John Quincy Adams Digital Diary

258 Quincy— Monday. 15 September 1845.

15. V. Monday.

No interruption of Visitors. The labour of the day was to bring up the journal from Friday, and that was all that I was able to accomplish— I could not write the daily Letter— I received from Elliot C. Cowdin, one of the young man who a few days since applied to me to deliver a Lecture before the Mercantile Library association a Report of the board of Directors made in June last, from the origin of the institution in 1820 to its incorporation in 1845— The object of this institution originally was to collect a library suitable for the reading of a merchant, by the associated funds of the merchants clerks in Boston. Their beginnings were small—their numbers few—their contributions scanty. But they have maintained their organization under repeated modifications, for 25 years— They began with a board of seven directors annually chosen, which they afterwards increased to thirteen, then reduced to ten and again to 9 with a President— They have also an anniversary Oration and Poem, delivered sometimes by members of the Society and at others by strangers under special invitation.— After much deliberation they rejected the proposal to have a supper with their anniversary Oration and Poem— They have also introduced annual courses of Lectures every winter for a series of years and made repeated applications to me to deliver one of them, but I have never been able to comply with their invitation, and am now more unable then ever. After 25 years of a variegated and fluctuating fortune they have at last at the Session of this present year of the Legislature of this Commonwealth obtained an act of incorporation, and it is a sore disappointment to me to be disabled from delivering a Lecture before them. I went to the Post-Office, and left the Boston Evening Gazette of last Saturday for my Granddaughter Louisa Catherine, at Mr Charles Sedgwick at Lenox and a Letter for Miss Cutts to the care of Governor Fairfield at Saco, Maine and in returning home stop’d at my Son’s house to see him— I called again as the Sun was setting and the full moon rising, with a disk apparently larger than that of the Sun himself— How uniform is the course of Nature! how mutable the condition of man! The Sun and Moon rise and set now as they did five thousand years ago— I take pleasure in seeing the rising and setting of the Sun—and of the full moon—so I did fifty years ago—but with what a different sensation!— In youth, in manhood, even in green old age—the rising and setting Sun and moon, speak at once of God and of the lapse of time— Carpe diem is their Lesson—but what is it in extreme old age? what is it when the faculties of body and Soul, are in the last stage of decay? palsied— It is never too late to learn—but the last Lessons are without hope?— that must come from another quarter— In pursuit of Mr John G Palfrey’s enquiries about Joseph Nourse, I found that on the 19th. of September 1781. he was appointed by the confederation Congress Register of the Treasury—under an Ordinance for regulating the Treasury, and adjusting the public accounts—of the 11th. of that month. And on the 11th. of September 1789. President Washington nominated him as Register (in Office) of the Treasury