Snow and sleighing in full force. The omnibuses are all on runners in sleigh fashion; wheels are everywhere discarded.
January 10.
Thermometer down at 5° at sunset yesterday; so must, I think, have got down to -5° during the night.
For me, I was taken yesterday to the College chapel, where an eminent Unitarian preached on the parable of the prodigal son, or rather, against the said parable. To be sure there was joy, because it was so very uncommon and surprising a thing when a sinner repented. It was a thing that very rarely indeed came to pass.
I sometimes think that my course is one that must be walked alone, and that it is altogether too unpleasant and poverty stricken for married happiness. I sometimes, when I have heard people here talk, for example, of Theodore Parker, as if he were the scum of the earth, think that it will not do to keep silence. I have no particular love for Theodore Parker; but he is so manifestly more right than the people who despise him, I cannot, I think, in right altogether remain silent and acquiesce. It looked to me as if orthodoxy (of the Unitarian kind) was as bad for me as any realler orthodoxy elsewhere.
Anecdotes of the old clergy here are very rife: they were quite an aristocracy, and could do as they pleased more than anyone else, which now nobody can at all. They were appointed for life, with fixed incomes; this is not the case so generally now. Religious opinions contrary to the orthodox Unitarianism are represented as much disliked here.
Mrs. —— says Boston ladies suffer in their health through the endless trouble of keeping servants doing things properly and nicely; that the only way to live is to live rudely and simply. I think she is right. Ornament in America is a failure. As England stands to France, so America to England for ornamental things.
January 20.
I have just had a new pupil; he is a very good fellow and eager to learn, and a ‘senior,’ i.e. a fourth year student in the College. I am also going to write an article on the Oxford Commission in the ‘North American Review.’ Another book matter is, that Little & Brown, the head booksellers here, want me to help towards republishing Langhorne’s Plutarch. I am to have discretion to do it as I like, and $350 for the work.
My fancy at present is, if possible, to live here in a humble way, take a few pupils, and do booksellers’ work or lecture, and so make up an income. I think it will be less fatiguing and less hazardous than setting up a school, which any rumour of heterodoxy might upset. And I do think that I can teach Greek better than most Yankee Grecians.