File:Thomas Butler Gunn Diaries- Volume 9, page 130, April 24, 1858.jpg

Transcription:

to Harper's at 2; up town.

One remark I think I can add to [Oliver Wendell] Holmes' essay on Old Age in this month's Atlantic. It's this. The first real consciousness that a man gets of not being so young as he was, is produced by the discovery that some pretty or pleasant young girl of his acquaintance tacitly puts him out of the ranks of those capable of inspiring her with affection. I found this out this morning, talking with Grace [Eldredge]. You may know that it's all right and fair, you may want no more than friendly good will, — but yet the conviction comes upon you with a kind of pang.

— [Frank] Cahill is not behaving rightly towards Mrs [Catharine] Potter. He didn't pay her last Saturday. I know that he made $13 — his salary's $10; three he got from the Pic. This isn't honest. He goes to Honey's too often and squanders his money. She has had a hard time of it this winter and is in debt. Cahill is a good-intentioned fellow but weak. And weak men are never honest. Honesty and Justice — which is only a larger honesty comprising everything but the divine element of Mercy — are the rarest of qualities. And, however unloveable, perverse, wicked even, a man may be, it is astonishing how respectable (in the better sense of the word) an obstinate, rugged honesty will make him. There's [William] Leslie — obstinate, opinionative, horribly illogical, making no sort of allowance for thoughts or feelings he don't understand, prejudiced — but honest and kind-hearted, keeping up his family affections, willing to pay his mothers expenses if she'll cross the Atlantic to see him married; capable, during his early struggles, of living on three or four dollars a week, saving money and keeping out of Debt! — in a word basing his life on Honesty and