Arose very late this morning, the weather more cold than at any preceding time this Winter, and I feeling unwell from a severe cold caught upon my preceding one which had not altogether left me. Went to Meeting at Mr. Frothingham’s this morning and heard him deliver a much better Sermon than usual. I was quite pleased with it though I felt severely the cold during the Service. I was glad to get home, from which I resolved that I would not again stir, during the day.

Miss Julia Gorham and Mr. Edmund Quincy dropped in, the former by chance, the latter by invitation and they dined with us very pleasantly. Quincy remained all the afternoon, conversing about things in general. He is tolerably agreeable, and has a kind of superiority about him to the generality of our young men which I do not dislike. He has tastes which are in themselves rare and which do ennoble a man, let people say what they will. He left us at dark when I felt much 142worse with the oppression from my cold, than heretofore. Being somewhat upon my breast it alarmed me a little.

After tea, I read to my Wife a little of Clarissa Harlowe but we were soon interrupted by the entrance of my friend Edward Blake who came in and talked with us agreeably for a couple of hours. It would give me a good deal of pleasure if I could select a number of young men to frequent my house such as these and a few like them. I reject many of the coarse and disagreeable persons I meet in Society and even the rough in manners, for with these I cannot coalesce. But my notions are perhaps a little too fastidious upon these subjects—And I shall only succeed in quite excluding myself out of young men’s society. Be it so. I am independent. After he had gone and Abby had retired, I sat down and wrote a long Letter to my Father in reply to his two last, which took up until near twelve o’clock.1 The weather was cold and I was glad to retire.