[Boston—Tuesday, 23 July 1867]
Tuesday July 24th [sic] 1867. It was excessively warm today as the heat of the sun came back to earth after a delicious easterly storm of 4 days which has wet the grass and cool[e]d heated mortality. I could not get up any desire to leave home and partly for that reason I suppose and partly because, painters, carpenters, visitors, servants (or servant it is now I am thankful to say) & garden held me. I put off packing for Marblehead (where we intend staying 8 weeks) until nearly two o clock. Mrs Howells stayed some time in the morning & we took lunch together in our upper kitchen. We had a cosy time, for she is a good loveable honest very plain-speaking to naivété little creature and I was glad to see her. She has had a miserable time with servants but at last has an old black woman with negro blood in her who boasts of having had 24 places beside having lived in a home of her own 24 years. She is clean but proud & self willed and has a daughter of eleven years who lives with her. Notwithstanding all this she is a great assistance to Mrs Howells who can put perfect confidence in her. Beside she is a very first-rate cook and on the whole a comfort.
Talking of comfort, there never were people more blessed than we have been this summer in our Irish Marsella.
The weather grew warmer & warmer & the trouble of packing thickened & thickened until when the moment came for departure I felt utterly bewildered & was ashamed of the tumult which seized my brain. We found the weather cool enough at Marblehead which is as barren a promontory as one could well find but it is an uninviting place, like one of those persons who are good enough, you believe, but who possess no magnetism. You can’t tell why it is but you don’t altogether care to be with them, had a good x x x
