I ever finish them it will be through much tribulation, the way they
have to be raveled out and commenced over again. I think I shall know
how to knit when I get through, if I never know how to do anything else.
Perhaps I shall know how to write, too, for I write all of Grandmother's
letters for her, because it tires her to write too much. I have sorted
my letters to-day and tied them in packages and found I had between 500
and 600. I have had about two letters a week for the past five years and
have kept them all. Father almost always tells me in his letters to read
my Bible and say my prayers and obey Grandmother and stand up straight
and turn out my toes and brush my teeth and be good to my little sister.
I have been practising all these so long I can say, as the young man did
in the Bible when Jesus told him what to do to be saved, "all these have
I kept from my youth up." But then, I lack quite a number of things
after all. I am not always strictly obedient. For instance, I know
Grandmother never likes to have us read the secular part of the _New
York Observer_ on Sunday, so she puts it in the top drawer of the
sideboard until Monday, but I couldn't find anything interesting to read
the other Sunday so I took it out and read it and put it back. The jokes
and stories in it did not seem as amusing as usual so I think I will not
do it again.
Grandfather's favorite paper is the _Boston Christian Register._ He
could not have one of them torn up any more than a leaf of the Bible. He
has barrels of them stored away in the garret.
I asked Grandmother to-day to write a verse for me to keep always and
she wrote a good one: "To be happy and live long the three grand
essentials are: Be busy, love somebody and have high aims." I think,
from all I have noticed about her, that she has had this for her motto
all her life and I don't think Anna and I can do very much better than
to try and follow it too. Grandfather tells us sometimes, when she is
not in the room, that the best thing we can do is to be just as near
like Grandmother as we can possibly be.
_Saturday, May_ 30.--Louisa Field came over to dinner to-day and brought
Allie with her. We had roast chickens for dinner and lots of other nice
things. Grandmother taught us how to string lilac blossoms for necklaces
and also how to make curls of dandelion stems. She always has some
things in the parlor cupboard which she brings out on extra occasions,
so she got them out to-day. They are some Chinamen which Uncle Thomas
brought home when he sailed around the world. They are wooden images
standing in boxes, packing tea with their feet.
Last week Jennie Howell invited us to go up to Black Point Cabin with
her and to-day with a lot of grown-up people we went and enjoyed it.
There was a little colored girl there who waits on the table and can row
the boats too. She is Polly Carroll's granddaughter, Mary Jane. She sang
for us,
"Nellie Ely shuts her eye when she goes to sleep,
When she opens them again her eyes begin to peep;
Hi Nellie, Ho Nellie, listen love to me,
I'll sing for you, I'll play for you,
A dulcet melody."
She is just as cute as she can be. She said Mrs. Henry Chesebro taught
her to read.
_Sunday, June_ 1.--Rev. Dr. Shaw, of Rochester, preached for Dr. Daggett
to-day and his text was: "Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst
again, but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall
never thirst." He said by this water he meant the pleasures of this
life, wealth and fame and honor, of which the more we have the more we
want and are never satisfied, but if we drink of the water that Christ
can give us we will have happiness here and forever. It was a very good
sermon and I love to hear him preach. Grandmother never likes to start
for church until after all the Seminary girls and Academy boys have gone
by, but this morning we got to the gate just as the boys came along.
When Grandmother saw five or six hats come off and knew they were bowing
to us, she asked us how we got acquainted with them. We told her that
almost all the girls knew the Academy boys and I am sure that is true.
_Tuesday, June_ 8.--We are cleaning house now and Grandmother asked Anna
and me to take out a few tacks in the dining-room carpet. We did not
like it so very well but we liked eating dinner in the parlor, as the
table had to be set in there. Anna told us that when she got married we
could come to visit her any time in the year as she was never going to
clean house. We went down street on an errand to-night and hurried right
back, as Grandmother said she should look at the clock and see how long
we were gone. Emma Wheeler went with us. Anna says she and Emma are as
"thick as hasty pudding."
_June._--Rev. Frederick Starr, of Penn Yan, had an exhibition in Bemis
Hall to-day of a tabernacle just like the children of Israel carried
with them to the Promised Land. We went to see it. He made it himself
and said he took all the directions from the Bible and knew where to put
the curtains and the poles and everything. It was interesting but we
thought it would be queer not to have any church to go to but one like
that, that you could take down and put up and carry around with you
wherever you went.
