The air had turned cold during the night, and it was cloudy. After a good breakfast we started for Washington in an Extra Coach I had procured exclusively for ourselves. It began to rain and freeze so as to be cheerless in the extreme. My Mother who seemed at first scarcely able to go on, gathered strength by exercise and bore the Journey through without stopping. We arrived at Washington shortly after three.

On the road I could not help reflecting how different my feelings were from what they had ever before been. How cheerless and barren every thing looked, how desolate now, where formerly the anticipation of pleasure and youthful vacations and all the novelty of fashionable life had thrown a glow of cheerfulness. Both my brothers with whom I had shared all these hopes and feelings gone, corrupted by the very luxury we longed for, and now numbered only among those thousands and millions that have been. My own views and feelings changed and changing. My situation in life now removed from all prospects of ambition, and from scenes of exalted intrigue. What is Washington to me now, but the monument of my father’s disappointment, the grave of my brothers, and the memorial of most of the misery and all of the vice of my own past life.1 My present entrance was moreover attended with circumstances of a peculiarly melancholy nature. My Mother barely recovering from a dreadful illness, and returning to 12the house of him who was her son but a few weeks ago, to a distressed wife and a fatherless child, to be called back to the memory of him by the million reminiscences in things about her; and this without the satisfaction of having a comfortable home or a mind free from anxious thoughts of the future. This is only a part of the picture and I will not fill up the rest.

We reached the door of my late brother’s house2 and my father came out full of anxiety and distress. I avoided the first meeting with all the family by pretending it was necessary for me to see Mrs. Smith home to her own house. On my return, all was over, the interview between my Mother and sister in law had taken place, and with less of distress than we had feared. I also saw the latter for a few moments. She had been very ill but is now recovering and looks better in health than I expected. She seems now much affected and no doubt will be for some time but if I judge her character right, her impressions will not be lasting. Nor is it at all desirable that they should be. The child Fanny is a pleasing little thing of just the age to be attractive. Mr. and Mrs. Frye with their son Thomas who has grown entirely out of my recollection3 passed the greater part of the evening here.

Our Journey was just executed in time, for this was a severe North East snow storm. My Mother was therefore judicious in advancing her day from this the first date fixed to last week. How much we have to be thankful for. How little my anxiety has been during the Journey, and how favorably every thing has happened for us. These are things little thought of but always worthy of profound attention.

I was engaged all the morning in writing a letter to my Wife1 giving her a detailed Account of my late Journey. I had intended to have been at Church in the morning but there was no service at St. John’s where we were to have gone. In the afternoon I accompanied my father and we heard the Episcopal service performed by a young man whose name 13I could not learn to an extremely thin audience. His Sermon was delivered in a very distinct and animated manner though its substance was not remarkable in any particular excepting its Anti Calvinism. Text, blank in MS .

The day was cold and gloomy, the earth covered with a crust of snow so as to make walking disagreeable. My brother’s house is not badly constructed, not is it without comforts, but there appears a great want of attention to the minutiae which make a residence cheerful and agreeable. To be sure my father’s residence is very well calculated to put to flight any idea of method or arrangement, as well as the greater essential neatness, but yet too much attention has been paid to the expensive parts. The house wants painting, whitewashing and a general correction of all the fireplaces, none of which draw as they ought. Perhaps papering would make the lower rooms still more pleasant. But now there is no one left to attend even to the necessaries far less the mere luxuries of life and the discomfort is apparent enough.2

I was quite depressed, and as I had nothing to do, it determined me to execute directly what has always been my intention—To seek an explanation of my father’s designs, to offer him any assistance which I might render, and regulate my own course upon his answer to this question. Accordingly in the evening I opened the subject. He then gave me his views, very differently from what they had been in our last conversation four weeks ago. He said that he was embarrassed and must look for the means to release himself. He concluded not to break up his establishment here, and he could sell no property. Therefore very little would be necessary for me to be done. I endeavoured to converse in a tone as mild as I could assume, but my father’s spirits have been so depressed, his nerves so shaken that he could not control his feelings at all. I had therefore a hard struggle to resist the painful effect which his mode of speaking produced upon me. I found myself gradually giving way to the same warmth and therefore dropped the conversation and shortly afterwards retired to my own room. My decision however was made.

Finding my services not necessary I had no reason for remaining in a place which gave me no pleasure and concluded upon an early day in the week for my return home. But I cannot, will not conceal from myself the bitterness of my feelings at my disappointment in not carrying through the measures which might save my father and Mother much anxiety and distress of mind for the future, and still more at the exceeding slight appreciation of my late motives of conduct and sacrifices of feeling during this catastrophe.