Morning clear and warm although the air was sufficiently elastic to prevent any inconvenience from it. I laboured to finish the assorting of the Letter files today, and completed it so far as I know of any at present. I have found some dating as early as 1762, two years before their marriage, and coming down through 1774, 5, 6, 7, 9. 80, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 9. 92, 93, 4, 7, in each of which years there was a considerable separation. There is much valuable matter in the Correspondence, and it richly merits to be preserved and bound up into volumes. But I do not know whether at present I feel willing to undertake the responsibility of it.

Attended divine Service and heard George Whitney in the morning upon the difference between Morality and Piety, and in the Afternoon upon the beneficial influence of Christianity. George always looks to me oddly in the Pulpit. His manner is dashing and wants solemnity, and the man is too perpetually peeping through.1

I read in the Afternoon a very short and the closing Sermon in the volume of Panegyric—Upon a holy martyr, patron of a church not named. Text. Acts 1. 8. “Ye shall be witnesses.” He considers the testimony now necessary to be three fold: 1. A testimony of sacrifice or suffering, 2. of submission, 3. of desire for another world. This is the martyrdom of the present day. I cannot enter into the spirit of these doctrines. I wish to avoid all evil and sinfulness, I wish to submit as far as I am able to all the dispensations of divine Providence, but I cannot convince myself that the proper use of the enjoyments this world has to afford was to be denied us by a beneficent Creator. It is the province of the reasoning faculty to discover what this proper use is, and the neglect or disregard of its admonitions appears to me to constitute sin. Evening, Mr. and Mrs. J. Quincy Jr. and Edmd. paid a short visit.

I went to town and passed the day. Time very much taken up in Commissions and exercise of various sorts. I went to my House to attend to the setting of the grate which the man was doing. This is the first piece of business. I then went to the Athenaeum and passed nearly an hour idling, dined at Mr. Frothingham’s who treated me to some very nice wine, of that which we bought Tuesday. I am well content with my purchase. No news of any kind. Attended a meeting of Directors of Boylston Market. Things begin to look brighter in this Quarter. We have wiped off our Notes. No business. Got into idle conversation with these Directors, and staid till quite late so that I was not at home until eight o’clock. The riding was very pleasant. Warm evening.

The morning began with very heavy showers and wind from the South. It afterwards cleared away and was hotter than was at all comfortable to the feeling, which a shower again qualified to tolerable.

I was occupied in looking over and attempting to discover some papers among the general mass of my Grandfather’s. I found but one, 147the original of the Letter to Webb which I copied. This has been published over and over again, but I thought a copy would not be useless from the genuine paper.1 I spent an hour in comparing copy of the old Journals with my father, a work intermitted since last Autumn.2 I also began reading over Virgil critically, and finished the first Eclogue.3 This gives pretty much the sum total of my day, the labour of which was shortened by the very enervating effect of the South wind. I am as yet doing little for Hutchinson.

On this day my child completed her second and entered upon her third year. She has enjoyed very good health during the year and has given us full as little trouble as any little thing of her age could. May I be thankful ever to the Divine being for having dealt so kindly to me, and blest my lot with a degree of happiness I know not how I can deserve. May he continue it to me, and I will endeavour at all times to turn the lesson of prosperity to the true account, my own amendment, in feelings, temper, vices &c. The cares and anxieties of life are so great that they require a mind well disciplined to bear them. Mine although I know that they are in themselves comparatively trifling to those of the mass of men, I am ashamed to say, sometimes unduly worry me. I must bear it in mind. Evening, I tried to read aloud, but my book was dull. Mr. Aug. Whitney and his Sisters4 called to see Mrs. J. Adams.