December 18. Last night with Ellie to call on the Wolcott Gibbses in Twenty-ninth Street; a pleasant visit. Made Gibbs talk chemistry and polarization. He told me a piece of scandal about aluminium. Ball & Black, the jewelers, had sundry scraps of that new and interesting acquisition of metallic society fused in a crucible, with intent to run it into bars, when it exploded with violence and without apparent excuse, knocking crucible and furnace into pi. Strange that so placid, quiet-mannered, inert a substance should so disgrace itself before company.
The Diary of George Templeton Strong, Edited by Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas
December 20. We called on Miss Josephine Strong and went to Wallack’s Theater [at 485 Broadway, see Wikipedia page entry below-HJS]: Merchant of Venice. Old Wallack embodies Shylock perfectly; it’s a most intense, vivid, truthful impersonation. Portia was respectable, and in the trial scene something more. Women of genius would do well to study Portia – the noblest of recorded specimen of the intellectual woman (I say recorded, because she is, relatively to us, quite as real as any of the Margaret Fullers and other strong-minded women who were once actual flesh and blood and lived on earth, and died, severally to the great relief of some man or set of men). She shews how lovely intellect makes a woman while it is subordinated to heart and womanly impulse.
The Diary of George Templeton Strong, Edited by Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas