“January 24.  We left the mercury one below zero when we went to bed last night, and it was at zero when we rose this morning.  But it rises rapidly, and now, at eleven A.M., it is as high as fifteen.  The weather is still and beautiful; the English steamer is still safe at her moorings.

“Our little club met last night, each with a sonnet.  I did the best I could with a very bad subject.  K. and E. rather carried the honors away, but Mr. J. M.’s was very taking.  Our ‘crambo’ playing was rather dull, all of us having exhausted ourselves on the sonnets.  We seem to have settled ourselves quietly into a tone of resignation in regard to the weather; we know that we cannot ‘get out,’ any more than Sterne’s Starling, and we know that it is best not to fret.

“The subject which I have drawn for the next poem is ‘Sunrise,’ about which I know very little.  K. and I continue to learn twenty lines of poetry a day, and I do not find it unpleasant, though the ’Deserted Village’ is rather monotonous.

“We hear of no suffering in town for fuel or provisions, and I think we could stand a three months’ siege without much inconvenience as far as the physicals are concerned.

“January 26.  The ice continues, and the cold.  The weather is beautiful, and with the thermometer at fourteen I swept with the telescope an hour and a half last night, comfortably.  The English steamer will get off to-morrow.  It is said that they burned their cabin doors last night to keep their water hot.  Many people go out to see her; she lies off ’Sconset, about half a mile from shore.  We have sent letters by her which, I hope, may relieve anxiety.

“K. bought a backgammon board to-day.  Clifford [the little nephew] came in and spent the morning.

“January 29.  We have had now two days of warm weather, but there is yet no hope of getting our steamboat off.  Day before yesterday we went to ’Sconset to see the English steamer.  She lay so near the shore that we could hear the orders given, and see the people on board.  When we went down the bank the boats were just pushing from the shore, with bags of coal.  They could not go directly to the ship, but rowed some distance along shore to the north, and then falling into the ice drifted with it back to the ship.  When they reached her a rope was thrown to them, and they made fast and the coal was raised.  We watched them through a glass, and saw a woman leaning over the side of the ship.  The steamer left at five o’clock that day.

“It was worth the trouble of a ride to ’Sconset to see the masses of snow on the road.  The road had been cleared for the coal-carts, and we drove through a narrow path, cut in deep snow-banks far above our heads, sometimes for the length of three or four sleighs.  We could not, of course, turn out for other sleighs, and there was much waiting on this account.  Then, too, the road was much gullied, and we rocked in the sleigh as we would on shipboard, with the bounding over hillocks of snow and ice.