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Title: André Wechel, 1535-1573 -- window photograph:
Creator: Wechel, André
Description: Window currently located at End window -- North wing
Window originally located at End window -- North wing
Date: 1535-1573

Title: John Skot, 1530 -- window photograph:
Creator: Skot, John
Description: Window currently located at First Floor -- Northeast wing
Window originally located at North wing -- Third window
Date: 1530

Title: Aaron, Fannie -- to [family], n.d. [postmarked December 12, 1920]:
Creator: Aaron, Fannie
Description
Date: n.d. [postmarked 1920-12-15]
Text: Love, Fannie. All well. Won't write today

Title: Aaron, Fannie -- to Mother, Father, and Pete, March 22,1921
Creator: Aaron, Fannie
Date: 1921-03-22
Text: March 22, 1921 Dear Mother, Father, and Pete: Before I forget, Thursday is Lucy's twenty-first birthday. I think she would appreciate it very much if you were to congratulate her, Pete. Please don't forget to deposit the money for me, Father. The reason I think of it again is that Lucy promised me to tell me what books she wants for her birthday. I ate lunch with her today and spent a solid hour talking to her. I got a business letter from her Father encolsing a five-dollar bill...
Show moreMarch 22, 1921 Dear Mother, Father, and Pete: Before I forget, Thursday is Lucy's twenty-first birthday. I think she would appreciate it very much if you were to congratulate her, Pete. Please don't forget to deposit the money for me, Father. The reason I think of it again is that Lucy promised me to tell me what books she wants for her birthday. I ate lunch with her today and spent a solid hour talking to her. I got a business letter from her Father encolsing a five-dollar bill and asking me to order a corsage for her. I couldn't spend all his money. I could only spend four. The only other possibility was to suspend one lonely little two dollar orchid in the cneter, and somehow or other, that didn't sound artistic to me. I have gotten more dope about Wellesley. The girls cannot get over the way they were treated. One thing certainly struck me funny, and that was that most of the audience wear evening dress and that they all come out in it every Saturday night! Some dudes' institute. And to think that we are starting a campaign here trying to make people wear decent dresses to dinner Friday nights instead of sloppy sport clothes. It wasn't a question of Wellesley's dropping out of the league of their own volition if they did not win anything this year. It is part of the constitution that any college that does not win one debate in four years must drop out, and they have an unbroken record of three years behind them. So this year, they started out an intensive campaign for debate. No girl who had not been recommended by the faculty could try out, and hence it was a very much coveted honor. No girl could work on committee who had not been so recommended. The committee spread debate literature broadcast and everybody in the place was reading about immigration. The debaters had to read about ten books on the general subject! Their course in immigration was given by Fairchild. Etc. etc. So we can almost be kind-hearted enough to be glad they won. Is it true that you had to pay fifty cents admission? In previous years they could never get an audience, so I hear. What did you think of the delegation when they walked in? Don't you think they were a pretty good-looking bunch. They said they marched in singing, "Down the future's cloudy way". Did you see our time-keeper. She was chairman of our class debate. Really, I don't know what my letter will be like when I haven't any debate news to write. I went to bed at eight-thirty last night, incidentally, slept two hours in the afternoon, and got up at five this morning to study for the chem midsemester. It was "rather worse". No letter from home since Saturday. I am anxious to hear how you are, Mother.
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Title: Field Day -- 1922 (6 of 10)
Creator: Wolven, E. L. (Edmund L.)
Date: 1922

Title: John Burroughs Journal, 1894 (January - July)
Creator: Burroughs, John, 1837-1921
Date: January 17, 1894 - July 24, 1894
Text: 17 Read of Frank Bolle's death this morning. Was much shocked. Saw him once, Dec. 1892 and liked him Something clean-cut and pleasing about him -- red hair and sandy complexion Some of his out-door sketches interest me, and some do not. He was hardly a poet, or thinker. -- Write what you feel, not merely what you think. One may think anything and everything; he can only feel certain things. What he feels is vital to him. When I think I grope, and do not always know where I stand. What I...
Show more17 Read of Frank Bolle's death this morning. Was much shocked. Saw him once, Dec. 1892 and liked him Something clean-cut and pleasing about him -- red hair and sandy complexion Some of his out-door sketches interest me, and some do not. He was hardly a poet, or thinker. -- Write what you feel, not merely what you think. One may think anything and everything; he can only feel certain things. What he feels is vital to him. When I think I grope, and do not always know where I stand. What I feel I see, and what I see I feel.Clear and sharp this morning, like Nov. Ground bare; grass yet quite green. Mercury down to 24 degrees this morning. 18 Mild with SW wind. Julian and I have our first skate on the river; ice less than 2 inches. 19 Like an April morning, clear, still, mild; raindrops hanging to the limbs and grapevines. Objects steam in the sun like a morning in summer. Sounds very noticeable. Rumbling of wagons, barking of dogs heard from over the river. Very few birds this winter, except crows. Now and then a large flock of goldfinches. Few English sparrows. On anopen winter like this the birds disperse over the open country. A deep snow would drive them about our habitations. 20 A bright and beautiful day. How naked the world seems, no snow, no verdure, no clouds. A fine skate on the river; condition all perfect, a glare of ice, a medium temperature, and a still air. Not a breath of wind. I fly up and down like a bird. At night, Julian and I skate an hour by moonlight, a rare treat. How we dash off into the dimness over the black smooth surface. -- These days I am hacking away at my Whitman matter, cutting, burning, rewriting. My matter mproves under my heroic treatment, but I doubt if I can make it worthy the subject. Health not very good past two weeks. 21 Mild, overcast, with sprinkle of rain in P.M. Signs of fog. The steam from the passing train swells and increases and stretches far behind in a long, tapering window. 22 Cleared off in the night as silently as usual. The weather is in a most gentle and placid frame of mind this winter. The storms sprinkle a little, or spit a little snow and then fold their tents like the Arabs and steal away. Fog this morning. P.M. Clear, warm, still likeIndian summer -- insects dancing in the air -- a day to walk through the fields and stand long by the bars, or lean upon the wall and look long and long over the brown, weedy lifeless fields. Almost brings the bees out of the hive. 24 Another attempt at a rain from the South, with only a slight sprinkle. Mercury up to near 50 degrees. 25 Cold wave last night, clear and lovely today, but sharp. Julian and I go to Black Pond skating; fly like birds over the glassy surface -- a fine time. Not a speck of snow to be seen. 26 Mercury down to 12 degrees this morning. 27 Winter again. The snow came like thief in the night, about 5 or 6 inches, and is still at it, from the North, which means that the storm clouds really came up the coast. 28 Bright and lcear adn sharp. Mercury down to 10 degrees this morning. The large opening on the river in front closed up this morning. -- That Death awaits you and me and all men is of little account. But that the race is to become extinct, that the earth is to grow old and die, and the sun itself wither like a leaf and be blown about the barrens of infinite space -- this strikes one dumb, and paralyzes the soul -- this is the abyss of science into whic e cannot gaze. What bow of promise spans it? That the very soil which hold out dead must become lifeless meteoric dust! Human monuments must perish, but the solar system is to be disrupted. How many times may this have happened in the past eternities! I see no reason to doubt that this game of the gods may not have been played over and over, and that even you and I may, in effect, have lived many times on other worlds, and may live again. The same results, culminations, must go on forever and ever. When great clock runs down, it will wind itself up again and strike the same hours as before.