[Manchester—Monday, 19 August 1872]
Monday. Jamie has gone to town. Excessive heat. He delighted me yesterday by his vivid talk about his boyhood and the books he loved to read. Those were indeed reading days. Thaddeus of Warsaw was one of his favorites. The best of Scott were not in his boy’s library. Whatever there was, he learned to know thoroughly. “King Alfred” was a poem in the collection which was read among the rest. It obtained a terrible reality in his eyes from hearing his two old uncles talking it over when he was a child of 6 or 8 years. “How they bent the old man” he heard them say.
Glorious moonlight last night. We walked home from Eagle Head between 10 and 11.
