[Boston—Thursday, 5 April 1866]
Thursday. Warm as summer. We went to Manchester and took our lunch in the sun on Eagle Head; a soft haze covered the sea and the waves came up with their old beauty. The beach was wonderful with groups of gayly clad country children playing on the sands. I observed one young girl walking with a young man and thought how gentle her bearing was, how becoming her manner—afterward I saw she was dumb! Sometimes it seems as if we needed heavy weights of sorrow to crush the sweetness of the divine out into our human nature.
Invited to Mrs Dorr’s for Wed., to Mrs Andrews for Thursday eve. to meet Mr & Mrs George Ward. Went to neither.