eing as is to be found anywhere,--lonely, and with
the sensitiveness to feel his loneliness, and capacities, now withered,
to have enjoyed the sweets of life. I suppose he is comfortable enough
when busied in his duties at the Custom-House; for when I spoke to him
at my entrance, he was too much absorbed to hear me at first. As we
walked, he kept telling stories of the family, which seemed to have
comprised many oddities, eccentric men and women, recluses and other
kinds,--one of old Philip English, (a Jersey man, the name originally
L'Anglais,) who had been persecuted by John Hawthorne, of witch-time
memory, and a violent quarrel ensued. When Philip lay on his death-bed,
he consented to forgive his persecutor; "But if I get well," said he,
"I'll be damned if I forgive him!" This Philip left daughters, one of
whom married, I believe, the son of the persecuting John, and thus all
the legitimate blood of English is in our family. E---- passed from the
matters of birth, pedigree, and ancestral pride to give vent to the most
arrant democracy and locofocoism that I ever happened to hear, saying
that nobody ought to possess wealth longer than his own life, and that
then it should return to the people, &c. He says old S. I---- has a
great fund of traditions about the family, which she learned from her
mother or grandmother, (I forget which,) one of them being a Hawthorne.
The old lady was a very proud woman, and, as E---- says, "proud of being
proud," and so is S. I----.

* * * * *

_October 7th, 1837._--A walk in Northfields in the afternoon. Bright
sunshine and autumnal warmth, giving a sensation quite unlike the same
degree of warmth in summer. Oaks,--some brown, some reddish, some still
green; walnuts, yellow,--fallen leaves and acorns lying beneath; the
footsteps crumple them in walking. In sunny spots beneath the trees,
where green grass is overstrewn by the dry, fallen foliage, as I passed
I disturbed multitudes of grasshoppers basking in the warm sunshine; and
they began to hop, hop, hop, pattering on the dry leaves like big and
heavy drops of a thunder-shower. They were invisible till they hopped.
Boys gathering walnuts. Passed an orchard, where two men were gathering
the apples. A wagon, with barrels, stood among the trees; the men's
coats flung on the fence; the apples lay in heaps, and each of the men
was up in a separate tree. They conversed together in loud voices, which
the air ca