[Boston—Sunday, 18 October 1874]
Sunday. Jamie was ill at home. Charlotte Cushman dropped in at breakfast time. Anxious J. should try the N.Y. water-cure. Miss Doria, Mr. J. Wheeler called. Walked with the children in the P.M. Carried them to the Bellevue to see Aunt Willard.
I wish I could portray the touching simplicity with which Mrs Diaz gave me her story of her son’s life. He is now in prison not far from here. He has never been trustworthy. Money always ran through his fingers from earliest youth. She felt it right that society should understand what he was. He is probably a gambler, though of that she knows nothing. All she does know is that his lack of principle is an inheritance from her most wretched husband. Poor woman! Her woes are heavy indeed! Her other son is a great pride and joy to her heart. She lives in him and he, to his honor, rejoices equally in her. The ultimate cause of her son’s arrest was the larceny of watches in false pretenses to the amount of $1000.
Mr. Bonamy Price says he was examining a school of girls and boys. He asked “what chiefly distinguished men from animals?” One answer only was given by a girl—she said it was “the power of progressive desire.”
This seems to me truly marvellous.
