The diaries are written in a beautiful hand, the writer evidently having rewritten them from memoranda. The contents, however, do not seem to warrant the effort. They are, in general, a detailed narrative of the life of a commonplace man who lived a very ordinary existence. He recorded minutely such details as his hour of rising, the weather, the work he was engaged in, and the gist of his conversations with friends. He made infrequent comments on American life. Occasionally he alluded to some early tragedy in his own life but carefully avoided any specific information.
