Daily Observations from The Civil War

Saturday Night, July. — Grandfather was asking us to-night how many things we could remember, and I told him I could remember when Zachary Taylor died, and our church was draped in black, and Mr Daggett preached a funeral sermon about him. and I could remember when Daniel Webster died, and there was service held in the church and his last words, “I still live,” were put up over the pulpit. He said he could remember when George Washington died and when Benjamin Franklin died. He was seven years old then and he was seventeen when Washington died. Of course his memory goes farther back than mine, but he said I did very well, considering.

July.—I have not written in my journal for several days because we have been out of town. Grandfather had to go to Victor on business and took Anna and me with him. Anna says she loves to ride on the cars as it is fun to watch the trees and fences run so. We took dinner at Dr Ball’s and came home on the evening train. Then Judge Ellsworth came over from Penn Yan to see Grandfather on business and asked if he could take us home with him and he said yes, so we went and had a splendid time and stayed two days. Stewart was at home and took us all around driving and took us to the graveyard to see our mother’s grave. I copied this verse from the gravestone :

“Of gentle seeming was her form
And the soft beaming of her radiant eye
Was sunlight to the beauty of her face.
Peace, sacred peace, was written on her brow
And flowed in the low music of her voice
Which came unto the list’ner like the tones of soothing Autumn winds.
Her hands were full of consolations which she scattered free to all—the poor, the sick, the sorrowful.”

I think she must have been exactly like Grandmother only she was 32 and Grandmother is 72.

Stewart went to prayer meeting because it was Wednesday night, and when he came home his mother asked him if he took part in the meeting. He said he did and she asked him what he said. He said he told the story of Ethan Allen, the infidel, who was dying, and his daughter asked him whose religion she should live by, his or her mother’s, and he said, “Your mother’s, my daughter, your mother’s.” This pleased Mrs Ellsworth very much. Stewart is a great boy and you never can tell whether he is in earnest or not. It was very warm while we were gone and when we got home Anna told Grandmother she was going to put on her barege dress and take a rocking-chair and a glass of ice water and a palm leaf fan and go down cellar and sit, but Grandmother told her if she would just sit still and take a book and get her mind on something else besides the weather, she would be cool enough. Grandmother always looks as cool as a cucumber even when the thermometer is 90 in the shade.

Sunday, June 1. — Rev. Dr Shaw, of Rochester, preached for Dr Daggett to-day and his text was: “Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again, but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst.” He said by this water he meant the pleasures of this life, wealth and fame and honour, of which the more we have the more we want and are never satisfied, but if we drink of the water that Christ can give us we will have happiness here and forever. It was a very good sermon and I love to hear him preach. Grandmother never likes to start for church until after all the Seminary girls and Academy boys have gone by, but this morning we got to the gate just as the boys came along. When Grandmother saw five or six hats come off and knew they were bowing to us, she asked us how we got acquainted with them. We told her that almost all the girls knew the Academy boys and I am sure that is true.

Tuesday, June 8.—We are cleaning house now and Grandmother asked Anna and me to take out a few tacks in the dining-room carpet. We did not like it so very well but we liked eating dinner in the parlor, as the table had to be set in there. Anna told us that when she got married we could come to visit her any time in the year as she was never going to clean house. We went down street on an errand to-night and hurried right back, as Grandmother said she should look at the clock and see how long we were gone. Emma Wheeler went with us. Anna says she and Emma are as “thick as hasty pudding.”

June.—Rev. Frederick Starr, of Penn Yan, had an exhibition in Bemis Hall to-day of a tabernacle just like the children of Israel carried with them to the Promised Land. We went to see it. He made it himself and said he took all the directions from the Bible and knew where to put the curtains and the poles and everything. It was interesting but we thought it would be queer not to have any church to go to but one like that, that you could take down and put up and carry around with you wherever you went.

