The air had turned cold during the night, and it was cloudy. After a good breakfast we started for Washington in an Extra Coach I had procured exclusively for ourselves. It began to rain and freeze so as to be cheerless in the extreme. My Mother who seemed at first scarcely able to go on, gathered strength by exercise and bore the Journey through without stopping. We arrived at Washington shortly after three.

On the road I could not help reflecting how different my feelings were from what they had ever before been. How cheerless and barren every thing looked, how desolate now, where formerly the anticipation of pleasure and youthful vacations and all the novelty of fashionable life had thrown a glow of cheerfulness. Both my brothers with whom I had shared all these hopes and feelings gone, corrupted by the very luxury we longed for, and now numbered only among those thousands and millions that have been. My own views and feelings changed and changing. My situation in life now removed from all prospects of ambition, and from scenes of exalted intrigue. What is Washington to me now, but the monument of my father’s disappointment, the grave of my brothers, and the memorial of most of the misery and all of the vice of my own past life.1 My present entrance was moreover attended with circumstances of a peculiarly melancholy nature. My Mother barely recovering from a dreadful illness, and returning to 12the house of him who was her son but a few weeks ago, to a distressed wife and a fatherless child, to be called back to the memory of him by the million reminiscences in things about her; and this without the satisfaction of having a comfortable home or a mind free from anxious thoughts of the future. This is only a part of the picture and I will not fill up the rest.

We reached the door of my late brother’s house2 and my father came out full of anxiety and distress. I avoided the first meeting with all the family by pretending it was necessary for me to see Mrs. Smith home to her own house. On my return, all was over, the interview between my Mother and sister in law had taken place, and with less of distress than we had feared. I also saw the latter for a few moments. She had been very ill but is now recovering and looks better in health than I expected. She seems now much affected and no doubt will be for some time but if I judge her character right, her impressions will not be lasting. Nor is it at all desirable that they should be. The child Fanny is a pleasing little thing of just the age to be attractive. Mr. and Mrs. Frye with their son Thomas who has grown entirely out of my recollection3 passed the greater part of the evening here.