Friday October 1, 1830. Weather begins to have the feeling of fall, Now frosts are common and one will involuntarily put his hands in his pocket to keep them warm. I have a small fire all the time now and obtain fuel from the river. Our lessons are quite long. Squaretoed boots and Sugarloaf hats all the rage among people of fashion this year past.
Saturday Oct[ober] 2, 1830. I did not do much this afternoon but look around a little. I went to visit some medical springs a little down the river, which appears to be impregnated with some substance the taste [of] which is very disagreeable and brackish. I should think some of our literary Gent. would examine them soon. Took a boat ride up the river about a mile, the water was very rapid all the way. We sailed up and floated down with the current.
Sunday October 3, 1830. Cold and windy today. Wore a cloak. Dr. Chaplin preached in his usual way, but delivered a finely written sermon. I like him very much for his old-fashioned, unaffected way of speaking and manners. The house was not very well filled. In [the] evening I attended a prayer meeting in the “Village School House.” It was full and Mr. Porter took [the] lead. The Sabbath does not appear as it was wont to at N. Hampton. Meetings are not conducted here in so familiar and social a style but more formal.
Monday October 4, 1830. Arose at the bell hour. I feel much better for rising early, I think. When we get into prayers it seems much as it used to at Pembroke when Preceptor Vose made prayer. Each class sits by itself on all occasions and in alphabetical order except at our meals. In this way everyone knows his place and there is no crowding and jostling for a seat. The President reads a chapter from the Bible himself always and makes the prayer. Someone being a little vexed with the officers hid the Pres[ident’s] Bible the other day, but it was soon returned. A mean trick, I think.
Tuesday October 5, 1830. Three or four of us have attained liberty for cut[ting wood?] on the college lands near by and so we [go] there half an hour and more a day. In this way we intend to get our wood for fire and exercise too. They sent in a petition to the Officers to be excused today to go to a muster over in Clinton and so there was no exercises. A fine day. I took the boat and went up river and brought down a heaping cord of dry wood which I found on the rocks. After I came back I went to see the Philosophical Apparatus and museum. The Apparatus is fine, although not very extensive, It was bought in London and presented by Dr. Bales. The minerals presented by Jeremiah Stickney are fine, and the whole is kept in the nicest order. Not having the key, we could not see the Chemical Apparatus, which is in another room. After dinner I mended a pr. of trousers and played ball. Pres. has gone to North Yarmouth to a meeting of an Education Soc. I have commenced a translation (written) of all my lessons in Greek and Latin.
Thursday October 7, 1830. Cool weather and very heavy frosts. Hutchinson and Gould have engaged schools in town, one for fourteen dollars a month, the other for thirteen. I hardly know what I shall do [in] vacation, sometimes I think of one thing, sometimes another. I dont know but what I shall go home and study, for this will be the most profitable to me.
Friday October 8, 1830. There is an extensive library belonging to the college of which the students have a use. I took a book yesterday which is the Freshmen Day. One may take out three books for three weeks. There is also a reading room where useful newspapers and other periodicals are kept. On the whole we have fine advantages here and as good as we could ask. I have written a letter to Dickey and Uncle Smart.
Saturday October 9, 1830. Very fine day. We recite twice in Algebra now on Saturdays. I have been writing all this afternoon and evening and have read some of Silliman’s travels through England, Scotland and Holland. It is a fine book. I like to room alone very much, then I can do as I have a mind to and no one to object.
Monday October 11, 1830. It is a fair warm day. We have quite a lot of wood chopped already and are getting more fast. The students had a meeting this evening about finishing the workshop and have agreed to work upon it. …I have sold my watch for 16 dollars, seal 4 dollars, pencil case 1.50 and handkerchief pin 3.50, making in all 25.00, to Shepard who rings the bell. I have made in this trade about seven or eight dollars. Good trade, I think, for me! I think of buying a watch of him worth about eight dollars for my g[randfather?].
Tuesday October 12, 1830. Moderate today. Have to study hard. I have been frequently up and down the river to examine the curiosities of the place. I shall not consider myself competent to give a complete description of them but shall drop a few remarks which I suppose will be useful and amusing. The river at this place is quite rapid, being affected by falls above and below and runs entirely on a bed of slate stone or something similar, but as I am no mineralogist I cannot tell what it is called: it runs in a regular stratum across the river, more obliquely in some places than in others, varying according to the course of the river but in every case the strata incline downward as a number of boards would be standing on their edges or sides. At a place just below here a ledge of this kind of stone commences in the east side of the river, being wide at the place, and runs a great way towards the western shore in an oblique direction and still keeping its strata in the same position downwards so that they look as it were the works of art, not of nature. What is remarkable is that this stratum runs in the same direction for nearly a mile above and below this place and appears to be the same soft, soapy and rotten stone. Its colours [are] not like common slate but much lighter, similar to soap or free stone and often forms a bank for the river fifteen or twenty ft. high and almost perpendicular. On the bank of the river most of the students both of former and present times have cut their names in the rocks. This slate splits very regularly and very thin.