_June._--Rev. Mr. Kendall is not going to preach in East Bloomfield any
more. The paper says he is going to New York to live and be Secretary of
the A.B.C.F.M. I asked Grandmother what that meant, and she said he
would have to write down what the missionaries do. I guess that will
keep him busy. Grandfather's nephew, a Mr. Adams of Boston and his wife,
visited us about two weeks ago. He is the head of the firm Adams'
Express Co. Anna asked them if they ever heard the conundrum "What was
Eve made for?" and they said no, so she told them the answer, "for
Adam's express company." They thought it was quite good. When they
reached home, they sent us each a reticule, with scissors, thimble,
stiletto, needle-case and tiny penknife and some stamped embroidery.
They must be very rich.
_Saturday Night, July._--Grandfather was asking us to-night how many
things we could remember, and I told him I could remember when Zachary
Taylor died, and our church was draped in black, and Mr. Daggett
preached a funeral sermon about him, and I could remember when Daniel
Webster died, and there was service held in the church and his last
words, "I still live," were put up over the pulpit. He said he could
remember when George Washington died and when Benjamin Franklin died. He
was seven years old then and he was seventeen when Washington died. Of
course his memory goes farther back than mine, but he said I did very
well, considering.
_July._--I have not written in my journal for several days because we
have been out of town. Grandfather had to go to Victor on business and
took Anna and me with him. Anna says she loves to ride on the cars as it
is fun to watch the trees and fences run so. We took dinner at Dr.
Ball's and came home on the evening train. Then Judge Ellsworth came
over from Penn Yan to see Grandfather on business and asked if he could
take us home with him and he said yes, so we went and had a splendid
time and stayed two days. Stewart was at home and took us all around
driving and took us to the graveyard to see our mother's grave. I copied
this verse from the gravestone:
"Of gentle seeming was her form
And the soft beaming of her radiant eye
Was sunlight to the beauty of her face.
Peace, sacred peace, was written on her brow
And flowed in the low music of her voice
Which came unto the list'ner like the tones of soothing Autumn winds.
Her hands were full of consolations which she scattered free to
all--the poor, the sick, the sorrowful."
I think she must have been exactly like Grandmother only she was 32 and
Grandmother is 72.
Stewart went to prayer meeting because it was Wednesday night, and when
he came home his mother asked him if he took part in the meeting. He
said he did and she asked him what he said. He said he told the story of
Ethan Allen, the infidel, who was dying, and his daughter asked him
whose religion she should live by, his or her mother's, and he said,
"Your mother's, my daughter, your mother's." This pleased Mrs. Ellsworth
very much. Stewart is a great boy and you never can tell whether he is
in earnest or not. It was very warm while we were gone and when we got
home Anna told Grandmother she was going to put on her barege dress and
take a rocking-chair and a glass of ice water and a palm leaf fan and go
down cellar and sit, but Grandmother told her if she would just sit
still and take a book and get her mind on something else besides the
weather, she would be cool enough. Grandmother always looks as cool as a
cucumber even when the thermometer is 90 in the shade.
_Sunday, August._--Rev. Anson D. Eddy preached this morning. His text
was from the sixth chapter of John, 44th verse. "No man can come to me,
except the Father which hath sent me, draw him." He is Tom Eddy's
father, and very good-looking and smart too. He used to be one of the
ministers of our church before Mr. Daggett came. He wrote a book in our
Sunday School library, about Old Black Jacob, and Grandmother loves to
read it. We had a nice dinner to-day, green peas, lemonade and
gooseberry pie. We had cold roast lamb too, because Grandmother never
has any meat cooked on Sunday.
_Sunday._--Mr. Noah T. Clarke is superintendent of our Sunday School
now, and this morning he asked, "What is prayer?" No one answered, so I
stood up and gave the definition from the catechism. He seemed pleased
and so was Grandmother when I told her. Anna said she supposes she was
glad that "her labor was not in vain in the Lord." I think she is trying
to see if she can say Bible verses, like grown-up people do.
Grandfather said that I did better than the little boy he read about
who, when a visitor asked the Sunday School children what was the
ostensible object of Sabbath School instruction, waited till the
question was repeated three times and then stood up and said, "Yes,
sir."
_Wednesday._--We could not go to prayer meeting to-night because it
rained, so Grandmother said we could go into the kitchen and stand by
the window and hear the Methodists. We could hear every word that old
Father Thompson said, and every hymn they sung, but Mr. Jervis used such
big words we could not understand him at all.
_Sunday._--Grandmother says she loves to look at the beautiful white
heads of Mr. Francis Granger and General Granger as they sit in their
pews in church. She says that is what it means in the twelfth chapter of
Ecclesiastes where it says, "And the almond tree shall flourish." I
don't know exactly why it means them, but I suppose she does. We have
got a beautiful almond tree in our front yard covered with flowers, but
the blossoms are pink. Probably they had white ones in Jerusalem, where
Solomon lived.