-- Forty years ago was my last winter at the old school-house in West Settlement. Of my schoolmates at that time I recall eleven who are dead, Walter Elliott of Bovina was teacher. In the spring of 1854 I left home to teach school in Olive; taught there fro mApril to middle of Sept. at 10 or 12 dollars a month and boarded around. Went to Ashland to school in Nov.; lefft there in Sprinng and went to Jersey in April in search of school; failed; came home and stayed all summer, working and studying. After haying started for Jersey again; stopped in Olive to visit; was again hired to teach same school at 20 dollars a month; taught till spring. In spring (April 20) went to Cooperstown seminary. Left therein July; worked in haying and went West in Sept. Tom Kniffin with me. Stopped at Dr. Allaben's in Polo. Engaged the school there and taught till spring of 1957. Came back home in April; stayed home till June or July when I engaged to teach at High Falls in Ulster County. Was married that fall September 13. Taught till spring. In July went to Rosendale to teach. Got interested in a patent buckle; threw up the school and went to Newark, N.J. Buckle failed and engaged school in Jan. 1859 at East Orange. Taught there about 2 years. In fall of '60 took the school at Marlboro on Hudson; taught there till spring of '62. Went home in April. Stayed all summer. In fall went to Olive to study medicine with Dr. Hull; heard of a school atButtermilk Falls, secured it, and went there to teach probably in Jan. 1863. Taught there, and began there the study of birds and flowers, stimulated to the latter by Prof. Eddy. Taught there till fall of '63 (made the Adirondack trip in August of that year) when I threw up the school and went to Washington (in October). On Jan. 4, 1864 I was appointed to a clerkship in the office of Comptroller of Currency. Continued a cleark till Jan 1, 1873 when I left W. and came to Middleton, N.Y. as Receiver of the Wallkill Nat. Bank. Wound up the affairs of the bank in 3 or 4 years. In Aug. '73to about '85. Built my house in '73 and '74, moved into it late in Nov. '74. -- Capt. Steven Burroughs was born in Bridgeport, Conn. in 1729. Died in 1817. A man of unusual mental endowments, ship-builer and astronomer: said to have invented the system of Federal Money. He had 4 brothers, Eden, John, Edward, and Ephraim. The latter was my great-grandfather, his son Eden was my grandfather. Ephraim died in Stamford, in April 1818, and nwas buried there in a field which is now under cultivation. He was born near Bridgeport (Conn.) about 1735. He hadsix sons and several daughters. His sons were Eden, Curtis, William, David, Daniel, and Ephraim. Eden, father's great uncle, was the father of Stephen, the notorious. Eden was a Presbyterian minister. 30 More snow, pretty heavy, about 10 inches now on the ground. Weather mild. 31 Bright, mercury 40 degrees. Feb. 1 Showing again this morning. Storm center seems south of us. Ver deliberate, evidently means business. -- Snow turned out only about an inch of hyperborean chaff. 3 Mild, overcast, mercury 42-- How common in literature is the sin of over-writing. It strikes one as vulgar, like over-dressing. The piece has a studied, formal, artificial air. Simple things must be simply said -- all things must be as simply said as possible. A man must work a long time to get out of the ambition of writing of inflating and bedecking what he has to say. I think this was at times or of the sins of Franis Parkman. I judge so from extracts I have seen of a sealed paper, giving an account of his life, which he left with a friend, and which was opened after his death. It is full of the balancing of period and is more like an amateur than like a master. 5 Cold wave; down to 2 degrees above this morning, clear and still. 6 Down to zero this morning. Bright and still all day. Had a skate on the river. -- In saying that Homer and the Bible are not literary, I mean they do not savor of literary or artificial culture, or of conscious literary art. They savor more of the larger culture of life and nature. From this point of view Tennyson is more literary that Wordsworth, Longfellow that Bryant. Milton than Shakespeare, the later novelists than Scott and Fielding. There is a deeper seriousness in Wordsworth than in Tennyson, in Whittier than in Lowell, a More profound humility and religiousness. It is not mrerely the seriousness of the scholar, the poet, it is the seriousness and humility of the man. I would have the unadulterated man, or human, flavor always predominate, as it does in the greates works. The Bible was not written with a view to literary edification as The Princess was, or Maud, or the Fable for Critics were; but for moral and spiritual edification. The literary spirit must always walk behind the spirit of universal love and sympathy, the spirit of man as man and not as a literary expert.8 Milder, a thaw at hand. -- Just finished A Window in Thrums, a delicious piece of work -- would rather have written it than all Mr. Howell's or James have written. How one loves these characters! because the author himself loved them. If Mr. Mowells only had this girft of love! P.M. Thermometer up to near 59 degrees. Bees out of the hive. 9 Snowing, moist and heavy. Mercury up to 36 degrees. 10 Deeply saddened by the death of Archdeacon Ziegenfusz, a man I had come to love. Only a few weeks ago he was here and passed the day in this room with the rest of the "Gang" as he called them -- the picture of health and good nature. His chances of long life seemed vastly better than m own. His wife died only a few weeks ago, and this calamity seemed to have broken him up and killed him. He was a man to love for his genial good-fellowship, as well as for his fine mind and character. I feel a keen sense of personal loss. Going over to the station last night I said to myself, Here have I lived in this place 20 years, and am not yet wonted to it. Twenty years of youth here, and these hills and valleys and river would seem like a part of myself; now I look upon them with alien, reluctant eyes. I seem only a camper for a day and a night. So much more plastic and impressionable are we in youth! As manhood is reached we begin to harden, and by and by our affections will not take on new shapes at all. 13 The boss snow storm of the winter so far, nearly a foot of snow, much drifted. Mercury down to 18 degrees, began yesterday afternoon. -- Attended the funeral of Ziegenfuss yesterday. A great crowd. Saw the body in the morning, looked like life -- never saw Death counterfeit Sleep more perfectly. No emaciation, no pain. His old mother came while I was standing near. Dear old woman! how her heart was wrung! how I wanted to comfort her! How the past must have come like a flood upon her! She remembered him as a babe in her arms, as a child by her side, as a ladwith his books and playthings, as a youth going out into the world, as a young man entering upon his career. How pathetic, how overwhelming! Oh, the inrrevocable past! Bishop Potter spoke well -- a metropolitan man, stamped with the air of a great city. Conventional, precise, dignified, clean-cut. Not a large, homely, original nature, but a fine-trained talent -- an epitome of better New York. Ziegenfusz himself was a true democrat. I loved him much and shall always carry a sweet remembrance of him. How mysterious, I heard several say, that such a man should be taken; the bishop said so, too. It is mysterious when weLucky if here and there on a writer's page we catch the scent of fresh new soil. Once in a while Carlyle, Goethe, Arnold, go in to the and we are exilarated, dilated; and then, again it is scratch, scratch. Rocks and stones with Carlyle and hard-pan with Goethe, or roots and weeds with Arnold. 15 More snow, 5 or 6 inches, this morning; half leg deep now. The cloud cows have had good grazing lately; they pour down their milk like cows in June. Well, they went dry early in the fall, and it is time. As the sun comes North he drives the hot moist air of the tropics before him, and we get the benefit. -- I never read a newspaper but I way, What a poor editor I shold make, according topresent standards. Nine-tenths of this stuff I should leave out. It is useless for a newspaper to try to be a private correspondent of every man woman and child trying to tell them the news about the people they know, and the matters they are concerned in. It should aim only at real news, important news for all, and when there is no news, it shold print a smaller sheet, just as it prints a larger sheet when there is extra news. Printing the same number of columns daily shows the absurdity of the whole business. If there is real news one day, and noe the next, then chaf must take its place, and readersbe robbed of their time. Does any same man more than glance at the editorial page? He knows before hand that he will find no honest, disinterested discussion there, but only lis and make-believe. 17 Cold, cold 8 degrees or 10 degrees below this morning, yet the air looks as innocent and genial as in summer; a soft, bluish haze veils everyting. Sun bright, sky blue, the steam whistles have that split shrill minor character of every cold weather. 