been entertained in leaving disposition to the regular courts of the District.

2.30. - Dinner: as good as epicure could desire. The salmon (by the by, the best fish for constant diet I have ever seen) was as good as could be. Took a little of all the good things except the pumpkin pie; I did not take a little of that barely, but ate all of it except the pastry. Read Cicero. Walked my room. Saw in Boston Journal one of the best and most sensible of Mr. Lincoln's friendly, good illustrations by jokes. General Sherman tells it.*

6.15. Walked out with Lieut. W. Paid board bill, $22.75 and $5.00 making $27.75. All up to date $95.98. Tea as usual. Geary would not accept the draft I drew in his favour for $5.00; so my expenses are really but $90.98.

*Sherman asked Lincoln if he must capture Jeff Davis or let him escape. Lincoln replied with an anecdote in which a temperance lecturer, refusing liquor in his lemonade, suggested that a drop might be put in "unbeknownst” to him. "You might let Jeff escape unbeknownst to me," Lincoln concluded.

CHAPTER XI

ULY 1.-Wrote to Linton. This is his birthday.
Inclosed letter to Dr. Willis, of Savannah, request-

JU

ing him to forward. Would like to copy it, but have not space. I have ordered another blank book. I am compelled to shorten entries. Read papers. Read Cicero. Dinner at 2:30. Better appetite than for several days. The lamb was a choice bit. Geary usually brings the most select parts of whatever he has to choose from.

6:15. -The rain cut my walk short. Geary brought a clothes-brush, 62 cents, the blank book, $2, and a canebottom chair, $3.50. All expenses up to date, $97.10.

Sunday. - Cloudy and raining. Read eleven chapters in Job before breakfast. Finished Cicero on "Oratory," and commenced his conversations on orators. Felt greatly the need of cyclopedias which are ever at my elbow at home. I want to give locality, dates, and proper position to his characters, and to take views from these various standpoints of the prominent men who figure in his pictures. Otherwise, I see only profiles; I wish to examine them in front and rear as well. In this way only am I accustomed to form my own estimate of character, and of the true position all celebrities, ancient and modern, should occupy in history.

This treatise of Cicero upon "Orators" falls in style

below everything else I have read from him. In some parts it is but slipshod narrative that drags limpingly along. How much of this may be due to the translation I do not know. His "Oratory" I had not read before since I read it in the original at college. I was highly pleased with it then, and am much more so now. I only regret that I did not make it my study when first admitted to the bar. With all its gloss and tinsel of rhetoric, I find it abounding in practical good sense and the highest principles of wisdom.

At the usual hour for walking, rain came down in floods. Just before expiration of hour, I ascended the steps and looked out, but was driven back by rain. Tea as usual. This volume closes with the record of a gloomy day.

July 3.- The sun shines and all nature seems cheerful. Still reading Job. I was more struck this morning with the character of Elihu than ever before. He is certainly a representative man; more so than Job. Thousands of Elihus are to be met with to one Job. I have encountered many. Finished Cicero's "Letters." The reading of these fragments tends to produce nothing so much as a sadness—not at all lessened by suspicion of their authenticity thrown out by the editor. This suspicion but gives them the character, to some extent, of vague and indistinct whispers, overheard in the dark, passing between uncertain and unknown parties, concerning the fortunes and fate of those in whom we feel deep interest. With some of these letters, whether genuine or spurious, I was impressed. This first from Cicero to his brother Quintus, written at Thessalonica, after his first exile, touched my profoundest sympathy.

Whose heart is so dead that he can read without a sign, if not without a tear, this:

Could I be unwilling to see you? Nay, I was rather unwilling to be seen by you. For you would not have seen your brother. You would not have seen him whom you had left, him whom you had known, him who had attended you some way on your journey: him to whom weeping, you had bidden farewell, yourself weeping of whom you when departing had taken leave after he had attended you some way on your journey: you would have seen not even a trace or image of him but a sort of effigy, a breathing corpse. And I wish that you had seen or heard that I was dead. I wish that I had left surviving not only my life but my dignity.

you

These letters, as well as other writings acknowledged to be Cicero's, show for Quintus an unusual affection. These brothers seem to have been knit together by closest and tenderest ties, their several beings almost blended into one. Bearing somewhat similar relation to my only surviving brother as Cicero bore to Quintus, causes me, perhaps, to appreciate his fraternal affection more keenly than others differently situated may do. One of Cicero's letters to Quintus interests me in its delicate allusion to some family matters; he refers to the marriage of his daughter, Tullia, to Crassipes, and remarks:

On the 6th of April, I gave the wedding feast to Crassipes, but at this banquet that excellent boy, your and my Quintus [his nephew, son of Quintus], was not present because he had taken some offence; and therefore, two days afterward, I went to Quintus, and found him quite candid; and he held a long conversation with me, full of good feeling about the quarrels of our enemies what would you have more? Nothing could be in better

taste than was his language. Pomponia, however, made some complaints of you; but these matters we will discuss when we meet.

So, it seems that men and women then were subject to like passions, whims, caprices, and gossip, even in the best-regulated families, as they are now. But what could have been more brotherly than this little communication, and how could the matter have been put more delicately?

ANOTHER FANCY SKETCH, YET NOT ALTOGETHER FANCY:

[R. M. Johnston entering prison by window of imagination.]

Johnston. How are you to-day, my good friend? We are all very anxious about you. Linton and I, and Jack Lane, Simpson, Ben Harris, and Ben Hunt had a long talk about you the other day. Indeed, I see nobody but inquires if I have any news from you.

Prisoner. I am truly glad to see you, and just as truly wish it were under different circumstances. I wish it were even just as it was at Liberty Hall, when you and Jack came over there last February, arriving at night, dripping wet after a long ride on horseback through mud and rain. I am, in bodily health, quite as well if not better than then, and as to my mental anxiety, etc., I believe I am as well off. I have new troubles, but am greatly relieved of others which pressed heavily then. War is over; the issues are known; there is to be no more bloodshed - at least, in the field; anxieties for friends are removed.

Though I was prepared for it —

nerved for it as you