February.—Anna has been teasing me all the morning about a verse which John Albert Granger Barker wrote in my album. He has a most fascinating lisp when he talks, so she says this is the way the verse reads :
“Beauty of perthon, ith thertainly chawming
Beauty of feachure, by no meanth alawming
But give me in pwefrence, beauty of mind,
Or give me Cawwie, with all thwee combined.”
It takes Anna to find “amuthement” in ” evewy thing.”
Mary Wheeler came over and pierced my ears to-day, so I can wear my new earrings that Uncle Edward sent me. She pinched my ear until it was numb and then pulled a needle through, threaded with silk. Anna would not stay in the room. She wants her’s done but does not dare. It is all the fashion for girls to cut off their hair and friz it. Anna and I have cut off ours and Bessie Seymour got me to cut off her lovely long hair to-day. It won’t be very comfortable for us to sleep with curl papers all over our heads, but we must do it now. I wanted my new dress waist which Miss Rosewarne is making, to hook up in front, but Grandmother said I would have to wear it that way all the rest of my life so I had better be content to hook it in the back a little longer. She said when Aunt Glorianna was married, in 1848, it was the fashion for grown up women to have their waists fastened in the back, so the bride had hers made that way but she thought it was a very foolish and inconvenient fashion. It is nice, though, to dress in style and look like other people. I have a Garibaldi waist and a Zouave jacket and a balmoral skirt.
Sunday.—I asked Grandmother if I could write a letter to Father to-day, and she said I could begin it and tell him that I went to church and what Mr Daggett’s text was and then finish it to-morrow. I did so, but I wish I could do it all after I began. She said a verse from the Tract Primer:
“A Sabbath well spent brings a week of content
And strength for the toil of to-morrow,
But a Sabbath profaned, whatever be gained,
Is a certain forerunner of sorrow.”
Monday. —We dressed up in new fangled costumes to-day and wore them to school. Some of us wore dresses almost up to our knees and some wore them trailing on the ground. Some wore their hair twisted in knots and some let theirs hang down their backs. I wore my new waterfall for the first time and Abbie Clark said I looked like “Hagar in the Wilderness.” When she came in she looked like a fashion plate, bedecked with bows and ribbons and her hair up in a new way. When she came in the door she stopped and said solemnly, “If you have tears prepare to shed them now!” Laura Chapin would not participate in the fun, for once. She said she thought “Beauty unadorned was the dorndest.” We did not have our lesson in mental philosophy very well so we asked Mr Richards to explain the nature of dreams and their cause and effect. He gave us a very interesting talk, which occupied the whole hour. We listened with breathless attention, so he must have marked us 100.
There was a lecture at the seminary to-night and Rev. Dr Hibbard, the Methodist minister, who lives next door above the Methodist church, came home with us. Grandmother was very much pleased when we told her.