18 Rain this morning from the south, mercury 40 degrees. Truly a weather spasm. The grip of Winter is not sure when these happn. P.M. cleared off; mercury 5024 Very cold. 10 degrees below this morning. Bright sunshine all day. Mercury only 2 degrees above at noon. Ice-men on the river suffer much. 25 Still colder, 14 degrees below this morning. But now at 10 A.M. temperature recovering rapidly. A storm evidently approaching. The past week has been free from storm. Cold wave began on Wednesday, the 21st. 26 A driving snow storm from the North -- that is from the South -- mercury about 15 degrees. Winter grown robust and desperate in his last days. -- Took down Carlye's Past and Present last night and leafed it over for half an tasting it here and there. I was glad I did not feel abliged to read it again. It is hard reading. I confess I did not want to be bruised and bumped about by a ride over this rough road. Run the eye over the page and bumped about by a ride over this rought road. Run the eye over the page and see how rought and thorn it looks, and it feels no less so to the mind. The great classical turnpikes, how different! In Carlyle's prose, at its worst, as in Browning's poetry, the difficulties are mechanical; it is not in the thought; it is in the expression. There is fire and intensity about it, but a blow with a club will make you see stars, or a sudden jolt give you a vivid sense of real things. Oh, do level and roll your road a little, Mr. Cor I fear travellers upon it in the future will be few. we do not want it made easier, but simply do not want to be bruised. Carlyle will never be forgotten; he is one of the few monumental writers but probably he will be named and referred to oftener than he is read. A book that one cannot read a second or third time -- A man's private storms and whirlpools and despairs and indigestino ought to appear in his work only as power, or light, or richness of tone. It is near 50 years since Past and Present was written, and none of its dire prophecies have yet come true. Yet I love this Scotch Jeremiah as I love few men. 29 Four or five inches of snow yesterday. Mercury down to 8 degrees this morning. -- Milton's poetry, for the most part, is to me a kind of London Tower filled with old armor, stuffed knights, wooden chargers, and the emblems and bedizzlements of the past. Interesting for a moment, but dead, hollow, moth-eaten. Not a live thing in one of his poems that I can find. Yes, there is a nightingale and a few flowers, and a human touch, here and there. But half a dozen pages would hold all that any man need read. The "Sampson" is said to be in the Greek spirit, but what business find he, a Puritan of Cromwell's time, writing in the Greek spirit?Why did he not write in his own spirit, or in the Puritan spirit? the 17th Century spirit? What business had he masquerading in this old armor? He put no real life under these ribs of death. His "Paradise Lost" is a huge puppet show, so grotesque and preposterous that it is quite insufferable. Milton seems to have been a real man, but he stands there in English literature like a great museum of literary archeology. He seems to have had no experiences of his own, and rarely to have seen the earth and sky, or men and women with his own natural eyes. He saw everything through the classic eyes of the dead past. Who reads him? Professors of literature, I suppose. He was a great craftsman no doubt, but he has been of no service to mankind, except a literary service; he has helped us to realize the classic spirit of letters, and the absurdity of the old theological dramaturgy. He spoke no word to any man's real moral or spiritual wants. March 1 Welcome, thrice welcome the first day of the almanac's spring! Bright and warm, a sap-day. May tempt the bees out by and by. Mercury down to 25 degrees last night. Snow a foot or more on the ground. Ice-men at work on the river, with 10 or 11 inch ice, half of it snow-ice. 2 Warm with signs of rain. Light shower in P.M. Wind shifting to N.W. and cooler. 3 Warm and clear, a day without a cloud, a real blue day. Stiffened up a little last night. but hardly touched freezing-point. Gentle breeze from the North. No spring birds yet. River opened last ight. 4 Sunday, Still bright and sprin-like. The spring birds this morning; bluebirds before sunrise, and robins and purple finches a little later the latter singing in chorus. The perfection of sap-weather. Snow running very fast. 5 Clear and warm, snow runs rapidly. 6 The bright spring days continue. Mud and slush very bad. But little frost at night. 9 Fine spring days, without a break till today. Snow nearly all gone. Excellent sap-weather. Sparrows in song. Turtle-dove on the 6th. Clouds today and sprinkles of rain in P.M. Gilchrist came last night on his way to Vassar. Rather too good an opinion of himself and work. 10 Still warm with sunshine. never remember ten days of March in succession so spring-like. Down to freezing only two or three nights. Near 60 degres some days. G's lecture at Vassar not a success, and I told him so. 11 Sunday. Cloud and fog this morning, but no frost. Sunshine in P.M. River opened night of the second.12 A little frost last night, calm and cool this morning. No wind yet this spring. Only a little floating ice on the river. Can the spark be said to sleep in the flint or the steel? No, only the condition of the spark sleeps there. The spark, the fire, sleeps in the arm, or inthe power that brings the flint and steel in collision. The motion, the force is converted into heat. 18 Sunday. The end of another week of remarkable March weather, April weather, in fact. In the past twenty years I remember nothing equal to it. Sunshine most of the time, and only a little frost. Showed on Thursday about 1 1/2 inch; all gone by 3 on Friday and mercury up to 55. On Friday my four friends from Poughkeepsie came up and spent the day. A pleasant time again. Yesterday Julian and I spent the day over by Black Creek after ducks. Killed no ducks but had a delightful day. Many signs of life in the air and water -- two or three kinds of butterflies, weveral moths, and occasional piping frog, insects in the air, newts and water bugs in and on the water, nuthatches calling, sparrows and robins and bluebirds everywhere. Not a breee stirring. Black Creek like glass as we floated or paddled up and down its length. Only a few ducks here and there. Only a few patches of old snow in the woods. Roads getting dry and vineyard calls us to work.My new man, Auchmoody, moved in yesterday. Buds of the soft maples swelling perceptibly. Saw my first snake and did not harm him. P.M Mercury up to 64 degrees, too warm. Hazel in bloom. Bees carry in pollen. Crocuses piercing the turf. Julian and I walk along the creek and back on RR. Arbutus buds swelling. Phoebe bird today. Standing after night fall now anywhere on the lawn one hears a slow stirring or rustling in the leaves and dry grass. It is made by large earth worms coming up out of their burrows and ruching out over the ground, whetlere for feeding or breedingI know not. My boy calls them "night walkers". In summer he hunts them at night to make bobs of. They are very sly and jerk swiftly back in their holes on the slightest sound. I suppose they feed your footsteps on the ground. 19 Warmer and warmer, up to 69 degrees. A sprinkle of rain in P.M; the fairest April weather. The little piping frongs in full chorus tonight; the whole tribe in full cry, also clucking frogs and the long-drawn Tr-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r of the toad. 20 Cooler this morning, north wind. 22 Another big storm flashed in the pan. The fourth or fifith storm that had started from the West failed to reachus. Only a little dash of rain and mist and fog. Warm this morning, like lat April; grass greening and the plow at work. A cold wave said to be coming. No rain to speak of in over a month. -- A passage omiited on second thought from my essay in last Critic on the Sapphic Secret. "Discursive and experimental writers like Mr. Thompson and myself - the mere nibbling mice of Criticism, shoud temper their wrath when they sit in judgement upon the great ones -- the lions who make the paths through the jungles of the world. It is no fault of theirs that they are not micebut is it not a fault of ours that we do not see them to be lions?" 23 Rain set in P.M. and continued all night. Julian and I spend the day at Black Pond and Creek after ducks. See a few but no shot. Cook and eat our dinner on the miniature island, 8 x 10, near outlet of lake. Very pleasant time. The first warbler singing in the trees near us. J. has his new canvas canoe. 25 Overcast, storm threatened. 26 A white-was of snow this morning. All gone at night but getting colder. 27 A cold wave, down to 20 degrees this morning. Begin foundation of fruit house. A typical March day fo the chilly sort. 28 Like yesterday, with wind shifting to southerly in P.M. A storm approaching. How true it is that we want something untamed and untamable in a poet -- a strain of the original savage man. It is this salt that gives the tang to his poetry and that keeps it. No matter how great his culture and refinement if he only strikes back through it to his original uneducated nature and draws from that. He must be a poet before he has ever seen or heard of poetry. No doubt we strike here on one source of weakness of much modern poetry -- it does not smack at all of the soil, or simple, unlettered, human nature. The singers are poets mainly after what books and art ahve done for them. Their works are an intellectual and not an emotional product. Even in such a poet at Lowell, the original man is deeply overlaid iwth the scholar, and with literature. Which shall lead -- the emotional and intuitive nature, or the reasoning, intellectual nature? 