_Monday._--Mr. Alex. Jeffrey has come from Lexington, Ky., and brought
Mrs. Ross and his three daughters, Julia, Shaddie and Bessie Jeffrey.
Mrs. Ross knows Grandmother and came to call and brought the girls. They
are very pretty and General Granger's granddaughters. I think they are
going to stay all summer.
_Thanksgiving Day._--We all went to church and Dr. Daggett's text was:
"He hath not dealt so with any nation." Aunt Glorianna and her children
were here and Uncle Field and all their family and Dr. Carr and all his
family. There were about sixteen of us in all and we children had a
table in the corner all by ourselves. We had roast turkey and everything
else we could think of. After dinner we went into the parlor and Aunt
Glorianna played on the piano and sang, "Flow gently, sweet Afton, among
thy green braes," and "Poor Bessie was a sailor's wife." These are
Grandfather's favorites. Dr. Carr sang "I'm sitting on the stile, Mary,
where we sat side by side." He is a beautiful singer. It seemed just
like Sunday, for Grandmother never likes to have us work or play on
Thanksgiving Day, but we had a very good time, indeed, and were sorry
when they all went home.
_Saturday, December_ 20.--Lillie Reeve and her brother, Charlie, have
come from Texas to live. He goes to the Academy and she boards with Miss
Antoinette Pierson. Miss Pierson invited me up to spend the afternoon
and take tea with her and I went and had a very nice time. She told me
about their camp life in Texas and how her mother died, and her little
baby sister, Minnie, lives with her Grandmother Sheppard in Dansville.
She is a very nice girl and I like her very much, indeed.
1857
_January_ 8.--Anna and Alice Jewett caught a ride down to the lake this
afternoon on a bob-sleigh, and then caught a ride back on a load of
frozen pigs. In jumping off, Anna tore her flannel petticoat from the
band down. I did not enjoy the situation as much as Anna, because I had
to sit up after she had gone to bed, and darn it by candle light,
because she was afraid Grandmother might see the rent and inquire into
it, and that would put an end to bobsled exploits.
_March_ 6.--Anna and her set will have to square accounts with Mr.
Richards to-morrow, for nine of them ran away from school this
afternoon, Alice Jewett, Louisa Field, Sarah Antes, Hattie Paddock,
Helen Coy, Jennie Ruckel, Frankie Younglove, Emma Wheeler and Anna. They
went out to Mr. Sackett's, where they are making maple sugar. Mr. and
Mrs. Sackett were at home and two Miss Sacketts and Darius, and they
asked them in and gave them all the sugar they wanted, and Anna said
pickles, too, and bread and butter, and the more pickles they ate the
more sugar they could eat. I guess they will think of pickles when Mr.
Richards asks them where they were. I think Ellie Daggett and Charlie
Paddock went, too, and some of the Academy boys.
_March 7._--They all had to stay after school to-night for an hour and
copy Dictionary. Anna seems reconciled, for she just wrote in her
journal: "It was a very good plan to keep us because no one ever ought
to stay out of school except on account of sickness, and if they once
get a thing fixed in their minds it will stay there, and when they grow
up it will do them a great deal of good."
_April._--Grandfather gave us 10 cents each this morning for learning
the 46th Psalm and has promised us $1 each for reading the Bible through
in a year. We were going to any way. Some of the girls say they should
think we would be afraid of Grandfather, he is so sober, but we are not
the least bit. He let us count $1,000 to-night which a Mr. Taylor, a
cattle buyer, brought to him in the evening after banking hours. Anybody
must be very rich who has all that money of their own.
_Friday._--Our old horse is dead and we will have to buy another. He was
very steady and faithful. One day Grandfather left him at the front gate
and he started along and turned the corner all right, down the Methodist
lane and went way down to our barn doors and stood there until Mr. Piser
came and took him into the barn. People said they set their clocks by
him because it was always quarter past 12 when he was driven down to the
bank after Grandfather and quarter of 1 when he came back. I don't think
the clocks would ever be too fast if they were set by him. We asked
Grandfather what he died of and he said he had run his race but I think
he meant he had walked it, for I never saw him go off a jog in my life.
Anna used to say he was taking a nap when we were out driving with
Grandfather. I have written some lines in his memory and if I knew where
he was buried, I would print it on his head board.
