shall not have been hasty. But my prospect of letting it will not be very good if I cannot get the present applicant to take it.

My morning was pretty much taken up in bustling without coming to any precise result. I went upon change, resolved to finish the affair of my father’s Investment and purchased five shares of the State Bank of Mr. Degrand at 59 1/2. This is reinvesting the money I paid for my Shares with one hundred and twenty dollars beside—All I can do.1 I then calculated my power of meeting the Note on the 29th and concluded to send to Mrs. Longhurst and try her as a resource.2 Returned home and passed the afternoon in reading, and correcting my Essay which I like less and less. When shall I ever be satisfied? But I corrected freely, and thought it was improved. I then read the first part of the Oedipe of Corneille which I thought tolerably poor.3 It is a Frenchified Drama, in the strictly ludicrous sense. The evening was passed at home quietly reading Clarissa without interruption, after which I had time to finish an article in the North American Review upon the American System.4