- Spear Alpheus
Mr
Degrand went into Boston this morning with Charles, who returned here to dine—
Alpheus Spear one of my
Tenants of the Mount Wollaston farm came, and afterwards sent me a
second load of wood— He was going this day to Brighton, to purchase
Cattle, to drive into Rhode-Island for Sale— He told me he had sold
between one and two hundred head in the last fortnight— He borrows from
the Bank to make his capital— I continued my planting in the Nursery,
pursuing my experiments on the Stony-barren— There was room for
remarking upon the formation of the Stones and rocks under the Surface—
I overfatigued myself— Youth may acquire hardihood by hard labour; but
it suits not the infirmity of old Age— I resumed the assortment of
my father’s papers, and found
that this will prove another laborious task— I shall divide his
correspondence Alphabetically, and Chronologically, but cannot get
through with it before the winter— My attention was arrested by a number
of Letters received by my father in the years 1780 and 1781 from a
correspondent in England, who
dates every Letter from a different place, subscribes several fictitious
names, Church, Ross and Russell, and addresses the Letters to a
fictitious Spanish name at Amsterdam— I found Letters from Samuel Adams, Dr Cooper,
T. Dalton, William and Arthur Lee, and
General James Warren, and
his wife— Scarcely one of
these Letters repays the trouble of reading it— Scarcely one deserved to
be kept— They are neither lively, nor ingenious, nor indicative of mind
in the writer— There is some pompous inanity in the Letters of Mrs Warren— Much mortified pride— Jealousy
and Envy of Hancock—rankling
discontent at her own situation, and with constant professions of ardent
friendship a querulous tone of remark, and perpetual ebullitions of
Spleen, at the contrast between the Cottage and the Court, Milton Hill,
and the Palaces of Versailles and St.
James’s. Mrs Warren was a woman of uncommon
Powers; with grasp of intellect adequate to the composition and
publication of two sleepy Tragedies, and a History equally dull of the
American Revolution in three Volumes— Ambitious as Catherine of Anhalt Zerbst, sister
of James Otis, and linked to a
husband much inferior to herself though not altogether obscure in the
American Revolution, she had five Sons, in childhood the finest and most promising
boys that I ever knew, but every one of whom had a disastrous Life. The
youngest of them is I believe yet living; I know not where— I rode this
afternoon with John to Randolph,
returning by the Turnpike and Cold Water Corner.