31 Wonderful Aurora last night, beyond any I have ever before seen. Once while a boy I saw someting approaching it. The wonder of this display was that it made a complete circle all around the horizon. We stood in the midst of a greattent of streaming aurora. The ghostly flame shot up from north, east, south, west, and came to a focus just a few degrees south of our meridiam never before have I seen it rise up from the south. The apex of this tent was the scene of constantly shifting and vanishing forms of light. It was fairly apochryphal. At times it seemed as if the heavens opened at this point and troops of angels and winged horses came straight toward us. A pencil like Dore's would have caught many suggestions. Sometimes the electric clouds would gather at this point liek foam over the point of escaping fluid and whirl about. Sometimesthere would be curious openings through it where the black sky and the stars would appear. A deep crimson flush would appear here and there near the horizon and spread upward to the zenith. at 8:30 the motion of the streamers was hardly perceptible, but at 8:45 they were leaping up and very rapidly, the sublty impulses traveling up precisely like flame; and such ghostly flame! Never was anything more spectral and unearthly then the whole display. It was a wild dance of many-colored sheeted ghostly forms! What an impression such a phenomenon must have made upon rude primitive man. I myself could hardly keep down an emotion of superstitous fear.A warm fine day with summer clouds and wind. Work all day on the new foundation walls of barn. April 1 Warm and breezy; mercury about 50 degrees in morning. Grass quite green and all buds swelling. The spring three weeks ahead of time. Hepatica today out probably a day or two. 2 Bright, dry, cold. A day to burn brush and rubbish. 3 My 57th birthday. Clear, sharp, dry; mercury down to 20 degrees this morning. The sky so clear and dry that the cold air falls down upon us. House painters here this morning. Julian resumes scool. Settle up P.O matters with S. Health good, spirits ditto.8 Sunday. Ground white with snow this morning. We had an April March now we are having a March April. The week has been rather cold, quite a freeze two or three nights. -- What a difference between the artist's interest in a picture, and the public's interest! The people are interested in the picture, in what it tells them, in the subject, in what they see in it that agrees with their experience, or their ideals. The artist is interested in the art of the picture, the drawing, the coloring, the handling -- in the form and not in the substance. Which is right? The artists do not much respect the popular verdict. An artist will greatly admire a portrait that is not a good likeness, while the first thing that the layman demands is that it be like the original. If it is not like, he has no further interest in it. It is the old story of art for art's sake, and not for what it tells. The professional view of a doctor whom he met rubbing his hands with delight because he had just been called to a chase of some kind or other that was "beautiful" -- just according to the books, every feature was perfect. The book or the picture that has not something besides its art to recommend it, will not carry very far. -- Prof. Huxley says the ethical process and the cosmic process are at war -- the former combats the latter. And yet if your ethical process is not in keeping with the laws of nature, if it be not really founded upon the cosmic order, will it last? will it carry? Can the settled order of the Whole be combatted? Do we combat it in setting up the moral order? Certainly not. The conflict is not fully cleared up by Husley. Our benevolence, our humanity prompts us to interfere with the law of natural selection, the survival of the fittest in seeking to prolong the lives of the unfit. We do prolong them, but evidently to the detriment of the stock. Moral value, moral goodness -- what are they? Are they founded in the constitution of things? Self-denial, self-sacrifice, heroism, mercy, forgiveness, etc. are these things contrary to the eternal verities? Man confronts Nature and puts her under his feet, but only within certain narrow limits. He does not make the tide rollback, but he utilizes it, rides it. He cannot change the nature of lightning, but he can use it, control it, (not tame it.) We say Man tames the lightning, or tames the elements, but that is only a figure of speech. They are untabalbe. He measured them and adjusts his wants to them. He tames the animals; he subdues them. He tames them his own animal nature; he lets the ape and tiger ide. The cosmic process of course includes man and lass his doings, since he is part of the cosmos, and the ethical process is at war with the cosmic process only as the lever is at war with gravitation. A new element is introduced, the will of man, which sorks upon and uses the old order. Man uses Nature and is part ofher unconsciously, while the animals do not. He is an animal plus a developed (more or less) moral consciousness. By reason he uses Nature. (The lamper-eels use Nature also when they go up stream for the stones which the current helps them float down to their nest.) The moral order is opposed to the animal order -- is not that about all? Must think further on this matter. Is the ethical process analogous to the cultivating and improving of the surface of the earth -- draining, clearing, shaping, fertilizing? Is the farmer at war with Nature? In one sense; but unless Nature favors him, where is he? 9 Windy, chilly. Froze some last night. Sheets of snow all day yesterday and a very chilly air. -- Dick Martin just dropped in to show me a handful of young 'possums, very young -- 16 of them -- likely newly-born mice. The mother was picked up dead on the RR, head and one leg cut off and these young were in her pouch each clinging to its teat dead. The connection seems almost as vital as when they-- When I am flollowing my plow over a refractory piece of ground, and see it dip in here and come to the surface there, now and then the turning of the soil fairly, but as often only making a mark, I say that while that is not good plowing it is about as good as the best writing, so rarely do even the best authors more than turn up fresh soil here and there -- a steady uniform furrow, opening up virgin soil -- who turns it? We arewere in the mother's womb. They are born in about two weeks after gestation begins, and placed by the mother in her pouchm where they fasten upon the teats. The teats, Dick says, are long and slender like a little skunks, 'possums, muskrats, woodchucks, and foxes. The red foxes seem to be run down by the fast night trains. 11 Forty years ago to-day -- how appalling that sounds! -- I began my first school, Tongore, Ulster County. A driving snow storm from the North. Winter again in earnest. Moved the wagon-house today, and now call it the fruit house.12 Five or six inches of wet snow yesterday. Flurries of snow in the air this morning, with north wind still blowing very chilly. Mercyry a little above freezing. -- Some natures are essentially moral, the categories to which they refer all things are those of good and evil; others are intellectual; their categories of reference are those of the true and the false; still others are esthetic; they see only the beautiful and ugly, only poetry or prose. 15 Lovely day, the world flooded with light; warm, dry, north wind. A luxury to be out doors. Fine yesterday also, with some cloud. drive to Sherwood's in PM.-- How curious, almost startling, the thought or discovery that there is such a thing as light or sound -- these two universal phenomena that play such a part in our lives. That they are sensations -- merely, physiological effects of vibrations in the ether. But what causes the vibratons in the ether that causes our sensations of light? some material force certainly. The same with sound; the waves are there, if the ear is not. Light effects even the rocks. So there is an influence, an emanation from the sun or the lamp which is real, and which makes the conditions for the sensation we call light. There is such thing as sweet or sour, hot or cold; these are sensations. The universe is an illusion, a creation of our own after all. 17 The fourth of the charmed days. Bright, dry and warm. The yellow redpoll warbler today. Walk up to the creek for suckeys but get none, but how beautiful the full, clear, cold stream rushing along in the sunlight! Began plowing vineyard to-day. 20 Two days of cloud and blue vapor -- veiled, soft, quiet, moist orodous April days. 21 Shower with thunder last night, and light rains during forenoon. Bright and warm in PM, and rain again at sundown. 