1780 February 9 (Wednesday). Elias goes with Breck and others to break the Roads to Southborough. Mr. Daniel Forbes from Brookfield, Mr. Isaac Pratt of Hardwick. N.B. I am troubled that Elias should so readily leave his Books to join with them whose Gain and Interest prompted to clear the roads for their Teams to be going again, seeing that he could have no great Inducement, but Benevolence, public Spirit etc. which had been sufficiently served by five times before now, exposing himself in Cold and Dangers by Night and by Day in this work and all of it Gratis. This Sixth Time, when his own Time is so extremely precious in which he has so much to read and write before he can be fit to return to his College Exercises again. And yet this is not the most trying. He is planning an unseasonable journey to Cambridge to fetch a Table from thence; now at the very Day when the Vacancy is finished, and he should go to stay there, the rather because he has been absent from the Recitations so long, that he ought to be one of the first that returns at this Term. He proposes also to go and return incog. presuming that the Vacancy is prolonged by reason of the difficult stirring and enormous price of wood.