[Boston—Friday, 20 March 1868]
Friday. March 20th How full of small businesses these spring days are. Yesterday J. & I went to a wedding at 10 a.m. at Brookline; at one he went as pall-bearer to a funeral (that of Mrs. Rice, wife of our representative to Congress) walking in from Mt. Auburn in the afternoon. He was very tired. I, in the meantime, went to Roxbury to see Mrs. Putnam and finished a good deal of business.
Such a letter from Dickens as came this morning! We laughed till we cried over it!
I am still making my own bed Katy being in hers. However we get on capitally having no company but I frequently reflect what a different thing it must be to have a large & troublesome family to engineer with all the varieties of mood & taste not to speak of the varieties of bad servants one might get. So many persons endure great suffering from lack of service! It is sufficient reason for not living a suburban life, beautiful as that can be in America, the impossibility (speaking humanly) of getting servants for the winter, and no sane person should have two houses.
