The cold this morning was so great as to produce a frost, but whether sufficient to cut off the corn crop remains to be seen. I did not go to town. Mr. W. Spear called after breakfast to see my father and I had some talk with him about my matters. He agreed to bring with him the man to build the well on Saturday next, in town at my Office. Read Livy as usual, the eleventh year of the vicissitudes of the Punic War told perhaps with all due partiality for the Roman cause. Hannibal was certainly a greater man than I had given him credit for. This with a lesson of my daughter was all I did.

Afternoon, read French with my Wife and went over some of the MS. Letters. They are peculiarly embarrassing from the entire want of dates on all the copies. And my want of perfect familiarity with the precise periods at which events happened makes the work slow. But it is an excellent historical exercise. Evening at home. My father’s eye is in a bad state of inflammation and I therefore read to him a part of his proposed Eulogy of Mr. Madison which he has already made exceeding long. Afterwards, looking over Loudon’s Encyclopedia.