Sunday, August 15.—To-day the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was held in our church, and Mr Daggett baptized 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.
Village Life in America, 1852 – 1872, by Caroline Cowles Richards
July.—Every Saturday our cousins, Lucilla 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 parlour. We looked at the paintings on the wall and looked at ourselves in the long looking-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 good-bye 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 Caroline 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 every one 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.
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.
1853May 1.—I arose this morning about the usual time and read my three chapters in the Bible and had time for a walk in the garden before breakfast. The polyanthuses are just beginning to blossom and they border all the walk up and down the garden. I went to school at quarter of nine, but 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 seventeen and the latter about fifteen. In the afternoon old Mrs Kinney 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.
April 1. — Grandmother sent me up into the little chamber to-day to straighten things and get the room ready to be cleaned. I found a little book called “Child’s Pilgrim Progress, Illustrated,” that I had never seen before. I got as far as Giant Despair when Anna came up and said Grandmother sent her to see what I was doing, and she went back and told her that I was sitting on the floor in the midst of books and papers and was so absorbed in “Pilgrim’s Progress” that I had made none myself. It must be a good book for Grandmother did not say a word. Father sent us “Gulliver’s Travels” and there is a gilt picture on the green cover, of a giant with legs astride and little Lilliputians standing underneath, who do not come up to his knees. Grandmother did not like the picture, so she pasted a piece of pink calico over it, so we could only see the giant from his waist up. I love the story of Cinderella and the poem, “‘Twas the night before Christmas,” and I am sorry that there are no fairies and no Santa Claus.
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 proceeded with the business of the day. Just before school was out, we recited in “Science of Things Familiar,” and in Dictionary, 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.
Sunday, March 20, 1853.—It snowed so, that we could not go to church to-day and it was the longest day I ever spent. The only excitement was seeing the snowplough, drawn by two horses, go up on this side of the street and down on the other. Grandfather put on his long cloak with a cape, which he wears in real cold weather, and went. We wanted to pull some long stockings over our shoes and go too but Grandmother did not think it was best.
She gave us the “Dairyman’s Daughter” and “Jane the Young Cottager,” by Leigh Richmond, to read. I don’t see how they happened to be so awfully good. Anna says they died of “early piety,” but she did not say it very loud. Grandmother said she would give me 10 cents if I would learn the verses in the New England Primer that John Rogers left for his wife and nine small children and one at the breast, when he was burned at the stake, at Smithfield, England, in 1555. One verse is, “I leave you here a little book for you to look upon that you may see your father’s face when he is dead and gone.” It is a very long piece but I got it. Grandmother says “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” Anna learned
“In Adam’s fall we sinned all.
My Book and heart shall never part.
The Cat doth slay and after play.
The Dog doth bite a thief at night.”
When she came to the end of it and said,
“Zaccheus he, did climb a tree, his Lord to see.”
she said she heard some one say, “The tree broke down and let him fall and he did not see his Lord at all.” Grandmother said it was very wicked indeed and she hoped Anna would try and forget it.
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)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.
