- White Rev
dJohn. - Degrand P. P. F
- Clapp William W
- Oxnard
Sun rose 5.48 clear Set 5.56.
Mr White
of Dedham preached this morning from Proverbs 3.17. [“]Her ways are ways
of pleasantness, and all her paths are Peace”— The discourse was upon
the pleasures of religion, but I was in a lethargy and unable to listen
with attention— There was a great change last evening in the atmosphere
to sultry damp, the effect of which upon my body was to produce a dull
heavy headache, and a sluggish sulky rhumatic uneasiness all over me. I
went to bed soon after 10 and to sleep— I awoke at the stroke of the
clock with an excruciating cramp in my right leg— I supposed the clock
was striking 4. but it struck 12— My cramp passed off but the head ache
remained— I slept no more, but lay and heard the clock strike 2 and 3.
during which the relieving perspiration came on. At half past 3. I rose,
dressed. wrote a page of my astronomical address and as Sun rise
approached went up the hill and saw it from the Eastern corner of
Charles’s house— I returned
and wrote with the interval for breakfast till the second bell for
meeting was ringing whereby my indispensable days work was done; but I
was in a state of torpor the whole day— The weather was of the very
hottest of the Summer. Mr White dined with
us and preached after dinner from Mark 6.20. [“]For Herod favored John, knowing that he was a just man, and an
holy.”—omitting the remainder of the verse— The discourse was upon the
duty and the blessing of an holy life. An excellent theme, but I had the
malady of not listening as in the morning; altogether involuntary, and
the unfailing consequence of a headache and sleepless night.— I had
barely returned home from afternoon meeting, when Mr Degrand
came in from Boston, with his nephew named Oxnard, a young Frenchman from Marseilles, and Mr Clapp
senior editor of the Boston evening Gazette who took tea and spent the
Evening with us. Mr Degrand took my Letters
to Edward Armstrong and
W. B. Reed, to put into the
Post-Office at Boston. Extreme lassitude disabled me for writing and
drove me to bed soon after 10
While he was an apprentice at Weichselberger’s, the house fell in, and buried him under its ruins. He was dug out of them alive, the king of Bavaria having repaired to the spot, cheering the workmen who dug him out by his presence and his exhortations—and upon his deliverance gave him 18 ducats— With part of the money he purchased a machine for grinding glass, and made experiments with it in the leisure of holidays, without success. He resorted to Treatises upon Optics, but found they required previous elementary mathematics, for the acquisition of which he was obliged to steal holiday hours out of his masters house, for in it the use of Books was interdicted to him— He had been very imperfectly taught even to write— In despite of all these obstacles and discouragements, he persevered indefatigably in pursuit of the science of optics with the unconquerable will which cannot be disappointed.