Cloudy with a gently falling snow. I went to the Office where I was occupied with accounts. Received a letter from my Mother inclosing my biography with which she appears tolerably well pleased.1 Nothing further material.

Home, to read Herodotus with whom I am now making very good progress. The Greek language is perhaps as remarkable for it’s great difficulty of ellipses as for any thing. The syntax is half of it supplied by implication. Afternoon, reading Crantz with whose book I feel much interested. I find my lectures so superficial that I am glad I have had no occasion to deliver them uncorrected. What is knowledge among us but to be the least ignorant.

Evening, my Wife had some of her two sister’s children, to come and play Loto at which I assisted to teach them the game according to my way of playing it. After it was over, Mr. Frothingham and Governor Everett came in and we had a light supper for them all.

This was the day of the Mayor’s election. Mr. Eliot was opposed upon many grounds, but principally for his action against the fire department, which is perhaps the best measure he has taken. I voted against him with reluctance from a conviction that his paper of reasons for refusing Faneuil Hall showed him to be anti-republican in his principles. After they had gone, I corrected the proof of two sheets of my pamphlet.