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The first week in December I was so busied & hurried with Estimates etc. that I did not know any thing about it, as it was coming on. Up at 6 A.M. and work till 10 or 11, any how, forget how I felt, or never stopped to think. 7th Get Estimates etc. done up; rolled a Hand Car, pretty vigorous exercise by the way.

 "Battles of the World" might make a book similar to Headley's: if no better, it would be 'no great shakes.' I judge though that it might be. It might not however take so well.

"Battles of Life" might be a far higher subject. - Who is sufficient for these things? "What Might have been." I see plainly you'll never make a successful "Novel Writer". Those "Close semi-Mathematical deductions of probabilities", might be ingenious & curious etc. "And a' that" ; but would probably fail entirely - would drop down into an awful gulf of a chasm between the truth of History, and the charm of Fiction. There is however a great field there. Package per Robbins' Express came safely & speedily to hand. "Eliab has in considerable degree learned a good trade" He has not probably learned any more of it than would be extremely convenient for a Engineer to know - But little more of it perhaps than I have got to learn - not so much of some branches of it may be.

 The Box 10ft below surface, water replaced with equal weight of Lead. air tight - would be of same bulk as before, same weight + weight of a certain bulk of air at surface, to fill the vacancy in bulk of lead. sink a bit, would it not?
Alison is in high repute as a Historian; that is with Loyal Englishmen. Lacks impartiality. Strongly prejudiced against all "Liberalism" for a "Constitutional Monarchy" etc. Thiers I have never read. is a very interesting writer indeed. is a little smiling fragment of a man 3 or 4 feet high very much thought of by Frenchmen "Lively" to last degree.