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DIARY OF 
 Caroline Cowles Richards 
 
 1852 - 1872 
 
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 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 
 
Beals Homestead 
 
DIARY OF 
 
 Caroline Cowles Richards 
 
 1852 - 1872 
 CANANDAIGUA, N. Y. 
 
 Fond memory brings the light 
 Of other days around me. " 
 
I Tw'. C'j-y-?.',- Received 
 
 ' ) 1903 
 
 Copyright, 1908, by 
 Caroline Richards Ci.akke 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 "Dear friends what can I bring to you? 
 I fain would offer something new 
 At this glad time, but I have naught. 
 Not even one new wish, or thought. 
 
 Only the same old love; you know 
 
 I gave it to you years ago. 
 
 Only the memories of old 
 
 That never have grown changed or cold. 
 
 No, I have nothing new: and yet 
 
 I scarcely think I need regret 
 
 That it is so, for you and I 
 
 Have precious things from days gone by. 
 
 But if good wishes, good can bring 
 Mine are with you, in everything. 
 So take the old love, tried and true 
 On from the old years to the new." 
 
 Naples, New York. 
 
1852 
 
 Canandaigua, N. Y. 
 
 November 21, 1852. — I am ten years old to-day and I 
 think I will write a journal and tell who I am and what I am 
 doing. I have lived with my Grandfather and Grandmother 
 Beals ever since I was seven years old, and Anna, too, since 
 she was four. Our brothers, James and John, came too, 
 but they are at East Bloomfield at Mr. Stephen Clark's 
 Academy. 
 
 "I Was Seven and Anna Was Four" 
 
 Anna and I go to school at District No. 1 1 . Mr. James 
 C. Cross IS our teacher, and some of the scholars say he is 
 cross by name and cross by nature, but I like him. He gave 
 me a book by the name of "Noble Deeds of American 
 Women, " for reward of merit, in my reading class. To- 
 day, a nice old gentleman, by the name of Mr. William 
 Wood, visited our school. He is Mrs. Nat. Gorham's 
 uncle, and Wood street is named for him. He had a beau- 
 tiful pear in his hand and said he would give it to the boy or 
 girl who could spell "virgaloo, " for that was the name of the 
 
pear. I spelt it that way, but it was not right. A little boy, 
 named William Sly, spelt it right and he got the pear. I 
 wish I had, but I can't even remember now how he spelt it. 
 If the pear was as hard as the name, I don't believe any one 
 would want it, but I don't see how they happened to give 
 such a hard name to such a nice pear. Grandfather says 
 perhaps Mr. Wood will bring in a Seckle pear some day, 
 so I had better be ready for him. 
 
 Grandmother Beals 
 
 Grandmother told us such a nice story to-day, I am going 
 to write it down in my journal. I think I shall write a book 
 some day. Miss Caroline Chesebro does and I don't see 
 why I can't. If I do, I shall put this story in it. It is a 
 true story and better than any I found in three story books 
 grandmother gave us to read this week, "Peep of Day, 
 "Line Upon Line," and "Precept Upon Precept," but this 
 story was better than them all. One night, grandfather was 
 locking the front door at 9 o'clock, and he heard a queer 
 
sound, like a baby crying. So he unlocked the door and 
 found a band box on the stoop and the cry seemed to come 
 from inside of it. So he took it up and brought it into 
 the dining room and called the two girls, who had just gone 
 upstairs to bed. They came right down and opened the box 
 and there was a poor little girl baby, crying as hard as could 
 be. They took it out and rocked it and sung to it and got 
 some milk and fed it and then sat up all night with it, by the 
 fire. There was a paper pinned on the baby's dress with her 
 name on it, "Lily T. LaMott, " and a piece of poetry called 
 "Pity the Poor Orphan. " The next morning, grandfather 
 went to the overseer of the poor and he said it should be 
 taken to the county house, so our hired man got the horse 
 and buggy, and one of the girls carried the baby and they 
 took it away. There was a piece in the paper about it and 
 grandmother pasted it into her "Jay's Morning and Evening 
 Exercises, " and showed it to us. It said "A Deposit After 
 Banking Hours." 
 
 "Two suspicious looking females were seen about town m 
 the afternoon, one of them carrying an infant. They took a 
 train early in the morning without the child. They probably 
 secreted themselves in Mr. Deal's yard and if he had not 
 taken the box in, they would have carried it somewhere else." 
 When grandfather told the clerks in the bank about it next 
 morning, Mr. Bunnell, who lives over by Mr. Daggett's, on 
 the park, said, if it had been left at some people's houses, it 
 would not have been sent away. Grandmother says, they 
 heard that the baby was adopted afterwards, by some nice 
 people in Geneva. People must think this is a nice place for 
 children, for they had eleven of their own, before we came. 
 Mrs. McCoe was here to call this afternoon and she looked 
 at us and said: "It must be a great responsibility, Mrs. Beals. " 
 Grandmother said she thought "her strength would be equal 
 to her day." That is one of her favorite verses. She said 
 Mrs. McCoe never had any children of her own and perhaps 
 that is the reason she looks so sad at us. Perhaps some one 
 will leave a band box and a baby at her door some dark 
 night. 
 
Grandfather Beals 
 
 Saturday — Our brother John drove over from East Bloom- 
 field to-day to see us and brought Julia Smedley with him, 
 who is just my age. John lives at Mr. Ferdinand Beebe's 
 and goes to school and Julia is Mr. Beebe's niece. They 
 make quantities of maple sugar out there and they brought 
 us a dozen little cakes. They were splendid. I offered John 
 one and he said he would rather throw it over the fence than 
 to eat it. I can't understand that. Anna had the face ache 
 to-day and I told her that I would be the doctor and make 
 her a ginger poultice. I thought I did it exactly right but 
 when I put it on her face she shivered and said: "Carrie, you 
 make lovely poultices only they are so cold. " I suppose I 
 ought to have warmed it. 
 
 Tuesday — Grandfather took us to ride this afternoon and 
 let us ask Bessie Seymour to go with us. We rode on the 
 plank road to Chapinville and had to pay 2 cents at the toll 
 gate, both ways. We met a good many people and Grand- 
 father bowed to them and said, "How do you do, neighbor." 
 
 8 
 
We asked him what their names were and he said he did not 
 know. We went to see Mr. Munson, who runs the mill at 
 Chapinville. He took us through the mill and let us get 
 weighed and took us over to his house and out into the 
 barnyard to see the pigs and chickens and we also saw a 
 colt which was one day old. Anna just wrote in her journal 
 that "it was a very amusing site." 
 
 Sunday — Rev. Mr. Kendall, of East Bloomfield, preached 
 to-day. His text was from Job xxvi, 14: "Lo these are 
 parts of his ways, but how little a portion is heard of him." 
 I could not make out what it meant. He is James' and 
 John's minister. 
 
 Wednesday — Capt. Menteth was at our house to dinner 
 to-day and he tried to make Anna and me laugh by snap- 
 ping his snuff box under the table. He is a very jolly man, 
 I think. 
 
 Thursday — Father and Uncle Edward Richards came to 
 see us yesterday and took us down to Mr. Corson's store and 
 told us we could have anything we wanted. So we asked 
 for several kinds of candy, stick candy and lemon drops and 
 bulls eyes, and then they got us two rubber balls and two 
 jumping ropes with handles and two hoops and sticks to roll 
 them with and two red carnelian rings and two bracelets. 
 We enjoyed getting them very much and expect to have 
 lots of fun. They went out to East Bloomfield to see James 
 and John, and father is going to take them to New Orleans. 
 We hate to have them go. 
 
 Friday — We asked Grandmother if we could have some 
 hoop skirts like the seminary girls and she said no, we were 
 not old enough. When we were downtown Anna bought 
 a reed for I cents and ran it into the hem of her underskirt 
 and says she is going to wear it to school to-morrow. I think 
 Grandmother will laugh out loud for once, when she sees it, 
 but I don't think Anna will wear it to school or anywhere 
 else. She wouldn't want to if she knew how terrible it 
 looked. 
 
 Wednesday, June 8. — Mr. Cross had us speak pieces to- 
 day. He calls our names and we walk on to the platform 
 and toe the mark and make a bow and say what we have 
 
 9 
 
"Hoop Skirts Like the Seminary Girls' 
 
 got to say. He did not know what our pieces were going 
 to be and some of them said the same ones. Two boys 
 spoke: "The boy stood on the burning deck. Whence all but 
 him had fled." William Sly was one and he spoke his the 
 best. When he said, "The flames that lit the battle wreck 
 Shone round him o'er the dead," we could almost see the 
 fire, and when he said, "My father, must I stay?" we felt 
 like telling him, no, he needn't. He is going to make a good 
 speaker. Mr. Cross said so. Albert Murray spoke "Ex- 
 celsior, " and Horace Fmley spoke nice, too. My piece was. 
 "Why, Phoebe, are you come so soon? Where are your 
 berries, child?" Emma Van Arsdale spoke the same one. 
 We find them all in our reader. Sometime I am going to 
 speak, "How does the water come down at Ladore?" 
 Splashing and flashing and dashing and clashing and all that 
 — it rhymes so it is easy to remember. 
 
 10 
 
Tuesday, December 8. — I could not keep a journal for 
 two weeks, because grandfather and grandmother have been 
 very sick and we were afraid something dreadful was going 
 to happen. We are so glad that they are well again. 
 Grandmother was sick upstairs and grandfather in the bed- 
 room downstairs, and we carried messages back and forth 
 for them. Dr. Carr and Aunt Mary came over twice every 
 day and said they had the influenza and the inflammation 
 of the lungs. It was lonesome for us to sit down to the table 
 and just have Hannah wait on us. We had such lumps in 
 cur throats we could not eat much and we cried ourselves 
 to sleep two or three nights. Aunt Ann Field took us home 
 
 'Aunt Ann Field" 
 
 with her one afternoon to stay all night. We liked the idea 
 and Mary and Louisa and Anna and I planned what we 
 would play in the evening, but just as it was dark, our hired 
 man, Patrick McCarty, drove over after us. He said grand- 
 
father and grandmother could not get to sleep till they saw 
 the children and bid them good night. So we rode home 
 with him. We never stayed anywhere away from home all 
 night that we can remember. When grandmother came 
 downstairs, the first time, she was too weak to walk, so she 
 sat on each step till she got down. When grandfather saw 
 her he smiled and said to us: "When she will, she will, you 
 may depend on't; And when she won't, she won't, and 
 that's the end on't." But we knew all the time that he was 
 very glad to see her. 
 
 1853 
 
 July. — Hiram Goodrich, who lives at Mr. Myron H. 
 Clark's, and George and Wirt Wheeler ran away on Sunday 
 to seek their fortunes. When they did not come back every- 
 one was frightened and started out to find them. They set 
 out right after Sunday School, taking their pennies which had 
 been given them for the contribution, and were gone several 
 days. They were finally found at Palmyra. When asked 
 why they had run away, one replied that he thought it was 
 about time they saw something of the world. We heard 
 that Mr. Clark had a few moments private conversation with 
 Hiram in the barn and Mr. Wheeler the same with his boys 
 and we do not think they will go traveling on their own hook 
 again right off. Miss Upham lives right across the street 
 from them and she was telling little Morris Bates that he must 
 fight the good fight of faith and he asked her if that was the 
 fight that Wirt Wheeler fit. She probably had to make 
 her instructions plainer after that. 
 
 July. — Every Saturday our cousins, Lucilia and Mary and 
 Louisa Field, take turns coming to grandmother's to dinner. 
 It was Mary's turn to-day, but she was sick and couldn't 
 come, so grandmother told us that we could dress up and 
 make some calls for her. We were very glad. She told us 
 to go to Mrs. Gooding's first, so we did and she was glad 
 to see us and gave us some cake she had just made. Then 
 we went on to Mr. Greig's. We walked up the high steps 
 to the front door and rang the bell and Mr. Alexander came. 
 We asked if Mrs. Greig and Miss Chapin were at home and 
 he said yes, and asked us into the parlor. We looked at the 
 
 12 
 
paintings on the wall and looked at ourselves in the long look- 
 ing glass, while we were waiting. Mrs. Irving came in first. 
 She was very nice and said I looked like her niece, Julie 
 Jeffrey. I hope I do, for I would like to look like her. Mrs. 
 Greig and Miss Chapin came in and were very glad to see 
 us and took us out into the greenhouse and showed us all the 
 beautiful plants. When we said we would have to go, they 
 said goodbye and sent love to grandmother and told us to 
 call again. I never knew Anna to act as polite as she did 
 to-day. Then we went to see Mrs. Judge Phelps and Miss 
 Eliza Chapin, and they were very nice and gave us some 
 flowers from their garden. Then we went on to Miss Caro- 
 Ime Jackson's, to see Mrs. Holmes. Sometimes she is my 
 Sunday School teacher, and she says she and our mother 
 used to be great friends at the seminary. She said she was 
 glad we came up and she hoped we would be as good as 
 our mother was. That is what nearly everyone says. On 
 our way back, we called on Mrs. Dana at the Academy, as 
 she is a friend of grandmother. She is Mrs. Noah T. Clarke's 
 mother. After that, we went home and told grandmother 
 we had a very pleasant time calling on our friends and they 
 all asked us to come again. 
 
 Sunday, August 15. — To-day the Sacrament of the 
 Lord's Supper was held in our church and Mr. Daggett bap- 
 tized several little babies. They looked so cunning when he 
 took them in his arms and not one of them cried. I told 
 grandmother, when we got home, that I remembered when 
 Grandfather Richards baptized me in Auburn, and when he 
 gave me back to mother, he said, "Blessed little lambkin, 
 you'll never know your grandpa." She said I was mistaken 
 about remembering it, for he died before I was a year old, 
 but I had heard it told so many times I thought I remembered 
 it. Probably that is the way it was, but I know it happened. 
 
 Tuesday — Grandfather took us down street to be meas- 
 ured for some new patten leather shoes at Mr. Ambler's. 
 They are going to be very nice ones for best. We got our 
 new summer hats from Mrs. Freshour's millinery and we 
 them over to show to Aunt Ann and she said they were the 
 very handsomest bonnets she had seen this year. 
 
 13 
 
We go to school to Miss Zilpha Clark in her own house 
 on Gibson Street. Other girls who go are Laura Chapin, 
 Julia Phelps, Mary Paul, Bessie Seymour, Lucilla and Mary 
 Field, Louisa Benjamin, Nannie Corson, Kittie Marshall, 
 Abbie Clark and several other girls. I like Abbie Clark the 
 best of all the girls in school excepting of course my sister 
 Anna. 
 
 Before I go to school every morning I read three chapters 
 in the Bible. I read three every day and five on Sunday and 
 that takes me through the Bible in a year. Those I read this 
 morning were the first, second and third chapters of Job. The 
 first was about Eliphaz reproveth Job; second. Benefit of 
 God's correction; third. Job justifieth his complaint. I then 
 learned a text to say at school. I went to school at quarter to 
 nine and recited my text and we had prayers and then pro- 
 ceeded with the business of the day. Just before school was 
 out, we recited in "Science of Things Familiar, " and in Dic- 
 tionary, and then we had calisthenics. 
 
 We go through a great many figures and sing "A Life on 
 the Ocean Wave, " "What Fairy Like Music Steals Over 
 the Sea," "Lightly Row, Lightly Row, O'er the Glassy 
 Waves We Go," and "O Come, Come Away," and other 
 songs. Mrs. Judge Taylor wrote one song on purpose for us. 
 
 November 22. — I wrote a composition to-day and the sub- 
 ject was, "Which of the Seasons Is the Pleasantest?" Anna 
 asked grandmother what she should write about and grand- 
 mother said she thought "A Contented Mind" would be a 
 very good subject, but Anna said she never had one and 
 didn't know what it meant, so she didn't try to Write any at 
 
 A squaw walked right into our kitchen to-day with a 
 blanket over her head and had beaded purses to sell. 
 