June.—Rev. Mr Kendall is not going to preach in East Bloomfield any more. The paper says he is going to New York to live and be Secretary of the A.B.C.F.M. I asked Grandmother what that meant, and she said he would have to write down what the missionaries do. I guess that will keep him busy. Grandfather’s nephew, a Mr Adams of Boston and his wife, visited us about two weeks ago. He is the head of the firm Adams’ Express Co. Anna asked them if they ever heard the conundrum “What was Eve made for?” and they said no, so she told them the answer, “for Adam’s express company.” They thought it was quite good. When they reached home, they sent us each a reticule, with scissors, thimble, stiletto, needle-case and tiny penknife and some stamped embroidery. They must be very rich.

May 15.—Miss Anna Gaylord is one of my teachers at the seminary and when I told her that I wrote a journal every day she wanted me to bring her my last book and let her read it. I did so and she said she enjoyed it very much and she hoped I would keep them for they would be interesting for me to read when I am old. I think I shall do so. She has a very particular friend, Rev. Mr Beaumont, who is one of the teachers at the Academy. I think they are going to be married some day. I guess I will show her this page of my journal, too. Grandmother let me make a pie in a saucer to-day and it was very good.

May.—We were invited to Bessie Seymour’s party last night and Grandmother said we could go. The girls all told us at school that they were going to wear low neck and short sleeves. We have caps on the sleeves of our best dresses and we tried to get the sleeves out, so we could go bare arms, but we couldn’t get them out. We had a very nice time, though, at the party. Some of the Academy boys were there and they asked us to dance but of course we couldn’t do that. We promenaded around the rooms and went out to supper with them. Eugene Stone and Tom Eddy asked to go home with us but Grandmother sent our two girls for us, Bridget Flynn and Hannah White, so they couldn’t. We were quite disappointed, but perhaps she won’t send for us next time.

May.—Grandmother is teaching me how to knit some mittens now, but if I ever finish them it will be through much tribulation, the way they have to be ravelled out and commenced over again. I think I shall know how to knit when I get through, if I never know how to do anything else. Perhaps I shall know how to write, too, for I write all of Grandmother’s letters for her, because it tires her to write too much. I have sorted my letters to-day and tied them in packages and found I had between 500 and 600. I have had about two letters a week for the past five years and have kept them all. Father almost always tells me in his letters to read my Bible and say my prayers and obey Grandmother and stand up straight and turn out my toes and brush my teeth and be good to my little sister. I have been practising all these so long I can say, as the young man did in the Bible when Jesus told him what to do to be saved, “all these have I kept from my youth up.” But then, I lack quite a number of things after all. I am not always strictly obedient. For instance, I know Grandmother never likes to have us read the secular part of the New York Observer on Sunday, so she puts it in the top drawer of the sideboard until Monday, but I couldn’t find anything interesting to read the other Sunday so I took it out and read it and put it back. The jokes and stories in it did not seem as amusing as usual so I think I will not do it again.

Grandfather’s favourite paper is the Boston Christian Register. He could not have one of them torn up any more than a leaf of the Bible. He has barrels of them stored away in the garret.

I asked Grandmother to-day to write a verse for me to keep always and she wrote a good one: “To be happy and live long the three grand essentials are: Be busy, love somebody and have high aims.” I think, from all I have noticed about her, that she has had this for her motto all her life and I don’t think Anna and I can do very much better than to try and follow it too. Grandfather tells us sometimes, when she is not in the room, that the best thing we can do is to be just as near like Grandmother as we can possibly be.

Saturday, May 30.—Louisa Field came over to dinner to-day and brought Allie with her. We had roast chickens for dinner and lots of other nice things. Grandmother taught us how to string lilac blossoms for necklaces and also how to make curls of dandelion stems. She always has some things in the parlour cupboard which she brings out on extra occasions, so she got them out to-day. They are some Chinamen which Uncle Thomas brought home when he sailed around the world. They are wooden images standing in boxes, packing tea with their feet.

Last week Jennie Howell invited us to go up to Black Point Cabin with her and to-day with a lot of grown-up people we went and enjoyed it. There was a little coloured girl there who waits on the table and can row the boats too. She is Polly Carroll’s granddaughter, Mary Jane. She sang for us,

“Nellie Bly shuts her eye when she goes to sleep,
When she opens them again her eyes begin to peep ;
Hi Nellie, Ho Nellie, listen love to me,
I’ll sing for you, I’ll play for you,
A dulcet melody.”

