Throughout the first decade of the nineteenth century, Ethan Allen Greenwood, a rather pedantic young diarist, each day recorded the weather and the title of the book he was reading. He sometimes observed that a particular work was “instructive” or “entertaining” and occasionally noted the library from which the volume was borrowed–the Adelphi Fraternity Library, the Social Friends Library, or the unnamed circulating library he joined in 1806. His meticulous account of his activities and expenses–whether he was living at home in Worcester County, Massachusetts, or at Dartmouth College or later in Boston or traveling around the countryside as an itinerant painter–provides posterity with an unusually comprehensive portrait of “Ethan Allen Greenwood, his life and times.” Looking over the record that he left, we can well imagine that we know this serious and sober, parsimonious and abstemious young man Franklinesquely working his way toward fame and fortune. But then we encounter a curious diary entry: “Rode out with the ladies. Returned and spent the evening agreeably. What I do not write here will not be forgotten.”