Describes seeing fireworks for Fourth of July with William Levison at Madison Square. Transcription: in honor of the national birthday. x x x It is vanity to hope for happiness in this life. No man ever compassed it, or contentment. Least of all is it to be won by inquiry. Those have reached the nearest to it who lead natural, unquestioning lives. It is well to give up trying for it. We can by no means understand God, or the awful mystery of existence, even in the smallest measure. It is well to renunciate this attempt, also. Our business in this life is to work. Wo be unto us if we neglect o
Describes seeing fireworks for Fourth of July with William Levison at Madison Square. Transcription: in honor of the national birthday. x x x It is vanity to hope for happiness in this life. No man ever compassed it, or contentment. Least of all is it to be won by inquiry. Those have reached the nearest to it who lead natural, unquestioning lives. It is well to give up trying for it. We can by no means understand God, or the awful mystery of existence, even in the smallest measure. It is well to renunciate this attempt, also. Our business in this life is to work. Wo be unto us if we neglect or palter with it. x x x 4. Friday. Walked down town wards to the Park and Nassau Street, amid the salt-petre rejoicings of the day. Met [Charles] Welden and Moore momentarily, and the former remarked that I looked ?ǣmiserable. ? Truly I felt so. A shower of rain sent me back in an omnibus. Alone all the afternoon, mostly writing to Hannah [Bennett]. In the evening, at [William] Levison ?s suggestion, with him to Madison Square, to see certain fireworks. It was but a poor display, but I was not sorry to go. I was the means of giving a child pleasure, by holding her in my arms to see the display. Returning through the explosive streets, to a small celebration on our door- Title: Thomas Butler Gunn Diaries: Volume 8, page 22, July 3-4, 1856 . 3 July 1856. Gunn, Thomas Butler, 1826-1903
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