Cloudy and dull. At home writing letters, in answer to all sorts of enquiries made of me. Some of them are curious enough. For example, one man sends me a copy to Washington’s Farewell Address printed in 1800 at the end of which was written by some one the name of the signer. The question to me is whether this be a genuine Autograph; a question which might have been dispensed with had the writer thought of examining any book to know the date of Washington’s death. Another man thinks he has discovered two original portraits of Washington and his Wife, and wishes me to see and judge of them— And so on. Walk towards night around Ealing and Acton being the only dry circuit. Quiet evening— Read aloud part of Dickens’s Christmas Story.163