 This is my composition which I wrote: "Which of the 
 seasons is the pleasantest? Grim winter with its cold snows 
 and whistling winds, or pleasant spring with its green grass 
 and budding trees, or warm summer with its ripening fruit 
 and beautiful flowers, or delightful autumn with its golden 
 
 14 
 
fruit and splendid sunsets? I think that I like all the seasons 
 very well. In winter comes the blazing fire and Christmas 
 treat. Then we can have sleigh rides and play in the snow 
 and generally get pretty cold noses and toses. In spring wc 
 have a great deal of rain and very often snow and therefore 
 we do not enjoy that season as much as we would if it was 
 dry weather, but we should remember that April showers 
 bring May flowers. In summer we can hear the birds warb- 
 ling their sweet notes m the trees and we have a great many 
 strawberries, currants, gooseberries and cherries, which I like 
 very much, indeed, and I think summer is a very pleasant 
 season. In autumn we have some of our choicest fruits, such 
 as peaches, pears, apples, grapes and plums and plenty of 
 flowers in the former part, but m the latter, about in Novem- 
 ber, the wind begins to blow and the leaves to fall and the 
 flowers to wither and die. Then cold winter with its sleigh- 
 rides comes round again." After I had written this I went 
 to bed. Anna tied her shoe strings in hard knots so she 
 could sit up later. 
 
 November 23. — We read our compositions to-day and 
 Miss Clark said mine was very good. One of the girls had a 
 Prophecy for a composition and told what we were all going 
 to be when we grew up. She said Anna Richards was 
 going to be a missionary and Anna cried right out loud. I 
 tried to comfort her and told her it might never happen, so 
 she stopped crying. 
 
 November 24. — Three ladies visited our school to-day. 
 Miss Phelps, Miss Daniels and Mrs. Clark. We had calis- 
 thenics and they hked them. 
 
 Sunday. — Mr. Tousley preached to-day. Mr. Lamb is 
 Superintendent of the Sunday School. Mr. Chipman used 
 to be. Miss Mollie Ball played the melodeon. Mr. Fair- 
 child IS my teacher when he is there. He was not there to- 
 day and Miss Mary Howell taught our class. I wish I 
 could be as good and pretty as she is. We go to church 
 morning and afternoon and to Sunday School, and learn 
 seven verses every week and recite catechism and hymns to 
 grandmother in the evening. Grandmother knows all the 
 
 15 
 
questions by heart, so she lets the book lie in her lap and 
 she asks them with her eyes shut. She likes to hear us sing, 
 
 'Tis religion that can give 
 Sweetest pleasures while we live 
 'Tis religion can supply 
 Solid comfort when we die. " 
 
 December 1 .- — Grandfather asked me to read President 
 Pierce's message aloud to him this evening. I thought it was 
 very long and dry, but he said it was interesting and that I 
 read it very well. I am glad he liked it. Part of it was 
 about the Missouri Compromise and I didn't even know 
 what it meant. 
 
 December 8. — We are taking dictation lessons at school 
 now. Miss Clark reads to us from the "Life of Queen 
 Elizabeth " and we write it down m a book and keep it. 
 She corrects it for us. I always spell "until" with two I's 
 and she has to mark it every time. I hope I will learn how 
 to spell it after a while. 
 
 December 9, Saturday. — We took our music lessons to- 
 day. Miss Hattie Heard is our teacher and she says we are 
 getting along well. Anna practiced her lesson over sixty-five 
 times this morning before breakfast and can play "Mary to 
 the Savior's Tomb" as fast as a waltz. 
 
 1854 
 
 February 4. — We heard to-day of the death of our little 
 half-sister, Julia Dey Richards, in Penn Yan, yesterday, and 
 I felt so sorry I couldn't sleep last night, so I made up some 
 verses about her and this morning v^rote them down and 
 gave them to grandfather. He liked them so well he wanted 
 me to show them to Miss Clark and ask her to revise them. 
 I did and she said she would hand them to her sister Mary 
 to correct. When she handed them back they were very 
 much nicer than they were at first and grandfather had me 
 copy them and he pasted them into one of his Bibles to keep. 
 
 March 4. — Anna and I went to call on Miss Upham to- 
 day. She is a real old lady and lives with her niece, Mrs. 
 John Bates, on Gibson Street. Our mother used to go to 
 
 16 
 
school to her at the Seminary. Miss Upham said to Anna, 
 "Your mother was a lovely woman. You are not at ail 
 like her, dear." I told Anna she meant in looks I was sure, 
 but Anna was afraid she didn't.- 
 
 Miss Upham 
 
 Sunday. — Mr. Daggett's text this morning was the 22d 
 chapter of Revelation, 1 6th verse, "I am the root and off- 
 spring of David and the bright and morning star." Mrs. 
 Judge Taylor taught our Sunday School class to-day and 
 she said we ought not to read our S. S. books on Sunday. 
 I always do. Mine to-day was entitled, "Cheap Repository 
 Tracts by Hannah More," and it did not seem unreligious 
 at all. 
 
 May 1 . — I arose this morning about the usual time and 
 read my three chapters in the Bible and had time for a walk 
 m the garden before breakfast. The polyanthuses are just 
 beginnmg to blossom and they border all the walk up and 
 
 17 
 
down the garden. I went to school at quarter of nine, but 
 I did not get along very well because we played too much. 
 We had two new scholars to-day. Miss Archibald and Miss 
 Andrews, the former about 1 7 and the latter about 15. In 
 the afternoon old Mrs. Kmney made us a visit, but she did 
 not stay very long. In dictionary class I got up sixth, although 
 I had not studied my lesson very much. 
 
 May 2. — I got up this morning at twenty minutes after 
 five. I always brush my teeth every morning, but I forget 
 to put it down here. I read my three chapters in Job and 
 played in the garden and had time to read grandmother a 
 piece in the paper about some poor children in New York. 
 Anna and I went over to Aunt Ann's before school and she 
 gave us each two sticks of candy apiece. Part of it came 
 from New York and part from Williamstown, Mass., where 
 Henry goes to college. Ann Eliza is going down street with 
 us this afternoon to buy us some new summer bonnets. They 
 are to be trimmed with blue and white and are to come to 
 five dollars. We are going to Mr. Stannard's store also, to 
 buy us some stockings. I ought to buy me a new thimble and 
 scissors, for I carried my sewing to school to-day and they 
 were inside of it very carelessly and dropped out and got 
 lost. I ought to buy them with my own money, but I 
 haven't got any, for I gave all I had (2 shillings) to Anna 
 to buy Louisa Field a cornelian ring. Perhaps father will 
 send me some money soon, but I hate to ask him for fear he 
 will rob himself. I don't like to tell grandfather how very 
 careless I was, though I know he would say, "Accidents will 
 happen." 
 
 May 3. — I was up early this morning because a dress- 
 maker. Miss Willson, is coming to make me a new calico 
 dress. It is white with pink spots in it and grandfather bought 
 it in New York. It is very nice indeed and I think grand- 
 father was very kind to get it for me. I had to stay at home 
 from school to be fitted. I helped sew and run my dress 
 skirt around the bottom and whipped it on the top. I went 
 to school in the afternoon, but did not have my lessons very 
 well. Miss Clark excused me because I was not there in the 
 morning. Some girls got up on our fence to-day and walked 
 clear across it, the whole length. It is iron and very high 
 
 18 
 
and has a stone foundation. Grandmother asked them to 
 get down, but I think they thought it was more fun to walk 
 up there than it was on the ground. The name of the little 
 girl that got up first was Mary Lapham. She is Lottie Lap- 
 ham's cousin. I made the pocket for my dress after I got 
 home from school and then grandfather said he would take 
 us out to nde, so he took us way up to Thaddeus Chapin's 
 on the hill.. Julia Phelps was there, playing with Laura 
 Chapin, for she is her cousin. Henry and Ann Eliza Field 
 came over to call this evening. Henry has come home from 
 Williams college on his vacation and he is a very pleasant 
 young man, indeed. I am reading a continued story in Har- 
 per's magazine. It is called Little Dorritt, by Charles Dick- 
 ens, and is very interesting. 
 
 May, Friday. — Miss Clark told us we could have a pic- 
 nic down to Sucker brook this afternoon and she told us to 
 bring our rubbers and lunches by two o'clock; but grand- 
 mother was not willing to let us go; not that she wished to 
 deprive us of any pleasure for she said instead, we could 
 wear our new black silk basks and go with her to Preparatory 
 lecture, so we did, but when we got there we found that 
 Mr. Daggett was out of town so there was no meeting. Then 
 she told us we could keep dressed up and go over to Aunt 
 Mary Carr's and take her some apples, and afterwards grand- 
 father took us to ride to see old Mrs. Sanborn and old Mr. 
 and Mrs. Atwater. He is ninety years old and blind and 
 deaf, so we had quite a good time after all. 
 
 Tuesday. — When we were on our way to school this 
 morning we met a lot of people and girls and boys going to 
 a picnic up the lake. They asked us to go, loo, but we said 
 we were afraid we could not. Mr. Alex Howell said, "Tell 
 your grandfather I will bring you back safe and sound unless 
 the boat goes to the bottom with all of us." So we went 
 home and told grandfather and, much to our surprise, he said 
 we could go. We had never been on a boat or on the lake 
 before. We went up to the head on the steamer Joseph 
 Wood and got off at Maxwell's Point. They had a picnic 
 dinner and lots of good things to eat. Then we all went into 
 the glen and climbed up through it. Mr. Alex Howell and 
 Mrs. Wheeler got to the top first and everybody gave three 
 
 19 
 
cheers. We had a lovely time riding back on the boat and 
 told grandmother we had the very best time we ever had in 
 our whole lives. 
 
 May 26. — There was an eclipse of the sun to-day and we 
 were very much excited looking at it. General Granger 
 came over and gave us some pieces of smoked glass. Miss 
 Clark wanted us to write compositions about it so Anna 
 wrote, "About 1 1 o'clock we went out to see if it had come 
 yet, but it hadn't come yet, so we waited awhile and then 
 looked again and it had come, and there was a piece of it 
 cut out of it. " Miss Clark said it was a very good descrip- 
 tion and she knew Anna wrote it all herself. 
 
 I handed in a composition, too, about the eclipse, but I 
 don't think Miss Clark liked it as well as she did Anna's, 
 because it had something in it about "the beggarly elements 
 of the world." She asked me where I got it and I told her 
 that it was in a nice story book that grandmother gave me to 
 read, entitled, "Elizabeth Thornton or the Flower and Fruit 
 of Female Piety, and other sketches," by Samuel Irenaeus 
 Prime. — This was one of the other sketches. — It commenced 
 by telling how the moon came between the sun and the earth, 
 and then went on about the beggarly elements. Miss Clark 
 asked me if I knew what they meant and I told her no, but 
 I thought they sounded good. She just smiled and never 
 scolded me at all. I suppose next time I must make it all up 
 myself. 
 
 Monday. — When we were on our way to school this 
 morning, we saw General Granger coming, and Anna had 
 on such a homely sunbonnet she took it off and hid it behind 
 her till he had gone by. When we told grandmother, she 
 said, "Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit 
 before a fall." I never heard of any one who knew so many 
 Bible verses as grandmother. Anna thought she would be 
 sorry for her and get her a new sunbonnet, but she didn't. 
 
 Sunday, June. — We have Sunday School at 9 o'clock 
 in the morning now. Grandfather loves to watch us when 
 we walk off together down the street, so he walks back and 
 forth on the front walk, till we come out, and gives us our 
 money for the contribution. This morning we had on our 
 new white dresses that Miss Rosewarne made and new sum- 
 
 20 
 
mer hats and new patten leather shoes and our mitts. When 
 he had looked us all over, he said, with a smile, "The Bible 
 says, let your garments be always white." After we had 
 gone on a little ways, Anna said: "If grandmother had 
 thought of that verse, I wouldn't have had to wear my pink 
 barege dress to the concert." I told her she need not feel 
 bad about that now, for she sang as well as any of them and 
 looked just as good. She always believes everything I say, 
 although she does not always do what I tell her to. Mr. 
 Noah T. Clarke told us in Sunday School last Sunday that 
 if we wanted to take shares in the missionary ship, "Morning 
 Star," we could buy them at 10 cents apiece, and grand- 
 mother gave us $ 1 to-day so we could have 1 shares. We 
 got the certificate with a picture of the ship on it, and we are 
 going to keep it always. Anna says if we pay the money, 
 we don't have to go. 
 
 Noah T. Clarke 
 
 There is a Mr. Packer in town, who teaches all the chil- 
 dren to sing. He had a concert in Bemis Hall last night 
 and he put Anna on the top row of the pyramid of beauty 
 and about one hundred children in rows below. She ought 
 
 21 
 
to have worn a white dress as the others did but grand- 
 mother said her new pink barege would do. I curled her 
 hair all around in about thirty curls and she looked very nice. 
 She waved the flag in the shape of the letter S and sang 
 "The Star Spangled Banner," and all the others joined in 
 the chorus. It was perfectly grand. 
 
 June. — Our cousin, George Bates of Honolulu, came to 
 see us to-day. He has one brother, Dudley, but he didn't 
 come. George has just graduated from college and is going 
 to Japan to be a doctor. He wrote such a nice piece in my 
 album I must copy it, "If I were a poet, I would celebrate 
 your virtues in rhyme; if I were forty years old, I would 
 write a homily on good behavior; being neither, I will quote 
 two familiar lines which if taken as a rule of action, will 
 make you a good and happy woman : 
 
 "Honor and shame from no condition rise. 
 Act well your part, there all the honor lies." 
 
 I think he is a very smart young man and will make a good 
 doctor to the heathen. 
 
 Tuesday. — A gentleman visited our school to-day and 
 Miss Clark introduced iriim to us. When he came in. Miss 
 Clark said, "Young ladies," and we all stood up and bowed 
 and said in concert, his name. Grandfather says, he would 
 rather have us go to school to Miss Clark than anyone else, 
 because she teaches us manners, as well as books. We girls 
 think he is a very particular friend of Miss Clark. He is 
 very nice looking, but we don't know where he lives. Laura 
 Chapin says he is an architect. I looked it up in the dic- 
 tionary and it says one who plans or designs. I hope he 
 don't plan to get married to Miss Clark and take her away 
 and break up the school, but I presume he does, lor that is 
 usually the way. 
 
 Monday. — There was a minister preached in our church 
 last night and some people say he is the greatest minister in 
 the world. I think his name was Mr. Finney. Grand- 
 mother said I could go with our girl, Hannah White. We 
 sat under the gallery, in Miss Antoinette Pierson's pew. 
 There was a great crowd and he preached good. Grand- 
 
mother says that our mother was a Christian when she was 
 ten years old and jomed the church and she showed us some 
 sermons that mother used to write down when she was 1 7 
 years old, after she came home from church, and she has 
 kept them all these years. I think children in old times were 
 not as bad as they are now. 
 
 "Mrs. Judge Taylor' 
 
 Tuesday. — Mrs. Judge Taylor sent for me to come over 
 to see her to-day. I didn't know what she wanted, but when 
 I got there she said she wanted to talk and pray with me on 
 the subject of religion. She took me into one of the wings. 
 I never had been in there before and was frightened at first, 
 but it was nice after I got used to it. After she prayed, she 
 asked me to, but I couldn't think of anything but "Now I 
 lay me down to sleep, " and I was afraid she would not like 
 that, so I didn't say anything. When I got home and told 
 Anna, she said, "Caroline, I presume probably Mrs. Taylor 
 wants you to be a missionary, but I shan't let you go. " I 
 told her she needn't worry for I would have to stay at home 
 and look after her. After school to-night I went out into 
 Abbie Clark's garden with her and she taught me how to 
 play "mumble te peg." It is fun, but rather dangerous. I 
 
am afraid grandmother won't give me a knife to play with. 
 Abbie Clark has beautiful pansies in her garden and gave me 
 some roots. 
 
