Village Life in America, 1852 – 1872, by Caroline Cowles Richards

Sunday, December 8, 1859.—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 recitation. 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 in Mr Gibson’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 85 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.

Friday.—The older ladies of the town have formed a society for the relief of the poor and are going to have a course of lectures 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 Gentleman” Dr Harvey Jewett, “The House We Live in;” Prof. F. E. R. Chubbuck, “Progress;” Hon. H. W. Taylor, “The Empty Place;” Prof. E. G. Tyler, “Finance;” Mr N. T. Clark, “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 organise. 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. Yesterday afternoon Grandfather asked us if we did not want to go to ride with him in the big two seated covered carriage which he does not get out very often. We said yes, and he stopped for Miss Hannah Upham and took her with us. She sat on the back seat with me and we rode clear to Farmington and kept up a brisk conversation all the way. She told us how she became lady principal of the Ontario Female Seminary in 1830. She was still telling us about it when we got back home.

December 23.—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 post office and received letters from our friends. Mr E. M. Morse wrote me a ficticious 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 Christmas tree and gave some. I presented my teacher, Mr Chubbuck, 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 Chubbuck 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.

Here is Mr Morse’s letter :

“North Pole, 10 January 1869

” Miss Carrie Richards,

” My Dear Young Fr1end.—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 position among the most brilliant, noble and excellent women in all America. I always knew and recognised 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 were 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 any one 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 become 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 the pole thaws 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 Esquimaux express.—Most truly yours, E. M. MORSE.”

I think some one must have shown some verses that we girls wrote, to Mrs Grundy and made her think that our minds 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 Karnes’ Elements of Criticism and Tytler’s Ancient History 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.

June.—A lot of us went down to Sucker Brook this afternoon. Abbie Clark was one and she told us some games to play sitting down on the grass. We played “Simon says thumbs up” and then we pulled the leaves off from daisies and said,

“Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief,

Doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief,”

to see which we would marry. The last leaf tells the story. Anna’s came “rich man” every time and she thinks it is true because Eugene Stone has asked to marry her and he is quite well off. She is 13 and he is 17. He is going now to his home in St. Paul, Minn., but he is coming back for her some day. Tom Eddy is going to be groomsman and Emma Wheeler bridesmaid. They have all the arrangements made. She has not shown any of Eugene Stone’s notes to Grandmother yet for she does not think k is worth while. Anna broke the seal on Tom Eddy’s page in her mystic book, although he wrote on it, “Not to be opened until December 8, 1859.” He says:

“Dear Anna,—I hope that in a few years I will see you and Stone living on the banks of the Mississippi, in a little cottage, as snug as a bug in a rug, living in peace, so that I can come and see you and have a good time.—Yours,

Thos. C. Eddy.”

Anna says if she does marry Eugene Stone and he forgets, after two or three years to be as polite to her as he is now she shall look up at him with her sweetest smile and say, “Miss Anna, won’t you have a little more sugar in your tea?” When I went to school this morning Juliet Ripley asked, “Where do you think Anna Richards is now? Up in a cherry tree in Dr Cheney’s garden.” Anna loves cherries. We could see her from the chapel window.

June 7.—Alice Jewett took Anna all through their new house to-day which is being built and then they went over to Mr Noah T. Clarke’s partly finished house and went all through that. A dog came out of Cat Alley and barked at them and scared Anna awfully. She said she almost had a conniption fit but Emma kept hold of her. She is so afraid of thunder and lightning and dogs.

Old Friend Burling 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 in 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, 1859, in the 83rd year of his age.

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 pretented 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, 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 1859 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.”

I think she might as well 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 to do our arithmetic examples to-day. She is splendid in mathematics.

Much to our surprise Bridget Flynn, who has lived with us so long, is married. We didn’t know she thought of such a thing, but she has gone. Anna and I have learned how to make rice and cornstarch puddings. We have a new girl in Bridget’s place but I don’t think she will do. Grandmother asked her today if she seasoned the gravy and she said, either she did or she didn’t, she couldn’t tell which. Grandfather says he thinks she is a little lacking in the “upper story.”

March 1.—Our hired man has started a hot bed and we went down behind the barn to see it. Grandfather said he was up at 6 o’clock and walked up as far as Mr Greig’s lions and back again for exercise before breakfast. He seems to have the bloom of youth on his face as a reward. Anna says she saw “Bloom of youth” advertised in the drug store and she is going to buy some. I know Grandmother won’t let her for it would be like “taking coal to New Castle.”

February.—Anna has been teasing me all the morning about a verse which John Albert Granger Barker wrote in my album. He has a most fascinating lisp when he talks, so she says this is the way the verse reads :

“Beauty of perthon, ith thertainly chawming

Beauty of feachure, by no meanth alawming

But give me in pwefrence, beauty of mind,

Or give me Cawwie, with all thwee combined.”