22 Rain with thunder in morning and cooler. Misty all forenoon. The April drought fairly broken.Notes for an April poem: The soft maples are crimson and the buds of the elm swarm like bees in the branches, The bee comes home with golden thighs from the willows, and honey in her bag from the arbutus. School children pass with their hand full of hepaticas and arbutus. The newly-lpoughed fields glow like the breasts of robins. I walk in the new furrow in the stron sunlight till it is photographed upon my spirit. The farmer strides across the brown field scattering the seed oats at steps alternate. The sparrow, the robin, the jay, have nest-material in their beaks. The kinglet pipes his fine lyrical strain in the evergreens -- he flashes his ruby crown to his mate. The white-throat sings on his way northward. Long and long the highhole calls fro mthe distand field. The first swallow laughs down to me from the sky. From the marshes rise the shill, infantile chorus of the little piping frogs. From the trees above them comse the o-ka-lee of the red-wing. The song of the toad tr-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r is heard in the land. The first dandelion lies like a gold coin upon the greening turf.Something delicate, prophetic, spiritual is in the air. The bud-scales are falling from the buds -- some are fragrant and gummy. The light shower fills the air with wild perfume, The bluebird lifts and flickers to his mate his cerulean wing, In the twilight the robin-racket is prolonged and intense, The cow bird sits beside his dusky mate on the top of the tree and pumps up his liquid, glassy notes. In the leafless woods the pedestrian partridge beats his drum -- his own inflated breast. Amid the alders in the moist bottoms, the marsh marigold have the effect of coined sunshine. Here and there is the moist bottoms, the marsh marigolds have the effect of coined sunshine. Here and there is the tree-dotted landscape, the greening rye fields delight the eye. Ere the month is ended the shad-blow makes a white mist, here and there along the forest borders.27 A week of fine April weather, slowly warming up till to-day it is nearly summer heat. Again the maples have shaken out their fringelike blossoms, again the cherry trees are white. Season much earlier than last. A few days ago the air was filled with a dleicious wild perfume, a pungent, stimulating, bitter-sweet odor. I could not trace it to its source. It seemed to be general and to fill all the air. Was it from the just-bursting buds of the sugar maples? I know of no toher likely source. Tops of the trees over in Langdon's woods just faintly etched in opening leaf-buds. Currants blooming. On the night of the 24th went to Kingston to hear and see Ingersoll Much stouter and redder than when I saw him last May; much too much belly. Can drink whiskey, he says, but not wine. Wine makes him throb and throb. He ate his supper in his room after the lecture; drank iced-milk and iced-water freely. Lecture full of telling points, much sound argument, and many eloquent passages. He said, in talking with me in his room, that he was by no means sure that immortality was desirable; he would name conditions before accepting it -- unconditional immortality he would refuse.28 A lovely day, feminine day, veiled, tranquil, almost voluptuous. Mercury at 78. A little rain in afternoon. -- Had a glimpse of father the other night in my dream; we were at the table and a plate of trout was passed around, and I was father pick out the big one, as I have so often seen him do. I smiled in my sleep. 29 Clear and cooler, with North wind. 30 The last of the April days, clear, warm, still, with just a tinge of vapor in the air -- the beginning of brided veil ofSummer. Cherry and plum trees in bloom; pear trees spring and apple trees showing the pink. Carpenders began the new barn t0-day. May 1st May day shads in warm soft, wind southerly, wide hazy clouds in the sky. Wood thrush to-day in my grounds. The first big run of shad yesterday. 2. Hot and dry -- 88 degrees in shade to-day. Apple trees leaping into bloom. 3d Cooler this morning; North wind. Leaves half out; a tender mist of green over Langdens woods. Grass and grain need rain.-- In P. library I glance over Mr Grosses "Note on Walt Whitman" in the New Review for April. Must read it at my leisure some time. Gross is a very clever, but a very small critic and man -- has spent his days in overlading and sorting and inspecting the small potatoes of Enlish literature (and no literature has more small potatoes) How much he knows about [crossed out: English lit] said literature that is not worth knowing that it would be a mere weariness to know. He is a man of details and of deft careful workmanship, but entirely superficial. You never strike a great thought or a fresh thought in his workand his criticisms compare with Arnold's, or Scherer's as a vine compares with a tree. The professional critic, if he be not a large nature, can make nothing of Whitman. A man like Gosse, trained in the schools and overtrained is in literature, much like the orthodox theologian in religion. How the latter snorts at the idea that there can be any religion outside the church, the dogmas, the forms, the Bible etc. The former in the same way snorts at the idea that there can be any poetry outside of or in opposition to the rules and models and schools. He sees nothing but a barbarous, unregenerated poetic nature in W.W. Mr G. thinks the secret of W's attraction for certain minds is that they see themselves in him etc. Well, a poet in which such men as Stevenson Symonds, Emerson, Thoreau and others see themselves, must be something and somebody to be sure. In Mr Gosse's poems we see only little Mr Gosse. When we can all see ourselves in him [crossed out: we] he will have increased immeasurably in size and importance. 10 Lovely May days without a break, nearly summer tem-perature. A brief shower on Sunday the 6th getting pretty dry. Showy orchis in bloom and fringed polygala. Leaves all out. Trees clad in their under garments, tho' some of the maples look fully clad. Go to N.Y. to-day to attend Authors Club dinner at night. 12. Back home to-day from N.Y. Still dry and warm. Apple bloom all gone. The last run of shad (apparently) in the river. Was greatly shocked on my arrival home to learn of the sudden death of my neighbor Mr Hathaway yesterday morning. While I was at the authors club, speaking or eating and making merry, he was struggling with death. He has been my neighbor there under the hill for 10 years and I shall miss him much. I could almost look down into his chimney and I shall greatly miss the smoke from his fire going up into the air on winter mornings, and his friendly voice and manner. A blameless, good natured, rather intelligent man, without childrenwith a wife fearfully neat. A deacon in the church, a cooper by trade, and in all ways a kind and brotherly man. My last word with him or vision of him was last Friday the 4th of May. He had lived many years in Brooklyn working at his trade. Came here 10 years ago to look after the big ice house. Age, 67. To-day is his funeral day (Sunday 13th) -- The [crossed out: onl] main difference between a precious stone and a common stone is not in the substance, but in the arrangement -- the crystalization. In substance the charcoal and the diamond are one, but in form how widely they differ. This crystalization is not an easy thing. It requires almost an eternity of time. 19 Weather the last week warm and dry till last night, when a fine shower fell, nearly one inch of water. 19 Go home on morning train take up some shad; reach home at noon. How green and fresh the old spot looks, how the bobolinks sing. all are well. Stay home till Wednesday, the 23d Wind and light rain till last day, the bright and warm. I go fishing over in Meeker's Hollow; take 33 trout to the song of bobolinks. A hot pull home at 12. Take a few trout from West Settlement stream on Monday. Return home in afternoon. 24. Began raining last night from a depression in Va, yesterday, and has rained steadily all day. No let-up for a moment. Easily an inch of water has fallen. Grape arms 2 feet long and begin-ning to break some. 25 Rain continued all day and all last night, and is still at it; threatening to be a regular debauch of the rain godsStill my drains are not running. The earth was very thirsty. Grape arms dropping off this morning. -- Slow rain nearly all day. -- I do not seem to have made any proper record of my visit home from the 19th to the 23rd. Heavy East wind with light rain most of the time. I strolled about in the usual way, listening, looking for something I could not find. I sat for an hour or more on two occasions on the top of the hill above the house looking over in West Settlement and listening to the shore larks singing far above me. Twice after supper I walked out on the hill and looked long and long off east into Montgomery Hollow and trying to conjure up the old days I poked about the grave yard on the hill and found the grave of Obadiah Scudder, 1804, the oldest date I could find. I watched the boys draw dung and tried to get up courage to takea hand in, but could not. One afternoon I went down into the hemlocks and wandered along the little stream, all much changed since my boy hood. How green and fresh the country looked, with a sort of pathos over all, the pathos of my vanished youth. 