File:Thomas Butler Gunn Diaries- Volume 7, page 177, December 1, 1855.jpg

Transcription:

December.

1. Saturday. I have resolved to diversify employments, and the scene of them. So to the Mercantile all the morning, going through Blackwood’s Mag. [James] Parton came there awhile, and we returned down town together. A letter from Hannah [Bennett]. Inserted advertisement in the Tribune, for three small bed rooms, one common sitting-room and partial board, it having been drawn up by Parton, with intent that he, I and [Jesse] Haney should abide together. At [A.F.] Bank’s in the evening, he and O’Mana there. I have omitted in last month’s chronicle to speak of [Edward] Heylyn’s visit to New York. He came hither on an errand to dispose of a number of artificial flies, he had made in lack of all Architectural employment. It is the only thing in the world he can do — at 30. Of course he discovered that they could be made infinitely cheaper in New York, and that he could not sell them. His “Architectural” experience has been cofined to one job, paying the rent for an Office, and having cards printed. His mother wearies of sending him money, and he must do something. For three days was he here, talking in the old, joyless, lewd, desperately foolish, wretched way — attempting to bully himself into the belief that he could get a living, clutching at anything, but latently conscious of his own wasted life, — incapable of amending it. He made me additionally miserable, — I even fancied a hideous parallel between our non-successless lives, which frightened me. An unjust one too, God knows. / I had too, a kind, pleasant letter from Dillon Mapother — now at Chicago.