She is just as cute as she can be. She said Mrs Henry Chesebro taught her to read.

April 5.—I walked down town with Grandfather this morning and it is such a beautiful day I felt glad that I was alive. The air was full of tiny little flies, buzzing around and going in circles and semi-circles as though they were practising calisthenics or dancing a quadrille. I think they were glad they were alive, too. I stepped on a big bug crawling on the walk and Grandfather said I ought to have brushed it aside instead of killing it. I asked him why and he said, “Shakespeare says, The beetle that we tread upon feels a pang as great as when a giant dies.'”

A man came to our door the other day and asked if “Deacon” Beals was at home. I asked Grandmother afterwards if Grandfather was a Deacon and she said no and never had been, that people gave him the name when he was a young man because he was so staid and sober in his appearance. Some one told me once that I would not know my Grandfather if I should meet him outside the Corporation. I asked why and he said because he was so genial and told such good stories. I told him that was just the way he always is at home. I do not know any one who appreciates real wit more than he does. He is quite strong in his likes and dislikes, however. I have heard him say,

“I do not like you, Dr Fell,
The reason why, I cannot tell;
But this one thing I know full well,
I do not like you, Dr Fell.”

Bessie Seymour wore a beautiful gold chain to school this morning and I told Grandmother that I wanted one just like it. She said that outward adornments were not of as much value as inward graces and the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, in the sight of the Lord, was of great price. I know it is very becoming to Grandmother and she wears it all the time but I wish I had a gold chain just the same.

Aunt Ann received a letter to-day from Lucilla, who is at Miss Porter’s school at Farmington, Connecticut. She feels as if she were a Christian and that she has experienced religion.

Grandfather noticed how bright and smart Bentley Murray was, on the street, and what a business way he had, so he applied for a place for him as page in the Legislature at Albany and got it. He is always noticing young people and says, “As the twig is bent, the tree is inclined.” He says we may be teachers yet if we are studious now. Anna says, “Excuse me, please.”

Grandmother knows the Bible from Genesis to Revelation excepting the “begats” and the hard names, but Anna told her a new verse this morning, “At Parbar westward, four at the causeway and two at Parbar.” Grandmother put her spectacles up on her forehead and just looked at Anna as though she had been talking in Chinese. She finally said, “Anna, I do not think that is in the Bible.” She said, “Yes, it is; I found it in 1 Chron. 26 : 18.” Grandmother found it and then she said Anna had better spend her time looking up more helpful texts. Anna then asked her if she knew who was the shortest man mentioned in the Bible and Grandmother said “Zaccheus.” Anna said that she just read in the newspaper, that one, said “Nehimiah was” and another said “Bildad the Shuhite” and another said “Tohi.” Grandmother said it was very wicked to pervert the Scripture so, and she did not approve of it at all. I don’t think Anna will give Grandmother any more Bible conundrums.

April 12. — We went down town this morning and bought us some shaker bonnets to wear to school. They cost $1 apiece and we got some green silk for capes to put on them. We fixed them ourselves and wore them to school and some of the girls liked them and some did not, but it makes no difference to me what they like, for I shall wear mine till it is worn out. Grandmother says that if we try to please everybody we please nobody. The girls are all having mystic books at school now and they are very interesting to have. They are blank books and we ask the girls and boys to write in them and then they fold the page twice over and seal it with wafers or wax and then write on it what day it is to be opened. Some of them say, “Not to be opened for a year,” and that is a long time to wait. If we cannot wait we can open them and seal them up again. I think Anna did look to see what Eugene Stone wrote in hers, for it does not look as smooth as it did at first. We have autograph albums too and Horace Finley gave us lots of small photographs. We paste them in the books and then ask the people to write their names. We have got Miss Upham’s picture and Dr and Mrs Daggett, General Granger’s and Hon. Francis Granger’s and Mrs Adele Granger Thayer and Friend Burling, Dr Jewett, Dr Cheney, Deacon Andrews and Dr Carr, and Johnnie Thompson’s, Mr Noah T. Clarke, Mr E. M. Morse, Mrs George Willson, Theodore Barnum, Jim Paton’s and Will Schley, Merritt Wilcox, Tom Raines, Ed Williams, Gus Coleman’s, W. P. Fisk and lots of the girls’ pictures besides. Eugene Stone and Tom Eddy had their ambrotypes taken together, in a handsome case and gave it to Anna. We are going to keep them always.

