Morning fine though cold. I started early to go to Quincy and found things there going on pretty well. The frame of the house is pretty nearly put together and now nothing of that kind waits. They were putting together the small building when I was there. I do not know how I managed to spend the time but I found it gone very soon. There are two things very necessary to be guarded against in this process. The first too much of uneasiness at the expense particularly when it is unexpected, the second too great tendency to become fretted by occasional untoward events which will happen in building to disappoint one’s expectations.

Home, to dinner, a little of Homer. Afternoon, Plutarch, and Agathon which interests me much. Evening, Moore’s Life of Byron to my wife, and afterwards Talfourd’s Ion which I finished. A play upon the ancient model, with nice execution, taste, elegance and a classic drapery round one of the old classic ideas. But it wants action, the spirit which animates man and the sympathy which binds the reader to the actor. The love of Ion is passionless, his self-devotion is too much like a summer’s morning. There is no nice shading in the characters, none of the internal tempest of good and evil which makes the drama of life. Clemanthe always acts from reason, and Ion never does otherwise than right. We admire the poem when we do not realize the event.

Morning clear though cold, but it afterwards clouded and rained in the afternoon. I went to the Office and was occupied much of my time with Mr. Ayer and Mr. Whiting, my Carpenter and Mason who came in for plans and money. I am becoming a little startled at the difficulties of keeping in funds for my undertaking and considering the expediency of stopping the work. Yet I do not much wish it.

The commercial tornado increases in violence from day to day. The accounts today from New York are worse and worse, they show the last stage of panic. A run on the Banks, the failure of one and the fear of the consequences of refusing the bills inducing the others to take them with almost a certainty of loss. The consternation here is also very great. The factories have large amounts of suspended paper, which they cannot convert. Drafts for their cotton are now coming due and their workmen are constantly requiring money. Of course the only alternative is to stop which most of them are doing. But the distress as well to operatives as to stockholders must necessarily be very consider-240able. And the prospect is undoubtedly alarming even to the sternest nerves.

I felt my own spirits somewhat affected today although to me individually there is very little of this kind of trouble comparatively speaking. But there is much sympathy in all these cases and one thing is certain that my next year’s income is probably fifteen hundred dollars less, which is bad for a person just laying out money. Mr. Brooks too appears at last to be much alarmed. Gorham Brooks is here from Baltimore, I fancy in some difficulty, but this is mere conjecture and unfortified by any evidence.

Home. Read Homer. Afternoon, Plutarch and Agathon. Evening, Mr. and Mrs. Frothingham came in and passed a couple of hours very pleasantly. Then I read Moore’s Life of Byron.