Clear. Office. Accounts, division as usual. Evening out.

My morning was very much taken up in accounts. I transacted business with the Treasurer of the South Cove Corporation, and took deeds and gave Mortgages for the lands which had fallen to my share. This operation involves me in a considerable debt, in addition to that which the original shares create. But in looking upon the probabilities of the future, and the transition state in which all kinds of property are likely to be while the question of the currency remains unsettled, I think the probabilities of permanency and ultimate value are in favor of land so that I intend as fast as possible to convert my personal property into that shape. I do not know whether I have been fortunate in my selections. Time can only determine that. And my children may perhaps draw the benefit.

Home. Alcestis. After dinner coins as usual and now and then Crevier. Evening. Visit to Mr. and Mrs. Tarbell. I had not been to see them for many years until I thought they began to feel it, so I made up my mind to go. Miss Anna Thaxter there.1 Wrote a letter to my father.2

Cloudy. Office, division as usual. Evening at home.

Morning taken up at the Office. Accounts becoming somewhat complicated and therefore require to be placed in full. Nothing further of interest. Alcestis. Coins and Crevier.

My life is now extremely regular and hardly seems to justify much recording. I find my amount of work is not nearly so much as when I am at Quincy. The morning and evening are both against my present arrangement. Yet time passes very fast and as it seems to me almost without impressing a moral with it. I grow older and as this impresses itself upon me I feel now and then on a dull day at this season of the year a moment of depression. Such was the case today.

Read to my Wife a farce called High life below Stairs. Finished my letter.

Clear and pleasant, division as usual. Evening out. Office.

Much interest is now excited by the movement of Mr. Biddle and 151the Bank of the United States at Philadelphia, in holding up the price of cotton. There is cause for serious apprehension, I think, of the consequences of these operations. Perhaps it may be croaking but it does not look right. Yet I perceive that the President congratulates himself in his new Message upon the present state of security as if it was established upon a permanent basis. Talked with Mr. T. W. Ward about it who is a well informed merchant and who as Agent of a great London banking house is much interested in watching these operations.

Mr. Lunt dined with me from Quincy and thus cut off Alcestis. Coins as usual. Went to a party in the evening at the house of Mr. Charles Brooks, a cousin of my Wife, where however I saw only the members of the family whom I knew.