[Boston—Sunday, 17 March 1867]

Sunday. Another huge snow-storm. Have been reading a pleasant eulogy upon Alexander Smith which recalls his honest, genial face with the shades of delicate feeling which passed over it, very clearly. The snow comes whirling down like silent bees, recalling a pretty feat of the Japanese Jugglers we saw yesterday—butterflies made of paper which behaved exactly like the real little summer flutterers themselves, lighting on flowers and sipping water (apparently) from a vase. Their feats of strength were too terrible to behold—if human life were nothing, of no more value than that of bugs it would do very well to see the wonderful things—but when I remember the suffering & incapacity if not death which must ensue from the trembling of a muscle, I shudder and can no longer look—a man lay on his back and held a heavy ladder with his toes while a boy went to the top and performed evolutions.


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