File:Thomas Butler Gunn Diaries- Volume 8, page 122, December 22-26, 1856.jpg

Transcription:

Beard frozen and snow lying thick on my cloak, an occasional jangle of sleigh-bells and everything proper to the season.

23. Tuesday. Office &c. An article in the “Times” pul pitching into the “European,” and surmising that the “British Foreign Office might be at the bottom of it.”

24. Wednesday. Office, both morning and afternoon. Evening at [Frank] Bellew’s.

25. Thursday. Christmas Day. Office till 2. Afternoon alone, reading. Evening, by 8 to the Edwardses [745 Broadway]. Charades, games &c as at last year, but the evening was less of a success. [James] Parton was not present, though partly expected. [Jesse] Haney’s former landlady, a Mrs Taylor, was there. Stayed till near 1, then left with Haney.

26. Friday. Office. Wrote to Alf Waud, for information as to how my cuts are getting on. He don’t care to respond unless he has some object of his own. Andrew has not yet got half the cuts, I have yet to see the proof of the first one, and if they proceed at the same pace my book won’t get published till the Christmas of 1857. Altogether I’m being humbugged and played with, and am heart sick of the whole business.

A letter from my mother [Naomi Butler Gunn] — (God bless her.) My father [Samuel Gunn] is “just the same as he was last winter” — keeping his bed till dinner time, and “sitting by the fire and making all sorts of frightful noises.” — Bah.