Another delightful day. I went to the Office. Read my father’s Speech1 and pored over the Intelligencer until I was weary. Then read more of the letters of Gouverneur Morris. I find I appropriate only an hour or at most two of the morning in any reading. Another, for walking, and the rest divides itself into writing, Accounts and Newspapers. Is this working to the best advantage.

I walked and went to inquire about Wood, but found it high. Returned home and thence to dine at P. C. Brooks Jr.’s with my Wife. Nobody else. Returned at four and read Anquetil. This is a book that does not require much study, but I began Alison on Taste which cannot be read superficially to any purpose. Returned in the evening to bring back my Wife. Supper. I did little afterwards.

The last week has been given up far too much to dissipation. It unsettles my mind and disorders my body. It injures my taste for that simplicity of life which is after all the great end of human existence, or rather I would say, the true means, by which the great ends are accomplished.