It takes Anna to find “amuthement” in ” evewy thing.”

Mary Wheeler came over and pierced my ears to-day, so I can wear my new earrings that Uncle Edward sent me. She pinched my ear until it was numb and then pulled a needle through, threaded with silk. Anna would not stay in the room. She wants her’s done but does not dare. It is all the fashion for girls to cut off their hair and friz it. Anna and I have cut off ours and Bessie Seymour got me to cut off her lovely long hair to-day. It won’t be very comfortable for us to sleep with curl papers all over our heads, but we must do it now. I wanted my new dress waist which Miss Rosewarne is making, to hook up in front, but Grandmother said I would have to wear it that way all the rest of my life so I had better be content to hook it in the back a little longer. She said when Aunt Glorianna was married, in 1848, it was the fashion for grown up women to have their waists fastened in the back, so the bride had hers made that way but she thought it was a very foolish and inconvenient fashion. It is nice, though, to dress in style and look like other people. I have a Garibaldi waist and a Zouave jacket and a balmoral skirt.

Sunday.—I asked Grandmother if I could write a letter to Father to-day, and she said I could begin it and tell him that I went to church and what Mr Daggett’s text was and then finish it to-morrow. I did so, but I wish I could do it all after I began. She said a verse from the Tract Primer:

“A Sabbath well spent brings a week of content

And strength for the toil of to-morrow,

But a Sabbath profaned, whatever be gained,

Is a certain forerunner of sorrow.”

Monday. —We dressed up in new fangled costumes to-day and wore them to school. Some of us wore dresses almost up to our knees and some wore them trailing on the ground. Some wore their hair twisted in knots and some let theirs hang down their backs. I wore my new waterfall for the first time and Abbie Clark said I looked like “Hagar in the Wilderness.” When she came in she looked like a fashion plate, bedecked with bows and ribbons and her hair up in a new way. When she came in the door she stopped and said solemnly, “If you have tears prepare to shed them now!” Laura Chapin would not participate in the fun, for once. She said she thought “Beauty unadorned was the dorndest.” We did not have our lesson in mental philosophy very well so we asked Mr Richards to explain the nature of dreams and their cause and effect. He gave us a very interesting talk, which occupied the whole hour. We listened with breathless attention, so he must have marked us 100.

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. Grandmother was very much pleased when we told her.

January, 1859.—Mr Woodruff came to see Grandfather to ask him if we could attend his singing school. He is going to have it one evening each week in the chapel of our church. Quite a lot of the boys and girls are going, so we were glad when Grandfather gave his consent. Mr Woodruff wants us all to sing by note and teaches “do re me fa sol la si do” from the blackboard and beats time with a stick. He lets us have a recess, which is more fun than all the rest of it. He says if we practice well we can have a concert in Bemis Hall to end up with. What a treat that will be!

September.—I read in a New York paper to-day that Hon. George Peabody, of England, presented Cyrus W. Field with a solid silver tea service of twelve pieces, which cost $4,000. The pieces bear likenesses of Mr Peabody and Mr Field, with the coat of arms of the Field family. The epergne is supported by a base representing the genius of America.

We had experiments in the philosophy class to-day and took electric shocks. Mr Chubbuck managed the battery which has two handles attached. Two of the girls each held one of these and we all took hold of hands making the circuit complete. After a while it jerked us almost to pieces and we asked Mr Chubbuck to turn it off. Dana Luther, one of the Academy boys, walked up from the Post-office with me this noon. He lives in Naples and is Florence Younglove’s cousin. We went to a ball game down on Pleasant Street after school. I got so far ahead of Anna coming home she called me her “distant relative.”

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 him 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.

August 30, 1858.—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 children will never have another minister all their own. He thinks he may be able to write letters to the children and perhaps write his own life. We all hope he may be able to sit up if he cannot walk.

We went to our old home in Penn Yan visiting last week and stayed at Judge Ellsworth’s. We called to see the Tunnicliffs and the Olivers, Wells, Jones, Shepards, Glovers, Bennetts, Judds and several other families. They were glad to see us for the sake of our father and mother. Father was their pastor from 1841 to 1847.

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.

August 17.—There was a celebration in town to-day because 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 torchlight procession and the town was all lighted up except Gibson Street. Allie Antes died this morning, so the people on that street kept their houses as usual. Anna says that probably 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 buildings. 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 exultation and shouts of gladness, with illuminations and bonfires and the booming of cannon. The reason is, one is the telegraph of this world and may produce revolutions on eart; 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.

Grandfather says he thinks the 19th Psalm is a prophecy of the electric telegraph. “Their line is gone out through all the earth and their words to the end of the world.” It certainly sounds like it.