so.

On our drive home we passed through Charlestown. Stages in abundance
were passing the road, burdened with passengers inside and out; also
chaises and barouches, horsemen and footmen. We are a community of
Sabbath-breakers.


August 31st.--A drive to Nahant yesterday afternoon. Stopped at Rice's,
and afterwards walked down to the steamboat wharf to see the passengers
land. It is strange how few good faces there are in the world,
comparatively to the ugly ones. Scarcely a single comely one in all this
collection. Then to the hotel. Barouches at the doors, and gentlemen
and ladies going to drive, and gentlemen smoking round the piazza. The
bar-keeper had one of Benton's mint-drops for a bosom-brooch! It made a
very handsome one. I crossed the beach for home about sunset. The tide
was so far down as just to give me a passage on the hard sand, between
the sea and the loose gravel. The sea was calm and smooth, with only the
surf-waves whitening along the beach. Several ladies and gentlemen on
horseback were cantering and galloping before and behind me.

A hint of a story,--some incident which should bring on a general war;
and the chief actor in the incident to have something corresponding to
the mischief he had caused.


September 7th--A drive to Ipswich with B------. At the tavern was an
old, fat, country major, and another old fellow, laughing and playing off
jokes on each other,--one tying a ribbon upon the other's hat. One had
been a trumpeter to the major's troop. Walking about town, we knocked,