Tuesday.—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 bedroom 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 our throats we could not eat much and we cried ourselves to sleep two or three nights. Aunt Ann Field took us home 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 Grandfather 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.
(December 28, 1852)December 2002
Wednesday.—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 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 “Excelsior,” and Horace Finley 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.
We played snap the whip at recess to-day and I was on the end and was snapped off against the fence. It hurt me so, that Anna cried. It is not a very good game for girls, especially for the one on the end.
(December 15, 1852)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 10 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.
I threaded a dozen needles on a spool of thread for Grandmother, before I went to school, so that she could slip them along and use them as she needed them. She says it is a great help.
Grandmother says I will have a great deal to answer for, because Anna looks up to me so and tries to do everything that I do and thinks whatever I say is “gospel truth.” The other day the girls at school were disputing with her about something and she said, “It is so, if it ain’t so, for Calline said so.” I shall have to “toe the mark,” as Grandfather says, if she keeps watch of me all the time and walks in my footsteps.
We asked Grandmother this evening if we could sit out in the kitchen with Bridget and Hannah and the hired man, Thomas Holleran. She said we could take turns and each stay ten minutes by the clock. It gave us a little change. I read once that “variety is the spice of life.” They sit around the table and each one has a candle, and Thomas reads aloud to the girls while they sew. He and Bridget are Catholics, but Hannah is a member of our Church. The girls have lived here always, I think, but I don’t know for sure, as I have not lived here always myself, but we have to get a new hired man sometimes. Grandmother says if you are as good to your girls as you are to yourself they will stay a long time. I am sure that is Grandmother’s rule. Mrs McCarty, who lives on Brook Street (some people call it Cat Alley but Grandmother says that is not proper), washes for us Mondays, and Grandmother always has a lunch for her at eleven o’clock and goes out herself to see that she sits down and eats it. Mrs McCarty told us Monday that Mrs Brockle’s niece was dead, who lives next door to her. Grandmother sent us over with some things for their comfort and told us to say that we were sorry they were in trouble. We went and when we came back Anna told Grandmother that I said, “Never mind, Mrs Brockle, some day we will all be dead.” I am sure that I said something better than that.
(December 10, 1852)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.
Wednesday.—Captain Menteith was at our house to dinner to-day and he tried to make Anna and me laugh by snapping his snuffbox under the table. He is a very jolly man, I think.
(December 8, 1852)
Sunday.—Rev. Mr Kendall, of East Bloomfield, preached to-day. His text was from Job 26, 14: “Lo these are parts of his ways, but how little a portion is heard of him.” I could not make out what he meant. He is James’ and John’s minister.
(December 5, 1852)