Thursday October 14, 1830. …I went out with my ax today to cut some small bushes and found my match to cut them, they were so small and withey. I thought to myself that one must have the patience of Job to cut small bushes with an ax in a swamp. I have picked up a number of piles of wood since I have commenced and am well pleased with doing a little useful work once a day for exercise. A number of the students have taken the workshop to finish outside for seventy-five dollars but I think I choose to “Bushwhack” rather than meddle with it.
Friday October 15, 1830. …I have about concluded to go home next vacation and study because I [think] that the best course I can take. In proportion to what I gain during that time will be the amount of labor which my lessons will require next term.
Saturday October 16, 1830. …I did not study much this afternoon, which is generally the case when I have no regular exercises to perform. I attended a prayer meeting at Mr. Shepard’s, the Steward, and I suppose it was a good meeting to some but not to me because I am entirely dead as it were to all religious feelings. I have bought a watch [of] Frederick E. Shepard tonight. It is a very pretty little watch with gold hands and worth from eight to ten dollars, I should think.
Sunday October 17, 1830. …I am now exposed to the temptations and allurements of the world and vanity and I cannot too well arm myself against these facinating [sic] baits which will prove my ruin if not repelled. I seem to me not to strive to put away those sins which easily beset me but to embrace them with eagerness as my chief joy. O that I could but enjoy that nearness to the throne of God which I was used to enjoy when I first found religion taking its reign in my heart, but now it has flown away and left it open to the attacks [of] sin upon all sides. I lay not my present state of feeling [to] Satan, as though he had tempted me to withdraw my affection from its proper object of love and adoration, but to my own vile, treacherous heart and appetites which I have too much obeyed. One may as well think to enjoy a pleasant state of feeling in the ** as to think of being happy in the participation of sensual and worldly pleasures, for he is sure to be tormented by the raging fire of his troubled concience [sic] which is much worse than the former inasmuch as it cannot be so easily quenched. A darling sin once indulged leads to a more frequent indulgence of it and numerous others of its near relations which can hardly be turned away untasted. I have hardly any hopes of enjoying the presence of God unless I come to this firm conclusion that I will break off the sins which so easily beset me, look for want [wont?] to Christ as my great master. Oh I hope this may be my happy determination and I may live to it prayerfully.
Wednesday October 20, 1830. Very fine, pleasant weather now. The river has arisen about two ft., I should think. It is very strange that I do not have a letter from home because I wrote nearly four weeks ago. I find my bushwhacking business very good and healthy. I have hardly anything to write now of any consequence. Our lessons in Terence are the most interesting because [of the] dialogues. From his plays one has a great chance to learn the manner and state of [life?] at Rome in his day. It must have been a very corrupt city, I think, from what I can learn from his plays.
Thursday October 21, 1830. Weather quite pleasant in middle of the day but cold morning. There was another horse race here yesterday by some foolish persons.
Saturday October 23, 1830. …Had the long-wished-for letter from home tonight containing $10 and some news. All well. Father arrived at home from St. Johns on the 29 of September without Grandfather, who will come in May next. There were a great many conjectures where Father had gone at home the next day after he went away but all gave up that he would not come back. …
Monday October 25, 1830. Moderate as could be expected for the time of year. We had a few little flirts of rain yesterday and night. We have now almost finished Terence Comedy of the Eunuch, and I think it has been a very interesting study to me, not only from the knowledge one can derive from it of Antient manners and customs but also from the fine style of his works. I never read an author, I think, who showed such a masterly knowledge of human nature, such a faculty of representing his characters, Gnathp in particular and Chremes when accidentaly [sic] intoxicated. But it is all so well drawn that I can hardly select any best sentences and characters and if they are so beautiful in English we can hardly calculate their value in Latin. I must say that Lacroix’s Algebra is the hardest study I ever studied yet and although it is written in English I think it will tear off the palm for incomprehensibility in preference to Plato’s Greek, or Terence’s Comedies. It puzzles my brain to find out how a person could put together words so as to form so obscure sentences, but so it is and must be put up with. It is all theory without practice but still it needs another theory to teach common numbheads what his present one means
Tuesday October 26, 1830. Fine fall weather with heavy frost which make the mornings and evenings cool. I have been thinking what it is best to do this vacation coming and have almost concluded to stay here and study, although I wish very much to get some money to help myself along. I think it very necessary to study some more to get up with the class.
Wednesday October 27, 1830. Quite cloudy and lowering today. This day we have sorrowfully witnessed the expulsion of one of the students, Mr. Gow of Hallowell. He had eight charges against him, viz. breaking the door of one of the garrets and of one of the students, of throwing a football at an officer with the intention of hitting him, of misrepresenting the minds of his class that they wished to be excused from recitation at a certain time, of speaking a ludicrous piece with the intention of insulting the officer present, of frequently deceiving the Government, and some other charges of about the same import. It was very unexpected to me as well as to all the other students. I really pity him that he should so soon have his character blasted and all by his own actions. It’s a hard case, I say, and a thing of no little consequence to have his name tarnished at so early period of life. This is the second expulsion which I ever witnessed. The other was at Pembroke Academy when Augustus Perkins of Hopkinton was expelled. But painful as such things are they must be resorted to when students cannot be made to obey the commands of their instructors and laws. For my part I saw no need for a young man of a college to conduct [himself] in such a way as to be expelled.