7.20 P.M. W. reading the local papers. Out today, "an hour or so." Weather perfectly clear. Has not yet done anything practically as to Brinton's request.
Morris asked me today, how an extract from a recent letter from W. W. to Rhys, in which W. said his life was "ebbing slowly away" or something to that effect—had come into print. It seems it appeared in one of the Sunday papers. But W. said: "I know nothing of it—did not see it: yet I read the Press—the Times. You had better ply Morris for specifications. We ought to know."
Referred to the great murder trial now on its way in the Camden courts. "It is a long, draggy event—a horrible matter all through." Yesterday he saw "Tom Harned has been announced to speak before the Camden County Medical Society tonight.—Now," he said, "I see no mention of Tom in the accounts—he could not have been there."
As to Morse's remark in his letter that Latchford had written something for the Tribune apropos of a report that Gladstone had predicted the laureateship for Swinburne: "To make Swinburne the laureate would complete the operation of getting all the fat in the fire!—perhaps complete the laureateship! Yet the question arises, if not Swinburne, then who the devil shall it be, anyway? There don't appear to be anyone, the best light you put it in." W. said he had been "much interested to learn" that Latchford, according to Morse's letter, was greatly impressed with the Morse bust as found in my book. "There are none too many who penetrate to the genuineness of that work."