Village Life in America 1852-1872 Part 7

1860

_New Year's Day._--We felt quite grown up to-day and not a little scared when we saw Mr. Morse and Mr. Wells and Mr. Mason and Mr. Chubbuck all coming in together to make a New Year's call. They made a tour of the town. We did not feel so fl.u.s.trated when Will Schley and Horace Finley came in later. Mr. Oliver Phelps, Jr., came to call upon Grandmother.

Grandfather made a few calls, too.

_January_ 5.--Abbie Clark and I went up to see Miss Emma Morse because it is her birthday. We call her sweet Miss Emma and we think Mr. Manning Wells does, too. We went to William Wirt Howe's lecture in Bemis Hall this evening. He is a very smart young man.

Anna wanted to walk down a little ways with the girls after school so she crouched down between Helen Coy and Hattie Paddock and walked past the house. Grandmother always sits in the front window, so when Anna came in she asked her if she had to stay after school and Anna gave her an evasive answer. It reminds me of a story I read, of a lady who told the servant girl if any one called to give an evasive answer as she did not wish to receive calls that day. By and by the door bell rang and the servant went to the door. When she came back the lady asked her how she dismissed the visitor. She said, "Shure ye towld me to give an evasive answer, so when the man asked if the lady of the house was at home I said, 'Faith! is your grandmother a monkey!'" We never say anything like that to our "dear little lady," but we just change the subject and divert the conversation into a more agreeable channel. To-day some one came to see Grandmother when we were gone and told her that Anna and some others ran away from school. Grandmother told Anna she hoped she would never let any one bring her such a report again. Anna said she would not, if she could possibly help it! I wonder who it was. Some one who believes in the text, "Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others." Grandfather told us to-night that we ought to be very careful what we do as we are making history every day. Anna says she shall try not to have hers as dry as some that she had to learn at school to-day.

_February_ 9.--Dear Miss Mary Howell was married to-day to Mr.

Worthington, of Cincinnati.

_February_ 28.--Grandfather asked me to read Abraham Lincoln's speech aloud which he delivered in Cooper Inst.i.tute, New York, last evening, under the auspices of the Republican Club. He was escorted to the platform by David Dudley Field and introduced by William Cullen Bryant.

The _New York Times_ called him "a noted political exhorter and Prairie orator." It was a thrilling talk and must have stirred men's souls.

_April_ 1.--Aunt Ann was over to see us yesterday and she said she made a visit the day before out at Mrs. William Gorham's. Mrs. Phelps and Miss Eliza Chapin also went and they enjoyed talking over old times when they were young. Maggie Gorham is going to be married on the 25th to Mr.

Benedict of New York. She always said she would not marry a farmer and would not live in a cobblestone house and now she is going to do both, for Mr. Benedict has bought the farm near theirs and it has a cobblestone house. We have always thought her one of the jolliest and prettiest of the older set of young ladies.

_June._--James writes that he has seen the Prince of Wales in New York.

He was up on the roof of the Continental Fire Insurance building, out on the cornice, and looked down on the procession. Afterwards there was a reception for the Prince at the University Law School and James saw him close by. He says he has a very pleasant youthful face. There was a ball given for him one evening in the Academy of Music and there were 3,000 present. The ladies who danced with him will never forget it. They say that he enters into every diversion which is offered to him with the greatest tact and good nature, and when he visited Mount Vernon he showed great reverence for the memory of George Washington. He attended a literary entertainment in Boston, where Longfellow, Holmes, Emerson, Th.o.r.eau, and other Americans of distinction were presented to him. He will always be a favorite in America.

_June._--Mrs. Annie Granger asked Anna and me to come over to her house and 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 content. 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, although 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 'la.s.ses." Grandmother has been giving us sulphur and mola.s.ses 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.

Abbie Clark had a large tea-party this afternoon and evening--Seminary girls and a few Academy boys. We had a fine supper and then played games. Abbie gave us one which is a test of memory and we tried to learn it from her but she was the only one who could complete it. I can write it down, but not say it:

A good fat hen.

Two ducks and a good fat hen.

Three plump partridges, two ducks and a good fat hen.

