May 20.—I recited “Scott and the Veteran” to-day at school, and Mary Field recited, “To Drum Beat and Heart Beat a Soldier Marches By;” Anna recited “The Virginia Mother.” Everyone learns war poems now-a-days. There was a patriotic rally in Bemis Hall last night and a quartette sang, “The Sword of a Bunker Hill” and “Dixie” and “John Brown’s Body lies a Mouldering in the Grave,” and many other patriotic songs. We have one West Point cadet, Albert M. Murray, who is in the thick of the fight, and Charles S. Coy represents Canandaigua in the navy.
Village Life in America, 1852 – 1872, by Caroline Cowles Richards
May, 1861.—Many of the young men are going from Canandaigua and all the neighboring towns. It seems very patriotic and grand when they are singing, “It is sweet, Oh, ’tis sweet, for one’s country to die,” and we hear the martial music and see the flags flying and see the recruiting tents on the square and meet men in uniform at every turn and see train loads of the boys in blue going to the front, but it will not seem so grand if we hear they are dead on the battlefield, far from home. A lot of us girls went down to the train and took flowers to the soldiers as they were passing through and they cut buttons from their coats and gave to us as souvenirs. We have flags on our paper and envelopes, and have all our stationery bordered with red, white and blue. We wear little flag pins for badges and tie our hair with red, white and blue ribbon and have pins and earrings made of the buttons the soldiers gave us. We are going to sew for them in our society and get the garments all cut from the older ladies society. They work every day in one of the rooms of the court house and cut out garments and make them and scrape lint and roll up bandages. They say they will provide us with all the garments we will make. We are going to write notes and enclose them in the garments to cheer up the soldier boys. It does not seem now as though I could give up any one who belonged to me. The girls in our society say that if any of the members do send a soldier to the war they shall have a flag bed quilt, made by the society, and have the girls’ names on the stars.
April 15.—The storm has broken upon us. The Confederates fired on Fort Sumter, just off the coast of South Carolina, and forced her on April 14 to haul down the flag and surrender. President Lincoln has issued a call for 75,000 men and many are volunteering to go all around us. How strange and awful it seems.
April.—We seem to have come to a sad, sad time. The Bible says, “A man’s worst foes are those of his own household.” The whole United States has been like one great household for many years. “United we stand, divided we fall! ” has been our watchword, but some who should have been its best friends have proven false and broken the bond. Men are taking sides, some for the North, some for the South. Hot words and fierce looks have followed, and there has been a storm in the air for a long time.
March 4, 1861.— President Lincoln was inaugurated to-day.
March 5. — I read the inaugural address aloud to Grandfather this evening. He dwelt with such pathos upon the duty that all, both North and South, owe to the Union, it does not seem as though there could be war!
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. Someone 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 sleighriding 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 class and as they have recently united with the church, she thought they should begin practical Christian work by distributing tracts among the neglected classes. 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 embarrassed, but spying a photograph album 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 entitled “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 Saturday 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.
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.
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, Thoreau, and other Americans of distinction were presented to him. He will always be a favourite 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 ‘lasses.” Grandmother has been giving us sulphur and molasses 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 squaking wild geese, three plump partridges, etc.
Five hundred Limerick oysters.
Six pairs of Don Alfonso’s tweezers.
Seven hundred rank and file Macedonian horsemen 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 class 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 mass 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 Fanny Gaylord 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.”
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 Fuejans 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 class 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.
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.
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 Institute, 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.
