May.—Father has sent us a box of fruit from New Orleans. Prunes, figs, dates and oranges, and one or two pomegranates. We never saw any of the latter before. They are full of cells with jelly in, very nice. He also sent some seeds of sensitive plant, which we have sown in our garden.
This evening I wrote a letter to John and a little “poetry” to Father, but it did not amount to much. I am going to write some a great deal better some day. Grandfather had some letters to write this morning, and got up before three o’clock to write them! He slept about three-quarters of an hour tonight in his chair.
Sunday.—There was a stranger preached for Dr Daggett this morning and his text was, “Man looketh upon the outward appearance but the Lord looketh on the heart.” When we got home Anna said the minister looked as though he had been sick from birth and his forehead stretched from his nose to the back of his neck, he was so bald. Grandmother told her she ought to have been more interested in his words than in his looks, and that she must have very good eyes if she could see all that from our pew, which is the furthest from the pulpit of any in church, except Mr Gibson’s, which is just the same. Anna said she couldn’t help seeing it unless she shut her eyes, and then every one would think she had gone to sleep. We can see the Academy boys from our pew, too.
Mr Lathrop, of the seminary, is superintendent of the Sunday School now and he had a present to-day from Miss Betsey Chapin, and several visitors came in to see it presented: Dr Daggett, Mr and Mrs Alex. Howell, Mr Tousley, Mr Stowe, Mr and Mrs Gideon Granger and several others. The present was a certificate of life membership to something; I did not hear what. It was just a large piece of parchment, but they said it cost $25. Miss Lizzie Bull is my Sunday School teacher now. She asked us last Sunday to look up a place in the Bible where the trees held a consultation together, to see which one should reign over them. I did not remember any such thing, but I looked it up in the concordance and found it in Judges 9:8. I found the meaning of it in Scott’s commentary and wrote it down and she was very much pleased, and told us next Sunday to find out all about Absalom.
