Morning clear. Time distributed as usual. Evening at home.

This was a quiet day and I confess I relished it somewhat. My time at the Office taken up in Accounts and settling bills. Nothing of importance going on at present. Home where I continued Electra. This is about the only profitable hour which I spend in the course of the twenty four, and in this I think that I make progress in the language. The coins still go on and I reach in them the age of Constantine while 171in Crevier I remain with the Antonines. Quiet evening at home reading Miss Martineau.

Mild day. Time as usual, dinner company at home, quiet evening.

My time passed this morning quite in a bustle, first with various little commissions second with tenants and business people at Office. The payment of bills seems to be quite an important part of existence. Home where I continued to read Electra.

Company to dine. Allyne Otis, T. Dwight, F. H. Story, W. Gorham and Dr. Frothingham. Very pleasant and just what a dinner ought to be. They did not remain long and I had a quiet evening at home.

To think that Davis is now among the self banished from my table because he chooses to cultivate wild theories action against which he dreads.1 So be it. We had much talk about him and the other gentlemen were rather unjustly severe upon him, but this is the fate of dissentients. I continued reading Crevier.

Pleasant day. Services as usual. Evening at Mr. Brooks’.

I passed my time as usual, continuing the History of the Jews by Milman which is my Sundays reading besides one Sermon and the regular devotional exercises. Dr. Frothingham preached in the morning from 1 Timothy 2. 4. “Who will have men to be saved and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.” A discourse upon the probable design of the deity, in signifying the spread of the gospel and the universality of the Christian Religion which had not as yet taken place.

Afternoon Luke 16. 24. “I am tormented in this flame.” Dr. Frothingham is one of the class who draw every thing into the vortex of fancy. I for one am not prepared to pronounce that hell is a place of fire where flesh is burnt, but then on the other hand I am not prepared to maintain it’s impossibility or that after admitting for once the resurrection of the body, there is any sort of improbability in it. After all, the subject is beyond us.

Read a Sermon of Dr. Holland in the English Preacher, Psalm 34. 19. “Many are the afflictions of the righteous but the Lord delivereth him out of them all.” The favourite subject of the action of the Deity 172upon good and bad alike, which is puzzling to many but plain enough to any one who believes in a future state. The one proposition hangs upon the other.

Evening, as my Wife had a cold I went down and paid a visit to Mr. Brooks. Found there Mr. and Mrs. Story and after a pleasant hour walked home with them in company.