April.—The Siamese twins are in town and a lot of the girls went to see them in Bemis Hall this afternoon. It costs 10 cents. Grandmother let us go. Their names are Eng and Chang and they are not very handsome. They are two men joined together. I hope they like each other but I don’t envy them any way. If one wanted to go somewhere and the other one didn’t I don’t see how they would manage it. One would have to give up, that’s certain. Perhaps they are both Christians.

April 30.—Rev. Henry M. Field, editor of the New York Evangelist, and his little French wife are here visiting. She is a wonderful woman. She has written a book and paints beautiful pictures and was teacher of art in Cooper Institute, New York. He is Grandmother’s nephew and he brought her a picture of himself and his five brothers, taken for Grandmother, because she is the only aunt they have in the world. The rest are all dead. The men in the picture are Jonathan and Matthew and David Dudley and Stephen J. and Cyrus W. and Henry M. They are all very nice looking and Grandmother thinks a great deal of the picture.

March 3, 1856. — Elizabeth Spencer sits with me in school now. She is full of fun but always manages to look very sober when Miss Chesebro looks up to see who is making the noise over our way. I never seem to have that knack. Anna had to stay after school last night and she wrote in her journal that the reason was because “nature will out” and because “she whispered and didn’t have her lessons, etc., etc., etc.” Mr Richards has allowed us to bring our sewing to school but now he says we cannot any more. I am sorry for I have some embroidery and I could get one pantalette done in a week, but now it will take me longer. Grandmother has offered me one dollar if I will stitch a linen shirt bosom and wrist bands for Grandfather and make the sleeves. I have commenced but, Oh, my! it is an undertaking. I have to pull the threads out and then take up two threads and leave three. It is very particular work and Anna says the stitches must not be visible to the naked eye. I have to fell the sleeves with the tiniest seams and stroke all the gathers and put a stitch on each gather. Minnie Bellows is the best one in school with her needle and is a dabster at patching. She cut a piece right out of her new calico dress and matched a new piece in and none of us could tell where it was. I am sure it would not be safe for me to try that. Grandmother let me ask three of the girls to dinner Saturday, Abbie Clark, Mary Wheeler and Mary Field. We had a big roast turkey and everything else to match. Good enough for Queen Victoria. That reminds me of a conundrum we had in The Snow Bird: What does Queen Victoria take her pills in? In cider. (Inside her.)

March 10.—My teacher Miss Sprague kept me after school to-night for whispering, and after all the others were gone she came to my seat and put her arm around me and kissed me and said she loved me very much and hoped I would not whisper in school any more. This made me feel very sorry and I told her I would try my best, but it seemed as though it whispered itself sometimes. I think she is just as nice as she can be and I shall tell the other girls so. Her home is in Glens Falls.

Anna jumped the rope two hundred times to-day without stopping, and I told her that I read of a girl who did that and then fell right down stone dead. I don’t believe Anna will do it again. If she does I shall tell Grandmother.

February 6.—We were awakened very early this morning by the cry of fire and the ringing of bells and could see the sky red with flames and knew it was the stores and we thought they were all burning up. Pretty soon we heard our big brass door knocker being pounded fast and Grandfather said, “Who’s there?” “Melville Arnold for the bank keys,” we heard. Grandfather handed them out and dressed as fast as he could and went down, while Anna and I just lay there and watched the flames and shook. He was gone two or three hours and when he came back he said that Mr Palmer’s hat store, Mr Underbill’s book store, Mr Shafer’s tailor shop, Mrs Smith’s millinery, Pratt & Smith’s drug store, Mr Mitchell’s dry goods store, two printing offices and a saloon were burned. It was a very handsome block. The bank escaped fire, but the wall of the next building fell on it and crushed it. After school to-night Grandmother let us go down and see how the fire looked. It looked very sad indeed. Judge Taylor offered Grandfather one of the wings of his house for the bank for the present but he has secured a place in Mr Buhre’s store in the Franklin Block.

