30 April–6 May 1838

Walter Scott says, that " at night, the kind are savage."

Last night described the apathy from which she suffers. I own I was at a loss to pre- scribe, as I did not sufficiently understand the state of mind she paints. It seems to me as if what we mainly need, is the power of recurring to the Sublime at pleasure. And this we possess. If the splendid function of seeing should lose its interest, I can still flee to the sanctity of my moral nature, and trust, renounce, suffer, bleed.

On Anniversaries. Not without some rem- nant of its old radiance dawns yet the Sabbath on the heart. Any holiday communicates to me its color. I wear its cockade in my feelings, were it the Christmas which, by the way, has lent its poetry to the hemlock-pine, with the boughs of which in my infancy I saw the Roman and Episcopal churches decorated, to the Com- mencement Day, whose light, though in a swamp, would be to me festive, and its air faintly echo- ing with plausive academic thunders; the Fourth of July, red with artillery ; the Common full of children, the woods full of gunners, and at night the sky crackling with rockets, even down to the Election, miscalled by wanton boys "Nigger 'Lection," I have kindly vision out in these lone fields of marching ranks with red facings and white shoes ; of boys in vacation ; and on such a no day as that, I still feel a gayer air. . . .