 Wednesday, August. ^ — Grandmother sent Anna and me 
 up to Butcher street after school to-day to mvite Chloe to 
 come to dinner. I never saw so many black people as there 
 are up there. We saw old Loyd and black Jonathan and 
 Dick Valentine and Jerusha and Chloe and Nackie. Nackie 
 was pounding up stones into sand, to sell, to scour with. 
 Grandmother often buys it of her. I think Chloe was sur- 
 prised, but she said she would be ready, to-morrow, at 1 1 
 o'clock, when the carriage came for her. I should hate to be 
 as fat as Chloe. I think she weighs 300. She is going to sit 
 in grandfather's big arm chair, grandmother said. We told 
 grandmother we should think she would rather invite white 
 ladies, but she said Chloe was a poor old slave and as grand- 
 father had gone to Saratoga, .she thought it was a good time 
 to have her. She said God made of one blood all the people 
 on the face of the earth, so we knew she would do it and we 
 didn't say any more. When we talk too much, grandfather 
 always says N. C. (nuff ced.) She sent a carriage for 
 Chloe and she came and had a nice dinner, not in the kitchen 
 either. Grandmother asked her if there was any one else 
 she would like to see before she went home and she said. 
 "Yes, Miss Rebekah Gorham, " so she told the coachman 
 to take her down there and wait for her to make a call and 
 then take her home and he did. Chloe said she had a very 
 nice time, so probably grandmother was all right as she gen- 
 erally is, but I could not be as good as she is, if I should try 
 one hundred years. 
 
 Sunday, August 1 0. — Rev. Mr. Daggett's text this morn- 
 ing was "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy." 
 Grandmother said she thought the sermon did not do us 
 much good, for she had to tell us several times this after- 
 noon to stop laughing. Grandmother said we ought to be 
 good Sundays if we want to go to heaven, for there it is one 
 eternal Sabbath. Anna said she didn't want to be an angel 
 just yet and I don't think there is the least danger of it, as far 
 as I can judge. Grandmother said there was another verse, 
 "If we do not have any pleasure on the Sabbath, we shall 
 
 24 
 
ride on the high places of the earth," and Anna said she 
 liked that better, for she would rather ride than do anything 
 else, so we both promised to be good. Grandfather told us 
 they used to be more strict about Sunday than they are now. 
 Then he told us a story, how he had to go to Geneva one 
 Saturday morning in the stage and expected to come back 
 in the evening, but there was an accident, so the stage did 
 not come till Sunday morning. Church had begun and he 
 told the stage driver to leave him right there, so he went in 
 late and the stage drove on. The next day he heard that he 
 was to come before the minister, Rev. Mr. Johns, and the 
 deacons and explain why he had broken the fourth com- 
 mandment. When he got into the meeting Mr. Johns 
 asked him what he had to say, and he explained about the 
 accident and asked them to read a verse from the 8th chap- 
 ter of John, before they made up their minds what to do to 
 him. The verse was, "Let him that is without sin among 
 you cast the first stone." Grandfather said they all smiled, 
 and the minister said the meeting was out. Grandfather 
 says that shows it is better to know plenty of Bible verses, 
 for some time they may do you a great deal of good. We 
 then recited the catechism and went to bed. 
 
 August 21, I 854. — Anna says that Alice Jewett feels 
 very proud because she has a little baby brother. They have 
 named him John Harvey Jewett after his father, and Alice 
 says when he is bigger she will let Anna help her take him 
 out to ride in his baby carriage. I suppose they will throw 
 away their dolls now. 
 
 "Old Alice" came to see us to-day and grandmother gave 
 her some flowers. She had them in her apron for she said 
 if she should meet any little children and they should ask 
 for them she would have to let them go. Mrs. Gooding was 
 at our house to-day and made a carpet. We went over to 
 Aunt Mary Carr's this evening to see the gas and the new 
 chandeliers. They are bronze. 
 
 Tuesday, September I, 1854. — I am sewing a sheet over 
 and over for grandmother and she puts a pin in to show me 
 my stint, before I can go out to play. I am always glad 
 when I get to it. I am making a sampler, too, and have all 
 
 2.S 
 
the capital letters worked and now will make the small ones. 
 It is done in cross stitch on canvas with different color silks. 
 I am going to work my name, too. I am also knittmg a tip- 
 pet on some wooden needles that Henry Carr made for me. 
 Grandmother has ravelled it out several times because I 
 dropped stitches. It is rather tedious, but she says, "If at 
 first you don't succeed, try, try again. " Some military sol- 
 diers went by the house to-day and played some beautiful 
 music. Grandfather has a teter and swing for us in the back 
 yard and we enjoy them usually, but to-night Anna slid off 
 the teter board when she was on the ground and I was in 
 the air and I came down sooner than I expected. There 
 was a hand organ and monkey going by and she was in a 
 hurry to get to the street to see it. She got there a good 
 while before I did. 
 
 October, 1854. — Grandmother told us a story to-day, 
 how when she was a little girl, down in Connecticut, in 1 794, 
 she was on her way to school one morning and she saw an 
 Indian coming and was so afraid, but did not dare run for 
 fear he would chase her. So she thought of the word sago, 
 which means "good morning, " and when she got up close 
 to him, she dropped a curtesy and said "Sago," and he 
 just went right along and never touched her at all. She says 
 she hopes we will always be polite to everyone, even to 
 strangers. 
 
 November. — Abbie Clark's father has been elected Gov- 
 ernor and she is going to Albany to live for a while. We all 
 congratulated her when she came to school this morning, but 
 I am sorry she is going away. We will write to each other 
 every week. She wrote a prophecy and told the girls what 
 they were going to be and said I should be mistress of the 
 White House. I think it will happen, about the same time 
 that Anna goes to be a missionary. 
 
 Rev. Mr. Dickey, of Rochester, agent for the Seaman's 
 Friend society, preached this morning about the poor little 
 canal boy. His text was from the 107th Psalm, 23rd verse, 
 "They that go down into the sea in ships." He has the 
 queerest voice and stops off between his words. When we 
 got home, Anna said she would show us how he preached 
 
 26 
 
Governor Myron H. Clark 
 
 and she described what he said about a sailor in time of war. 
 She said, "A ball came — and struck him there — another ball 
 came — and struck him there — he raised his faithful sword — 
 and went on — to victory — or death." I expected grand- 
 father would reprove her, but he just smiled a queer sort of 
 smile and grandmother put her handkerchief up to her face, 
 as she always does when she is amused about anything. I 
 never heard her laugh out loud, but I suppose she likes funny 
 things as well as anybody. She did just the same, this morn- 
 ing, when grandfather asked Anna where the sun rose, and 
 she said "over by Gen. Granger's house and sets behind the 
 Methodist church." She said she saw it herself and should 
 never forget it when anyone asked her which way was east 
 or west. I think she makes up more things than anyone I 
 know of. 
 
 December, 1854. — There was a moonlight sleigh ride 
 of boys and girls last night, but grandfather did not want us 
 to go, but to-night he said he was going to take us to one 
 himself. So after supper he told Mr. Piser to harness the 
 horse to the cutter and bring it around to the front gate. Mr. 
 
Piser takes care of our horse and the Methodist church. He 
 hves in the basement. Grandfather sometimes calls him 
 Shakespeare to us, but I don't know why. He doesn't look 
 as though he could write poetry. Grandfather said he was 
 gomg to take us out to Mr. Waterman Powers' m Farmmg- 
 ton and he did. They were quite surprised to see us, but 
 very glad and gave us apples and doughnuts and other good 
 things. We saw Anne and Imogene and Morey and one 
 little girl named Zimmie. They wanted us to stay all night, 
 but grandmother was expecting us. We got home safe 
 about ten o'clock and had a very nice time. We never sat 
 up so late before. 
 
 Sunday. — Rev. M. L. R. P. Thompson preached to- 
 day. He used to be the minister of our church before Mr. 
 Daggett came. Some people call him Rev. "Alphabet" 
 Thompson, because he has so many letters in his name. He 
 preached a very good sermon from the text, "Dearly be- 
 loved, as much as lieth in you live peaceably with all men." 
 I liked to hear him preach, but not as well as I do Mr. Dag- 
 gett. I suppose I am more used to him. 
 
 Thursday. — Edward Everett, of Boston, lectured in our 
 church this evening. They had a platform built even with 
 the tops of the pews, so he did not have to go up into the 
 pulpit. Crowds and crowds came to hear him from all over 
 everywhere. Grandmother let me go. They say he is the 
 most eloquent speaker in the U. S., but I have heard Mr. 
 Daggett when I thought he was just as good. 
 
 Sunday. — We went to church to-day and heard Rev. 
 Mr. Stowe preach. His text was, "The poor ye have with 
 you always and whensoever ye will ye may do them good." 
 I never knew anyone who liked to go to church as much as 
 grandmother does. She says she "would rather be a door- 
 keeper in the house of our God than to dwell m the tents 
 of wickedness." I cannot imagine grandmother doing either. 
 I know she would not dwell a minute in a tent of any kind 
 and they never have women for doorkeepers. Mr. Colbum 
 is the doorkeeper in our church and he rings the bell every 
 day at 9 in the morning and at 1 2 and at 9 in the evening, 
 so grandfather knows when it is time to cover up the fire in 
 
 28 
 
the fireplace and go to bed. I think if the President should 
 come to call, he would have to go home at 9 o'clock. 
 Grandfather's motto is: 
 
 "Early to bed and early to rise 
 Makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise." 
 
 Tuesday. — Mrs. Greig and Miss 
 Betsey Chapin called to see us to- 
 day. Grandmother says that we can 
 return the call as she does not visit 
 any more. We would like to, for 
 we always enjoy dressing up and 
 making calls. Anna and I received 
 two black veils m a letter to-day 
 from Aunt Caroline Dey. Just ex- 
 actly what we had wanted for a 
 long while. Uncle Edward sent us 
 5 dollars and grandmother said we 
 could buy just what we wanted, so 
 we went down street to look at black 
 silk mantillas. We went to Moore'e 
 store and to Richardson's and to 
 Collier's, but they asked 10, 1 5 or 
 
 20 dollars for them, and Anna said "Black Silk Mantillas" 
 she resolved from now, henceforth and forever not to spend 
 her money for black silk mantillas. 
 
 Sunday. ^ — Rev. Mr. Tousley preached to-day to the chil- 
 dren and told us how many steps it took to be bad. I think 
 he said lying was first, then disobedience to parents, breaking 
 the Sabbath, swearing, stealing, drunkenness. I don't re- 
 member just the order they came. It was very interesting, 
 for he told lots of stories and we sang a great many times. 
 I should think Eddie Tousley would be an awful good boy 
 with his father in the house with him all the while, but prob- 
 ably he has to be away part of the time preaching to other 
 children. Eddie was named for Dr. Carr and he gave him 
 a silver fork. I don't think I should have given him anything 
 quite so nice if it had been me. 
 
 Sunday. — Uncle David Dudley Field and his daughter, 
 Mrs. Brewer, of Stockbridge, Mass., are visiting us and he 
 
 29 
 
 <5S 
 
preached for Mr. Daggett this afternoon. He is a very old 
 man and left his sermon at home and I had to go back after 
 it. His brother, Timothy, was the first minister in our church 
 about fifty years ago. Grandmother says she came all the 
 way from Connecticut with him on horseback on a pillion be- 
 hind him. Rather a long ride, I should say. I heard her 
 and Uncle David talking about their childhood and how they 
 lived in Guilford, Conn., in a house that was built upon a 
 rock. That was sometime in the last century like the house 
 that it tells about in the Bible that was built on a rock. 
 
 December. — My three chapters that I read this morning 
 were about Josiah's zeal and reformation; 2d, Jerusalem 
 taken by Nebuchadnezzar. 3rd, Jerusalem besieged and 
 taken. The reason that we always read the Bible the 
 first thing in the morning is because it says in the Bible 
 "Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and 
 all these things shall be added unto you." Grandmother 
 says she hopes we will treasure up all these things in our 
 hearts and practice them in our lives. I hope so, too. This 
 morning Anna got very mad at one of the girls and grand- 
 mother told her she ought to return good for evil and heap 
 coals of fire on her head. Anna said she wished she could 
 and burn her all up, but I don't think she meant it. I bought 
 some things at Mr. Mitchell's store to-day and Mr. Moses 
 Olds gave me a cake of maple sugar. It was good. 
 
 1855 
 
 Sunday, January. — Mr. Daggett's text this morning was, 
 "Behold I stand at the door and knock." They sang, "Be 
 hold a stranger at the door." It was very solemn indeed. In 
 the evening the text was, "And the door was shut." That 
 was even more solemn than the one in the morning. I think 
 they will do a great deal of good. 
 
 January 29 — Sunday. — Mr. Daggett preached this morn- 
 ing from the text, Deut. viii, 2: "And thou shalt remember 
 all the way which the Lord thy God led thee." It is 10 
 years to-day since Mr. Daggett came to our church, and he 
 told how many deaths there had been, and how many bap- 
 tisms, and how many members had been added to the church. 
 
 30 
 
It was a very interesting sermon, and everybody hoped Mr. 
 Daggett vs^ould stay here 1 years more, or 20, or 30, or 
 always. He is the only minister that I ever had, and I don't 
 ever want any other. We never could have anyone with 
 such a voice as Mr. Daggett's, or such beautiful eyes. Then 
 
 Rev. Dr. Daggett 
 
 he has such good sermons, and always selects the hymns we 
 like best, and reads them in such a way. This morning they 
 sang: "Thus far the Lord has led me on, thus far his power 
 prolongs my days. " After he has been away on a vacation 
 he always has for the first hymn, and we always turn to it 
 before he gives it out: 
 
 "Upward I lift mine eyes. 
 From God is all my aid; 
 The God that built the skies. 
 And earth and nature made. 
 
 "God is the tower 
 To which I fly; 
 His grace is nigh 
 In every hour." 
 
 He always prays for the oil of joy for mourning and the 
 garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. 
 
 April. — Grandmother received a letter from Connecticut 
 to-day telling of the death of her only sister. She was knit- 
 ting before she got it and she laid it down a few moments 
 
 31 
 
and looked quite sad and said, "So sister Anna is dead" — 
 then after a little she went on with her work. Anna watched 
 her and by and by, when we were alone, she said, "Caroline, 
 some day when you are about ninety you may be eating an 
 apple, or reading, or doing something, and you will get a 
 letter telling of my decease and after you have read it you 
 will lay it down and go on with your work and say, "So 
 sister Anna is dead." I told her that I knew if I lived to be 
 a hundred, and should hear that she was dead, I should cry 
 my eyes out, if I had any. 
 
 September 1 . — There was a stranger preached for Dr. 
 Daggett this morning and his text was, "Man looketh upon 
 the outward appearance but the Lord looketh on the heart. 
 When we got home, Anna said, the minister looked as 
 though he had been sick from birth and his forehead stretched 
 from his nose to the back of his neck, he was so bald. Grand- 
 mother told her she ought to have been more interested in his 
 words than in his looks, and that she must have very good 
 eyes if she could see all that from our pew, which is the 
 furthest from the pulpit of any in church, except Mr. Gib- 
 son's, which is just the same. Anna said she couldn't help 
 seeing it, unless she shut her eyes, and then everyone would 
 think she had gone to sleep. We can see the Academy boys 
 from our pew, too. 
 
 Mr. Lathrop, of the seminary, is superintendent of the 
 Sunday School now and he had a present to-day from Miss 
 Betsey Chapin, and several visitors came in to see it present- 
 ed: Dr. Daggett, Mr. and Mrs. Alex. Howell, Mr. Tous- 
 ley, Mr. Stowe, Mr. and Mrs. Gideon Granger and several 
 others. The present was a certificate of life membership to 
 something; I did not hear what. It was just a large piece of 
 parchment, but they said it cost $25. Miss Lizzie Bull is 
 my Sunday School teacher now. She asked us last Sunday 
 to look up a place in the Bible where the trees held a con- 
 sultation together, to see which one should reign over them. 
 I did not remember any such thing, but I looked it up in 
 the concordance and found it in Judges ix: 8. I found the 
 meaning of it in Scott's commentary and wrote it down and 
 she v/as very much pleased, and told us next Sunday to find 
 out all about Absalom. 
 
