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

Menlo Park N.J.
Sunday july 12 1885

Awakened at 8 15 AM. Powerful itching of my head, lots of white dry dandruff- what is this d–mnable material, Pertaps its the dust from the dry literary matter I’ve crowded into my noddle lately Its nomadic. gets all over my coat, must read about it in the Encyclopedia. Smoking too much makes me nervous– must lasso my natural tendency to aquire such habits– holding heavy cigar contantly in my mouth has deformed my upper lip, it has a sort of Havana curl. Arose at 9 oclock came down stairs expecting twas too late for breakfast– twas’nt. couldn’t eat much, nerves of stomach too nicotinny. The roots of tobacco plants must go clear through to hell. Satan’s principal agent Dyspepsia must have charge of this branch of the vegitable kingdom. — It has just occured to me that the brain may digest certain portions of food, say the etherial part, as well as the stomach — perhaps dandruff is the excreta of the mind– the quantity of this material being directly proportional to the amount of reading one indulges in. A book on German metaphysics would thus easily ruin a dress suit.

I bet you didn’t know that Thomas Edison was a blogger! Here’s his first entry:

Menlo Park N.J.
Sunday july 12 1885
Awakened at 5:15 AM. My eyes were embarassed by the sunbeams -turned my back to them and tried to take another dip into oblivion -succeeded — awakened at 7 A.M. thought of Mina, Daisy, and Mamma G__ put all 3 in my mental kalidescope to obtain a new combination a la Galton. took Mina as a basis, tried to improve her beauty by discarding and adding certain features borrowed from Daisy and Mamma G. a sort of Raphaelized beauty, got into it too deep, mind flew away and I went to sleep again.