Day clear. Distribution as usual. Evening uninterrupted at home.

My morning was taken up very much by my country business. Received a letter from the Cashier of the Bank at Quincy offering a purchaser for my Shares and answered it immediately accepting. This will I hope facilitate my efforts to put my business affairs upon a different footing. I have made myself a new rule to avoid holding in joint stock and to throw my property as much as I can into real estate. The sale of these shares and the winding up of the Suffolk Insurance Company will thus furnish me a sum to redeem my mortgaged South Cove Investment in part. This will be converting productive into dead property but as I do not absolutely need the income, perhaps the operation may be one of accumulation. At any rate, it will simplify matters much. And I feel anxious whenever I am in debt. Deacon Spear came in and I gave him the necessary orders and papers.

Finished Electra today and committed an extravagance in purchasing a new copy of Sophocles with which to review.1 My father’s library is deficient in this book. Coins and quiet evening at home reading Miss Martineau, French and Crevier.