Thursday, February 7.—Dr and Aunt Mary Carr and Uncle Field and Aunt Ann were over at our house to dinner to-day and we had a fine fish dinner, not one of Gabriel’s (the man who blows such a blast through the street, they call him Gabriel), but one that Mr Francis Granger sent to us. It was elegant. Such a large one it covered a big platter. This evening General Granger came in and brought a gentleman with him whose name was Mr. Skinner. They asked Grandfather, as one of the trustees of the church, if he had any objection to a deaf and dumb exhibition there to-morrow night. He had no objection, so they will have it and we will go.

Friday.—We went and liked it very much. The man with them could talk and he interpreted it. There were two deaf and dumb women and three children. They performed very prettily, but the smartest boy did the most. He acted out David killing Goliath and the story of the boy stealing apples and how the old man tried to get him down by throwing grass at him, but finding that would not do, he threw stones which brought the boy down pretty quick. Then he acted a boy going fishing and a man being shaved in a barber shop and several other things. I laughed out loud in school to-day and made some pictures on my slate and showed them to Clara Willson and made her laugh, and then we both had to stay after school. Anna was at Aunt Ann’s to supper to-night to meet a little girl named Helen Bristol, of Rochester. Ritie Tyler was there, too, and they had a lovely time.

February 8. — I have not written in my journal for several days, because I never like to write things down if they don’t go right. Anna and I were invited to go on a sleighride, Tuesday night, and Grandfather said he did not want us to go. We asked him if we could spend the evening with Frankie Richardson and he said yes, so we went down there and when the load stopped for her, we went too, but we did not enjoy ourselves at all and did not join in the singing. I had no idea that sleigh-rides could make any one feel so bad. It was not very cold, but I just shivered all the time. When the nine o’clock bell rang we were up by the “Northern Retreat,” and I was so glad when we got near home so we could get out. Grandfather and Grandmother asked us if we had a nice time, but we got to bed as quick as we could. The next day Grandfather went into Mr Richardson’s store and told him he was glad he did not let Frankie go on the sleigh-ride, and Mr Richardson said he did let her go and we went too. We knew how it was, when we got home from school, because they acted so sober, and, after a while, Grandmother talked with us about it. We told her we were sorry and we did not have a bit good time and would never do it again. When she prayed with us the next morning, as she always does before we go to school, she said, “Prepare us, Lord, for what thou art preparing for us,” and it seemed as though she was discouraged, but she said she forgave us. I know one thing, we will never run away to any more sleigh-rides.

February 20. — Mr Worden, Mrs Henry Chesebro’s father, was buried to-day, and Aunt Ann let Allie stay with us while she went to the funeral. I am going to Fannie Gaylord’s party to-morrow night.

I went to school this afternoon and kept the rules, so to-night I had the satisfaction of saying “perfect” when called upon, and if I did not like to keep the rules, it is some pleasure to say that.

February 21.—We had a very nice time at Fannie Gaylord’s party and a splendid supper. Lucilla Field laughed herself almost to pieces when she found on going home that she had worn her leggins all the evening. We had a pleasant walk home but did not stay till it was out. Some one asked me if I danced every set and I told them no, I set every dance. I told Grandmother and she was very much pleased. Some one told us that Grandfather and Grandmother first met at a ball in the early settlement of Canandaigua. I asked her if it was so and she said she never had danced since she became a professing Christian and that was more than fifty years ago.

Grandfather heard to-day of the death of his sister, Lydia, who was Mrs Lyman Beecher. She was Rev. Dr Lyman Beecher’s third wife. Grandmother says that they visited her once and she was quite nervous thinking about having such a great man as Dr Lyman Beecher for her guest, as he was considered one of the greatest men of his day, but she said she soon got over this feeling, for he was so genial and pleasant and she noticed particularly how he ran up and down stairs like a boy. I think that is very apt to be the way for “men are only boys grown tall.”

