Cold morning. I went down to Market and from thence to the Office where I could not stay long but was obliged to go into the Office of the Register of Deeds and look up title for the Estate proposed to be mortgaged. I looked back for seventy years and could find nothing to 394conflict with the title although I could not trace where it vested. There is a great difficulty in our system of recording, through the want of some evidence of divisions of property by inheritance. This can now be found only by examining a mass of papers of another Office.

Home to read Oedipus which strikes me now more than it ever did before. Afternoon, obliged to go down to Charlestown bridge to the Canal Office to discuss that affair. On examination of the records we found that there was no rule about it, but a simple vote of the Proprietors decided the number. This little discovery cost the Afternoon. Evening, Lockhart and after it Miss Baillie’s comedy upon Hatred, of “the Election.” Hatred can hardly be made a comical passion.