File:Thomas Butler Gunn Diaries- Volume 9, page 198, September 12, 1858.jpg

Transcription:

Ashton Place, from thence, after another hour or more, took a rail-car ride down town, and the boat for Staten Island. A lovely day. To the Pagoda, saw the Swinton its proprietor and Swinton pere. Then a five mile tramp in the interior, hot; but pleasant. Arrived at Alfred Swinton’s farm, found him and children (three of them) his wife being sick of remittent fever. Ate largely of water melons & bread and butter, talked with Swinton, went out with him through his woods to see the hill-site on which he projects building a house. (I don’t think the place can be healthy — Swinton himself was put to bed for four months last year by the same disease now troubling his wife. There’s swampy ground adjacent.) Tramped back, the evening growing a little damp at sunset: to New York and walked up town, fed at Florence’s ∓ Honey’s and then parted at our boarding house doors — he [Alfred Waud] going to Mrs [Celina] Jewell’s.

A pleasantly spent day altogether. I fancy he seemed just a little less prone to indulge his old humor of talking ill-conditioned of things and folk-condemning ‘em. Yet hard times and the difficulty of supporting a family, tell upon him, as they well may. He talks anxiously at times; and will never quite get over the effects accruing from the great error of his life. Her [Mary Jewell Waud], I doubt not, he loves as much of as ever. Nor is he anyway repentant beyond a sort of dogged impression that it’s a pity they came together under such circumstances. He appears to admit that he now has and must still pay the price of it, and to be sulkily content to do so. He