Old Dobbin's dead, that good old horse,
We ne'er shall see him more,
He always used to lag behind
But now he's gone before.
It is a parody on old Grimes is dead, which is in our reader, only that
is a very long poem. I am not going to show mine to Grandfather till he
gets over feeling bad about the horse.
_Sunday._--Grandmother gave Anna, Doddridge's "Rise and Progress of
Religion in the Soul" to read to-day. Anna says she thinks she will have
to rise and progress a good deal before she will be able to appreciate
it. Baxter's "Saints Rest" would probably suit her better.
_Sunday, April_ 5.--An agent for the American Board of Foreign Missions
preached this morning in our church from Romans 10: 15: "How shall they
hear without a preacher and how shall they preach except they be sent."
An agent from every society presents the cause, whatever it is, once a
year and some people think the anniversary comes around very often. I
always think of Mrs. George Wilson's poem on "A apele for air, pewer
air, certin proper for the pews, which, she sez, is scarce as piety, or
bank bills when ajents beg for mischuns, wich sum say is purty often,
(taint nothin' to me, wat I give aint nothin' to nobody)." I think that
is about the best poem of its kind I ever read.
Miss Lizzie Bull told us in Sunday School to-day that she cannot be our
Sunday School teacher any more, as she and her sister Mary are going to
join the Episcopal Church. We hate to have her go, but what can't be
cured must be endured. Part of our class are going into Miss Mary
Howell's class and part into Miss Annie Pierce's. They are both splendid
teachers and Miss Lizzie Bull is another. We had preaching in our church
this afternoon, too. Rev. Samuel Hanson Cox, of Le Roy Female Seminary,
preached. He is a great man, very large, long white hair combed back. I
think if a person once saw him they would never forget him. He preached
about Melchisidek, who had neither "beginning of days or end of life."
Some people thought that was like his sermon, for it was more than one
hour long. Dr. Cox and Mrs. Taylor came to call and asked Grandfather to
let me go to Le Roy Female Seminary, but Grandfather likes Ontario
Female Seminary better than any other in the world. We wanted
Grandmother to have her picture taken, but she did not feel able to go
to Mr. Finley's, so he came up Tuesday and took it in our dining-room.
She had her best cap on and her black silk dress and sat in her high
back rocking chair in her usual corner near the window. He brought one
up to show us and we like it so much. Anna looked at it and kissed it
and said, "Grandmother, I think you are perfectly beautiful." She smiled
and very modestly put her handkerchief up to her face and said, "You
foolish child," but I am sure she was pleased, for how could she help
it? A man came up to the open window one day where she was sitting, with
something to sell, and while she was talking to him he said, "You must
have been handsome, lady, when you were young." Grandmother said it was
because he wanted to sell his wares, but we thought he knew it was so.
We told her she couldn't get around it that way and we asked Grandfather
and he said it was true. Our Sunday School class went to Mr. Finley's
to-day and had a group ambrotype taken for our teacher, Miss Annie
Pierce; Susie Daggett, Clara Willson, Sarah Whitney, Mary Field and
myself. Mary Wheeler ought to have been in it, too, but we couldn't get
her to come. We had very good success.
_Thursday_.--We gave the ambrotype to Miss Pierce and she liked it very
much and so does her mother and Fannie. Her mother is lame and cannot go
anywhere so we often go to see her and she is always glad to see us and
so pleasant.
_May_ 9.--Miss Lizzie Bull came for me to go botanising with her this
morning and we were gone from 9 till 12, and went clear up to the orphan
asylum. I am afraid I am not a born botanist, for all the time she was
analysing the flowers and telling me about the corona and the corolla
and the calyx and the stamens and petals and pistils, I was thinking
what beautiful hands she had and how dainty they looked, pulling the
blossoms all to pieces. I am afraid I am commonplace, like the man we
read of in English literature, who said "a primrose by the river brim, a
yellow primrose, was to him, and it was nothing more."
Mr. William Wood came to call this afternoon and gave us some
morning-glory seeds to sow and told us to write down in our journals
that he did so. So here it is. What a funny old man he is. Anna and Emma
Wheeler went to Hiram Tousley's funeral to-day. She has just written in
her journal that Hiram's corpse was very perfect of him and that Fannie
looked very pretty in black. She also added that after the funeral
Grandfather took Aunt Ann and Lucilla out to ride to Mr. Howe's and just
as they got there it sprinkled. She says she don't know "weather" they
got wet or not. She went to a picnic at Sucker Brook yesterday
afternoon, and this is the way she described it in her journal. "Miss
Hurlburt told us all to wear rubbers and shawls and bring some cake and
we would have a picnic. We had a very warm time. It was very warm indeed
and I was most roasted and we were all very thirsty indeed. We had in
all the party about 40 of us. It was very pleasant and I enjoyed myself
exceedingly. We had boiled eggs, pickles, Dutch cheese and sage cheese
and loaf cake and raisin cake, pound cake, dried beef and capers, jam
and tea cakes and gingerbread, and we tried to catch some fish but we
couldn't, and in all we had a very nice time. I forgot to say that I
picked some flowers for my teacher. I went to bed tired out and worn
out."
