Diary of Charles Francis Adams, volume 7
1837-01-10
Mild and cloudy. Office. Time much taken up with persons calling to see me. Mr. Walsh who generally drops in for half an hour. Mr. A. H. Everett and Russel Freeman who came in to see not me but him.1 I left them in my room and had a conference with my carpenter Mr. Ayer who came to consult me. I was obliged to dispatch him quickly in order to get an opportunity to make a call or two for Rents. This I was enabled to do without much success. Thus passed the morning and I had not much time for Livy. Afternoon, Plutarch, Burnet, and Forster. Variety enough. Mr. Brooks took tea here. Evening conversation with my Wife instead of reading, after which Goguet.
In his letter to his mother a day earlier, CFA characterized (in inverse order) the three visitors of the present morning: “Here is one poor fellow who has lived for seven years and three quarters upon the hope of reinstatement to a place of which he was deprived by General Jackson, and tells me he can go on a year longer and then he will be a candidate for the poor house. Here is another who has with all the advantages nature and education gave him yet got to the lowest round of the ladder and is the sport of creatures far his inferiors in almost every attribute. And here is a third, modest, capable and well educated wearing out his years in seeking a bare livelihood which he does not find. Here are three cases, (the last the hardest of the three) directly within my observation, in which there is trial and cause for low spirits, and I hope they have for the present put out of my head all foolish nonsense.”