File:Thomas Butler Gunn Diaries- Volume 9, page 17, October 24-28, 1857.jpg

Transcription:

24. Saturday. Dismal rain-drizzle. To Harpers with drawings, Pic Office. Nobody there but the boy. “Doesticks” [Mortimer Thomson] away at Newhaven getting married [to Anna Van Cleve], [Charles E.] Wilbour abetting. [Fitz James] O’Brien came and went. To Nic-nax Office. Got block. Returned through the unceasing rain. In [Jesse] Haney’s room at night, he and [Frank] Cahill playing chess.

25. Sunday. In doors all the dismal drenching day. Doing Whelpley’s drawing, “chores” and reading. [Frank] Bellew called in the morning. Both his sister, brother in law and family, as well as wife [Catherine Bellew] and child [Allie Bellew] (from Boston) have arrived.

[26. Monday through 28. Friday] Wet weather. Drawing, for Nic-nax and Harpers; not much out o’doors. Had stove put up and commenced fires with the usual inconveniences. Cahill much in-doors too, hard-up, slightly floored and matagrabolized.

Resolved to economize by cutting off dinners, persists in it for four days, then breaks down. He and [George] Arnold writing one day, in Haneys room. Met [Edward] Dixon in the Picayune Office one morning — in a quit quiet whirlwind of excitement and blaspheming with his usual heartiness. Mrs [Elizabeth] Gouverneur and all her family here, she looking well, Rawson [Gill], loafing as of old, May [Gouverneur] with her hair cut short and looking ugly, “Gladdy” [Adolphus Gouverneur] puffy-faced and under a physicians care for a suppostitious enlargement of the heart. A little busybody of a man dines at our table. He will talk to everybody, is inquisitive and an exquisite prig; likes to show his erudition by cavilling at words in ordinary use and provokes continous antagonism and chaff. [William] Leslie is back from Philadelphia, whither he went to visit his brother and family, recently returned from Europe. O’Brien up, and night in Haney’s room. Talk and gin and water. Bellew