[Diary] Sunday, May 15.
Went down to church and made arrangements to go home. Wrote to the girls to say that I shall leave here May 30. Harriet Murray will not leave Frogmore. We have invited her up here, now Mrs. M. has gone, but she declines coming. She has got Lizzie Hunn to stay with her at Frogmore. I saw Mr. Sumner, who has been with an excursion party to Florida. We were invited, but did not go. Miss Kellogg went. On the way the Harriet Weed, or the Boston steamer, was following them as nearly as possible when a torpedo exploded and she went to the bottom before the eyes of the other boat. Mr. S. says that Miss Kellogg is not well since the fright. Ellen feels that she must go down to stay with Harriet after I go, since H. will not come up.
Uncle Robert came to the school to borrow a dollar “for buy tobacco.” He says he has cotton to pay me that and the other three he owes me; that he can get no money at all, as he will not work for Mr. Fairfield. In order to force the people to work for him, Mr. Fairfield threatens to turn them out of their houses, or to make them pay four dollars a month for their rent. They appealed to Dr. Brisbane,[1] who finally persuaded them to consent to plant a task each of cotton for Mr. F. This may pay his expenses. If the people had not been induced to do this by a third party, Mr. F. would have been ruined.
[1] One of the Tax Commissioners.
