Menlo Park N.J.
Sunday july 12 1885

After breakfast start reading Hawthorne’s English note Book don’t think much of it.– perhaps Im a literary barbarian and am not yet educated up to the point of appreciating fine writing– 90 per cent of his book is descriptive of old churches and graveyards and coronors — He and Geo Selwyn ought to have been appointed perpetual coroners of London. Two fine things in the book were these.
Hawthorne shewing to little Rose Hawthorne a big live lobster told her it was a very ugly thing and would bite everybody, wherupon she asked “if the first one God made, bit him”– again “Ghostland is beyond the jurisdiction of veracity” —

I think freckles on the skin are due to some salt of Iron, sunlight brings them out by reducing them from high to low state of oxidation- perhaps with a powerful magnet applied for some time, and then with proper chemicals, these
mud holes of beauty might be removed.

Dot is very is very busy cleaning the abode of our deaf and dumb parrot- she has fed it tons of edibles, and never got a sound out of it. This bird has the taciturnity of a statue, and the dirt producing capacity of a drove of buffalo.

This is by far the nicest day of this season, neither too hot or too cold.– it blooms on the apex of perfection — an Edenday Good day for an angels pic nic, They could lunch on the smell of flowers and new mown hay, drink the moisture of the air, and dance to the hum of bees, Fancy the soul of Plato astride of a butterfly, riding around Menlo Park with a lunch basket