d then finds that there is no way in which these labors can be made to
aid in supplying him the means of subsistence. He must throw away his
time, and yet buy his bread. There is no real taste for letters in a
people who will not pay for them. It is too early in our history,
perhaps, to patronize them as a general thing. Making and inventing new
ploughs will pay, but not books.

_9th_. The Secretary of War confirms my leave of absence, to visit
Europe, and extends it beyond the contingencies of a re-appointment, on
the 4th of March next.

_10th_. Attended a general and crowded party at Gen. Macomb's, in the
evening, with Mrs. Schoolcraft. The General has always appeared to me a
perfect amateur in military science, although he has distinguished
himself in the field. He is a most polished and easy man in all
positions in society, and there is an air and manner by which he
constantly reveals his French blood. He has a keen perception of the
ridiculous, and a nice appreciation of the mock gravity of the heroic in
character, and related to me a very effective scene of this latter kind,
which occurred at Mr. John Johnston's, at St. Mary's Falls, on the
close of the late war. He had visited that place in perhaps 1815 or
1816, as military commander of the District of Michigan, in the suite of
Major-Gen. Brown. They were guests of Mr. Johnston. In going up the
river to see Gros Cape, at the foot of Lake Superior, the American party
had been fired upon by the Chippewas, who were yet hostile in feeling.
When the party returned to the house of Mr. Johnston, their host, the
latter drew himself up in the spirit of the border times of Waverley,
and, with the air and accent of a chief of those days--which, by the
way, was not altogether unnatural to him--manifested the high
gentlemanly indignation of a host whose hospitality had been violated.
He exclaimed to his eldest son, "Let our followers be ready to repel
this gross affront." The General's eye danced in telling it. The thing
of the firing had been done--nobody was hurt--nobody was in fact in
hostile array; and far less was the party itself alarmed. It had been
some crack-brained Indian, I believe Sassaba, who yet smarted at the
remembrance of the death of his brother, who was killed with Tecumseh in
the Battle of the Thames.

_11th_. Left Washington, with my family, in the cars for Baltimore,
where we lodged; reached Philadelphia the next day, at four P.M.;
remained the 13th a