Monday Sept. 12.
Mr. Jefferson[1] came to breakfast that he might shoot afterwards. It is very extraordinary: but I never was acquainted with a young man of any mind or imagination—except Mr. Knowles. I do except him. They went out to shoot afterwards: & B, H A & I had the honor of their company at dinner—that is to say they talked while we ate. A disagreable kind of non-sympathy. We went to the Cliffes, nearly as soon as they went to the cricket match. Found the Cliffes gathering mushrooms. Mrs. Best & I with linked arms, not souls, talked about her future & past publications. An amiable, not an interesting, not a very superior woman. I asked her opinion of the general redemption doctrines. She seemed to me to have undecided & indistinct opinions on this subject. She seems to believe that all may be saved; but that the blood of Christ was shed only for those who are saved. Her little girl is a delicate intelligent little thing which I could love. She wishes to die, as Alfieri did at her age!—[2] Got home in the dark, at least with no more than a quarter of a moon,—but such a soft moonlighty air! You know—, I mean, I know—, it is possible to feel, as well as to see the moon.
The Greek testament was all the Greek which I read today.
1. Not positively identified, but from other references apparently a friend of Allen Cliffe.
2. Count Vittorio Alfieri (1749–1803), Italian dramatist, recorded in Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Victor Alfieri, 2 vols. (London, 1810), I, 11: “When about five years of age, I was reduced to the last extremity by a violent dysentery. … I knew not then what death was, yet I anxiously looked forward to it as the termination of my sufferings. I had heard it said, when my youngest brother died, that he would become a little angel.”
