The weather changed from warm to cool in the course of the night. I went to town accompanied by Mr. Brooks. My time was pretty much taken up in attending to my Mother and Walter Hellen who came in to meet my Wife and her children. I took him as a young Stranger about the Streets showing him the principal objects of attention. This was fatiguing, and killed all my morning. Returned to Medford with 357Mr. Brooks. We dined alone and very quietly—My Wife having remained in town until evening.

I read a good deal uninterruptedly, Madame de Maintenon’s Letters. These were collected and published by a French writer, La Beaumelle, who is thought to have introduced a good deal of his own to animate the style.1 Nevertheless there is much that is interesting and valuable in the work. She rose from extreme wretchedness. Born in a prison, the sport of adversity in her younger life, married for a home to a wretched piece of deformity, she became the wife of the first monarch of Europe and the ruler of many events. Yet she was scarcely happier in her later than in her early days. Ovid also. I read German in my spare moments, especially in the Evening.