June 3.—I was invited up to Sonnenberg yesterday and Lottie and Abbie Clark called for me at 5:30 p.m., with their pony and democrat wagon. Jennie Rankine was the only other lady present and, for a wonder, the party consisted of six gentlemen and five ladies, which has not often been the case during the war. After supper we adjourned to the lawn and played croquet, a new game which Mr. Thompson just brought from New York. It is something like billiards, only a mallet is used instead of a cue to hit the balls. I did not like it very well, because I couldn’t hit the balls through the wickets as I wanted to. “We” sang all the songs, patriotic and sentimental, that we could think of.
Mr. Lyon came to call upon me to-day, before he returned to New York. He is a very pleasant young man. I told him that I regretted that I could not sing yesterday, when all the others did, and that the reason that I made no attempts in that line was due to the fact that one day in church, when I thought I was singing a very good alto, my grandfather whispered to me, and said: “Daughter, you are off the key,” and ever since then, I had sung with the spirit and with the understanding, but not with my voice. He said perhaps I could get some one to do my singing for me, some day. I told him he was very kind to give me so much encouragement. Anna went to a Y.M.C.A. meeting last evening at our chapel and said, when the hymn “Rescue the perishing,” was given out, she just “raised her Ebenezer ” and sang every verse as hard as she could. The meeting was called in behalf of a young man who has been around town for the past few days, with only one arm, who wants to be a minister and sells sewing silk and needles and writes poetry during vacation to help himself along. I have had a cough lately and Grandmother decided yesterday to send for the doctor. He placed me in a chair and thumped my lungs and back and listened to my breathing while Grandmother sat near and watched him in silence, but finally she said, “Caroline isn’t used to being pounded!” The doctor smiled and said he would be very careful, but the treatment was not so severe as it seemed. After he was gone, we asked Grandmother if she liked him and she said yes, but if she had known of his “new-fangled” notions and that he wore a full beard she might not have sent for him! Because Dr. Carr was clean-shaven and also Grandfather and Dr. Daggett, and all of the Grangers, she thinks that is the only proper way. What a funny little lady she is!