29. The big rain of the season thus far yesterday; began about 2 P.M. and rained nearly all night, nearly 2 inches of water in 10 hours, drains all running this morning; broke the grape arms badly. I find they break less in stony, gravelly soil; the worst breakage is in the soft sandy soil. Bright and cool to-day. 31. Another rain set in last night from the N.E. a hell of rain seems imminent. The locusts have dropped their bloom. Daisy has come again and clover. June 1st June comes in like a huzzy, cold and sour-- clouds with spurts of rain. 3d A fine day at last but very cool. Dr Bucke and wife here. The 17 year locusts are coming out think in places. 4 Rain again last night and this morning. Clearing off is no good any more. Before you can turn around the rain is upon us again. It is "water affirmative" as Goethe says. No matter where the wind is it rains. Where two or three clouds are gathered together it rains. This is the third week of rain every day but one. 5th Threatens rain again. Coldand sour. We go to West Point. Actually clears off in P.M. and we have a fine day. 6 Cold and sour again threatening rain. Hellish weather, worse than in England. Barn not yet finished. Straw-berries just ripening a little. A cold wave coming from the N.W. with frosts in its course. In P.M. walk over to the weasel swamp. Find three interesting things -- The 17 year locusts coming out all along the borders of the woods; some little bushes loaded with them. Under certain trees find their little earth mounds [crossed out: thick] many of them yet sealed up, or with only a peep hole in them. Saw a little moth that evidently imitates bird droppings on the leaves. When disturbed it would fly a few rods and alight on [crossed out: the]a broad green leaf, spreading itself out perfectly flat, simulating the droppings of a bird. It was yellowish with a faint dark brown etched upon its wings. It would not move till touched. I have read of a moth or butterfly found on some island of Oceanica that exactly mimmicks the excrement of a bird upon a leaf -- this of course for protection. Found the nest of the worm-eating warbler beside the path in the edge of the woods. As I came along down the path on my return a small brown bird started up from the ground a few feet from me. From the glimpse of it I had, I took it to be the oven bird. Looking to the spot [crossed out: from] whence it started I saw another bird with a striped head standing on the edge of a nest in the side of the bank with the droppings of one of the young birds, whose heads I saw beneath her, in her beak. My appearance upon the scene was sudden and the mother bird was surprised while waiting upon her young. She stood motion-less, half turned toward me and kept the white mass in her beak, neither of us stirred for a minute or two, when I withdrew and sat down a few paces away. The male bird now became quite uneasy and flitted from bush to bush and uttered his alarm chip. The mother bird never stirred. I could see her loaded beak from where I sat. In two or three minutes she dropped or otherwise disposed of her unsavory morsel, but kept her place above her young. Then the male bird, seeing that was the game, quieted down also and dis-appeared from view. After long waiting I approached the nest and pausing 10 feet away, regarded it some moments. The bird never stirred. Then came nearer, and when I sat down within 4 or 5 feet of the nest the parent bird flew out upon the ground 3 or 4 paces from me and began trying that old confidence game of the birds upon me. She was seized with incipient paralysis, she dragged herself about in the ground, she grieved and tottered and seemed about ready to go all to pieces. [crossed out: The male now sudden] seeing this game did not work she began to use her wings and to scold sharply. The male now suddenly appeared upon the scene, and, ture to his name had a worm in his beak. Their scolding brought avireo upon the scene, which they seemed to regard as an intrusion. The nest was composed mainly of dry leaves. The young were probably a week old. I shall visit them again. 7. Cold and sour; almost a frost last night. No heat since April. We greatly overdrew our a/c in that long succession of bright mild days in March and April. 9 Weather still fair and beginning to warm up. Nearly 80 to-day. Grape arms have broken very badly this year. Met poor old Mrs Green last night trudging down from Esopus to take train here to go to Newburgh to see her son fatally hurt on the R.R. Poor old mother, I could have wept with her. Son a worth-less fellow, hard drinker, better dead than alive, but his mothersheart could not give him up easily. There were tears on her brown wrinkled face as we talked. It was very hard for her she said, so old, so much trouble, so much hard work as she had seen. [???] children, a drinking husband and sons, poverty and yet the old woman tries to keep up a cheerful front, and has preserved a certain innocence and sweetness. The methodist dominie went down and prayed beside her son; went on purpose, she said. "It was showing him a good deal of respect" said she, and she was touched by it. Probably the first mark of respect the poor devil had ever seen. I have known her for 20 years and yet she cant get my name right; calls me Mr Burrell generally. As she stepped along alertly to get on the train I saw how pinched and crooked her old back looked, bet. 70 and 80 10 No clouds to-day. Summer heat over 80. A lovely June day. Walked to the woods. Found nest of water thrush, and came near another, the brood had flown. Locusts in full chorus to-day. How warm and fragrant the breath of the meadow I passed through. A very little grape bloom to-day under the hill. 11. A still dim day of great heat, 90 in shade. 12 Still very hot; sky veiled with vapor or smoke till noon. Go to Vassar. A heavy shower at 6 1/2 P.M. 13. Hot, with streaks of sunshine cooler in evening. 14. Bright, cooler; grapes blooming. 21. Very warm the past ten days, from 80 to 90. Light thunder showers. Grapes done blooming yesterday, except a few stragglers, about the same as last year. Currants earlier. The 17-year cicadas humming and flying everywhere. Buildings at last finished and painted. 23. Heat continues, 92 to-day on north end of house. Began the currants. I do not remember such a hot June. July 1st No let-up in the heat, from 86 degrees to 91 degrees every day. Only light dashes of rain; getting dry. Finished currants yesterday, about 4 tons. Prices low.2d Mercury 90 degrees to-day. Start for Snyder Hollow, Julian and I. Reach Larkins about 10 A.M. Stay there in the camp till Friday the 6th A delicious time -- never had better, Julian a good camper out. Great pleasure in being with him in the woods and teaching him wood craft. Took [crossed out: ???] and ate about 90 trout from 5 to 10 inches. Began to get cooler on the 4th. Stopped at Phoececia and caught 2 fine rainbow trout. In the ice-cream saloon the boy asked us, "Will you have it in brick or in bulk?" "If the bricks are bulky," I said "We will have it in 'brick'"? "But what is the difference?" "In the brick it is all in a cake, and in bulk it is shovelled out.""'Shovelled out sounds good", we replied, "we are very hungry for cream;" we will try it both ways" which we did, and liked the shovelled out plates the best. Reached home Friday night. 10. Very cool for past few days and very dry; things begin to suffer much for want of water. 12 Start for Adirondacks to-day on invitation of Mr Chubb. Very hot. Stay at White Hall over night. Reach the Willey House in Keene Friday P.M. Stay one week. Very cool and delightful. The grandest mountain view I ever saw.Like the Chubbs much. Give a talk on Nature in Parlors on Saturday night, and one on Whitman on Sunday night. On Monday we climb Hurricane Mt. The view amazing for extent and sublimity. Meet Prof Davison and some of his philosophers; the Prof. an old time student and thinker -- lives on the past. Nothing new or vital in him. (The new is always vital, and the vital is always new). Return home Friday the 20th; heat terrible -- 94 in the cars all day, 96 in Albany and Troy stations. Very dry, -- a light rain last Sunday the 15th. 22d Cool and cloudy, about 1/2 ich of rain last night.Strays the drouth, but does not cure it. Grapes and all things suffering. A summer of great heat and dryness so far. -- I can well understand the feelings of the old Romans that prompted them to thrash and flog their gods when things went wrong with them. I never knew of a god that did not deserve flogging every day in the year. Take the god of rain, for instance. What a mess he makes of it, always drowning some part of the country and burning up some other part. 24. Cloudy, misty, getting hot. A hot wave near by no rain to speak of. Getting ready to go out to old home, Julian and I.
