Part 3 (1/2)

Tyler are the princ.i.p.als. 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 Richards. 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 Lucilla Field have gone to Farmington, Conn., to school.

_Monday._--I received a letter from my brother John in New Orleans, and his ambrotype. He has grown amazingly. He also sent me a N. O. paper and it gave an account 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 German 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 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 on to it ever since.

_Sunday._--Polly Peck looked so funny on the front seat of the gallery.

She had on one of Mrs. Greig's bonnets and her lace collar and cape and mitts. She used to be a milliner so she knows how to get herself up in style. The ministers have appointed a day of fasting and prayer and Anna asked Grandmother if it meant to eat as fast as you can. Grandmother was very much surprised.

_November_ 25.--I helped Grandmother get ready for Thanksgiving Day by stoning some raisins and pounding some cloves and cinnamon in the mortar pestle pounder. It is quite a job. I have been writing with a quill pen but I don't like it because it squeaks so. Grandfather made us some to-day and also bought us some wafers to seal our letters with, and some sealing wax and a stamp with ”R” on it. He always uses the seal on his watch fob with ”B.” He got some sand, too. Our inkstand is double and has one bottle for ink and the other for sand to dry the writing.

_December_ 20, 1855.--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 audience 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 1800 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.

_Monday._--I told Grandfather if he would bring me some sheets of foolscap paper I would begin to write a book. So he put a pin on his sleeve to remind him of it and to-night he brought me a whole lot of it.

I shall begin it to-morrow. This evening I helped Anna do her Arithmetic examples, and read her Sunday School book. The name of it is ”Watch and Pray.” My book is the second volume of ”Stories on the Shorter Catechism.”

_Tuesday._--I decided to copy a lot of choice stories and have them printed and say they were ”compiled by Caroline Cowles Richards,” it is so much easier than making them up. I spent three hours to-day copying one and am so tired I think I shall give it up. When I told Grandmother she looked disappointed and said my ambition was like ”the morning cloud and the early dew,” for it soon vanished away. Anna said it might spring up again and bear fruit a hundredfold. Grandfather wants us to amount to something and he buys us good books whenever he has a chance. He bought me Miss Caroline Chesebro's book, ”The Children of Light,” and Alice and Phoebe Cary's _Poems_. He is always reading Channing's memoirs and sermons and Grandmother keeps ”Lady Huntington and Her Friends,” next to ”Jay's Morning and Evening Exercises” and her Testament. Anna told Grandmother that she saw Mrs. George Willson looking very steadily at us in prayer meeting the other night and she thought she might be planning to ”write us up.” Grandmother said she did not think Mrs. Willson was so short of material as that would imply, and she feared she had some other reason for looking at us. I think dear Grandmother has a little grain of sarcasm in her nature, but she only uses it on extra occasions. Anna said, ”Oh, no; she wrote the lives of the three Mrs. Judsons and I thought she might like for a change to write the biographies of the 'two Miss Richards.'” Anna has what might be called a vivid imagination.

1856

_January_ 23.--This is the third morning that I have come down stairs at exactly twenty minutes to seven. I went to school all day. Mary Paul and Fannie Palmer read ”_The Snow Bird_” to-day. There were some funny 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.

_January_ 30.--I came home from school at eleven o'clock this morning and learned a piece to speak this afternoon, but when I got up to school I forgot it, so I thought of another one. Mr. Richards said that he must give me the praise of being the best speaker that spoke in the afternoon. Ahem!

_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 bra.s.s door knocker being pounded fast and Grandfather 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. Underhill's book store, Mr. Shafer's tailor shop, Mrs. Smith's millinery, Pratt & Smith's drug store, Mr.

Mitch.e.l.l'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 to see how the fire looked. It looked very sad indeed. Judge Taylor offered Grandfather 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 platter. This evening General Granger came in and brought a gentleman 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.

_Friday_.--We went and liked it very much. The man with them could talk and he interpreted 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 Goliath and the story of the boy stealing apples and how the old man tried to get him down by throwing gra.s.s at him, but finding that would not do, he threw stones which brought the boy down pretty quick. Then he acted a boy going fis.h.i.+ng 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Judge Henry W. Taylor, Miss Zilpha Clark, Rev. Oliver E. Daggett, D.D., ”Frankie Richardson”, Horace Finley]

_February_ 8.--I have not written in my journal for several days, because I never like to write things down if they don't go right. Anna and I were invited to go on a sleigh-ride, 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 sleigh-rides could make any one feel so bad. It was not very cold, but I just s.h.i.+vered all the time. When the nine o'clock bell rang we were up by the ”Northern Retreat,” 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 sleigh-ride, 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 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, Mrs. 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 g.a.y.l.o.r.d's party to-morrow night.

I went to school this afternoon and kept the rules, so to-night I had the satisfaction of saying ”perfect” when called upon, and if I did not like to keep the rules, it is some pleasure to say that.

_February_ 21.--We had a very nice time at Fannie g.a.y.l.o.r.d's party and a splendid supper. Lucilla Field laughed herself almost to pieces when she found 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 Canandaigua. 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 any one 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.

_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 Was.h.i.+ngton's birthday and we felt very patriotic, but he was inexorable.