_Saturday Morning._--It was as cold as ever it has been all winter, very hard frost.... William finished _Alice Fell_, and then wrote the poem of _The Beggar Woman_, taken from a woman whom I had seen in May (now nearly two years ago) when John and he were at Gallow Hill. I sate with him at intervals all the morning, took down his stanzas, etc.... After tea I read to William that account of the little boy belonging to the tall woman, and an unlucky thing it was, for he could not escape from those very words, and so he could not write the poem. He left it unfinished, and went tired to bed. In our walk from Rydale he had got warmed with the subject, and had half cast the poem. _Sunday Morning._--William ... got up at nine o'clock, but before he rose he had finished _The Beggar Boy_, and while we were at breakfast ... he wrote the poem _To a Butterfly_! He ate not a morsel, but sate with his shirt neck unbuttoned, and his waistcoat open while he did it. The thought first came upon him as we were talking about the pleasure we both always felt at the sight of a butterfly. I told him that I used to chase them a little, but that I was afraid of brushing the dust off their wings, and did not catch them. He told me how he used to kill all the white ones when he went to school because they were Frenchmen.... I wrote it down and the other poems, and I read them all over to him.... William began to try to alter _The Butterfly_, and tired himself.... _Monday Morning._--We sate reading the poems, and I read a little German.... During W.'s absence a sailor who was travelling from Liverpool to Whitehaven called, he was faint and pale when he knocked at the door--a young man very well dressed. We sate by the kitchen fire talking with him for two hours. He told us interesting stories of his life. His name was Isaac Chapel. He had been at sea since he was 15 years old. He was by trade a sail-maker. His last voyage was to the coast of Guinea. He had been on board a slave ship, the captain's name Maxwell, where one man had been killed, a boy put to lodge with the pigs and was half eaten, set to watch in the hot sun till he dropped down dead. He had been away in North America and had travelled thirty days among the Indians, where he had been well treated. He had twice swam from a King's ship in the night and escaped. He said he would rather be in hell than be pressed. He was now going to wait in England to appear against Captain Maxwell. "O he's a Rascal, Sir, he ought to be put in the papers!" The poor man had not been in bed since Friday night. He left Liverpool at 2 o'clock on Saturday morning; he had called at a farm house to beg victuals and had been refused. The woman said she would give him nothing. "Won't you? Then I can't help it." He was excessively like my brother John.