Diary of Charles Francis Adams, volume 3
1830-07-23
Medford
The weather changed during the night and this morning we found it quite cool with an Easterly Wind. This put us in mind of fulfilling our engagement. So that after breakfast Abby started with me to go to town. I drove to P. C. Brooks Jr. where she got out, and then went myself to the Office. Stopped to see Mr. Stephen Brown and inquire if he had any Atlas Insurance Stock for sale.1 He thought he had ten shares but the man concluded to keep them, and I was disappointed of the Investment I had hoped to make for my father.
My time was much cut up. I was in State Street for some time and there met Mr. J. H. Foster who asked me to go and see the Shark caught lately, who was supposed to have destroyed the man from 286Lynn.2 Rather a terrific animal as I should think to meet single handed. His teeth are arranged with a singular economy, for prey. The inner row lie flat in the mouth unless when necessary for use, when they strike as firmly as the external row, and both are sharp as the teeth of a saw.
I read a little of Horace Walpole today also. It then became time for me to start for Medford, so that calling for Abby at Miss Julia Gorham’s, I rode with her out of town. We found Mrs. Frothingham as usual, with Miss Phillips one of the large number from Andover. An innumerable quantity the count of whom it is difficult to keep.3 I did little or nothing after dinner though I attempted to read the first part of Le Batteux, Principes de la Construction Oratoire.4 Edward B. Hall, and afterwards Mr. Stetson called and passed the larger part of the Evening here in conversation, so that I had only a very short period of time to apply to Winthrop whom I have resumed.
Stephen Brown was a broker and auctioneer whose office was at the Exchange (
Boston Directory, 1830–1831).
When Joseph Blaney of Swampscott, while fishing in a dory off Scituate, was attacked and killed by a shark, the event created a local sensation. Ten days later a ten-foot-long female shark, presumed to be the same, was taken by Blaney’s son-in-law in the vicinity of the attack and put on exhibition in Boston (Boston Patriot, 16 July, p. 2, col. 2; 24 July, p. 2, col. 2).
Of the thirteen children of John and Lydia (Gorham) Phillips, nine of the daughters were unmarried in 1830 (Henry Bond, Genealogies... of Watertown, Boston, 1860, p. 886).
In the edition of Principes de la littérature by Abbé Charles Batteux, published at Göttingen and Leyden in 5 vols., 1764 (a copy of which is in MQA), “Traité de la construction oratoire des mots” is the last of the three works contained in the fifth volume.