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Title: Founder's Day -- 1924 (8 of 10)
Creator: Wolven, E. L. (Edmund L.)
Date: 1924

Title: Founder's Day Plays -- 1921 (5 of 12)
Creator: Wolven, E. L. (Edmund L.)
Date: 1921

Title: Founder's Day -- 1929 (5 of 6)
Creator: Wolven, E. L. (Edmund L.)
Date: 1929

Title: from Olive L. Huntley, 5 Dec 1862
Creator: Huntley, Olive L.
Description: Letter of application
Date: December 5, 1862
Text: New Woodstock Dec. 15th Mr Matthew Vassar Dear Sir It is not often that I venture unintroduced, into the presence of an entire stranger; but in consideration of the magnificent gift you have recently bestowed upon the women of our land, I am encouraged to address you upon a subject which, for years, has been to me, one of absorbing interest. I am the third of four sisters, between the ages of twenty two and thirty, in a family of twelve children- ten of whom are still living- who from our...
Show moreNew Woodstock Dec. 15th Mr Matthew Vassar Dear Sir It is not often that I venture unintroduced, into the presence of an entire stranger; but in consideration of the magnificent gift you have recently bestowed upon the women of our land, I am encouraged to address you upon a subject which, for years, has been to me, one of absorbing interest. I am the third of four sisters, between the ages of twenty two and thirty, in a family of twelve children- ten of whom are still living- who from our childhood have for (…)writing to you is to ascertain upon what terms we may become members of this Institution. It has ever been our intention to devote ourselves to teaching, if we can secure a thorough education to prepare us for that important work, and we feel that no place could be found more desirable for obtaining that preparation, than the Vassar Collegiate Institute. Pardon me for taking so much of your time; my earnest desire to secure this object is my apology. Will it be too much to ask you to answer the question I have proposed? Whether we can enjoy the advantages of this noble Institution or not, permit me with all fine women of our land, to thank you warmly for the kindly interest you have manifested in the intellectual and (…) training of our sex; assuring you that thousands of the sons and daughter of our land will yet bless the memory of him whose Christian kindness has prompted this noble enterprise. On behalf of my sister and myself Yours very respectfully Olive L. Humtleyhoped at some future day to enjoy the educational advantages, we so highly prized: but although poverty has never been our portion, yet our parents have never felt able to incur the necessary expense. The advertisements of the different institutions of learning, which have roughly met our eye, have been perused with a longing to share their benefits, which only those, similarly situated can fully understand. Some time since, a matter of the Vassar Collegiate Institute, when in process of erection, attracted our attention, and (…) new hopes; but, ignorant of the plans upon which it was founded, we supposed its advantages were far beyond our reach, and relinquished it with a sigh: hoping a way might yet be opened for the accomplishment of our long-cherished desire. Last evening an Article in the Female Advocate and Guardian caught our eye, which led us to hope that here might be found that which we had so long sought in vain. My object in1862 Olive L Humtley New Woodstock Madison Co. NY Decb 5th Answered 21 Decb wishes to enter as pupil
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Title: Anthony, Susan B. -- to My Dear Friend, Feb 6, 1899
Creator: Anthony, Susan B. (Susan Brownell), 1820-1906
Date: 1899-02-06
Text: Honorary President, ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, 25 West 61st Street, New York. President, SUSAN B. ANTHONY, 17 Madison Street, Rochester, New York. Vice-President-at-Large, REV. ANNA H. SHAW, 1341 Arch Street, Philadelphia, Pa. Corresponding Secretary, RACHEL PORTER AVERY, 1341 Arch Street, Philadelphia, Pa. Recording Secretary, ALICE STONE BLACKWELL, 3 Park Street, Boston, Mass. Treasurer, HARRIET TAYLOR UPTON, Warren, Ohio. Auditors: LAURA CLAY, Lexington, Ky. SARAH B. COOPER, San Francisco,...
Show moreHonorary President, ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, 25 West 61st Street, New York. President, SUSAN B. ANTHONY, 17 Madison Street, Rochester, New York. Vice-President-at-Large, REV. ANNA H. SHAW, 1341 Arch Street, Philadelphia, Pa. Corresponding Secretary, RACHEL PORTER AVERY, 1341 Arch Street, Philadelphia, Pa. Recording Secretary, ALICE STONE BLACKWELL, 3 Park Street, Boston, Mass. Treasurer, HARRIET TAYLOR UPTON, Warren, Ohio. Auditors: LAURA CLAY, Lexington, Ky. SARAH B. COOPER, San Francisco, Cal. Chairman Committee on Organization, CARRIE CHAPMAN CATT, 107 World Building, New York. Office of the President, ROCHESTER, N. Y. Feb. 6, 1899 My Dear Friend Dear Ellen wrote me of the sad bereavement that has come to you and your dear wife- it is too cruel- but there is no escape from the inevitable- Your hearts must ache to the breaking- nevertheless- you were so happy telling me of your blessings in your precious wife & darling babies- last fall when you so lovingly escorted me to the R. R. Station- You have drank of the cup of sorrow before- and proved you had philosophy & strength to endure it- and so both you & your dear one will be equal to this added grief!! With best love & deepest sympathy Susan B. AnthonyCopy Alma Lutz Collection National-American Woman Suffrage Association Office of the President, Rochester N.Y., Feb. 6, 1899 My Dear Friend Dear Ellen wrote me of the sad bereavement that has come to you and your dear wife- it is too cruel- but there is no escape from the inevitable- Your hearts must ache to the breaking- nevertheless- you were so happy telling me of your blessings in your precious wife & darling babies- last fall when you so lovingly escorted me to the R. R. Station- You have drank of the cup of sorrow before- and proved you had philosophy & strength to endure it- and so both you & your dear one will be equal to this added grief!! With best love & deepest sympathy Susan B. Anthony
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Title: Aaron, Fannie -- to Father and Mother, May 10,1920
Creator: Aaron, Fannie
Date: 5/10/20
Text: May 10. Dear Father + Mother, I moved home today. I'll try it and see how it works. I found a note on my door from Eleanor Wolfe - sorry to have missed me. It took a while for it to down who she was - but the address Park Ave., helped. Nothing new in classes, except that I got a C+ on that math makeup quiz. It's time for me to wake up. Mlle. C. says she will certify that I don't need [a2nd] year foreign language. Hurrah! I don't think those were the glasses, Mother. There...
Show moreMay 10. Dear Father + Mother, I moved home today. I'll try it and see how it works. I found a note on my door from Eleanor Wolfe - sorry to have missed me. It took a while for it to down who she was - but the address Park Ave., helped. Nothing new in classes, except that I got a C+ on that math makeup quiz. It's time for me to wake up. Mlle. C. says she will certify that I don't need [a2nd] year foreign language. Hurrah! I don't think those were the glasses, Mother. There should be 2 pairs specs. at home. Medicine + laundry O.K. Love; FannieMr. + Mrs. Marcus Aaron, 402 S. Winebiddle Ave, Pittsburgh, Pa.
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Title: Streett, Laura -- oral history, December 10, 2014:
Description: Field of study: history and library science. Current occupation: Vassar College Archivist. Grew up in Troy, NY; undergraduate at SUNY New Paltz, graduate studies at the University of Maine; worked at Smith College and Cornell University before coming to Vassar. Keywords: LGBTQ, oral history, New York, history, Smith College, Vassar history, women's history, feminism, lesbian fashion, archives, marriage, family dynamics.
