Fine day. I arose and immediately after breakfast returned to Boston. Passed my morning very quietly at the Office writing and making up Accounts. There is no time flies so fast with me as the morning and yet there is none in which I do so little.

Returned to Medford at noon. Found my Wife with Mr. and Mrs. Frothingham, and soon after came Mr. R. D. Shepherd and a Mr. Harrison from Louisiana, a relation of Gorham Brooks’ partner at Baltimore. The dinner was dull, and I felt very dull myself. So that I did hardly anything for the afternoon.

As Mr. Brooks and Abby went out in the evening, I made up a little of my allowance of Ovid and read some German—Part of one of Augustus Lafontaine’s familiar Historys in German.1 Also two Cantos of Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale modernized by Dryden.