Diary of Charles Francis Adams, volume 6

Monday. 16th.

Wednesday. 18th.

Tuesday. 17th. CFA

1835-11-17

Tuesday. 17th. CFA
Tuesday. 17th.

Blustering day but not cold. I went to the Office as usual. My article, on the result of the election was published today. But it was very incorrectly printed and did not appear to do me justice. My time taken up in Diary &ca. and collected Dividends and drew Accounts. Called at the Athenaeum and procured some books upon Coins and Medals.1 Walk. Home rather late as I was delayed in making a purchase or two. Juvenal.

In the Afternoon I was employed in cutting out and pasting in a book various of my publications. They are in a Newspaper form and will probably be forgotten unless some such process is resorted to.2 I began with the Treasury Report which is on the whole as able a dissertation as any I ever wrote, thence to my History of the Morgan Conspiracy. I have laboured much and gained little in exchange. Yet perhaps my style which is admitted to be a powerful one may have been formed by these exercises.

In the evening, Thomas Frothingham came up to ask us to join his mother to see a Juggler, Blitz, who was amusing the public with tricks. I have not seen one for many years, but it seemed to me he had very few new ones. The time for exhibitions of that kind has gone by with me. Besides, I felt quite unwell. Some obstruction in my system began to make itself felt until nature acting against it relieved me and I threw it up, partially. My night was however bad. There was a magnificent Aurora Borealis just as I went to bed, more splendid than I have 267ever before seen or can describe. But I shall remember it without a description.

1.

L. Jobert, Sciences des médailles, 2 vols., Paris, 1739; J. Addison, Dialogues upon Ancient Medals, London, 1726; J. Huddart, Catalogus numismatum, 2 vols., Lille, 1795.

2.

The scrapbooks into which, at this time and intermittently thereafter, CFA pasted clippings of his articles constitute a fairly complete record of his newspaper writing up to his assumption of the editorship of the Boston Daily Whig in 1846. The order in which the articles are entered in the scrapbooks is roughly the order of their publication; however, he failed to include with the clippings indication of date and place of publication other than what is to be learned from the texts themselves. Most of the scrapbooks remain in the Adams Papers (M/CFA/ 25–28; Microfilms, Reel Nos. 321–324); the others are in MQA.