1855
1855
Wednesday, January9.—I came downstairs this morning at ten minutes after seven, almost frozen. I never spent such a cold night before in all my life. It is almost impossible to get warm even in the dining-room. The thermometer is 10° below zero. The schoolroom was so cold that I had to keep my cloak on. I spoke a piece this afternoon. It was “The Old Arm Chair,” by Eliza Cook. It begins, “I love it, I love it, and who shall dare to chide me for loving that old arm chair?” I love it because it makes me think of Grandmother. After school to-night Anna and I went downtown to buy a writing book, but we were so cold we thought we would never get back. Anna said she knew her toes were frozen. We got as far as Mr. Taylor’s gate and she said she could not get any farther; but I pulled her along, for I could not bear to have her perish in sight of home. We went to bed about eight o’clock and slept very nicely indeed, for Grandmother put a good many blankets on and we were warm.
January23.—This evening after reading one of Dickens’ stories I knit awhile on my mittens. Ihave not had nice ones in a good while. Grandmother cut out the ones that I am wearing of white flannel, bound round the wrist with blue merino. They are not beautiful to be sure, but warm and will answer all purposes until I get some that are better. When I came home from school to-day Mrs. Taylor was here. She noticed how tall I was growing and said she hoped that I was as good as I was tall. A very good wish, I am sure.
Sunday, January29.—Mr. Daggett preached this morning from the text, Deut. 8: 2: “And thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee.” It is ten years to-day since Mr. Daggett came to our church, and he told how many deaths there had been, and how many baptisms, and how many members had been added to the church. It was a very interesting sermon, and everybody hoped Mr. Daggett would stay here ten years more, or twenty, or thirty, or always. He is the only minister that I ever had, and I don’t ever want any other. We never could have any one with such a voice as Mr. Daggett’s, or such beautiful eyes. Then he has such good sermons, and always selects the hymns we like best, and reads them in such a way. This morning they sang: “Thus far the Lord has led me on, thus far His power prolongs my days.” After he has been away on a vacation he always has for the first hymn, and we always turn to it before he gives it out:
“Upward I lift mine eyes,From God is all my aid;The God that built the skies,And earth and nature made.“God is the towerTo which I flyHis grace is nighIn every hour.”
“Upward I lift mine eyes,
From God is all my aid;
The God that built the skies,
And earth and nature made.
“God is the tower
To which I fly
His grace is nigh
In every hour.”
He always prays for the oil of joy for mourning and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.
January,1855.—Johnny Lyon is dead. Georgia Wilkinson cried awfully in school because she said she was engaged to him.
April.—Grandmother received a letter from Connecticut to-day telling of the death of her only sister. She was knitting before she got it and she laid it down a few moments and looked quite sad and said, “So sister Anna is dead.” Then after a little she went on with her work. Anna watched her and when we were alone she said to me, “Caroline, some day when you are about ninety you may be eating an apple or reading or doing something and you will get a letter telling of my decease and after you have read it you will go on as usual and just say, ‘So sister Anna is dead.’” I told her that I knew if I lived to be a hundred and heard that she was dead I should cry my eyes out, if I had any.
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 to-night 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.
July.—Our sensitive plant is growing nicely and it is quite a curiosity. It has fern-like leaves and when we touch them, they close, but soon come out again. Anna and I keep them performing.
September1.—Anna and I go to the seminary now. Mr. Richards and Mr. Tyler are the principals. Anna fell down and sprained her ankle to-day at the seminary, and had to be carried into Mrs. Richards’ library. She was sliding down the bannisters with little Annie Richards. I wonder what she will do next. She has good luck in the gymnasiumand can beat Emma Wheeler and Jennie Ruckle swinging on the pole and climbing the rope ladder, although they and Sarah Antes are about as spry as squirrels and they are all good at ten pins. Susie Daggett and Lucilla Field have gone to Farmington, Conn., to school.
