Diary of Charles Francis Adams, volume 8
1839-02-05
Cool and clear. Distribution as usual. Evening visit Mrs. Bates at Papanti’s.
At the Office I am often bored by countrymen who come in about the farm at Weston. They seem to have little or no idea of the value of time. I suppose a farming life rather begets indolence.
Continued Burr, and today wrote a note to Dr. Palfrey proposing to him a review of the same.1 So now my head is in for it. The truth is that I am conscious of being eaten up by indolence and luxury.
Home reading Electra. Average about 110 lines of review in the hour. This is slow. But I read most of the Greek Scholia.2 Finished the private Journal of Burr. Quite a tragedy finale. A case entirely unexampled in America and perhaps in the world.
The ball at Papanti’s was as splendid as money could make it, and on the whole quite pleasant, although by no means so much so as the Assemblies. We returned at one o’clock in the morning of
To J. G. Palfrey, Adams Papers.
Marginal notes to Sophocles’ text, commenting either on language or subject matter, and originating in the first century B.C., or earlier. N. G. L. Hammond and H. H. Scullard, eds., Oxford Classical Dictionary, 2d edn., Oxford, 1970, p. 960–961.