 32 
 
September 2. — I received a letter from my brother John 
 m New Orleans, and his ambrotype. He has grown amaz- 
 ingly. He also sent me a N. O. paper and it gave an ac- 
 count of the public exercises in the school, and said John 
 spoke a piece called "The Baron's Last Banquet," and had 
 great applause and it said he was "a chip off the old block." 
 He is a very nice boy, I know that. James is sixteen years 
 old now and is in Princeton college. He is studying Ger- 
 man and says he thinks he will go to Germany some day 
 and finish his education, but I guess in that respect he will be 
 very much disappointed. Germany is a great ways off and 
 
 "James and John" 
 
 none of our relations that I ever heard of have ever been 
 there and it is not at all likely that any of them ever will. 
 Grandfather says, though, it is better to aim too high than 
 not high enough. James is a great boy to study. They had 
 their pictures taken together once and John was holding some 
 flowers and James a book and I guess he has held onto it 
 ever since. 
 
 33 
 
Anna fell down and sprained her ankle to-day at the 
 Seminary, and had to be carried into Mrs. Richards' library. 
 She was sliding down the bannisters with little Annie Rich- 
 ards. I wonder what she will do next. She has good luck 
 in the gymnasium and can beat Emma Wheeler and Jennie 
 Ruckle swinging on the pole and climbing the rope ladder, 
 although they and Sarah Antes are about as spry as squirrels 
 and they are all good at ten pins. Susie Daggett and Lu- 
 cilla Field have gone to Farmington, Conn., to school. 
 
 December 20. — Susan B. Anthony is in town and spoke 
 in Bemis Hall this afternoon. She made a special request 
 that all the Seminary girls should come to hear her, as well 
 as all the women and girls in town. She had a large audi- 
 ence and she talked very plainly about our rights and how we 
 ought to stand up for them, and said the world would never 
 go right until the women had just as much right to vote and 
 rule as the men. She asked us all to come up and sign our 
 names who would promise to do all in our power to bring 
 about that glad day when equal rights should be the law of 
 the land. A whole lot of us went up and signed the paper. 
 When I told grandmother about it, she said she guessed 
 Susan B. Anthony had forgotten that St. Paul said the 
 women should keep silence. I told her, no, she didn't for 
 she spoke particularly about St. Paul and said if he had 
 lived in these times, instead of 1 800 years ago, he would 
 have been as anxious to have the women at the head of the 
 government as she was. I could not make grandmother agree 
 with her at all and she said we might better all of us stayed 
 at home. We went to prayer meeting this evening and a 
 woman got up and talked. Her name was Mrs. Sands. 
 We hurried home and told grandmother and she said she 
 probably meant all right and she hoped we did not laugh. 
 
 1856 
 
 January 23. — It is one year ago to-day that Johnnie Lyon 
 died. Georgie Wilkinson cried awfully in school, because 
 she said she was engaged to him. This is the third morning 
 that I have come down stairs at exactly 20 minutes to 7. 
 I went to school all day. Mary Paul and Fannie Palmer 
 read "The Snow Bird" to-day. There was some funny 
 
 34 
 
things in it. One was: "Why is a lady's hair like the latest 
 news? Because in the morning we always find it in the 
 papers. " Another was: "One rod makes an acher, as the 
 boy said when the schoolmaster flogged him." 
 
 This is Allie Field's birthday. He got a pair of slippers 
 from Mary with the soles all on ; a pair of mittens from Miss 
 Eliza Chapin, and Miss Rebecca Gorham is going to give 
 him a pair of stockings when she gets them done. 
 
 February 6.- — We were awakened very early this morning 
 by the cry of fire and the ringing of bells and could see the 
 sky red with flames and knew it was the stores and we 
 thought they were all burning up. Pretty soon we heard 
 our big brass door knocker being pounded fast and grand- 
 father said, "Who's there?' "Melville Arnold for the 
 bank keys," we heard. Grandfather handed them out and 
 dressed as fast as he could and went down, while Anna and 
 I just lay there and watched the flames and shook. He was 
 gone two or three hours and when he came back he said 
 that Mr. Palmer's hat store, Mr. Underbill's book store, Mr. 
 Shafer's tailor shop, Mrs. Smith's millinery, Pratt & Smith's 
 drug store, Mr. Mitchell's dry goods store, two printing 
 offices and a saloon were burned. It was a very handsome 
 block. The bank escaped fire, but the wall of the next 
 building fell on it and crushed it. After school to-night 
 grandmother let us go down and see how the fire looked. 
 It looked very sad, indeed. Judge Taylor offered grand- 
 father one of the wings of his house for the bank for the 
 present but he has secured a place in Mr. Buhre's store in 
 the Franklin block. 
 
 Thursday, February 7. — Dr. and Aunt Mary Carr and 
 Uncle Field and Aunt Ann were over at our house to dinner 
 to-day and we had a fine fish dinner, not one of Gabriel's 
 (the man who blows such a blast through the street, they 
 call him Gabriel), but one that Mr. Francis Granger sent to 
 us. It was elegant. Such a large one it covered a big plat- 
 ter. This evening Gen Granger came in and brought a gen- 
 tleman with him whose name was Mr. Skinner. They asked 
 grandfather, as one of the trustees of the church, if he had 
 any objection to a deaf and dumb exhibition there to-morrow 
 night. He had no objection, so they will have it and we 
 will go. 
 
 35 
 
Friday. — We went and liked it very much. The man 
 with them could talk and he mterpreted it. There were two 
 deaf and dumb women and three children. They performed 
 very prettily, but the smartest boy did the most. He acted 
 out David killing Goliah and the story of the boy stealing 
 apples and how the old man tried to get him down by 
 throwing grass at him, but finding that would not do, he 
 threw stones which brought the boy down pretty quick 
 Then he acted a boy going fishing and a man being shaved 
 in a barber shop and several other things. I laughed out 
 loud in school to-day and made some pictures on my slate 
 and showed them to Clara Willson and made her laugh, and 
 then we both had to stay after school. Anna was at Aunt 
 Ann's to supper to-night to meet a little girl named Helen 
 Bristol, of Rochester. Ritie Tyler was there, too, and they 
 had a lovely time. 
 
 February 8. — I have not written in my journal for several 
 days, because I never hke to write things down if they don't 
 go right. Anna and I were invited to go on a sleighride, 
 Tuesday night, and grandfather said he did not want us to 
 go. We asked him if we could spend the evening with 
 Frankie Richardson and he said yes, so we went down there 
 and when the load stopped for her, we went too, but we did 
 not enjoy ourselves at all and did not join in the singing. I 
 had no idea that sleighndes could make anyone feel so bad. 
 It was not very cold, but I just shivered all the time. When 
 the 9 o'clock bell rang, we were up by the "Northern Re- 
 treat," and I was so glad when we got near home, so we 
 could get out. Grandfather and grandmother asked us if 
 we had a nice time, but we got to bed as quick as we could. 
 The next day, grandfather went into Mr. Richardson's store 
 and told him he was glad he did not let Frankie go on the 
 sleighride, and Mr. Richardson said he did let her go and 
 we went, too. We knew how it was, when we got home 
 from school, because they acted so sober, and, after a while, 
 grandmother talked with us about it. We told her we were 
 sorry and we did not have a bit good time and would never 
 do it again. When she prayed with us the next morning, as 
 she always does before we go to school, she said, "Prepare 
 us. Lord, for what thou art preparing for us, " and it seemed 
 
 36 
 
as though she was discouraged, but she said she forgave us. 
 I know one thing, we will never run away to any more sleigh- 
 rides. 
 
 February 20.— Mr. Worden, Mr. 
 Henry Chesebro's father, was buried to- 
 day, and Aunt Ann let Allie stay with 
 us while she went to the funeral. I am 
 going to Fannie Gaylord's party to-morrow 
 night. 
 
 February 2 1 . — We had a very nice 
 time at Fannie Gaylord's party and a 
 splendid supper. Lucilla Field laughed ' ' 
 
 herself almost to pieces when she found "^""kie Richardson" 
 on going home that she had worn her leggins all the evening. 
 We had a pleasant walk home but did not stay till it was 
 out. Some one asked me if I danced every set and I told 
 them no, I set every dance. I told grandmother and she was 
 very much pleased. Some one told us that grandfather and 
 grandmother first met at a ball in the early settlement of Can- 
 andaigua. I asked her if it was so and she said she never 
 had danced since she became a professing Christian and that 
 was more than fifty years ago. 
 
 Grandfather heard to-day of the death of his sister, Lydia, 
 who was Mrs. Lyman Beecher. She was Rev. Dr. Lyman 
 Beecher's third wife. Grandmother says that they visited 
 her once and she was quite nervous thinking about having 
 such a great man as Dr. Lyman Beecher for her guest, as he 
 was considered one of the greatest men of his day, but she 
 said she soon got over this feeling, for he was so genial and 
 pleasant and she noticed particularly how he ran up and 
 down stairs like a boy. I think that is very apt to be the way 
 for "men are only boys grown tall." 
 
 There was a Know Nothing convention in town to-day. 
 They don't want anyone but Americans to hold office, but I 
 guess they will find that foreigners will get in. Our hired 
 man is an Irishman and I think he would just as soon be 
 "Prisidint" as not. 
 
 37 
 
February 22. — This is such a beautiful day, the girls 
 wanted a holiday, but Mr. Richards would not grant it. 
 We told him it was Washington's birthday and we felt very 
 patriotic, but he was inexorable. We had a musical review 
 and literary exercises instead in the afternoon and I put on 
 my blue merino dress and my other shoes. Anna dressed 
 up too and I curled her hair. The Primary scholars sit up- 
 stairs this term and do not have to pay any more. Anna 
 and Emma Wheeler like it very much, but they do not sit to- 
 gether. We are seated alphabetically, and I sit with Mary 
 Reznor and Anna with Mittie Smith. They thought she 
 would behave better, I suppose, if they put her with one of 
 the older girls, but I do not know as it will have the "desired 
 effect," as grandmother says. Miss Mary Howell and Miss 
 Carrie Hart and Miss Lizzie and Miss Mollie Bull were 
 visitors this afternoon. Gertrude Monier played and sang. 
 Abbie Clark spoke "King Henry of Navarre" and I spoke 
 "Bingen on the Rhine." Mrs. Anderson is the singing 
 teacher. Marion Maddox and Pussie Harris and Mary Dan- 
 iels played on the piano. Mr. Hardick is the teacher, and 
 he played, too. You would think he was trying to pound 
 the piano all to pieces, but he is a good player. We have 
 two papers kept up at school. The Snow Bird and The 
 Waif — one for the younger and the other for the older girls. 
 Miss Jones, the composition teacher, corrects them both. 
 Kate Buell, Anna Maria Chapin read the Waif to-day and 
 Gusta Buell and I read the Snow Bird. She has beautiful 
 curls and has two nice brothers, also, Albert and Arthur, 
 and the girls all like them. They have not lived in town very 
 long. 
 
 February 25. — I guess I won't fill up my journal any 
 more by saying I arose this morning at the usual time, for I 
 don't think it is a matter of life or death whether I get up 
 at the usual time or a few minutes later and when I am older 
 and read over the account of the manner in which I occupied 
 my time in my younger days I don't think it will add par- 
 ticularly to the interest, to know whether I used to get up 
 at 7 or at a quarter before. I think Miss Sprague, our school 
 room teacher, would have been glad if none of us had got 
 up at all this morning for we acted so in school. She does 
 not want any noise during the three minute recess, but there 
 
 38 
 
has been a good deal all day. In singing class they disturbed 
 Mr. Kimball by blowing through combs. We took off 
 our round combs and put paper over them and then blew 
 — Mary Wheeler and Lottie Lapham and Anna sat near- 
 est me and we all tried to do it, but Lottie was the only 
 one who could make it go. He thought we all did, 
 so he made us come up and sit by him. I did not 
 want to, a bit. He told Miss Sprague of us and she told 
 the whole school if there was as much noise another day she 
 would keep every one of us an hour after half-past four. As 
 soon as she said this they all began to groan. She said "Si- 
 lence." I only made the least speck of a noise that no one 
 heard. 
 
 February 26. — To-night after singing class, Mr. Rich- 
 ards asked all who blew through combs to rise. I did not, 
 because I could not make it go, but when he said all who 
 groaned could rise, I did, and some others, but not half who 
 did it. He kept us very late and we all had to sign an apol- 
 ogy to Miss Sprague. 
 
 March 3. — Elizabeth Spencer sits with me in school now. 
 She is full of fun but always manages to look very sober 
 when Miss Chesebro looks up to see who is making the noise 
 over our way. I never seem to have that knack. Anna had 
 to stay after school last night and she wrote in her journal 
 that the reason was because "nature will out" and because 
 "she whispered and didn't have her lessons, etc., etc." Mr. 
 Richards has allowed us to bring our sewing to school but 
 now he says we cannot any more. I am sorry for I have 
 some embroidery and I could get one pantalette done in a 
 week, but now it will take me longer. Grandmother has of- 
 fered me one dollar if I will stitch a linen shirt bosom and 
 wrist bands for grandfather and make the sleeves. I have 
 commenced, but, Oh, my! it is an undertaking. I have to 
 pull the threads out and then take up two threads and leave 
 three. It is very particular work and Anna says the stitches 
 must not be visible to the naked eye. I have to fell the 
 sleeves with the tiniest seams and stroke all the gathers and 
 put a stitch on each gather. Mmnie Bellows is the best one 
 in school with her needle and is a dabster at patching. She 
 cut a piece right out of her new calico dress and matched a 
 
 ?<9 
 
new piece in and none of us could tell where it was. I am 
 sure it would not be safe for me to try that. Grandmother 
 let me ask three of the girls to dinner Saturday, Abbie Clark, 
 Mary Wheeler and Mary Field. We had a big roast tur- 
 key and everything else to match. Good enough for Queen 
 Victoria. That reminds me of a conundrum we had in the 
 Snowbird: What does Queen Victoria take her pills in? In 
 cider. (Inside her.) 
 
 April I 2. — We went down town this morning and bought 
 us some shaker bonnets to wear to school. They cost $1 
 apiece and we got some green silk for capes to put on them. 
 We fixed them ourselves and wore them to school and some 
 of the girls liked them and some did not, but it makes no dif- 
 ference to me what they like, for I shall wear mine till it is 
 worn out. Grandmother says that if we try to please every- 
 body we please no-body. The girls are all having mystic 
 books at school now and they are very interesting to have. 
 They are blank books and we ask the girls and boys to write 
 in them and then they fold the page twice over and seal it 
 with wafers or wax and then write on it what day it is to 
 opened. Some of them say, "not to be opened for a year," 
 and that is a long time to wait. If we cannot wait we can 
 open them and seal them up again. I think Anna did look 
 to see what Eugene Stone wrote in hers, for it does not look 
 as smooth as it did at first. We have autograph albums too 
 and Horace Finley gave us lots of small photographs. We 
 paste them in the books and then ask the people to write 
 their names. We have got Miss Upham's picture and Dr. 
 and Mrs. Daggett, Gen. Granger's and Hon. Francis Gran- 
 ger's and Mrs. Adele Granger Thayer and Friend Burling, 
 Dr. Jewett, Dr. Cheney, Deacon Andrews and Dr. Carr, 
 and Johnnie Thompson's, Mrs. Noah T. Clarke, Mr. E. M. 
 Morse, Mrs. George Wilson, Theodore Barnum, Jim Paton's 
 and Will Sly, Merritt Wilcox, Tom Raines, Ed Williams, 
 Gus Coleman's, W. P. Fiske and lots of the girls' pictures 
 besides. Eugene Stone and Tom Eddy had their ambro- 
 types taken together, in a handsome case, and gave it to 
 Anna. We are going to keep them always. 
 
 April. — The Siamese twins are in town and a lot of the 
 girls went to see them in Bemis hall this afternoon. It cost 
 1 cents. Grandmother let us go. Their names are Eng 
 
 41 
 
and Chang and they are not very handsome. They are two 
 men joined together. I hope they hke each other, but I 
 don't envy them, any way. If one wanted to go somewhere 
 and the other one didn't I don't see how they would man- 
 age it. One would have to give up, that's certam. Perhaps 
 they are both Christians. 
 
