File:Thomas Butler Gunn Diaries- Volume 10, page 217, May 2, 1859.jpg

Transcription:

becoming Worse! When I think of every roof in this great city covering each its little hells of folly and unhappiness, of all that the sun shines on doing the like, I might well be saddened but for the knowledge that men have lived brave, sweet, divine lives and thus born testimony of the good of which we are capable. Otherwise [Alfred] Tennyson’s Lotus-eaters gods rule. Then, too, to know that all the countless villains of men who have preceded us have had to meet the same questions. I can turn a key and take out a sculptured Ninevite head — to think that my Assyrian brother who wrought on that two thousand years before Christ walked in Judea — to think that he had to face the same Sphynx riddles that I do this day. The dead millions can’t help us too! Yes they can. Charles Lamb’s life might bid us all hope, to say nothing of Christ’s. Turned out with [William] Leslie and met [Jesse] Haney at the street corner. Leslie soon left us and Haney and I walked about the whole warm summery evening, going once to the “Store” (tavern) for beef. Much said of [James] Parton. I had met him this afternoon, he waiting outside a store reading a paper, while Mrs Skewton [Fanny Fern] was shopping within. Haney told me some things about the horrible woman’s first reasons for first taking a dislike for him which I won’t put down.

Oh that that woman could be bodily removed to another planet, that past relations could be cancelled