Diary of Charles Francis Adams, volume 3
1830-08-12
Morning warm and pleasant, but my Wife was so unwell this morning with the disease incident to the season, that I abandoned the idea which I had taken up of returning on this day to Quincy. Rode to town accompanied by Mr. Frothingham. My time passed at the Office much as usual. I accomplished a good deal of Hutchinson, and then went down to the Boylston Insurance Office to try for the Certificates which however were not ready. I then went and looked at the Tenements in Common Street. Found Hollis not yet gone out, and Mrs. Wells still in. This woman notified me she must go, which is a matter 300of grievance. So it is sometimes. Those who are desired to go, stay and those whom we like to keep, leave us.
Returned to Medford. After dinner, Miss Glover and Miss Frothingham friends of Mrs. F., paid a visit.1 We undertook a walk to the place in the Pond or lake called the Partings,2 it was quite pleasant and took up a considerable time. On our return we found here Dr. and Mrs. Stevenson who took tea. On the whole, the time was very agreeably passed. They went away late, and the rest of the evening was passed lazily in skimming over Fontenelle’s Pluralité des Mondes.3
Miss Glover and Miss Frothingham are not otherwise identified.
Opposite the six-mile line on the canal, still within the bounds of the Brooks estate but nearly a mile north of the house, the Mystic Pond narrowed and was crossed by a shoal called “the Partings.” The location is evident on the plan of Medford reproduced in the present volume. The shoal, sometimes used as a road, divided the pond into nearly equal parts. At a later date a stone dam was built upon it, excluding the tidal water from the upper pond (Brooks, Medford
, p. 17).
An edition published at Paris in 1811 is in MQA.