Morning not so pleasant, the wind being easterly. At the Office as usual. Occupied in my Accounts as usual. Received a small portion of rent from my Tenant Hurlbert, and paid the customary due to my Uncle who called for it. I then went down to see Miss Abby Adams and made a settlement with her thus clearing out this business. Returned to the Office and began attempting a careful review of Marshall’s fifth volume.1 I fear much I have lost the power of close application but as now I shall be able to be more released from affairs of business, I am resolved to begin upon a new tack, and try to see whether I cannot profit more by studies which ought to be most important to me, for the mere temporal affairs are after all, a matter of exceeding small consideration. I did however accomplish a considerable portion of Marshall and succeeded in getting the general impression as to the condition of affairs at the commencement of the peace of 1783. Marshall is considered a prejudiced historian of this period, which is probable, but yet he is the only one.

The morning slipped away with great rapidity, and not disagreeably although it must be confessed this affair of Whitney’s hangs upon my mind. After dinner I sat down and wrote a letter to my Father upon the subject of my studies,2 which exhausted the whole morning and finally did not satisfy me at all. But I have no time to write over. It is a difficult thing to write well, at least so exactly as I have a desire to know how. Whether I shall ever succeed in reaching the standard of my wishes, is at any rate doubtful. But practice, they say makes perfect, and there is no want of that. In the evening, I continued Clarissa Harlowe aloud to my Wife and read the Will and subsequent events to her death. They are tame. The action seems to be over, it is a superfluous fifth Act in a play and injures the unity of the Novel. Afterwards, Campbell, on the arrangement of words.