There was a Know Nothing convention in town to-day. They don’t want any one but Americans to hold office, but I guess they will find that foreigners will get in. Our hired man is an Irishman and I think he would just as soon be “Prisidint” as not.

February 22.—This is such a beautiful day, the girls wanted a holiday, but Mr Richards would not grant it. We told him it was Washington’s birthday and we felt very patriotic, but he was inexorable. We had a musical review and literary exercises instead in the afternoon and I put on my blue merino dress and my other shoes. Anna dressed up, too, and I curled her hair. The Primary scholars sit upstairs this term and do not have to pay any more. Anna and Emma Wheeler like it very much, but they do not sit together. We are seated alphabetically, and I sit with Mary Reznor and Anna with Mittie Smith. They thought she would behave better, I suppose, if they put her with one of the older girls, but I do not know as it will have the “desired effect,” as Grandmother says. Miss Mary Howell and Miss Carrie Hart and Miss Lizzie and Miss Mollie Bull were visitors this afternoon. Gertrude Monier played and sang. Mrs Anderson is the singing teacher. Marion Maddox and Pussie Harris and Mary Daniels played on the piano. Mr Hardick is the teacher, and he played too. You would think he was trying to pound the piano all to pieces but he is a good player. We have two papers kept up at school, The Snow Bird and The Waif-— one for the younger and the other for the older girls. Miss Jones, the composition teacher, corrects them both. Kate Buell and Anna Maria Chapin read The Waif to-day and Gusta Buell and I read The Snow Bird. She has beautiful curls and has two nice brothers also, Albert and Arthur, and the girls all like them. They have not lived in town very long.

February 25.—I guess I won’t fill up my journal any more by saying I arose this morning at the usual time, for I don’t think it is a matter of life or death whether I get up at the usual time or a few minutes later and when I am older and read over the account of the manner in which I occupied my time in my younger days I don’t think it will add particularly to the interest to know whether I used to get up at 7 or at a quarter before. I think Miss Sprague, our schoolroom teacher, would have been glad if none of us had got up at all this morning for we acted so in school. She does not want any noise during the three minute recess, but there has been a good deal all day. In singing class they disturbed Mr Kimball by blowing through combs. We took off our round combs and put paper over them and then blew — Mary Wheeler and Lottie Lapham and Anna sat nearest me and we all tried to do it, but Lottie was the only one who could make it go. He thought we all did, so he made us come up and sit by him. I did not want to a bit. He told Miss Sprague of us and she told the whole school if there was as much noise another day she would keep every one of us an hour after half-past 4. As soon as she said this they all began to groan. She said “Silence.” I only made the least speck of a noise that no one heard.

February 26.—To-night, after singing class, Mr Richards asked all who blew through combs to rise. I did not, because I could not make it go, but when he said all who groaned could rise, I did, and some others, but not half who did it. He kept us very late and we all had to sign an apology to Miss Sprague.

Grandfather made me a present of a beautiful blue stone to-day called Malachite. Anna said she always thought Malachite was one of the prophets.

January 30.—I came home from school at eleven o’clock this morning and learned a piece to speak this afternoon, but when I got up to school I forgot it, so I thought of another one. Mr. Richards said that he must give me the praise of being the best speaker that spoke in the afternoon. Ahem!

January 23.—This is the third morning that I have come down stairs at exactly twenty minutes to seven. I went to school all day. Mary Paul and Fannie Palmer read “The Snow Bird” to-day. There were some funny things in it. One was : “Why is a lady’s hair like the latest news? Because in the morning we always find it in the papers.” Another was: “One rod makes an acher, as the boy said when the schoolmaster flogged him.”

This is Allie Field’s birthday. He got a pair of slippers from Mary with the soles all on; a pair of mittens from Miss Eliza Chapin, and Miss Rebecca Gorham is going to give him a pair of stockings when she gets them done.