In Mont­gomery, Mary Ches­nut immersed her­self in the social scene, host­ing del­e­gates and their fam­i­lies at her board­ing house. On the evening of March 11, she not­ed a gath­er­ing of “judges, gov­er­nors, sen­a­tors, gen­er­als, con­gress­men” in her draw­ing room, where live­ly sto­ries and gos­sip cir­cu­lat­ed. One anec­dote shared by her uncle, Judge With­ers, was par­tic­u­lar­ly strik­ing: a mar­ried cou­ple’s quar­rel on a bridge esca­lat­ed to a dra­mat­ic point where the man offered to drown him­self if his wife didn’t take the baby, to which she cold­ly respond­ed that she want­ed none of his lin­eage left.

As the evening wore on, Mary’s hus­band, James, grew impa­tient with the lengthy sto­ry­telling and retreat­ed upstairs. Despite his frus­tra­tion, Mary engaged in dis­cus­sions with a group of women about divorce laws, reveal­ing their deep under­stand­ing of the top­ic. One par­tic­u­lar woman, Mrs. Lafayette Bor­land, abrupt­ly silenced her­self when the con­ver­sa­tion shift­ed to the con­se­quences of leav­ing one’s spouse, a reflec­tion of her own past actions.

Mary reflect­ed on the dynam­ics with­in her mar­riage, not­ing a com­ment from a Geor­gia man who sug­gest­ed James was secre­tive. This prompt­ed James to inquire whether he was indeed per­ceived this way. Mary can­did­ly admit­ted that she remained large­ly obliv­i­ous to his thoughts and feel­ings, express­ing the renewed sense of dis­tance in their rela­tion­ship, which she likened to an “Iron Wall.”

In a moment of intro­spec­tion, Mary con­sid­ered her ded­i­ca­tion to jour­nal­ing. She expressed con­cern that chron­i­cling her thoughts had become time-con­sum­ing, draw­ing a metaphor com­par­ing her writ­ing to a spi­der weav­ing webs from its entrails. This idea was inspired by a line from John Dryden’s play, *Mar­riage à la Mode*, where he pon­dered the silent inti­ma­cy and iso­la­tion of souls, sug­gest­ing a com­plex inter­play between con­nec­tiv­i­ty and dis­tance in human rela­tion­ships.