File:Thomas Butler Gunn Diaries- Volume 10, page 215, May 2, 1859.jpg

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the pleasantest rooms in the house. Went through it, with Mrs [Catharine] Potter, Miss [Lucia] Cooper, [William] Leslie &c. Found old Miss Sturgis at the top of the house where she is to be domesticated. [Jesse] Haney has a pretty spacious top front room. The only ones which would come within compass of my purse are small and will be horribly hot in summer — have little, abominable square windows. We found Mrs [Elizabeth] Gouverneur lying on her bed. On Mrs P’s being at the [132] Bleecker St house this afternoon a dead set was made at her by the Bradbury’s. Even the old man joined in. I had thought him not ill-natured, but a fool is capable of anything, and doubtless his beast of a wife set him on. The girl [Anna Bradbury] threw shavings or egg-shells at Mrs P! This is her report, true enough in the main no doubt, though she is tarred out of the same brush as the Bradburys. One of the most melancholy things attendant on these hates and spites and squabblings is that people who are capable of better things are drawn into them, deteriorated and bedeviled. Knowing and seeing them in detail, finding how they selfishness and meanness cling to all of us, how easy were it to pass from profound pity and sympathy to [Jonathan] Swift’s dreadful view of life, finding so much evidence to back it! Sometimes when wrathful at the damned things one who keeps his eyes open cannot help seeing, I fancy I should like to have heard Swift talk of his fellow creatures. Yet I know I should rise up in profound misery.