This evening I received [Thomas] Cholmondeley’s gift of Indian books, forty-four volumes in all, which came by Canada, reaching Boston on the morning of the 24th. Left Liverpool the 10th.

  Goodwin and Farmer think that a dog will not ouch the dead body of a mink, it smells so strongly . . .

  I asked Aunt L. [Louisa Dunbar] to-night why Scheeter Potter was so called. She said, because his neighbors regarded him so small a man that they said in jest that it was his business to make mosquitoes’ bills. He was accused of catching his neighbor’s hens in a trap and eating them. But he was crazy.

  William Wheeler says that he went a-spearing on the 28th (night before Thanksgiving) and, besides pouts and pickerel, caught two great suckers . . .