Perhaps it was natural that the retiring secretary of the navy, returning quietly and unannounced and with possibly a trace of the depression that comes with the relinquishment of great affairs, should fancy a certain lack of enthusiasm in his welcome. But a little later, when he had bought the house, now No. 11 Charter Oak Place, which was to be his future home, and his presence was more widely known, he found his friends more appreciative. "During the week," he writes some days later, "old friends have called and welcomed me back. . . . My old friend, Calvin Day, was absent from the city when I arrived and did not get home till midnight on Saturday. As soon as he knew I was here, on Monday morning, he called. H. A. Perkins, Mrs. Colt, Beach, Seymour, etc., etc., called. Mark Howard is absent. Governor Hawley saw me at breakfast on Wednesday last and immediately came and greeted me." It is not without interest to note that the servant question was at the time a great problem. This, and the confusion of getting settled, of unpacking loads of furniture, of arranging the contents of two hundred and twenty-four boxes that arrived from Washington, while Mrs. Welles was confined to her room as the result of a fall, "have made me," he writes, "unused as I am to these matters, exceedingly uncomfortable." Nevertheless, there is some mitigation, as this entry shows: "Met Mr. Hamersley--who invited me to his store, where we had an hour, on political subjects chiefly. It is somewhere about fifteen years since we have had such and so long a conversation. So far as I have met and seen old friends, I have had every reason to be satisfied. Though not very demonstrative or forward in calling, they have without exception been cordial and apparently sincere." During the nine remaining years of his life Mr. Welles lived quietly, devoting most of his time to writing, his chief pieces of work being an elaborate article claiming for the navy, which he felt had never received its proper share of the credit, the most important part in the capture of New Orleans, and a little volume entitled "Lincoln and Seward."