Date: December 10, 2014

Title: Page 1
Description: Included in Ross, Caroline (Barnes). Scrapbook, 1901-1905
"Photographs - Main Building through gate, October 1901 -- Photographs - Main Building across field, October 1901 -- Photographs - Old Observatory, October 1901 -- Photographs - Interior of the Museum [Vogelstein], October 1901 -- Photographs - Path with steps and campus in the background, October 1901 -- Photographs - Sunset Lake, October 1901 -- Photographs - Raymond, October 1901 -- Photographs - Ely Hall (Gymnasium), October 1901"
Date: From scrapbook dated c. September 1901 - July 20, 1906

Title: Page 172
Description: Included in Mansfield, Adelaide (Claflin). Scrapbook, 1893-1897
Songs - VC Trig Ceremonies
Date: From scrapbook dated c. September 1893 - November 27, 1901

Title: "Concert programs - VC School of Music, ""Fifth Soirée Musicale,"" April 24 1880"
Description: Included in Wyman, Anne (Southworth). Scrapbook, 1878-1882
Date: From scrapbook dated c. September 1878 - June 10, 1932

Title: Page 28
Description: Included in Wyman, Anne (Southworth). Scrapbook, 1878-1882
"Programs - VC Commencement, June 22 1881 -- Concert programs - VC School of Music, ""Third Soirée Musicale,"" March 25 1881 -- Concert programs - VC School of Music, ""Fourth Soirée Musicale,"" May 27 1881 -- Concert programs - VC School of Music, ""Fifth Soirée Musicale,"" June 20 1881"
Date: From scrapbook dated c. September 1878 - June 10, 1932

Title: Page 140
Description: Included in Mansfield, Adelaide (Claflin). Scrapbook, 1893-1897
"Printed materials - ""The Misses Shipley's School, Preparatory to Bryn Mawr College"" -- Notes - Transcription of a poster outside the Math room, February 22 [1897] -- Notes - from Mollie E. Leverett [Mary E. Leverett, VC 1897] -- Examinations - ""History F"" with Professor Lucy [Maynard] Salmon, January 1897"
Date: From scrapbook dated c. September 1893 - November 27, 1901

Title: "Concert programs - VC Choir, 'The Christmas Music,' December 12 1920"
Description: Included in Janish, Jeanne (Russell) and Lucile (Cross) Russell. Scrapbook, 1887-1938
Date: From scrapbook dated June 3, 1887 - March 1, 1938

Title: Anthony, Susan B. -- to Miss Booth, Jan 22, 1888
Creator: Anthony, Susan B. (Susan Brownell), 1820-1906
Date: 1888-01-22
Text: Fortieth Anniversary of the Woman Suffrage Movement. International Council of Women Assembled by the NATIONAL WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION of the United States, To be held at Washington, D.D., March 25 to April 1, 1888, inclusive. COMMITTEE OF ARRANGEMENTS: ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, Pres., Tenafly, N. J. SUSAN B. ANTHONY, Rochester, N. Y., MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE, Fayettville, N. Y., Vice Pres. at Large. MAY WRIGHT SEWALL, Chair. Ex. Com., 405 North Pennsylvania St., Indianapolis, Ind. ELLEN H....
Show moreFortieth Anniversary of the Woman Suffrage Movement. International Council of Women Assembled by the NATIONAL WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION of the United States, To be held at Washington, D.D., March 25 to April 1, 1888, inclusive. COMMITTEE OF ARRANGEMENTS: ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, Pres., Tenafly, N. J. SUSAN B. ANTHONY, Rochester, N. Y., MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE, Fayettville, N. Y., Vice Pres. at Large. MAY WRIGHT SEWALL, Chair. Ex. Com., 405 North Pennsylvania St., Indianapolis, Ind. ELLEN H. SHELDON, Recording Secretary, Q. M. Gen'l's Office, Washington, D. C. RACHEL G. FOSTER, Corresponding Secretary, 1909 N. 12th Street, Philadelphia, Pa. JANE H. SPOFFORD, Treasurer, Riggs House, Washington, D. C. Riggs House, Washington, D.C. Jan 22, 1888 My Dear Miss Booth Yours of the 16th made feel both very happy & very sad- - Glad because you expressed so much sympathy with our great undertaking- and very sorry because you cannot give us the paper on Journalism- We have not yet found any one who will- but am hope some one will feel moved to say yes very soon- I hope you & Mrs Wright will both be able to steal away the week of the Council- - At any rate to be with us on Monday April 2d when we hope to see organized a promising International Council- - Well officered- & well started for good & useful work- And to accomplish this- we shall you & the like of you You will- I am sure give a mention of the Council in the Bazaar- Perhaps we ought to put an advertisement in both the Bazaar & Weekly!! Do you think so?- or will both contribute good items- for our good works sake. Very Sincerely yours & Mrs. Wright Susan B. Anthony Copy Alma Lutz Collection Fortieth Anniversary of the Woman Suffrage Movement. International Council of Women Assembled by the NATIONAL WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION of the United States, To be held at Washington, D. C., March 25 to April 1, 1888 Riggs House, Washington, D.C. Jan 22, 1888 My Dear Miss Booth Yours of the 16th made feel both very happy & very sad- - Glad because you expressed so much sympathy with our great undertaking- and very sorry because you cannot give us the paper on Journalism- We have not yet found any one who will- but am hope some one will feel moved to say yes very soon- I hope you & Mrs Wright will both be able to steal away the week of the Council- - At any rate to be with us on Monday April 2d when we hope to see organized a promising International Council- - Well officered- & well started for good & useful work- And to accomplish this- we shall you & the like of you You will- I am sure give a mention of the Council in the Bazaar- Perhaps we ought to put an advertisement in both the Bazaar & Weekly!! Do you think so?- or will both contribute good items- for our good works sake. Very Sincerely yours & Mrs. Wright Susan B. Anthony
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Title: Vance, Gertrude (Pratt) — to mother, n.d.
Creator: Vance, Gertrude (Pratt)
Date: n.d.
Text: 3. Dear Mama I got your dear letter this A.M. Who is the Mr. Gregory who was killed by auto. You are a perfect dear to send the cake I told Margie about it & she said it would be fine. In thought of the [nabisco’s?] myself we could mix them with the cake. I have one package that I [bought?] from home & we might get another. We are going to have a punch bowl & cups from the place we [got?] the ice cream when you were here & then we will make the punch with lemons ourselves &...
Show more3. Dear Mama I got your dear letter this A.M. Who is the Mr. Gregory who was killed by auto. You are a perfect dear to send the cake I told Margie about it & she said it would be fine. In thought of the [nabisco’s?] myself we could mix them with the cake. I have one package that I [bought?] from home & we might get another. We are going to have a punch bowl & cups from the place we [got?] the ice cream when you were here & then we will make the punch with lemons ourselves & get a bottle of marachino[sp:maraschino] cherries to put in it. then we will have a supper dance & serve & after that just let people help themselves to punch like a reg. dance. We had snow up here yesterday & today is very cold & snow still on the ground. Do tell me what you want for Xmas. I dont want you to get any big things for my room like a lamp as we must have one at home before I have one & my light here is excellent. We might [buy?] ^ some of yours & my Xmas present s together & then we would get what we wanted although the things you get for me are always perfect. One thing I would like is a watch ribbon with a little silver “slide” & clasp. I have just thought you may be in N.Y. if I should phone so I guess I wont any way dont stay home for it as I can decide about the pictures & I will get them as cheap as I can but if you think they are really good we might as well get at least 3 expensive ones as it would be a shame to loose them. Love from your little Goo.
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Title: Aaron, Fannie -- to Mother, n.d. [postmarked April 16, 1920]
Creator: Aaron, Fannie
Date: n.d. [postmarked 1920-04-16]
Text: Dear Mother, You told me sure I could call up whenever I want to, so I shall do so next Sunday before temple, between 9 + 10. Do not be worried. I feel so perfectly rotten, and goodness knows, I am obeying the doctor's instructions. I want to speak to you to get some advice, so that you can ask the doctor if he has any suggestions about what I should do. I thought it was the railroad trip, but it is already Friday morning + there is no improvement. