[Boston—Saturday, 24 February 1866]
Saturday Feb. 24. Another month almost gone. I have had hardly an hour for study or reading except when too tired to give my best devotion to my work and I feel much a[s] Gibbon did during the first 7 or 8 months of his service in the Hampshire militia, only alas! this is not the first time in my life as it is with him. Society absorbs too much of my best thought and time yet I cannot see well how to help this because ——— well—the becauses are many and evident but I sometimes wonder at and blame myself for not seizing more time, only it is not my own to seize. The slight cares of housekeeping and entertaining beside of visiting cannot be neglected in the smallest of particulars, else others who depend upon me will be made uncomfortable.
Gibbon’s Autobiography is very absorbing and interesting. Now that the Spring months are here I would devote many hours every day to Greek and Latin if I could find an instructor. I will look.
Lovely soft rain. Jamie at Saturday Club dinner.
Lissie’s pictures are unpacked. They are unequal but full of poetic sentiment. The coloring lovely and the Architecture true and faithfully painted reminding us of the school of Baron Leys.
The 22d Andrew Johnson made his speech on the Veto bill. We are all plunged into the saddest anxieties by it. May Heaven preserve the country from another war. Preserve us, preserve us, and raise up the oppressed. How difficult for us to understand the drifting of the present.
