Diary of Charles Francis Adams, volume 3
1831-01-26
Morning clear but rather more moderate than it has been. I went to the Office as usual and was busy in despatching Jonathan Simple,1 after which I wrote my Journal and then sat about copying my papers obtained yesterday. By some strange luck however, I was more than usual interrupted by persons upon various errands, so that I accomplished in fact only the letter of Mr. Crawford2 which was very short. This certainly was not a very good morning’s work.
Returned home to dine, and passed the afternoon in copying my father’s reply,3 and preparing two or three other short papers which it was necessary for me to finish to send off by the evening’s Mail. No time was left me to make particular use of and so I used the fraction in reading a report of Col. Davis’s upon Anatomy, which seemed a curious thing for the purpose it was designed to promote. He and I have different notions about the General Court.4
Evening, reading the Year in Spain which we have almost finished. It is a very good production for a young man and keeps up it’s interest very well. Perhaps a little too much enthusiasm for the different classes of the Spanish Women, but that is very pardonable in a young man. I afterwards read Vossius, in his sketch of the different kinds of figurative language, and finished with two Numbers of the Tatler.
Perhaps the nom de plume used by CFA in his communication to the Boston Daily Advertiser, but which when published was unsigned. More likely CFA 410was using it as a generic name for anonymous letters to the press as an equivalent of “John Smith” or “John Doe.”
See entry for 22 Jan., above.
That is, to Crawford; same.
In the Mass. House of Representatives on 25 Jan. “on motion of Mr. Davis of Boston, the bill more effectually to protect the sepulchres of the dead, and to legalize the study of anatomy in certain cases, was taken up for consideration” (Boston Patriot, 26 Jan., p. 2, col. 1).