Diary of Charles Francis Adams, volume 8
1838-12-19
Fine day. Distribution as usual. Evening visit.
My time at the Office was taken up in finishing various little duties which I recollected still to remain unperformed. Wrote to Mr. Frye respecting the execution of the Will of T. B. Adams, sent a letter to 158the publisher of the Concord paper and left one for an old tenant Miss Oliver,1 besides calling upon the painter Kauffer. These little details it is pleasant to get rid of. I then walked round to take a look at the South Cove.
Home. Alcestis. Coins and Crevier. A visit in the evening to see Mr. and Mrs. Frothingham and a pleasant talk for an hour. A very agreeable place to visit in a sociable way. Nothing new.
LbC of the letter to Nathaniel Frye is in the Adams Papers; the other two letters are missing.
1838-12-20
Mild, pleasant day. Distribution as usual. Evening party.
At the Office pretty lazy. Having now accomplished all the morning work I have to do, my time is unoccupied and I must look around me for some occupation. I am waiting for Burr’s new work before I review that,1 and also to get through with my job for the Athenaeum.
Continued Alcestis, and coins. The afternoons are so short I make no very rapid progress. I have reached the time of Aurelius which may be considered as the palmy days of the Roman Empire, and now there is the long tale of decline to be told.
In the evening after French, we went to a small party at Mrs. H. B. Rogers’. Principally consisting of the Mason connexion which is very large but of whom I know extremely few. T. K. Davis there and barely recognized me. So much for political theories. They have changed the man.
See entry for 30 Jan. 1839, below.
1838-12-21
Fine day. Distribution as usual. Evening at home.
Office as usual where I had a variety of little matters but no regular nor useful occupation. Alcestis the review of which is very interesting.
Coins after dinner. And Crevier. My ignorance of the History of the Roman Emperors strikes me very much now I am upon it. The little I got from a careless perusal of part of Tacitus at Cambridge is nothing at all. What is the knowledge got at College? A negative quantity I say.
Reflecting today upon the subject of yesterday and more and more struck with the fact of the entire isolation of my position in life. And yet perhaps this is one incident in my good fortune. Who knows? In my system of reliance I draw great comfort from this idea.