I really did have a lovely time in Orono yesterday. I visited a class of young English majors who were doing presentations on Milton, and they were working so hard and so earnestly to find their way into his lines that they made me feel a little weepy. They were very sweet, very nice to me; seemingly also very relieved to have someone tell them that it's possible, as an adult, to read seriously for pleasure and for discovery . . . that one doesn't forever have to be a student who takes someone else's word for what's important in books.

But now I'm back home with a flooded chicken house to ream out, and dear Trollope is sitting on my desk, saying many things that I find difficult to believe. Still, I can hope they're true for someone.

from Framley Parsonage

Anthony Trollope

Is it not that sharing of the mind's burdens one of the chief purposes for which a man wants a wife?

Dinner tonight: We're going out for dinner in Portland after we go to Tom's photo show in Falmouth. I went out for dinner last night too, in Orono. Two nights in a row. What a reckless life I lead.