Four squawking wild geese, three plump partridges, etc.

Five hundred Limerick oysters.

Six pairs of Don Alfonso's tweezers.

Seven hundred rank and file Macedonian hors.e.m.e.n drawn up in line of battle.

Eight cages of heliogabalus sparrow kites.

Nine sympathetical, epithetical, categorical propositions.

Ten tentapherical tubes.

Eleven flat bottom fly boats sailing between Madagascar and Mount Palermo.

Twelve European dancing masters, sent to teach the Egyptian mummies how to dance, against Hercules' wedding day.

Abbie says it was easier to learn than the multiplication table. They wanted some of us to recite and Abbie Clark gave us Lowell's poem, "John P. Robinson, he, says the world'll go right if he only says Gee!" I gave another of Lowell's poems, "The Courtin'." Julia Phelps had her guitar with her by request and played and sang for us very sweetly. Fred Harrington went home with her and Theodore Barnum with me.

_Sunday._--Frankie Richardson asked me to go with her to teach a cla.s.s in the colored Sunday School on Chapel Street this afternoon. I asked Grandmother if I could go and she said she never noticed that I was particularly interested in the colored race and she said she thought I only wanted an excuse to get out for a walk Sunday afternoon. However, she said I could go just this once. When we got up as far as the Academy, Mr. Noah T. Clarke's brother, who is one of the teachers, came out and Frank said he led the singing at the Sunday School and she said she would give me an introduction to him, so he walked up with us and home again. Grandmother said that when she saw him opening the gate for me, she understood my zeal in missionary work. "The dear little lady,"

as we often call her, has always been noted for her keen discernment and wonderful sagacity and loses none of it as she advances in years. Some one asked Anna the other day if her Grandmother retained all her faculties and Anna said, "Yes, indeed, to an alarming degree."

Grandmother knows that we think she is a perfect angel even if she does seem rather strict sometimes. Whether we are 7 or 17 we are children to her just the same, and the Bible says, "Children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right." We are glad that we never will seem old to her. I had the same company home from church in the evening. His home is in Naples.

_Monday._--This morning the cook went to early ma.s.s and Anna told Grandmother she would bake the pancakes for breakfast if she would let her put on gloves. She would not let her, so Hannah baked the cakes. I was invited to Mary Paul's to supper to-night and drank the first cup of tea I ever drank in my life. I had a very nice time and Johnnie Paul came home with me.

Imogen Power and I went down together Friday afternoon to buy me a Meteorology. We are studying that and Watts on the Mind, instead of Philosophy.

_Tuesday._--I went with f.a.n.n.y g.a.y.l.o.r.d to see Mrs. Callister at the hotel to-night. She is so interested in all that we tell her, just like "one of the girls."

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Old Canandaigua Academy]

I was laughing to-day when I came in from the street and Grandmother asked me what amused me so. I told her that I met Mr. and Mrs. Putnam on the street and she looked so immense and he so minute I couldn't help laughing at the contrast. Grandmother said that size was not everything, and then she quoted Cowper's verse:

"Were I so tall to reach the skies or grasp the ocean in a span, I must be measured by my soul, the mind is the stature of the man."

I don't believe that helps Mr. Putnam out.

_Friday._--We went to Monthly Concert of prayer for Foreign Missions this evening. I told Grandmother that I thought it was not very interesting. Judge Taylor read the _Missionary Herald_ about the Madagascans and the Senegambians and the Terra del Fuegans and then Deacon Tyler prayed and they sang "From Greenland's Icy Mountains" and took up a collection and went home. She said she was afraid I did not listen attentively. I don't think I did strain every nerve. I believe Grandmother will give her last cent to Missions if the Boards get into worse straits than they are now.

In Latin cla.s.s to-day Anna translated the phrase Deo Volente "with violence," and Mr. Tyler, who always enjoys a joke, laughed so, we thought he would fall out of his chair. He evidently thought it was the best one he had heard lately.

