June 21st, 1865.—We held our first meeting of the Shakespeare Club last night, the play selected is, “The Merchant of Venice.” The parts have been assigned and practice will begin immediately. The meeting was held here and we had a fine supper and, after much persuasion, Mother played for us to dance, the first time we have danced since that dreadful 9th of April, but we have agreed to try the cheerful role for a while. The Club will meet on the 4th of July at Greenwood.
I am reading poetry with Father now. The reading was so very dry last winter that the thought of poetry is delightful. I love it and Mother does, too. She likes me to repeat verses and I have learned nearly all of Scott’s poems by heart. I can repeat Spencer’s Faery Queen, Cowper’s Task and nearly all of Pollock’s Course of Time; but I do not like this last one. It is so horrible that. I sometimes dream of the hands reaching out of the gloom and the anguished voices crying for help, while the accusing words fill the air about them: “Ye knew your duty, but ye did it not.”
Last winter we read Rollins’ Ancient History, the paper was yellow and the print bad, the contents was interesting but dry. I had just finished Josephus when I undertook Rollins and I really feel as if I have had a surfeit of historical lore.
I have not been allowed to even take Byron down from the top shelf, where the seven beautiful little volumes sit. Father, however, seems to know a great deal of Byron, for he sometimes repeats portions of his poems to me. What I have heard I like very much, perhaps I can read it all some day. While I have read Shakespeare it has been under protest, but Miss Darner insisted we must read it when she was governess; now we will have to re-read it in order to keep up with the other members of the club. We had a meeting of the Bezique Club last night, and played—whist.
