Morning cool with an easterly wind. I went down to the Office. Not a sign of life in the Whig Newspapers. I imagine silence is the policy. If so I can put as much weight as I please in my blows. And No. 4 shall be a biting one. Yet I this day saw Buckingham slipping into Webster’s Office which makes me suspect there is something afloat.1 Perhaps a running Commentary upon my next number from the fountain head. So much the better.

I went to see Durand’s likeness of Mr. Brooks which he is painting for me. Very much gratified with it. Think it a better likeness than either Stuarts or Harding’s. The former is a caricature, the latter a hard picture, stiff as a deal board. My time at the Office consumed in making up Accounts for the close of the Quarter. This is a business I take in time preparatory to a change in my general plan on the first of July. Home. I devoted the afternoon and evening to No. 4 with the exception of an hour’s walk with my boy John, and another in conversation with my Wife who is slowly recovering. The baby is now four weeks old and weighs twelve pounds.

I forgot time and sat up late. The severe straining of thought which is necessary for the purpose of writing with effect, and which I have now for some time endured, resembles when I first wake in the morning something more like the effect of intoxication than any thing I could easily have conceived. This satisfies me of the stimulating character of the occupation and of the causes of restlessness in those who follow it.