Cold continues. I went to the office after reading Oberon. Fire missed catching and therefore cold and comfortless. Mr. Beale called in from Quincy with several items of information. His particular business an application for an answer by my father to an offer of a Long Lease of one of the House Lots in my Grandfather’s donation to the town.1 He is living at home this winter with his children. Cold enough. I took my walk though not without considerable discomfort.

The whole town talking of a melancholy suicide. A young woman, daughter of N. P. Russel just married to a Clergyman Mr. Barnard. An unhappy affair. This town is too gloomy. Yet gayer ones have more suicides. The spirit of gaming drives these.

Afternoon, Letters of Samuel Adams and Ralph Izard. The latter a very uneasy, passionate spirit. It is not a little singular however to find him taking up the Cudgels for the Fisheries against my grandfather who probably from a spirit of contradiction some say in conversation with him argued against them. Such are the perversities of the human mind. Evening, read Mrs. Trollope’s Belgium.2 A poor thing with not half the spirit of her American book. Oberon.