The cover and first few pages of this notebook are pretty rough, but it gets better and better as one turns the jam packed pages, including beautiful writing and gracefully meandering equations, all sorts of wonderful little doodles and flourishes, and best of all gorgeous watercolored headers. And over and over again James M. Beale has signed and dated the pages, in a wide variety of ways. I'd be very inclined to carefully remove and frame a handful of pages, or find a nice lectern to display it open to a favorite. The cover is fragile and the back cover is missing, but the pages themselves are really not. 

I found this 1897 info about James M. Beale, which I am certain is him: Honey Grove, Tuscarora township, Juniata county, Pa., was born March 25, 1837. His great grandfather, John Beale, was the original ancestor of the family in America, a native of England who came to this country with the Penn family. He was a surveyor, and assisted in laying out the city of Philadelphia James M. Beale received his education in the Tuscarora township school, and made farming his life occupation. He was a Democrat, and served as school director and as judge of elections.

12 1/2" x 8"; 66 pages filled completely front and back (so 132 pages of writing.) I've documented a mix of pages, which are very indicative of the rest. Photos are in chronological order with the exception of a few favorites up front.