I went to my Office this morning, thus beginning my usual routine of occupation. My business was the arranging my Accounts which took me the whole of my time. I drew off the charges for the Journey against my father and credited him with the surplus, and then went through the Items of my own Accounts which the transactions at Washington occasioned. These were few but rather puzzling especially to me who am upon my first attempt to make a set of books go by the 23system of double entry. I do not know that I gave myself time upon which to reflect properly. But after all this is no great affair, “Le Jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle.”

Returned home and spent the afternoon for the most part at the Athenaeum which is very near and which is the greatest convenience of a residence in this part of the City. I procured there a couple of books with which I could go on until my regular winter occupations commenced. These are Sir James Mackintosh’s fragment upon the Revolution of 1688, and a book of a Mr. Sedgwick upon education at the English University.1 The first of these works is edited by some unknown person who has prefixed to it an account of the life and writings of the Author. A violent party production doing no justice to the character of Mackintosh but curious from it’s tracing his earlier productions which in a perishable and anonymous form were brought before the public.

I need not say that in the course of my whole Journey I have never omitted reading my Chapter in the Bible with the Commentary.