My Catalogue wanted so much of being finished that I concluded to remain at home today and work upon it. Accordingly I was very busy and accomplished a great deal. The Office and the Room upstairs remained to be done and the power to go on with them as I had done with the preceding did not exist which made me hurry faster than I otherwise should have done. Perhaps I did not finish quite so perfectly, and neglected much more the profit I had anticipated and which has made to me much the most amusing part of the Work.

My tastes are decidedly literary and if I had only the Room to exercise them which my father’s Library gives me, or even my own. But at present I do neither.1 I am tossing about in an ocean of nothing, and corrupting proper tastes in desultory reading—Gathering what men call a smattering of reading without the solidity proper to support it.

After a laborious day I went to pass part of the evening at our neighbour Mr. Danl. Greenleaf’s, whose lady had asked my Wife to tea. She is a kindhearted woman very much disposed to be gratified with every thing, and I have felt desirous of treating her with corresponding civility. We there heard of some important news of a new Revolution in France which had overturned the Monarchy. But nobody seemed to put any confidence in the Report as it came. In the evening we returned in time for me to work somewhat longer.