_November_ 21.--Aunt Ann gave me a sewing bird to screw on to the table to hold my work instead of pinning it to my knee. Grandmother tells us when we sew or read not to get everything around us that we will want for the next two hours because it is not healthy to sit in one position so long. She wants us to get up and "stir around." Anna does not need this advice as much as I do for she is always on what Miss Achert calls the "qui vive." I am trying to make a sofa pillow out of little pieces of silk. Aunt Ann taught me how. You have to cut pieces of paper into octagonal shape and cover them with silk and then sew them together, over and over. They are beautiful, with bright colors, when they are done. There was a hop at the hotel last night and some of the girls went and had an elegant time. Mr. Hiram Metcalf came here this morning to have Grandmother sign some papers. He always looks very dignified, and Anna and I call him "the deed man." We tried to hear what he said to Grandmother after she signed her name but we only heard something about "fear or compulsion" and Grandmother said "yes." It seems very mysterious. Grandfather took us down street to-day to see the new Star Building. It was the town house and he bought it and got Mr. Warren Stoddard of Hopewell to superintend cutting it in two and moving the parts separately to Coach Street. When it was completed the shout went up from the crowd, "Hurrah for Thomas Beals, the preserver of the old Court House." No one but Grandfather thought it could be done.

_December._--I went with the girls to the lake to skate this afternoon.

Mr. Johnson, the colored barber, is the best skater in town. He can skate forwards and backwards and cut all sorts of curlicues, although he is such a heavy man. He is going to Liberia and there his skates won't do him any good. I wish he would give them to me and also his skill to use them. Some one asked me to sit down after I got home and I said I preferred to stand, as I had been sitting down all the afternoon! Gus Coleman took a load of us sleigh-riding this evening. Of course he had Clara Willson sit on the front seat with him and help him drive.

_Thursday._--We had a special meeting of our society this evening at Mary Wheeler's and invited the gentlemen and had charades and general good time. Mr. Gillette and Horace Finley made a great deal of fun for us. We initiated Mr. Gillette into the Dorcas Society, which consists in seating the candidate in a chair and propounding some very solemn questions and then in token of desire to join the society, you ask him to open his mouth very wide for a piece of cake which you swallow, yourself, instead! Very disappointing to the new member!

We went to a concert at the Seminary this evening. Miss Mollie Bull sang "Coming Through the Rye" and Miss Lizzie Bull sang "Annie Laurie" and "Auld Lang Syne." Jennie Lind, herself, could not have done better.

_December_ 15.--Alice Jewett, Emma Wheeler and Anna are in Mrs.

Worthington's Sunday School cla.s.s and as they have recently united with the church, she thought they should begin practical Christian work by distributing tracts among the neglected cla.s.ses. So this afternoon they ran away from school to begin the good work. It was so bright and pleasant, they thought a walk to the lake would be enjoyable and they could find a welcome in some humble home. The girls wanted Anna to be the leader, but she would only promise that if something pious came into her mind, she would say it. They knocked at a door and were met by a smiling mother of twelve children and asked to come in. They sat down feeling somewhat embarra.s.sed, but spying a photograph alb.u.m on the table, they became much interested, while the children explained the pictures. Finally Anna felt that it was time to do something, so when no one was looking, she slipped under one of the books on the table, three tracts ent.i.tled "Consolation for the Bereaved," "Systematic Benevolence"

and "The Social Evils of dancing, card playing and theater-going." Then they said goodbye to their new friends and started on. They decided not to do any more pastoral work until another day, but enjoyed the outing very much.

_Christmas._--We all went to Aunt Mary Carr's to dinner excepting Grandmother, and in the evening we went to see some tableaux at Dr.

Cook's and Dr. Chapin's at the asylum. We were very much pleased with the entertainment. Between the acts Mr. del Pratt, one of the patients, said every time, "What next!" which made every one laugh.

Grandfather was requested to add his picture to the gallery of portraits of eminent men for the Court Room, so he has had it painted. An artist by the name of Green, who lives in town, has finished it after numerous sittings and brought it up for our approval. We like it but we do not think it is as good looking as he is. No one could really satisfy us probably, so we may as well try to be suited.

I asked Grandmother if Mr. Clarke could take Sunday night supper with us and she said she was afraid he did not know the catechism. I asked him Friday night and he said he would learn it on Sat.u.r.day 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.