 April 30. — Rev. Henry M. Field, editor of the New 
 York Evangelist, and his little French wife are here visiting. 
 She is a wonderful woman. She has written a book and 
 paints beautiful pictures and was teacher of art in Cooper 
 Institute, New York. He is grandmother's nephew and he 
 brought her a picture of himself and his five brothers, taken 
 for grandmother, because she is the only aunt they have in 
 the world. The rest are all dead. The men in the picture are 
 Jonathan and Matthew and David Dudley and Stephen J. 
 and Cyrus W. and Henry M. They are all very nice look- 
 ing and grandmother thinks a great deal of the picture. 
 
 May I 5. — Miss Anna Gaylord is one of my teachers at 
 the Seminary and when I told her that I wrote a journal 
 every day she wanted me to bring her my last book and let 
 her read it. I did so and she said she enjoyed it very much 
 and she hoped I would keep them, for they would be inter- 
 esting for me to read when I am old. I think I shall do so. 
 She has a very particular friend. Rev. Mr. Beaumont, who is 
 one of the teachers at the Academy. I think they are going 
 to be married some day. I guess I will show her this page 
 of my journal, too. Grandmother let me make a pie m a 
 saucer to-day and it was very good. 
 
 May. — We were invited to Bessie Seymour's party last 
 night and grandmother said we could go. The girls all told 
 us at school that they were going to wear low neck and short 
 sleeves. We have caps on the sleeves of our best dresses and 
 we tried to get the sleeves out, so we could go bare arms, 
 but we couldn't get them out. We had a very nice time, 
 though, at the party. Some of the Academy boys were 
 there and they asked us to dance, but of course we couldn't 
 do that. We promenaded around the rooms and went out 
 to supper with them. Eugene Stone and Tom Eddy asked 
 to go home with us, but grandmother sent over two girls 
 
 42 
 
for us, Bridget Flynn and Hannah V^hite, so they couldn't. 
 We were quite disappointed, but perhaps she won't send 
 for us next time. 
 
 May.-^Grandmother is teaching me how to knit some 
 mittens now, but if I ever finish them it will be through much 
 tribulation, the way they have to be ravelled out and com- 
 menced over again. I think I shall know how to knit when 1 
 get through, if I never know now to do anything else. Per 
 haps I shall know how to write, too, for I write all of grand 
 mother'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 aboul 
 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 practicing 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. 
 
 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 
 
 43 
 
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 occa- 
 sions, 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. 
 
 Sunday, June 1 . — Rev. Dr. Shaw, of Rochester, preached 
 for Dr. Daggett to-day and his text was: "Whosoever drink- 
 eth 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 for- 
 ever. It was a very good sermon and I love to hear hmi 
 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 ac- 
 quainted 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 grandmother the best way to dust 
 was to close the blinds, but grandmother does not seem to 
 agree with her. She says that when she gets married we 
 can come to visit her any time in the year, as she is 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 Wheelei went with us. Anna says she and Emma 
 are as "thick as hasty pudding." 
 
 June. — Rev. Frederick Starr, of Penn Yan, had an exhi- 
 bition in Bemis hall to-day of a tabernacle just like the chil- 
 dren of Israel carried with them to the Promised Land. We 
 
 44 
 
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. 
 
 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 Web- 
 ster died and there was service held in the church and his 
 last words, "I still live," was 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 grave yard to see our mother's grave. I copied this 
 verse from the grave stone: 
 
 "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 Au- 
 tumn winds. 
 
 Her hands were full of consolations which she scattered free 
 to all — the poor, the sick, the sorrowfull." 
 
 45 
 
I think she must have been almost exactly like grand- 
 mother 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 in- 
 fidel, who was dying, and his daughter asked him whose 
 religion she should live by, his or her mother's, and he said, 
 "\ our 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 
 
 46 
 
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. 
 
 Gen. John A. Granger 
 
 Sunday. — Grandmother says she loves to look at the beau- 
 tiful white heads of Mr. Francis Granger and Gen. 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 flow- 
 ers, but the blossoms are pink. Probably they had white 
 ones in Jerusalem, where Solomon lived. 
 
 47 
 
Mr. Francis Granger 
 
 Monday.- — Mr. Alex Jeffrey has come from Lexington, 
 Ky., and brougfit 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 Gen. Granger's granddaughters. I think they are going 
 to stay all summer. 
 
 Thanksgiving Day. — We all w^ent to church and Dr. Dag- 
 gett'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 I 6 of us in all and we children had a table in 
 the corner all by ourselves. We had roast turkey and every- 
 thing 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 
 
 48 
 
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 gid and I like 
 her very much, mdeed. 
 
 1857 
 
 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 
 
 49 
 
Antes, Hattie Paddock, Helen Coy, Jennie Ruckel, Frankie 
 Younglove, Emma Wheeler and Anna. They went out to 
 Mr. Sackett's, where they are makmg 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 but- 
 ter, 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 ex- 
 cept 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." 
 
 Johnnie Buxton brings his lame father around in a sort of 
 a rolling chair and sells molasses candy to the Sem. girls 
 every Wednesday afternoon. It is the best I ever ate. 
 
 March. — I asked Grandfather why we do not have 
 gas in the house like almost every one else and he said be- 
 cause 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 that 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 
 
 50 
 
down. There are no curtains or even shades at the win- 
 dows, 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, DeWitt Clinton, Rev. 
 Rev. Mr. Dwight, Uncle Henry Channing Beals and Aunt 
 Luciila 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. 
 
 "Will Sly" 
 
 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 
 
 51 
 
he was coming down to see us this evening. Will Sly heard 
 him say it and he said he was coming too. His mother 
 says she always knows when he has been at our house, be- 
 cause she finds sperm on his clothes and has to take brown 
 paper and a hot flatiron and get it out, but still I do not 
 think that Mrs. Sly 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 nine 
 o'clock bell rang we heard grandfather 
 Horace Finley 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 goodnight. "We won't go 
 home till morning" is a song that will never be sung in this 
 house. 
 
 March 29. — 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 twelve 
 when he was driven down to the bank after grandfather and 
 quarter of one 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. 
 
 52 
 
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. 
 
 April. — Grandfather gave us ten 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. 
 
 Mrs. George Willson 
 
 Sunday, April 5. — An agent for the American Board 
 of Foreign Missions preached this morning in our church 
 from Romans x, 15: "How shall they hear without a 
 preacher and how shall they preach except they be sent. 
 
 53 
 
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. Sam- 
 uel Hansom Cox, of LeRoy 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 Melchisedek, who had neither "begin- 
 ning 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 LeRoy Female Seminary, but grandfather hkes 
 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 Tues- 
 day 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 Hke it so much. Anna looked at it 
 and kissed it and said, "Grandmother, I think you are per- 
 fectly 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 
 
 54 
 
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. 
 
 Miss Lizzie Bull 
 
 May 9. — Miss Lizzie Bull came for me to go botanizing 
 with her this mornmg and we were gone from 9 till 1 2, and 
 went clear up to the orphan asylum. I am afraid I am not a 
 born botanist, for all the time she was analyzing the flowers 
 and telling me about the corona and the corrolla 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 common- 
 place, 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." I asked grandmother if 
 Mr. Clarke could take Sunday night supper with us and she 
 
 55 
 
said she was afraid he did not know the catechism. I asked 
 him Friday night and he said he would learn it on Saturday 
 so that he could answer every third question any way. So 
 he did and got along very well. I think he deserved a 
 pretty good supper. 
 
 June 2. — Abbie Clark wrote such a nice piece in my 
 album to-day, I am going to write it in my journal. Grand- 
 father says he likes the sentiment as well as any in my book. 
 This is it: "It has been said that the friendship of some peo- 
 ple is like our shadows, 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, June. — Gen. 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 ten 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 sat on, for the 
 driver. He sat inside the coach, but we could see him look- 
 ing 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. 
 
 July 4. — Barnum's circus was in town to-day and if 
 grandmother had not seen the pictures on the hand bills, I 
 think she would have let us go. She said it was all right to 
 look at the creatures God had made, but she did not think 
 He ever intended that women should go only half dressed 
 and stand up and ride on horses bare back, or jump through 
 hoops in the air. So we could not go. We saw the street 
 parade though and heard the band play and saw the men 
 and women in a chariot, all dressed so fine, and we saw a 
 big elephant and a little one and a camel with an awful 
 hump on his back, and we could hear the lion roar in the 
 cage, as they went by. It must have been nice to see them 
 close, too, and probably we will some day. 
 
 56 
 
August 8. — Grandfather has given me his whole set of 
 Waverly novels and his whole set of Shakespeare's plays, 
 and has ordered Mr. Jahn, the cabinet maker, to make me 
 a black walnut bookcase, with glass doors and three deep 
 drawers underneath, with brass handles. He is so good. 
 Anna says perhaps he thinks I am going to be married and 
 go to housekeeping some day. Well, perhaps he does. 
 Stranger things have happened. "Barkis in willin'." I 
 have just read David Copperfield and was so interested I 
 could not leave it alone till I finished it. 
 
 September I . — Anna and I have been in Litchfield, 
 Conn., all summer at father's summer school for boys. James 
 IS one of the teachers and he came for us and we stayed two 
 weeks in New York and vicinity before me came home. 
 Uncle Edward took us to Christie's Minstrels and the Hippo- 
 drome, so we saw all the things we missed seeing when the 
 circus was here in town. Grandmother seemed surprised 
 when we told her, but she didn't say much because she was 
 so glad to have us at home agam. Anna said we ought to 
 brmg a present to grandfather and grandmother, for she read 
 one time about some children who went away and came back 
 grown up and brought home "busts of the old philosophers 
 for the sitting room," so as we saw some busts of George 
 Washington and Benjamin Franklin in plaster of paris we 
 bought them, for they look almost like marble and grand- 
 father and grandmother like them. Speakmg of busts re- 
 minds me of a conundrum I heard while I was gone. How 
 do we know that Poe's Raven was a dissipated bird? Be- 
 cause he was all night on a bust. Grandfather took us down 
 to the bank to see how he had it made over while we were 
 gone. We asked him why he had a bee hive hanging out 
 for a sign and he said, "Bees store their honey in the summer 
 for winter use and men ought to store their money against a 
 rainy day." He has a swing door to the bank with "Push" 
 on it. He said he saw a man studying it one day and finally 
 looking up he spelled p-u-s-h, push (and pronounced it like 
 mush), "What does that mean? " Grandfather showed him 
 what it meant and he thought it was very convenient. He 
 was about as thick headed as the man who saw some snuff- 
 ers and asked what they were for and when told to snuff 
 the candle with, he immediately snuffed the candle with his 
 
fingers and put it in the snuffers and said, "Law sakes, how 
 handy!" Grandmother really laughed when she read this 
 in the paper. 
 
 September. — Mrs. Martin, of Albany, is visiting Aunt 
 Ann, and she brought grandmother a fine fish that was 
 caught in the Atlantic ocean. We went over and asked her 
 to come to dinner to-morrow and help eat it, and she said if 
 it did not rain pitchforks she would come, so I think we may 
 expect her. Her granddaughter, Hattie Blanchard, has come 
 here to go to the seminary and will live with Aunt Ann. 
 She IS a very pretty girl. Mary Field came over this morn- 
 ing and we went down street together. Grandfather went 
 with us to Mr. Nat Gorham's store, as he is selling off at 
 cost, and got grandmother and me each a new pair of kid 
 gloves. Hers are black and mine are green. Hers cost six 
 shillings and mine cost five shillings and six pence; very cheap 
 for such nice ones. Grandmother let Anna have six little 
 girls here to supper to-night ; Louisa Field, Hattie Paddock, 
 Helen Coy, Martha Densmore, Emma Wheeler and Alice 
 Jewett. We had a splendid supper and then we played 
 cards. I do not mean regular cards, mercy no! Grand- 
 father thinks those kind are contagious or outrageous or some- 
 thing dreadful and never keeps them in the house. Grand- 
 mother said they found a pack once, when the hired man's 
 room was cleaned, and they went into the fire pretty quick. 
 The kind we played was just "Dr. Busby," and another 
 "The Old Soldier and His Dog." There are counters with 
 them, and if you don't have the card called for you have to 
 pay one into the pool. It is real fun. They all said they had 
 a very nice time, indeed, when they bade grandmother good 
 night, and said: "Mrs. Beals, you must let Carrie and Anna 
 come and see us some time, " and she said she would. I 
 think it is nice to have company. 
 
 Christmas. — Grandfather and grandmother do not care 
 much about making Christmas presents. They say, when 
 they were young, no one observed Christmas or New Years, 
 but they always kept Thanksgiving day. Our cousins, the 
 Fields and Carrs, gave us several presents and Uncle Edward 
 sent us a basketfull from New York by express. Aunt Ann 
 gave me one of the Lucy books and a Franconia story book 
 
 58 
 
and to Anna, The Child's Book on Repentance. I am 
 afraid she will never read hers, but I will lend her mine. 
 Miss Lucy Ellen Guernsey, of Rochester, gave me "Christ- 
 mas Earnings" and wrote in it: "Carrie C. Richards with 
 the love of the author." I think that is very nice. Anna 
 and I were chattermg like two magpies to-day, and a man 
 came in to talk to grandfather on business. He told us in 
 an undertone that children should be seen and not heard. 
 After he had gone I saw Anna watching him a long time 
 till he was only a speck m the distance and I asked her what 
 she was domg. She said she was doing it because it was a 
 sign if you watched persons out of sight you would never 
 see them again. She does not seem to have a very forgiving 
 spirit, but you can't always tell. 
 
 1858 
 
 February 24. — The boarders at the seminary had some 
 tableaux last evening and invited a great many from the vil- 
 lage. They were splendid. Mr. Chubbuck was in nearly 
 all of them. The most beautiful one was Abraham offering 
 up Isaac. Mr. Chubbuck was Abraham and Sarah Ripley 
 was Isaac. After the tableaux they acted a charade. The 
 word was "Masterpiece." It was fine. After the audi- 
 ence got half way out of the chapel, Mr. Richards an- 
 nounced "The Belle of the Evening." The curtain rose and 
 every one rushed back, expecting to see a young lady dressed 
 in the height of fashion, when immediately the seminary bell 
 rang! Mr. Blessner's scholars gave all the music and he 
 stamped so, beating time, it almost drowned the music. 
 Some one suggested a bread and milk poultice for his foot. 
 Anna has been taking part in some private theatricals. The 
 play is in contrast to "The Spirit of '76" and the idea car- 
 ried out is that the men should stay at home and rock the 
 cradles and the women should take the rostrum. Grand- 
 mother was rather opposed to the idea, but everyone wanted 
 Anna to take the part of leading lady, so she consented. She 
 even helped Anna make her bloomer suit and sewed on the 
 braid for trimming on the skirt herself. She did not know 
 that Anna's opening sentence was, "How are you, sir? 
 Cigar, please!" It was acted at Mrs. John Bates' house on 
 Gibson street and was a great success, but when they de- 
 
 59 
 
cided to repeat it another evening grandmother told Anna 
 she must choose between going on the stage and hving with 
 her grandmother, so Anna gave it up and some one else took 
 her part. 
 
 March. — There is a great deal said about spirits nowa- 
 days and a lot of us girls went into one of the recitation 
 rooms after school to-night and had a spiritual seance. We 
 sat around Mr. Chabbuck's table and put our hands on it 
 and it moved around and stood on two legs and sometimes 
 on one. I thought the girls helped it but they said they 
 didn't. We heard some loud raps, too, but they sounded 
 very earthy to me. Eliza Burns, one of the boarders, told us 
 if we would hold our breath we could pick up one of the 
 girls from the floor and raise her up over our heads with one 
 finger of each hand, if the girl held her breath too. We tried 
 it with Anna and did it, but we had such hard work to keep 
 from laughing I expected we would drop her. There is 
 nothing very spintuelle about any of us. I told grandmother 
 and she said we reminded her of Jemima Wilkinson, who told 
 all her followers that the world was to come to an end on a 
 certain day and they should all be dressed in white and get 
 up on the roofs of the houses and be prepared to ascend and 
 meet the Lord in the air. I asked grandmother what she 
 said when nothing happened and she said she told them 
 it was because they did not have faith enough. If they had, 
 everything would have happened just as she said. Grand- 
 mother says that one day at a time has always been enough 
 for her and that to-morrow will take care of the things of 
 itself. 
 
