The morning looked stormy as our friend Captain Myrick had predicted. But it rained for a very short time only. Our parlour at this house was exceedingly dark and rather gloomy and for the first time upon our trip my spirits left me a little. I found that I had accidentally torn my only coat on this excursion and this gave an anxiety to my general manner which consciously to myself made me appear stiff and awkward to others.

Notwithstanding all this I attended divine service with our party at the Unitarian Church and heard Mr. Edes, a young man,1 from Leviticus 19. 18. “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,” and the Clergyman himself who is settled there Mr. Joseph Angier from Luke 10. 27. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul and with all thy strength and with all thy mind.” A singular similarity in the topics of all these. Love, discussed by one as the tie of earthly relations, by the other spiritualized into a heavenly existence.

Angier’s mind like Mr. Frothinghams is a very delicately refining one, not over well adapted to the taste of the multitude but producing still and beautiful results.2 Angier has more imagination, Mr. Frothingham more polish. I am glad the former has secured so favorable a position and hope he will be able to maintain it. But the trials of a Clergyman in these days pass belief, and I much fear that he is destined to encounter them.

We remained at home all day and for want of better books I amused myself with Peter Pindar’s Lousiad. The world has much changed in half a Century, for were Pindar to write again the chances would be 225strongly against his making any headway at all. He would now be voted out of Society as coarse and vulgar.

We had some visitors occasionally through the day and evening. Mr. Morton Davis and Judge Davis, Mr. Russell, Mr. S. Rodman and in the evening Mr. Tallman an old Quaker who came in and sat with his hat on and thou’d and thee’d his friend Adams in regular form and after the most approved manner. There is something not unpleasant in all this. So much depends upon the spirit in which a thing is done. Perhaps upon the principle of the thing the Quakers are right. But the world is not to be ruled by an infallible standard. Mr. Arnold spent the remainder of the evening with us. He rather prosed until ten.