Monday.—I received a letter from my brother John in New Orleans, and his ambrotype. He has grown amazingly. He also sent me a N. O. paper and it gave an account of the public exercises in the school, and said John spoke a piece called “The Baron’s Last Banquet,” and had great applause and it said he was “a chip off the old block.” He is a very nice boy, I know that. James is sixteen years old now and is in Princeton College. He is studying German and says he thinks he will go to Germany some day and finish his education, but I guess in that respect he will be very much disappointed. Germany is a great ways off and none of our relations that I ever heard of have ever been there and it is not at all likely that any of them ever will. Grandfather says, though, it is better to aim too high than not high enough. James is a great boy to study. They had their pictures taken together once and John was holding some flowers and James a book and I guess he has held on to it ever since.
Sunday.—Polly Peck looked so funny on the front seat of the gallery. She had on one of Mrs.Greig’s bonnets and her lace collar and cape and mitts. She used to be a milliner so she knows how to get herself up in style. The ministers have appointed a day of fasting and prayer and Anna asked Grandmother if it meant to eat as fast as you can. Grandmother was very much surprised.
November25.—I helped Grandmother get ready for Thanksgiving Day by stoning some raisins and pounding some cloves and cinnamon in the mortar pestle pounder. It is quite a job. I have been writing with a quill pen but I don’t like it because it squeaks so. Grandfather made us some to-day and also bought us some wafers to seal our letters with, and some sealing wax and a stamp with “R” on it. He always uses the seal on his watch fob with “B.” He got some sand, too. Our inkstand is double and has one bottle for ink and the other for sand to dry the writing.
December20, 1855.—Susan B. Anthony is in town and spoke in Bemis Hall this afternoon. She made a special request that all the seminary girls should come to hear her as well as all the women and girls in town. She had a large audience and she talked very plainly about our rights and how we ought to stand up for them, and said the world would never go right until the women had just as much right to vote and rule as the men. She asked us all to come up and sign our names who wouldpromise to do all in our power to bring about that glad day when equal rights should be the law of the land. A whole lot of us went up and signed the paper. When I told Grandmother about it she said she guessed Susan B. Anthony had forgotten that St. Paul said the women should keep silence. I told her, no, she didn’t for she spoke particularly about St. Paul and said if he had lived in these times, instead of 1800 years ago, he would have been as anxious to have the women at the head of the government as she was. I could not make Grandmother agree with her at all and she said we might better all of us stayed at home. We went to prayer meeting this evening and a woman got up and talked. Her name was Mrs. Sands. We hurried home and told Grandmother and she said she probably meant all right and she hoped we did not laugh.
Monday.—I told Grandfather if he would bring me some sheets of foolscap paper I would begin to write a book. So he put a pin on his sleeve to remind him of it and to-night he brought me a whole lot of it. I shall begin it to-morrow. This evening I helped Anna do her Arithmetic examples, and read her Sunday School book. The name of it is “Watch and Pray.” My book is the second volume of “Stories on the Shorter Catechism.”
Tuesday.—I decided to copy a lot of choice stories and have them printed and say they were “compiledby Caroline Cowles Richards,” it is so much easier than making them up. I spent three hours to-day copying one and am so tired I think I shall give it up. When I told Grandmother she looked disappointed and said my ambition was like “the morning cloud and the early dew,” for it soon vanished away. Anna said it might spring up again and bear fruit a hundredfold. Grandfather wants us to amount to something and he buys us good books whenever he has a chance. He bought me Miss Caroline Chesebro’s book, “The Children of Light,” and Alice and Phoebe Cary’sPoems. He is always reading Channing’s memoirs and sermons and Grandmother keeps “Lady Huntington and Her Friends,” next to “Jay’s Morning and Evening Exercises” and her Testament. Anna told Grandmother that she saw Mrs. George Willson looking very steadily at us in prayer meeting the other night and she thought she might be planning to “write us up.” Grandmother said she did not think Mrs. Willson was so short of material as that would imply, and she feared she had some other reason for looking at us. I think dear Grandmother has a little grain of sarcasm in her nature, but she only uses it on extra occasions. Anna said, “Oh, no; she wrote the lives of the three Mrs. Judsons and I thought she might like for a change to write the biographies of the ‘two Miss Richards.’” Anna has what might be called a vivid imagination.