 June. — Cyrus W. Field called at our house to-day. He 
 is making a trip through the States and stopped here a few 
 hours because grandmother is his aunt. He made her a 
 present of a piece of the Atlantic cable about six inches long, 
 which he had mounted for her. It is a very nice souvenir. 
 He is a tall, fine looking man and very pleasant. 
 
 August 1 7. — There was a celebration in town to-day be- 
 cause the Queen's message was received on the Atlantic 
 cable. Guns were fired and church bells rung and flags 
 were waving everywhere. In the evening there was a torch- 
 light procession and the town was all lighted up except Gib- 
 
 60 
 
son street. Allie Antes died this morning, so the people on 
 that street kept their houses as usual. Anna says that prob- 
 ably Allie Antes was better prepared to die than any other 
 little girl in town. Atwater hall and the academy and the 
 hotel were more brilliantly illuminated than any other build- 
 mgs. Grandfather saw something in a Boston paper that a 
 minister said in his sermon about the Atlantic cable and he 
 wants me to write it down in my journal. This is it: "The 
 two hemispheres are now successfully united by means of the 
 electric wire, but what is it, after all, compared with the 
 instantaneous communication between the Throne of Divine 
 Grace and the heart of man? Offer up your silent petition. 
 It is transmitted through realms of unmeasured space more 
 rapidly than the lightning's flash and the answer reaches the 
 soul e're the prayer has died away on the sinner's lips. Yet 
 this telegraph, performing its saving functions ever since 
 Christ died for men on Calvary, fills not the world with ex- 
 ultation and shouts of gladness, with illuminations and bon 
 fires and the booming of cannon. The reason is, one is the 
 telegraph of this world and may produce revolutions on 
 earth; the other is the sweet communication between Christ 
 and the christian soul and will secure a glorious immortality 
 in Heaven. " Grandfather appreciates anything like that 
 and I like to please him. 
 
 There was a lecture at the seminary to-night and Rev. 
 Dr. Hibbard, the Methodist minister, who lives next door 
 above the Methodist church, came home with us. Grand- 
 mother was very much pleased when we told her. 
 
 Sunday. — Rev. Henry Ward Beecher is staying at Judge 
 Taylor's and came with them to church to-day. Everybody 
 knew that he was here and thought he would preach and the 
 church was packed full. When he came in he went right to 
 Judge Taylor's pew and sat with them and did not preach 
 at all, but it was something to look at him. Mr. Daggett was 
 away on his vacation and Rev. Mr. Jervis of the M. E. 
 church preached. I heard some people say they guessed 
 even Mr. Beecher heard some new words to-day, for Mr. 
 Jervis is quite a hand to make them up or find very long hard 
 ones in the dictionary. 
 
 61 
 
August 30. — Rev. Mr. Tousley was hurt to-day by the 
 falling of his barn which was being moved, and they think 
 his back is broken and if he lives he can never sit up again. 
 Only last Sunday he was in Sunday School and had us sing 
 in memory of Allie Antes. 
 
 A mourning class, a vacant seat, 
 Tell us that one we loved to meet. 
 Will join our youthful throng no more, 
 'Till all these changing scenes are o'er. 
 
 And now he will never meet with us again and the chil- 
 dren will never have another minister all their own. He 
 thinks he may be able to write letters to the children and per- 
 haps write his own life. We all hope he may be able to sit 
 up if he cannot walk. 
 
 Some one told us that when Bob and Henry Antes were 
 small boys they thought they would like to try, just for once, 
 to see how it would seem to be bad, so in spite of all of Mr. 
 Tousley's sermons, they went out behind the barn one day 
 and in a whisper Bob said, "I swear, " and Henry said, 
 "So do I. " Then they came into the house looking guilty 
 and quite surprised, I suppose, that they were not struck 
 dead, just as Ananias and Sapphira were for lying. 
 
 September 9. — We gave the ambrotype to Miss Pierce 
 and she liked it very much and so does her mother and Fan- 
 nie. 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. 
 
 1859 
 
 April. — Anna wanted me to help her write a composition 
 last night, and we decided to write on "Old Journals," so we 
 got hers and mine both out and made selections and then 
 she copied them. When we were on our way to school this 
 morning we met Mr. E. M. Morse and Anna asked him if 
 he did not want to read her composition that Carrie wrote 
 for her. He made a very long face and pretended to be much 
 shocked, but said he would like to read it, so he took it and 
 also her album, which she asked him to write in. At night, 
 
 62 
 
on his way home, he stopped at our door and left them both. 
 When she looked in her album, she found this was what 
 he had written : 
 
 "Anna, when you have grown old and wear spectacles 
 and a cap, remember the boyish young man who saw your 
 fine talents in 1 859 and was certain you would add culture 
 to nature and become the pride of Canandaigua. Do not 
 forget also that no one deserves praise for anything done by 
 others and that your progress in wisdom and goodness will 
 be watched by no one more anxiously than by your true 
 friend, E. M. Morse." 
 
 "Old Friend Burling" 
 
 I think she might as well have told Mr. Morse that the old 
 journals were as much hers as mine; but I think she likes to 
 make out she is not as good as she is. Sarah Foster helped 
 us do our arithmetic examples to-day. She is splendid in 
 mathematics. 
 
 63 
 
Old Friend Buding brought grandfather a specimen of his 
 handwriting to-day to keep. It is beautifully written, like 
 copper plate. This is the verse he wrote and grandfather 
 gave it to me to paste into my book of extracts: 
 
 DIVINE LOVE. 
 
 Could we with ink the ocean fill, 
 
 Was the whole earth of parchment made. 
 Was every single stick a quill. 
 
 And every man a scribe by trade; 
 To write the love of God above 
 
 Would drain the ocean dry; 
 Nor could that scroll contain the whole 
 
 Though stretched from sky to sky. 
 
 Transcribed by William S. Burling, Canandaigua, Christ- 
 mas, 1 859, in the 83rd year of his age. 
 
 December 8, Sunday.- — Mr. E. M. Morse is our Sunday 
 School teacher now and the Sunday School room is so 
 crowded that we go up into the church for our class recita- 
 tion. Abbie Clark, Fannie Gaylord and myself are the 
 only scholars, and he calls us the three christian graces, faith, 
 hope and charity, and the greatest of these is charity. I am 
 the tallest, so he says I am charity. We recite m Mr. Gib- 
 son's pew, because it is farthest away and we do not disturb 
 the other classes. He gave us some excellent advice to-day 
 as to what was right and said if we ever had any doubts 
 about anything we should never do it and should always be 
 perfectly sure we are in the right before we act. He gave 
 us two weeks ago a poem to learn by Samuel Taylor 
 Coleridge. It is an apostrophe to God and very hard to 
 learn. It is blank verse and has eighty-five lines in it. I have 
 it committed at last and we are to recite it in concert. The 
 last two lines are, "Tell thou the silent sky and tell the stars 
 and tell yon rising sun. Earth with its thousand voices praises 
 God." Mr. Morse delivered a lecture in Bemis hall last 
 Thursday night. The subject was, "You and I." It was 
 splendid and he lent me the manuscript afterwards to read. 
 Dick Valentine lectured in the hall the other night, too. His 
 subject was "Prejudice." There was some difference in 
 the lectures and the lecturers. The latter was more highly 
 colored ! 
 
 64 
 
The older ladies of the town have formed a society for 
 the relief of the poor and are going to have a course of lec- 
 tures in Bemis hall under their auspices to raise funds. The 
 lecturers are to be from the village and are to be: Rev. O. E. 
 Daggett, subject, "Ladies and Gentlemen;" Dr. Harvey 
 Jewett, "The House We Live In;" Prof. F. E. R. Chab- 
 buck, "Progress;" Hon. H. W. Taylor, "The Empty 
 Place;" Prof. E. G. Tyler, "Finance;" Mr. W. T. Clarke. 
 "Chemistry;" E. M. Morse, "Graybeard and His Dogmas." 
 The young ladies have started a society, too, and we have 
 great fun and fine suppers. We met at Jennie Howell's to 
 organize. We are to meet once in two weeks and are to 
 present each member with an album bed quilt with all our 
 names on when they are married. Susie Daggett says she 
 is never going to be married, but we must make her a quilt 
 just the same. Laura Chapin sang "Mary Lindsey, dear," 
 and we got to laughing so that Susie Daggett and I lost our 
 equilibrium entirely, but I found mine by the time I got 
 home. 
 
 December. — We have had a Christmas tree and many 
 other attractions in seminary chapel. The day scholars and 
 townspeople were permitted to participate and we had a 
 postoffice and received letters from our friends. Anna says 
 they had all the smart people for clerks in the P. O. — Mr. 
 Morse, Miss Achert, Albert Granger and herself. Someone 
 asked Albert Granger if his law business was good and he 
 said one man thronged into his office one day. Mr. E. M. 
 Morse wrote me a fictitious one, claiming to be written from 
 the north pole, ten years hence. I will copy it in my journal, 
 for I may lose the letter. I had some gifts on the Christ- 
 mas tree and gave some. I presented my teacher, Mr. 
 Chabbuck, with two large hemstitched handkerchiefs with 
 his initials embroidered in a corner of each. As he is favored 
 with the euphonious name of Frank Emery Robinson Chub- 
 buck, it was a work of art to make his initials look beautiful. 
 I inclosed a stanza in rhyme: 
 
 Amid the changing scenes of life 
 
 If any storm should rise. 
 May you ever have a handkerchief 
 
 To wipe your weeping eyes. 
 
 65 
 
Here is Mr. Morse's letter: 
 
 North Pole, 
 Miss Carrie Richards, I January, 1 869. 
 
 My dear young friend : 
 
 It is very cold here and the pole is covered with ice. I 
 climbed it yesterday to take an observation and arrange our 
 flag, the stars and stripes, which I hoisted immediately on 
 my arrival here, ten years ago. I thought I should freeze and 
 the pole was so slippery that I was in great danger of coming 
 down faster than was comfortable. Although this pole has 
 been used for more than 6,000 years, it is still as good as new. 
 The works of the Great Architect do not wear out. It is 
 now ten years since I have seen you and my other two 
 Christian Graces and I have no doubt of your present posi- 
 tion among the most brilliant, noble and excellent women in 
 all America. I always knew and recognized your great 
 abilities. Nature was very generous to you all and you were 
 enjoying fine advantages at the time I last knew you. I 
 thought your residence with your grandparents an admirable 
 school for you and you and your sister were most evidently 
 the best joy of their old age. You certainly owe much to 
 them. At the time that I left my three Christian Graces, Mrs. 
 Grundy was sometimes malicious enough to say that they 
 "svere injuring themselves by flirting. I always told the old 
 lady that I had the utmost confidence in the judgment and 
 discretion of my pupils and that they would be very careful 
 and prudent in all their conduct. I confessed that flirting 
 was wrong and very injurious to anyone 
 who was guilty of it, but I was very sure 
 that you were not. I could not believe 
 that you would disappoint us all and be- 
 come only ordinary women, but that you 
 would become the most exalted characters, 
 scorning all things unworthy of ladies and 
 Christians and I was right and Mrs. 
 Grundy was wrong. When the ice around 
 Mr. E. M. Morse f^g poj^ ^haws out I shall make a flying 
 visit to Canandaigua. I send you a tame polar bear for a 
 playfellow. This letter will be conveyed to you by Esqui- 
 maux express. jy,^^^ ^^^jy ^^^^^^ 
 
 E. M. MORSE. 
 
 66 
 
I think some one must have shown some verses that we 
 girls wrote to Mrs. Grundy and made her think that our 
 mmds were more upon the young men than they were upon 
 our studies, but if people knew how much time we spent on 
 Paley's "Evidences of Christianity" and Butler's Analogy 
 and Kames' Elements of Criticism and Tyler's Ancient His- 
 tory and Olmstead's Mathematical Astronomy and our 
 French and Latin and arithmetic and algebra and geometry 
 and trigonometry and bookkeeping, they would know we 
 had very little time to think of the masculine gender. 
 
 1860 
 
 June. — Annie Granger asked Anna and me to come 
 over to her house to see her baby. We were very eager to 
 go and wanted to hold it and carry it around the room. She 
 was willing but asked us if we had any pins on us anywhere. 
 She said she had the nurse sew the baby's clothes on every 
 morning, so that if she cried she would know whether it was 
 pains or pins. We said we had no pins on us, so we stayed 
 quite a while and held little Miss Hattie to our heart's con- 
 tent. She is named for her aunt, Hattie Granger. Anna 
 says she thinks Miss Martha Morse will give medals to her 
 and Mary Daggett for being the most meddlesome girls in 
 school, judging from the number of times she has spoken to 
 them to-day. Anna is getting to be a regular punster, al- 
 though I told her that Blair's Rhetoric says that punning is 
 not the highest kind of wit. Mr. Morse met us coming from 
 school in the rain and said it would not hurt us as we were 
 neither sugar nor salt. Anna said, "No, but we are 'lasses.' 
 Grandmother has been giving us sulphur and molasses for 
 the purification of the blood and we have to take it three 
 mornings and then skip three mornings. This morning Anna 
 commenced going through some sort of gymnastics and 
 grandmother asked her what she was doing, and she said it 
 was her first morning to skip. 
 
 Friday, July. — I have not kept a journal for two weeks 
 because we have been away visiting. Anna and I had an 
 invitation to go to Utica to visit Rev. and Mrs. Brandigee. 
 He is rector of Grace Episcopal church there and his wife 
 used to belong to father's church in Morristown, N. J. Her 
 
 67 
 
name was Miss Condict. Rev. Mr. Stowe was going to 
 Hamilton college at Clinton, so he said he would take us 
 to Utica. We had a lovely time. The corner stone of the 
 church was laid while we were there and Bishop DeLancey 
 came and stayed with us at Mr. Brandigee's. He is a very 
 nice man and likes children. One morning they had muffins 
 for breakfast and Anna asked if they were ragamuffins. Mr. 
 Brandigee said, "Yes, they are made of rags and brown 
 paper," but we knew he was just joking. When we came 
 away Mrs. Brandigee gave me a prayer book and Anna a 
 vase, but she didn't like it and said she should tell Mrs. 
 Brandigee she wanted a prayer book too, so I had to change 
 with her. When we came home Mr. Brandigee put us in 
 
 
 Dr. Jewett 
 
 care of the conductor. There was a fine soldier looking man 
 m the car with us and we thought it was his wife with him. 
 He wore blue coat and brass buttons, and some one said his 
 name was Custer and that he was a West Point cadet and 
 belonged to the regular army. I told Anna she had better 
 behave or he would see her, but she would go out and stand 
 
 68 
 
on the platform until the conductor told her not to. I pulled 
 her dress and looked very stern at her and motioned toward 
 Mr. Custer, but it did not seem to have any impression on 
 her. I saw Mr. Custer smile once because my words had no 
 effect. I was glad when we got to Canandaigua. I heard 
 someone say that Dr. Jewett was at the depot to take Mr. 
 Custer and his wife to his house, but I only saw grandfather 
 coming after us. He said, "Well, girls, you have been and 
 you have got back," but I could see that he was glad to 
 have us at home again, even if we are "troublesome com- 
 forts," as he sometimes says. 
 
 1861 
 
 We seem to have come to a sad, sad time. The Bible 
 says, "A man's worst foes are those of his own household." 
 The whole United States has been like one great household 
 for many years. "United we stand, divided we fall!" has 
 been our watchword, but some who should have been its 
 best friends have proven false and broken the bond. Men 
 are taking sides, some for the North, some for the South. 
 Hot words and fierce looks have followed and there has been 
 a storm in the air for a long time. 
 
