A delightfully mild day. I went to the Office and from thence to a Meeting of the Directors of the Middlesex Canal. The purpose was to 255declare a Dividend which was done. The gross receipts were over $56,000—A sum which enabled us to give thirty dollars a share. This is a blessed thing for my fathers affairs1 and will probably enable me to redeem another portion of debt due in May to Isaac Hull Adams, he being then of age. And if this should be done, the funds here will in the course of one year have been released from an annual tax2 to the amount of $500, nearly a sixth part of the usual receipts.

Walk and home. Afternoon. Finished the last volume of the works of Lord Bacon in the edition which I have, and went on with the Andrian, the text of which is easier than I had expected.

I was grieved to hear of the illness of little Edward Everett whose case was to night very critical. We went to P. C. Brooks, but the supper party of the family was damped by the intelligence from this child. Returned at ten.