Her next entry was the following day when she and the other scholars
dressed up to "speak pieces." She says, "After dinner I went and put on
my rope petticoat and lace one over it and my barege de laine dress and
all my rings and white bask and breastpin and worked handkerchief and
spoke my piece. It was, 'When I look up to yonder sky.' It is very
pretty indeed and most all the girls said I looked nice and said it
nice. They were all dressed up, too."
_Thursday_.--I asked Grandfather why we do not have gas in the house
like almost every one else and he said because it was bad for the eyes
and he liked candles and sperm oil better. We have the funniest little
sperm oil lamp with a shade on to read by evenings and the fire on the
hearth gives Grandfather and Grandmother all the light they want, for
she knits in her corner and we read aloud to them if they want us to. I
think if Grandfather is proud of anything besides being a Bostonian, it
is that everything in the house is forty years old. The shovel and tongs
and andirons and fender and the haircloth sofa and the haircloth rocking
chair and the flag bottomed chairs painted dark green and the two old
arm-chairs which belong to them and no one else ever thinks of touching.
There is a wooden partition between the dining-room and parlor and they
say it can slide right up out of sight on pulleys, so that it would be
all one room. We have often said that we wished we could see it go up
but they say it has never been up since the day our mother was married
and as she is dead I suppose it would make them feel bad, so we probably
will always have it down. There are no curtains or even shades at the
windows, because Grandfather says, "light is sweet and a pleasant thing
it is to behold the sun." The piano is in the parlor and it is the same
one that our mother had when she was a little girl but we like it all
the better for that. There are four large oil paintings on the parlor
wall, De Witt Clinton, Rev. Mr. Dwight, Uncle Henry Channing Beals and
Aunt Lucilla Bates, and no matter where we sit in the room they are
watching and their eyes seem to move whenever we do. There is quite a
handsome lamp on a mahogany center table, but I never saw it lighted. We
have four sperm candles in four silver candlesticks and when we have
company we light them. Johnnie Thompson, son of the minister, Rev. M. L.
R. P., has come to the academy to school and he is very full of fun and
got acquainted with all the girls very quick. He told us this afternoon
to have "the other candle lit" for he was coming down to see us this
evening. Will Schley heard him say it and he said he was coming too. His
mother says she always knows when he has been at our house, because she
finds sperm on his clothes and has to take brown paper and a hot
flatiron to get it out, but still I do not think that Mrs. Schley cares,
for she is a very nice lady and she and I are great friends. I presume
she would just as soon he would spend part of his time with us as to be
with Horace Finley all the time. Those boys are just like twins. We
never see one without being sure that the other is not far away.
_Later_.--The boys came and we had a very pleasant evening but when the
9 o'clock bell rang we heard Grandfather winding up the clock and
scraping up the ashes on the hearth to cover the fire so it would last
till morning and we all understood the signal and they bade us
good-night. "We won't go home till morning" is a song that will never be
sung in this house.
_June_ 2.--Abbie Clark wrote such a nice piece in my album to-day I am
going to write it in my journal. Grandfather says he likes the sentiment
as well as any in my book. This is it: "It has been said that the
friendship of some people is like our shadow, keeping close by us while
the sun shines, deserting us the moment we enter the shade, but think
not such is the friendship of Abbie S. Clark." Abbie and I took supper
at Miss Mary Howell's to-night to see Adele Ives. We had a lovely time.
_Tuesday_.--General Tom Thumb was in town to-day and everybody who
wanted to see him could go to Bemis Hall. Twenty-five cents for old
people, and 10 cents for children, but we could see him for nothing when
he drove around town. He had a little carriage and two little bits of
ponies and a little boy with a high silk hat on, for the driver. He sat
inside the coach but we could see him looking out. We went to the hall
in the afternoon and the man who brought him stood by him and looked
like a giant and told us all about him. Then he asked Tom Thumb to make
a speech and stood him upon the table. He told all the ladies he would
give them a kiss if they would come up and buy his picture. Some of them
did.