- Sewall D
r - Everett Edward
My only certain time for writing, is the morning from my rising hour till
breakfast— After breakfast, visitors, Newspapers, unexpected and
unaccountable casual calls, consume Time, like fire without flame
fretting it away by the five or ten minutes at a time, till the moment
of sallying forth for exercise comes, and unless seized, is gone— A walk
of an hour and a half brings me back to a late dinner—after which
reading or writing are both irksome, and often impracticable— This
Evening I was with a lamp in my hand reading a prosy Article in the
Telegraph, when it lulled me to a doze, and my lamp set fire to the
Newspaper which it took some expense of breath to extinguish— I made
several efforts to write, but was obliged to give it up. I had a morning
visit from Dr
Sewall; and before dinner walked to the Capitol— There I
met Chilton Allen of Kentucky,
and Mr
Foster of Georgia, and Mr Potts of Pennsylvania— On
coming out, I met in the Avenue Heman
Allen of Vermont, and afterwards Coll. David
Crockett of Tennessee— I did not recognize him, till he
came up and accosted me—and named himself— I congratulated him upon his
return here; and he said yes— It had cost him two years to convince the
People of his District that he was the fittest man to represent them,
that he had just been to Mr Gales, and requested him to
announce his arrival, and inform the Public that he had taken for
lodgings two rooms on the first floor of a boarding House, where he
expected to pass the Winter, and to have for a fellow lodger Major Jack Downing— The 190only person in whom he had any confidence for information
of what the Government was doing— This Major Jack Downing is the
fictitious signature of a writer in some of the Newspapers, assuming the
character of a shrewd, trickish, half-educated Yankee Major of Militia,
writes Letters from the President’s House, as entirely in his confidence, and
telling all the petty intrigues of the cabinets and favourites by whom
he is surrounded— After dinner Mr Edward Everett called, and
we had some conversation upon the state of Politics in Massachusetts— I
found he was anxious to convince me that if the House of Representatives
should elect Morton and me as the
two Candidates from whom the Senate are to choose a Governor, the Senate
would choose Morton— I told him I supposed they would, and should be
much obliged to them if they should— I saw his object was to prevail
upon me to decline in favour of Davis; but I was not disposed to let him know what my
intentions are— He and his brother Alexander are both reeds shaken with the wind— I spent
part of this Evening in assorting pamphlets.