[Manchester—Thursday, 3 September 1868]
Thursday Sep. 3. The weather is quite cool again. J. has been gone all day. He gave a dinner at Point Shirley to Editors &c. today which was entirely successful, as his good times can never fail to be. Whipple was the wit of the table; full of simple frolicsomeness, he is simple and hearty as a boy. While the sea tossed outside the open windows they ate fish and birds. I am glad it is well over for it has rather haunted J. of late. Coming down in the cars he met Mr Dana Jr. just returned from an annual visit to Mr. Evarts (W.E.) the Attorney-General—“a powerful, eloquent man Mr. Dana describes him, one who makes $75,000 per ann. by his legal practice. A keen clear intellect, not a dash of poetry in his composition but eloquent “because he always says what he means to say” said R.H.D. His mind is sharp as a stiletto, always ready to pounce on a weak point and stab it through and through. He will only hold his present public office for five months because to hold it and obtain the honor, he has been obliged to sacrifice a portion of his grand income, the pay of the country to the holder of this office being only $8,000. He has a grand farm in Win[d]sor Vermont where Mr. D. has been, stocked with 50 oxen and 500 sheep, among other items. He is a strict Calvinist, his wife seeing nothing of society but devoting her energies to the distribution of religious tracts.
Passed the afternoon stretched on the top of a cliff some distance from the sea but overlooking it recalling the latter part of Keats’s delicious Epistle to “My Brother George.”
