Morning cloudy with a Southerly wind which brought a storm of rain before night. I went to town with Mr. Brooks and was busy at my office much of the day. My father sent me a long letter, the answer to Col. Pickman to copy. I think with the exception of one or two passages, it is very well. The subject is a painful one to all parties and should be treated with the gentlest language.1 T. B. Adams came in just before I left town, and I was obliged to hurry in order to complete my business with him. He wants an advance as usual with him when he comes to this Quarter.

Home. Afternoon quiet at home. Read German. The Life and Adventures of Quinctius Heymerau von Flaming. A work by La Fontaine, but more comical than his others. Read in the evening, two hundred lines of Ovid’s first book of the Metamorphoses and was much charmed with them—Incomparably superior to all the rest of his works, by the nobility of it’s thought. The versification is as easy as usual. A little of Mrs. Austin’s Characteristics of Goethe.2 Very German. I have a notion, I shall not like him. The boy was quite unwell with his new teeth today.