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paid his own low expenses. Also he spake of the �Diamond
Lens� controversy, which turns out disasterously for O�Brien.
Both Merrick, Seymour, Picton & Guernsey depose to having seen
North�s M.S. � the original story. Picton�s out in a letter to
today�s Times about it. Apropos of O�B, his last excentricity
consists in walking up Broadway with a gaudily striped umbrella,
such as shops use for signs. On a former occasion he and a com
panion sold strings of fish and Sunday papers � just as folks
were coming out of church. They met Guernsey and offered
him some. They were sober at the time. O�Brien was drunk
during the umbrella display. Cahill and Wood saw him.
28. Sunday. To Pounden�s by 1, dined there and stayed
till 6, then to Doestick�s. Himself, wife and mother within. The
talk turned on Parton�s �Burr�. Thomson very denunciatory of
it, and furthermore of the American Revolution, declaring repub-
licanism a failure. That it is so in this country I thoroughly
believe, but �tis odd to find a Pro-British American. He
magnified England and the working of its government,
said he was in favor of the ascendancy of�an amiable despot,�
and believed that North and South would fight, that latter getting
tremendously licked. Furthermore he pitched into the Opera
and Shakspere. To Parton�s. Jim suffering from the
Atlantic Monthly, to which he�s written an answer for the Tribune.
Ripley told him that the author of the criticism had been amas-
sing materials for a life of Burr, himself, and that he had
done a brief memoir from Appleton�s Cyclop�dia. Fanny nar-
rating stories of her school pranks at Miss Catherine Beecher�s,
in Hartford, Conn. How she had stolen pies nocturnally;
how she, in conjunction with other girls, had made up an abom-