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.

A very heavy North Easterly rain storm which kept me confined at home all day. I arose in the morning after a poor night’s rest, much tranquillized but not a whit less decided. I met my father as usual without making any attempt at conversation upon any topic between us. He seemed excessively depressed which I regretted. It is very melancholy to see an old man so bowed down, but I have contributed less to this than any member of the family. I have served him as well as I could although I had heretofore thought myself not cherished as I might have been. Now at the moment of trial to be called upon merely to render menial services at the expense of my own independent station in Society, at the expense of the society of my Wife and children, and to receive no thanks for it, nothing but a formal acknowledgment of duty performed, and at the moment of this rather unreasonable expectation to be told, that property had ceased to interest him, that nothing of his was of value to him to prevent his parting with it tomorrow, that the Estates at Quincy, his own residence and that of his father before him might as well go. If this is an expression of feeling for or interest in children and grandchildren, if this is even a sense of generous attention to the mere sensitive feelings of an only child, then has my understanding of terms and of conduct been grossly perverted in my education. But I will stop.

Some day or other, I may turn over this page and regret I had written it. Be it so, the faults of a Parent are holy even when they work aggressively. I will endeavour to be silent though I cannot forget. Not that I mean to say my father has been an unkind one in general. Far from it. His indulgence has if any thing been too great. But he has never taken any active interest in our success in life. His rules have been those of general application which rarely operate so forcibly upon the young mind as short maxims at the right moment. His course has been to leave them to themselves, a course under which nine out 15of ten youths in situations of the same kind would fail, a course which he would be probably able himself to stand under, but which judging from the letters of my grandfather and grandmother he luckily escaped the full effect of in his own person. I have felt the influence of this mode of treatment less than others, but I have had enough of it very much to discourage my exertions. But enough of this. I shall not recur to it.

Having nothing to do the day passed wearily. I read a considerable part of the letters of Espriella, a work of Southey’s written under the influence of far more liberal principles than he has acknowledged of late.1 There is much sense and justice in them. But they did not interest me much.

Conversation with my Mother. She talked a great deal of the last moments of my brother. He was not in possession of his senses mind but his visions were not painful. His mind did not recur to painful associations. His taking leave of his Wife previous to his loss of reason as well as the thorough possession of his faculties in the direction of matters after his death which he so clearly foresaw, are the consolations which she now derives from the fatal event. Her tears are plentiful, and they will relieve her. May her mind find more steady quiet now than it has had for years.