- Danforth Rev
dJoshua - Adams James C
The assortment and filing of my Letters which have been two months
accumulating, some of them unread, occupies now about two hours of my
time every day— Four hours, for the recording of two days in this Diary,
to retrieve every day one of the arrears, gives as much writing as I can
perform— The tide of visitors is subsiding, and the newspaper and
pamphlet reading is not now overcharged as it was during the Session of
Congress.—Mr
James C. Adams, Secretary of the Baltimore Lyceum had
written me a Letter from Brown’s
hotel last evening, enquiring if I would deliver a Lecture before that
institution; and he came this morning and renewed in person the
invitation— I have no alternative, but to decline them all; and in every
case it is a trial of temper to give a courteous negative answer. I
walked this morning to Mr Haas’s shop, and he took
from his camera obscura, three Daguerrotype likenesses of me— The
operation is performed in half a minute; but is yet altogether
incomprehensible to me. Mr Haas says it is a
chemical process upon mercury, silver, gold and Iodine. It would seem as
easy to stamp a fixed portrait from the reflection of a mirror; but how
wonderful would that reflection itself be, if we were not familiarised
to it from childhood.— I went to the Capitol, and on enquiry at the
Clerk’s office, found that my
resolution reported from the Committee of foreign Affairs in the night
of the 3d. of March, but not received by the
house, was recovered; a copy of it was furnished me, which I gave to
Mr
Gales for publication in the National Intelligencer— I met
him in the Congress library.— There are no additional documents, or
journals of the houses printed since Monday— The arrearages of printed
Documents are enormous.— Those of the house even for the second Session
of the recent Congress I am told will not be completed till next winter—
Mr
Danforth came again to enquire if I would deliver a
Lecture at Alexandria— I definitively declined.— He asked me if I had
heard Dr
Ely at the second presbyterian church last Sunday; I said
I had; and he intimated that perhaps the Doctor would incline to be
permanently settled there— I received last evening a Letter from
Charles J. Ingersoll at
Philadelphia, reminding me of Letters received by me some months since
from Dr
Lamb of Frankford 6 miles from Philadelphia, inviting me
to deliver a Lecture there— Charles was a strange correspondent to urge
this invitation upon me; but I answered his Letter in all cordiality,
and desired to be excused from delivering the Lecture— I wrote also to
the Revd
Obadiah B. Brown, concerning his note due next
Saturday.