[Boston—Sunday, 19 November 1865]
Sunday. Heard Mr Bartol. Good about attending to one’s own business.
The perfect weather has fled—east wind and rain the precursors of winter are here.
Mrs Thaxter had a strange story to tell me yesterday of herself. She said she thought she should never write any more for she had no servant now-a-days and did all the work of her house, that she could not afford to do otherwise!! I could not help thinking what a mighty shame it was for this woman with a husband in the prime of health with three sons to be obliged to work for them in this manner. She washes and irons and scrubs and mends their stockings and pantaloons and makes her own clothes while he does no business and pretends to be a philanthropist, a radical and all that is good. I don’t believe in him, that’s all! They are not very poor. I sometimes wish they were, then he would have to work. Poor child. I don’t wonder she flies to her Island.
Sunday. Finished the printed diary of Eugenie de Guérin. She is my sister. The words used by M. de Ste Beuve of M. de Guérin’s journal might be prefixed most fitly to that of Hawthorne. I shall ask J. to do this if it be not already too late. “L’artiste, en effet, le peintre qui préparait à tout hasard les cartons, s’essayait en lin.”
Maurice says “Aprés le bonheur de mourir avant ceux que l’on aime je ne connait rein qui masque plus la faveur du ciel que d’être admis au chevet d’un ami mourant, de le suivre jusqu’où l’on peut aller avec lui dans l’ombre de la mort, de s’initier á moitié au mysterè profond dans lequel il disparaît, de lever sur son visage des empreintes fidèles et incorruptibles, de se former enfin un trésor de douleurs et de pensées secrètes, qui puisse fournir à l’étendue de la plus longue vie.”
