A lovely morning as I ever saw in this climate and not much in character with the advanced state of the season. I rode to town and was fully occupied during the time I was there. A. H. Everett came to me and made an application for a loan of a hundred dollars. He has within a day or two been engaged in a scuffle with one of his opponents not much to his credit. And now I suppose he needs money to keep him up until the election. The application did not surprise me, and from having foreseen the probability of it I was more fully enabled to act at once. My disposition to aid Mr. Everett is considerable. I am willing to let him have the Office he occupies without asking him for rent, and also to write Addresses for him to aid his Election to a responsible Office at a critical moment of his life, but money for him to squander in the thoughtless manner he has heretofore done is neither within my duty or inclination to furnish him. I was enabled to decline the more quietly as I am myself at this time in need of all my funds to meet the extraordinary expense incurred by my building project.

Went to the House to give directions there, thence on an expedition to pay certain Accounts now open and to see Ayer, the carpenter. He called, as did two or three others, after I had returned to my Office, and they consumed the remainder of the time. Home. Afternoon upon the hill superintending the disposition of the trees. My cellar goes on 114slowly. Evening quiet at home. My Mother is better today though still not up. Conversation with my father upon the news from Pennsylvania which appears conclusive as to the Presidential question.1

Morning clear and warm but it cleared with a shower before evening. I was occupied for some time in assorting MS. which I keep on with slowly, perhaps too slowly. Attended divine service and heard Mr. Walker of Charlestown preach.1 In the morning from Matthew 6. 13. “Lead us not into temptation.” Mr. Walker first considered the question which this text always presents, whether the Deity can ever be supposed to tempt man, and answered it by a distinction, between the idea of sin and that of trial. God may put us to trial from which we must extricate ourselves by our own energies, but he never would put us into a position where we must infallibly become guilty of sin through inability to resist it. The preacher then went on to explain the text as praying for removing trial, and he descanted upon the tendency of men to seek in their incapacity of resistance the excuse for an indulgence of their criminal inclinations. The great merit is the removal of temptation. A very powerful and excellently moral discourse.

Afternoon 2. Corinthians 5. 4. “For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life.” A discourse upon immortality, the influence which the dead have upon the living and the certainty of their not being extinct although dead. Mr. Walker dined with us as also Mr. Degrand who came in rather late.

I read after service a Sermon of Dr. Barrow’s much shorter than common upon the same text and subject with that of last Sunday. The truth of the Christian religion as compared with others, proved by the falsity of others. This discourse took up the Pagan and Mahometan faiths, and disposes of them briefly. Evening, at home. Read some chapters in President Goguet.