 April 15. — The storm has broken upon us. The Con- 
 federates fired on Fort Sumter, just off the coast of South 
 Carolina, and forced her on April 1 4 to haul down the flag 
 and surrender. President Lincoln has issued a call for 75,- 
 000 men and many are volunteering to go all around us. 
 How strange and awful it seems. 
 
 I recited "Scot and the Veteran" to-day at school and 
 Mary Field recited "To Drum Beat and Heart Beat a Sol- 
 dier Marches By;" Anna recited "The Virginia Mother." 
 Everyone learns war poems now-a-days. There was a patri- 
 otic rally in Bemis hall last night and a quartette sang, "The 
 Sword of Bunker Hill" and "Dixie" and "John Brown's 
 Body Lies a Mouldering in the Grave," and "Marching 
 Through Georgia" and many other patriotic songs. 
 
 May. — Many of the young men are going from Canan- 
 daigua and all the neighboring towns. It seems very patriotic 
 and grand when they are singing "It is sweet. Oh, 'tis sweet, 
 for one's country to die," and we hear the martial music and 
 
 69 
 
see the flags flying and see the recruiting tents on the square 
 and meet men in uniform at every turn and see tram loads of 
 the boys in blue gomg to the front, but it will not seem so 
 grand if we hear they are dead on the battlefield, far from 
 home. A lot of us girls went down to the train and took 
 flowers to the soldiers as they were passing through and they 
 cut buttons from their coats and gave to us as souvenirs. We 
 have flags on our paper and envelopes and have all our sta- 
 tionery bordered with red, white and blue. We wear littb 
 flag pins for badges and tie our hair with red white and blue 
 ribbon and have pirs and ear rings made of the buttons the 
 soldiers gave us. We are going to sew for them in our 
 society and get the garments all cut from the older ladies 
 society. They work every day in one of the rooms of the 
 court house and cut out garments and make them and scrape 
 them and roll up bandages. They say they will provide 
 us with all the garments we will make. We are going to 
 write notes and enclose them in the garments to cheer up the 
 soldier boys. It does not seem now as though I could give 
 up anyone who belonged to me. The girls in our society 
 say that if any of the members do send a soldier to the war 
 they shall have a flag bed quilt, made by the society, and 
 have the girls' names on the stars. 
 
 June. — I have graduated from Ontario Female Seminary 
 after a five years' course and had the honor of receiving a 
 diploma from the courtly hands of Gen. John A. Granger. 
 I am going to have it framed and handed down to my 
 grandchildren as a memento, not exactly of sleepless nights 
 and midnight vigils, but of rising betimes, at what Anna calls 
 the crack of dawn. She likes that expression better than 
 daybreak. I heard her reciting in the back chamber one 
 morning about 4 o'clock and listened at the door. She was 
 saying in the most nonchalant manner: "Science and literature 
 in England were fast losing all traces of originality, invention 
 was discouraged, research unvalued and the examination of 
 nature prescribed. It seemed to be generally supposed that 
 the treasure accumulated in the preceding ages was quite 
 sufficient for all national purposes and that the only duty 
 which authors had to perform was to reproduce what had 
 thus been accumulated, adorned with all the graces of pol- 
 ished style. Tameness and monotony naturally result from 
 
 7(1 
 
a slavish adherence to all arbitrary rules and every branch 
 of literature felt this blighting influence. History, perhaps, 
 was in some degree an exception, for Hume, Robertson, and 
 more especially Gibbon, exhibited a spirit of original investi- 
 gation which found no parallel among their contemporaries." 
 I looked in and asked her where her book was and she said 
 she left it down stairs. She has "got it" all right, I am sure. 
 We helped decorate the seminary chapel for two days. Our 
 motto was, "Still achieving, still pursuing." Miss Guernsey 
 made most of the letters and Mr. Chubbuck put them up and 
 he hung all the paintings. It was a very warm week. Gen. 
 Granger had to use his palm leaf fan all the time, as well as 
 the rest of us. There were six in our clcw-s, Mary Field, 
 Lucia Petherick, Kate Lilly, Sarah Clay, Abby Scott and 
 myself. Abbie Clark would have been in the class, but she 
 went to Pittsfield, Mass., instead. Gen. Granger said to each 
 one of us, "It gives me great pleasure to present you with 
 this diploma," and when he gave Miss Scott hers, as she is 
 from Alabama, he said he wished it might be as a flag of 
 truce between the North and the South, and this sentiment 
 was loudly cheered. Gen. Granger looked so handsome 
 with his black dress suit and ruffled shirt front and all the 
 natural grace which belongs to him. The sheepskin has a 
 picture of the seminary on it and this inscription: "The 
 Trustees and Faculty of the Ontario Female Seminary here- 
 by certify that has completed the course of study 
 
 prescribed in this Institution, maintained the requisite scholar- 
 ship and commendable deportment and is therefore admitted 
 to the graduating honors of this Institution. President Board, 
 John A. Granger; Benjamin F. Richards, Edward G. Tyler, 
 Principals." 
 
 December 1 . — Dr. Carr is dead. He had a stroke of 
 paralysis two weeks ago and for several days he has been 
 unconscious. The choir of our church, of which he was 
 leader for so long, and some of the young people came and 
 stood around his bed and sang, "Jesus, Lover of My Soul." 
 They did not know whether he was conscious or not, but 
 they thought so because the tears ran down his cheeks from 
 his closed eyelids, though he could not speak or move. The 
 funeral was from the church and Dr. Daggett's text was, 
 "The beloved physician." 
 
A young man asked Anna to take a drive to-day, but 
 grandmother was not willing at first to let her go. She 
 finally gave her consent, after Anna's plea that he was so 
 young and his horse was so gentle. Just as they were ready 
 to start, I heard Anna run upstairs and I heard him say, 
 "What an Anna!" I asked her afterwards what she went 
 for and she said she remembered that she had left the soap 
 in the water. 
 
 1862 
 
 February. — John B. Gough lectured in Bemis hall last 
 night and was entertained by Governor Clark. I told 
 grandfather that I had an invitation to the lecture and he 
 asked me who from. I told him from Mr. Noah T. Clarke's 
 brother. He did not make the least objection and I was 
 awfully glad, because he has asked me to the whole course. 
 Wendell Phillips and Horace Greeley, E. H. Chapin and 
 John G. Saxe and Bayard Taylor are expected. John B. 
 Gough's lecture was fine. He can make an audience laugh 
 a§ much by wagging his coattails as some men can by talking 
 an hour. 
 
 March 26. — I have been up at Laura Chapin's from ten 
 o'clock in the morning until ten at night, finishing Jennie 
 Howell's bed quilt, as she is to be married very soon. Al- 
 most all of the girls were there. We finished it at 8 p. m. 
 and when we took it off the frames we gave three cheers. 
 Some of the youth of the village came up to inspect our 
 handiwork and see us home. Before we went Julia Phelps 
 sang and played on the guitar and Captain Barry also sang 
 and we all sang together, "O! Columbia, the gem of the 
 ocean, three cheers for the red, white and blue." 
 
 Mr. Dillaway is at Mr. Gibson's as tutor for one of the 
 Sherman boys. They walk up and down Main street every 
 day, taking their constitutional, and people say, there goes 
 "the tutor " and "the tooted." 
 
 June. — There was great excitement in prayer meeting 
 last night, it seemed to Abbie Clark, Mary Field and me 
 on the back seat where we always sit. Several people have 
 asked us why we sit away back there by old Mrs. Kinney, 
 
but we tell them that she sits on the other side of the stove 
 from us and we like the seat, because we have occupied it so 
 long. I presume we would see less and hear more if we sat 
 in front. To-night just after Mr. Walter Hubbell had made 
 one of his most beautiful prayers and Mr. Cyrus Dixon was 
 praying, a big June bug came zipping into the room and 
 snapped against the wall and the lights and barely escaped 
 several bald heads. Anna kept dodging around in a most 
 startling manner and I expected every moment to see her 
 walk out and take Emma Wheeler with her, for if she is 
 afraid of anything more than dogs, it is June bugs. At this 
 crisis the bug flew out and a cat stealthily walked in. We 
 knew that dear Mrs. Taylor was always unpleasantly affected 
 by the sight of cats and we didn't know what would hap- 
 pen if the cat should go near her. The cat very innocently 
 ascended the steps to the desk and as Judge and Mrs. Taylor 
 always sit on the front seat, she couldn't help observing the 
 ambitious animal, as it started to assist Dr. Daggett in con- 
 ducting the meeting. The result was that Mrs. Taylor just 
 managed to reach the outside door before fainting away. 
 We were glad when the benediction was pronounced. 
 
 June. — Anna and I had a serenade last night from the 
 Academy Glee Club, I think, as their voices sounded familiar. 
 We were awakened by the music, about 11 p. m., quite 
 suddenly and I thought I would step across the hall to the 
 front chamber for a match to light the candle. I was only 
 half awake, however, and lost my bearings and stepped off 
 the stairs and rolled or slid to the bottom. The stairs are 
 winding, so I must have performed two or three revolutions 
 before I reached my destination. I jumped up and ran back 
 and found Anna sitting up in bed, laughing. She asked me 
 where I had been and said, if I had only told her where I 
 was going, she would have gone for me. We decided not 
 to strike a light, but just listen to the singing. Anna said 
 she was glad that the leading tenor did not know how quickly 
 I "tumbled" to the words of his song "O come my love and 
 be my own, nor longer let me dwell alone," for she thought 
 he would be too much flattered. Grandfather came into the 
 hall and asked if any bones were broken and if he should 
 send for a doctor. We told him we guessed not, we thought 
 we would be all right in the morning. He thought it was 
 
 7?< 
 
Anna who fell down stairs, as he is never looking for such 
 exploits m me. We girls received some verses from the 
 Academy boys, written by Greig Mulligan, under the as- 
 sumed name of Simon Snooks. The subject was the poor 
 unfortunate Academy boys. We have answered them and 
 now I fear Mrs. Grundy will see them and imagine some- 
 thing serious is going on. But she is mistaken and will find, 
 at the end of the session, our hearts are still in our own pos- 
 session. 
 
 1863 
 
 March. — Our society met at Fannie Pierce's this after- 
 noon. Her mother is an invalid and never gets out at all, 
 but she is very much interested in 
 the soldiers and in all young peo- 
 ple, and loves to have us come in 
 and see her and we love to go. 
 She enters into the plans of all of 
 us young girls and has a personal 
 interest in us. We had a very 
 good time to-night and Laura 
 Chapin was more full of fun than 
 usual. Once there was silence 
 for a minute or two and some one 
 said "awful pause. " Laura said, 
 "I guess you would have awful 
 paws if you worked as hard as I 
 do. ' We were talking about 
 Abbie Clark }^ow many of us girls would be 
 
 entitled to flag bed quilts, and according to the rules, they 
 said that, up to date, Abbie Clark and I were the only ones. 
 The explanation is, that Capt. George N. Williams and 
 Lieut. E. C. Clark are enlisted in their country's service. 
 Abbie Clarke and I had our ambrotypes taken for two young 
 braves who are going to the war. 
 
 74 
 
July 26. — Charlie Wheeler was buried with military 
 honors from the Congregational church to-day. Two com- 
 panies of the 54th New York State National Guard at- 
 tended the funeral, and the church was 
 packed, galleries and all. It was the 
 saddest funeral and the only one of a 
 soldier that I ever attended. I hope it 
 will be the last. He was killed at Get- 
 tysburg, July 3, by a sharpshooter's 
 bullet. He was a very bright young 
 man, graduate of Yale college and was 
 practicing law. He was captain of 
 Company K, 1 26th N. Y. volunteers. 
 I have copied an extract from Mr. 
 Morse's lecture, "You and I : " "And 
 who has forgotten that gifted youth, "And i" 
 
 who fell on the memorable field of Gettysburg? To win 
 a noble name, to save a beloved country, he took his 
 place beneath the dear old flag, and while cannon thundered 
 and sabers clashed and the stars of the old Union shone 
 above his head he went down in the shock of battle and left 
 us desolate, a name to love and a glory to endure. And as 
 we solemnly know, as by the old charter of liberty we most 
 sacredly swear, he was truly and faithfully and religiously 
 
 Of all our friends the noblest. 
 The choicest and the purest. 
 The nearest and the dearest. 
 In the field at Gettysburg. 
 Of all the heroes bravest. 
 Of soul the brightest, whitest. 
 Of all the warriors greatest. 
 Shot dead at Gettysburg. 
 
 And where the fight was thickest 
 And where the smoke was blackest. 
 And where the fire was hottest. 
 On the fields of Gettysburg, 
 There flashed his steel the brightest. 
 There blazed his eye the fiercest. 
 There flowed his blood the reddest 
 On the field of Gettysburg. 
 
O wailing winds of heaven! 
 O weeping dew of evening! 
 O music of the waters 
 That flow at Gettysburg, 
 Mourn tenderly the hero, 
 The rare and glorious hero, 
 The loved and peerless hero. 
 Who died at Gettysburg. 
 
 His turf shall be the greenest. 
 His roses bloom the sweetest. 
 His willow droop the saddest 
 Of all at Gettysburg. 
 His memory live the freshest. 
 His fame be cherished longest. 
 Of all the holy warriors. 
 Who fell at Gettysburg. 
 
 These were patriots, these were our jewels. When shall 
 we see their like again? And of every soldier who has 
 fallen in this war his friends may write just as lovingly as 
 you and I may do of those to whom I pay my feeble tribute." 
 
 August I 2. — Lucilla Field was married in our church to 
 Rev. S. W. Pratt to-day. I always thought she was cut 
 out for a minister's wife. Jennie Draper cried herself sick 
 because Lucilla, her Sunday School teacher, is going away. 
 
 1864 
 
 April 1 . — Grandfather has decided to go to New York 
 to attend the fair given by the Sanitary Commission, and he 
 is taking two immense books, which are more than one hun- 
 dred years old, to present to the Commission, for the benefit 
 of the war fund. 
 
 April 1 8. — Grandfather returned home to-day, unex- 
 pectedly to us. I knew he was sick when I met him at the 
 door. He had traveled all night alone from New York, 
 although he said that a stranger, a fellow passenger, from 
 Ann Arbor, Mich., on the train noticed that he was suffering 
 and was very kind to him. He said he fell in his room at 
 Gramercy Park hotel, in the night, and his knee was very 
 painful. We sent for old Dr. Cheney and he said the hurt 
 
 76 
 
was a serious one and needed most careful attention. I was 
 invited to a spelling school at Abbie Clark's in the evening 
 and grandmother said that she and Anna would take care 
 of grandfather till I got back, and then I could sit up by 
 him the rest of the night. We spelled down and had quite 
 a merry time. Major C. S. Aldrich had escaped from prison 
 and was there. He came home with me, as my soldier is 
 down in Virginia. 
 
 April 19. — Grandfather is much worse. He was de- 
 lirious all night. We have sent for Dr. Rosewarne in coun- 
 sel and Mrs. Lightfoote has come to stay with us all the time 
 and we have sent for Aunt Glorianna. 
 
 May 1 6. — I have not written in my diary for a month 
 and it has been the saddest month of my life. Dear, dear 
 grandfather is dead. He was buried May 2, just two weeks 
 from the day that he returned from New York. We did 
 everything for him that could be done, but at the end of the 
 first week the doctors saw that he was beyond all human aid. 
 Uncle Thomas told the doctors that they must tell him. He 
 was much surprised, but received the verdict calmly. He 
 said "he had no notes out and perhaps it was the best 
 time to go." He had taught us how to live and he seemed 
 determined to show us how a Christian should die. He said 
 he wanted "grandmother and the children to come to him 
 and have all the rest remain outside." When we came into 
 the room he said to grandmother "do you know what the 
 doctors say?" She bowed her head, and then he motioned 
 for her to come on one side and Anna and me on the other 
 and kneel by his bedside. He placed a hand upon us and 
 upon her and said to her, "All the rest seem very much ex- 
 cited, but no matter what happens you and I must be com- 
 posed." Then he asked us to say the 23d Psalm, "The 
 Lord is my Shepherd," and then all of us said the Lord's 
 Prayer together, after grandmother had offered a little 
 prayer, for grace and strength in this trying hour. Then he 
 said, "grandmother, you must take care of the girls, and 
 girls, you must take care of grandmother." We felt as 
 though our hearts would break and were sure we never could 
 be happy again. During the next few days he often spoke 
 of dying and of what we must do when he was gone. Once 
 when I was sitting by him he looked up and smiled and said : 
 
 77 
 
"You will lose all your roses watching over me." A good 
 many business men came in to see him to receive his parting 
 blessing. The two McKechnie brothers, Alexander and 
 James, came in together on their way home from church the 
 Sunday before he died. Dr. Daggett came very often. He 
 lived until Saturday, the 30th, and in the morning he said, 
 "Open the door wide." We did so and he said, "Let the 
 King of Glory enter in." Very soon after he said, "I am 
 going home to Paradise," and then sank into that sleep which 
 on this earth knows no waking. I sat by the window near 
 his bed and watched the rain beat into the grass and saw 
 the peonies and crocuses and daffodils beginning to come up 
 out of the ground and I thought to myself, I shall never see 
 the flowers come up again without thinking of these sad, sad 
 days. He was buried Monday afternoon. May 2, from the 
 Congregational church, and Dr. Daggett preached a sermon 
 from a favorite text of grandfather's, "I shall die in my nest." 
 James and John came and as we stood with dear grand- 
 mother and all the others around his open grave and heard 
 Dr. Daggett say in his beautiful sympathetic voice, "Earth 
 to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust," we felt that we were 
 losing our best friend; but he told us that we must live for 
 grandmother and so we will. 
 
 The next Sabbath, Anna and I were called out of church 
 by a messenger, who said that grandmother was taken sud- 
 denly ill and was dying. When we reached the house at- 
 tendants were all about her administering restoratives, but 
 told us she was rapidly sinking. I asked if I might speak to 
 her and was reluctantly permitted, as they thought best not 
 to disturb her. I sat down by her and with tearful voice 
 said, "Grandmother, don't you know that grandfather said 
 we were to care for you and you were to care for us and if 
 you die we cannot do as grandfather said?" She opened 
 her eyes and looked at me and said quietly, "Dry your eyes, 
 child, I shall not die to-day or to-morrow." She seems well 
 now. 
 
 Inscribed in my diary: 
 "They are passing away, they are passing away. 
 Not only the young, but the aged and grey. 
 Their places are vacant, no longer we see 
 The arm chair in waiting, as it used to be. 
 
 78 
 
The hat and the coat, all removed from the nail. 
 Where for years they have hung, every day without fail. 
 The shoes and the shppers are needed no more. 
 Nor kept ready vs^aitmg, as they were of yore. 
 The desk which he stood at m manhood's fresh prime, 
 Which now shows the marks of the finger of time. 
 The bright well worn keys, which were childhood's delight 
 Unlocking the treasures kept hidden from sight. 
 These now, are mementoes of him who has passed. 
 Who stands there no longer, as we saw him last. 
 Other hands turn the keys, as he did, before. 
 Other eyes will his secrets, if any, explore. 
 The step once elastic, but feeble of late. 
 No longer we watch for, through door way or gate. 
 Though often we turn, half expecting to see. 
 The loved one approaching, but ah! 'tis not he 
 We miss him at all times, at morn when we meet. 
 For the social repast, there is one vacant seat. 
 At noon, and at night, at the hour of prayer. 
 Our hearts fill with sadness, one voice is not there. 
 Yet not without hope, his departure we mourn. 
 In faith and in trust, all our sorrows are borne. 
 Borne upward to Him who in kindness and love 
 Sends earthly afflictions to draw us above. 
 Thus hoping and trusting, rejoicing, we'll go. 
 Both upward and onward, through weal and through woe 
 'Till all of life's changes and conflicts are past 
 Beyond the dark river, to meet him at last." 
 
 1fn /©emoriam 
 
 Thomas Beals died in Canandaigua, N. Y., on Saturday, 
 April 30th, 1864, in the 81st year of his age. Mr. Beals 
 was born in Boston, Mass., November 13, 1783. 
 
 He came to this village in October, 1803, only 14 years 
 after the first settlement of the place. He was married in 
 March, 1805, to Abigail Field, sister of the first pastor of 
 the Congregational church here. Her family, in several of its 
 branches, have since been distinguished in the ministry, the 
 legal profession, and in commercial enterprise. 
 
 79 
 
Living to a good old age, and well known as one of our 
 most wealthy and respected citizens, Mr. Beals is another 
 added to the many examples of successful men who, by 
 energy and mdustry, have made their own fortune. 
 
 On coming to this village, he was teaching in the Academy 
 for a time, and afterward entered into mercantile business, in 
 which he had his share of vicissitude. When the Ontario 
 Savings Bank was established, 1832, he became the treas- 
 urer, and managed it successfully till the institution ceased, 
 in 1835, with its withdrawal. In the meantime, he con- 
 ducted, also a banking business of his own, and this was 
 continued until a week previous to his death, when he for- 
 mally withdrew, though for the last five years devolving its 
 more active duties upon his son. 
 
 As a banker, his sagacity and fidelity won for him the 
 confidence and respect of all classes of persons in this com- 
 munity. The business portion of our village is very much 
 indebted to his enterprise for the eligible structures he built 
 that have more than made good the loses sustained by fires. 
 More than fifty years ago he was actively concerned in the 
 building of the Congregational church, and also superintended 
 the erection of the county jail and almshouse ; for many years 
 a trustee of Canandaigua Academy, and trustee and treas- 
 urer of the Congregational church. At the time of his death 
 he and his wife, who survives him, were the oldest members 
 of the church, having united with it in I 807, only eight years 
 after its organization. Until hindered by the infirmities of 
 age, he was a constant attendant of its services, and ever 
 devoutly maintained the worship of God in his family. No 
 person had been more generally known among all classes of 
 our citizens. Whether at home or abroad he could not fail 
 to be remarked for his gravity and dignity. His character 
 was original, independent, and his manners remarkable for 
 a dignified courtesy. Our citizens were familiar with his 
 brief, emphatic answers with the wave of his hand. He was 
 fond of books, a great reader, collected a valuable number 
 of volumes, and was happy in the use of language both in 
 writing and conversation. In many unusual ways he often 
 showed his kind consideration for the poor and afflicted, and 
 many persons hearing of his death gratefully recollect in- 
 stances, not known to others, of his seasonable kindness to 
 
 80 
 
them in trouble. In his charities he often studied conceal- 
 ment as carefully as others court display. His marked in- 
 dividuality of character and deportment, together with his 
 shrewd discernment and active habits, could not fail to leave 
 a distinct impression on the minds of all. 
 
 For more than sixty years he transacted business in one 
 place here, and his long life thus teaches more than one gen- 
 eration the value of sobriety, diligence, fidelity and usefulness. 
 
 In his last illness he remarked to a friend that he always 
 loved Canandaigua; had done several things for its pros- 
 perity, and had intended to do more. He had known his 
 measure of affliction; only four of eleven children survive him, 
 but children and children's children ministered to the com- 
 fort of his last days. Notwithstanding his years and infirm- 
 ities he was able to visit New York, returning 1 8th April 
 quite unwell, but not immediately expecting a fatal termina- 
 tion. As the final event drew near, he seemed happily pre- 
 pared to meet it. He conversed freely with his friends and 
 neighbors m a softened and benignant spirit, at once receiving 
 and imparting benedictions. His end seemed to realize his 
 favorite citation from Job: "I shall die in my nest." 
 
 His funeral was attended on Monday in the Congrega- 
 tional church by a large assembly. Dr. Daggett, the pastor, 
 officiating on the occasion. — Written by Dr. O. E. Daggett 
 in 1864. 
 
 June 23, 1864. — Anna graduated last Thursday, June 
 1 6, and was valedictorian of her class. There were eleven 
 girls in the class, Ritie Tyler, Mary Antes, Jennie Robinson, 
 Hattie Paddock, Lillie Masters, Abbie Hills, Miss McNair, 
 Miss Pardee and Miss Palmer, Miss Jasper and Anna. The 
 subject of her essay was, "The Last Time." I will copy an 
 account of the exercises as they appeared in this week's vil- 
 lage paper. Everyone thinks it was written by Mr. E. M. 
 Morse. 
 
 Mr. Editor: 
 
 Less than a century ago I was traveling through this en- 
 chanted region and accidentally heard that it was commence- 
 ment week at the seminary. I went. My venerable appear- 
 
 81 
 
ance seemed to command respect and I received many atten- 
 tions. I presented my snowy head and patriarchal beard at 
 the doors of the sacred institution and was admitted. I heard 
 all the classes, primary, secondary, tertiary, et cetera. All 
 went merry as a marriage bell. Thursday was the great day. 
 I made vast preparation. I rose early, dressed with much 
 care. I affectionately pressed the hands of my two landlords 
 and left. When I arrived at the seminary I saw at a glance 
 that it was a place where true merit was appreciated. I was 
 invited to a seat among the dignitaries, but declined. I am 
 a modest man, I always was. I recognized the benign Prin- 
 cipals of the school. You can find no better principles m 
 the state than in Ontario Female Seminary. After the report 
 of the committee, a very lovely young lady arose and saluted 
 us in Latin. I looked very wise, I always do. So did every- 
 body. We all understood it. As she proceeded, I thought 
 the grand old Roman tongue had never sounded so musically 
 as when she pronounced the decree, "Richmond dilenda est," 
 we all hoped it might be prophetic. Then followed the essays 
 of the other young ladies and then every one waited anxiously 
 for "The Last Time." At last it came. The story was 
 beautifully told, the adieux were tenderly spoken. We saw 
 the withered flowers of early years scattered along the aca- 
 demic ways, and the golden fruit of scholarly culture ripen- 
 ing in the gardens of the future. Enchanted by the sorrowful 
 eloquence, bewildered by the melancholy brilliancy, I sent 
 a rosebud to the charming valedictorian and wandered out 
 into the grounds. I went to the concert in the evening and 
 was pleased and delighted. So was everybody. I shall 
 return next year unless the gout carries me off. I hope I 
 shall hear just such beautiful music, see just such beautiful 
 faces and dine at the same excellent hotel. — Senex. 
 
 Anna closed her valedictory with these words: 
 
 "May we meet at one gate when all's over. 
 The ways they are many and wide. 
 And seldom are two ways the same. 
 
 Side by side, may we stand. 
 At the same little door, when all's done. 
 The ways, they are many. 
 The end it is one." 
 
 82 
 
April, 1865. — What a month this has been. On the 
 sixth of April, Governor Fenton issued this proclamation: 
 "Richmond has fallen. The wicked men who governed the 
 so-called Confederate States have f^ed their capital, shorn of 
 their power and influence. The rebel armies have been de- 
 feated, broken and scattered. Victory everywhere attends 
 our banners and our armies and we are rapidly moving to 
 the closing scenes of the war. Through the self-sacrifice and 
 heroic devotion of our soldiers, the life of the republic has 
 been saved and the American Union preserved. I, Reuben 
 E. Fenton, governor of the .state of New York, do designate 
 Friday, the 14th of April, the day appointed for the cere- 
 mony of raising the United States flag on Fort Sumter, as a 
 day of thanksgiving, prayer and praise, to Almighty God, 
 for the signal blessings we have received at His hands." 
 
 On the 1 4th of April, this day appointed for thanksgiving 
 for Union victories, our dear president, Abraham Lincoln, 
 was assassinated, and on the 1 9th 
 of April there were union religious 
 services held in the Congregational 
 church for the funeral of our late la- 
 mented president. All places of 
 business were closed and the bells 
 of the village churches tolled from 
 half past ten till eleven o'clock. 
 
 I don't think I shall keep a diary 
 any more, only occasionally jot down 
 things of importance. Mr. Noah T. 
 Clarke's brother got possession of my 
 little diary in some way one day and 
 when he returned it I found written 
 scription to the diary : 
 
 "You'd scarce expect a volume of my size, 
 To hold so much that's beautiful and wise. 
 And though the heartless world might call me cheap 
 Yet from my pages some much joy shall reap, 
 As monstrous oaks from little acorns grow. 
 And kindly shelter all who toil below. 
 So my future greatness and the good I do 
 Shall bless, if not the world, at least a few." 
 
 83 
 
 "Mr. Noah T. Clarke's 
 brother and I" 
 
 on the flyleaf this in- 
 
I think I will close my old journal with the mottoes which 
 I find upon an old well worn writing book which Anna used 
 for jotting down her youthful deeds. On the cover I find 
 inscribed, "Try to be somebody, " and on the back of the 
 same book, as if trying to console herself for unexpected 
 achievement which she could not prevent, "Some must be 
 great!" 
 
 London, August 8, 1872. — John sent for Aunt Ann 
 Field and James and me to come to England to visit him and 
 we have been here nearly a month. To-day we heard by 
 cable the sad news that our dear grandmother is dead. It 
 does not seem possible that we shall never see her again on 
 this earth. She took such an interest in our journey and just 
 as we started I put my dear little Abigail Beals Clarke in her 
 lap to receive her parting blessing. As we left the house she 
 sat at the front window and saw us go and smiled her fare- 
 well. Little did I dream that it was our last look on earth 
 of her sweet face. 
 
 August 20. — Anna has written how often she prayed 
 that "He who holds the winds in his fist and the waters in the 
 hollow of his hands, would care for 
 us and bring us to our desired 
 haven." She had received one let- 
 ter, telling of our safe arrival and 
 how much we enjoyed going about 
 London, when she was suddenly 
 taken ill and Dr. Hayes said she 
 could never recover. Anna's letter 
 came, after ten days, telling us all 
 the sad news and how grandmother 
 looked out of the window the last 
 night before she was taken ill and 
 Dr. Hayes up at the moon and stars and said 
 
 how beautiful they were. Anna says, "How can I ever 
 write it? Our dear little grandmother died on my bed to- 
 day." 
 
 84 
 
From the New York Evangelist of August 15, 1872: 
 "Died, at Canandaigua, N. Y., August 15, 1872, Mrs. 
 Abigail Field Beals, widow of Thomas Beals, in the 89th 
 year of her age. Mrs. Beals, whose maiden name was 
 Field, was born in Madison, Conn., April 7, 1 784. She 
 was a sister of Rev. David Dudley Field, D. D., of Stock- 
 bridge, Mass., and of Rev. Timothy Field, first pastor of 
 the Congregational church of Canandaigua. She came to 
 Canandaigua with her brother, Timothy, in 1 800. In 
 1805 she was married to Thomas Beals, Esq., with whom 
 she lived nearly sixty years, until he fell asleep. They had 
 eleven children, of whom only four survive. In 1807 she 
 and her husband united with the Congregational church, of 
 which they were ever liberal and faithful supporters. Mrs. 
 Beals loved the good old ways and kept her house in the 
 simple and substantial style of the past. She herself be- 
 longed to an age of which she was the last. With great 
 dignity and courtesy of manner which repelled too much 
 familiarity, she combined a sweet and winning grace, which 
 attracted all to her, so that the youth, while they would al- 
 most involuntarily 'rise up before her,' yet loved to be in her 
 presence and called her blessed. She possessed in a rare 
 degree the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit and lived in 
 an atmosphere of love and peace. Her home and room were 
 to her children and her children's children what Jerusalem 
 was to the saints of old. There they loved to resort and the 
 saddest thing in her death is the sundering of that tie which 
 bound so many generations together. She never ceased to 
 take a deep interest in the prosperity of the beautiful village 
 of which she and her husband were the pioneers and for 
 which they did so much and in the church of which she was 
 the oldest member. Her mind retained its activity to the 
 last and her heart was warm in sympathy with every good 
 work. While she was well informed in all current events, 
 she most delighted in whatever concerned the Kingdom. Her 
 Bible and religious books were her constant companions and 
 her conversation told much of her better thoughts, which 
 were in Heaven. Living so that those who knew her never 
 saw in her anything but fitness for Heaven, she patiently 
 awaited the Master's call and went down to her grave in a 
 full age like a shock of corn fully ripe that cometh in its 
 season." 
 
 85 
 

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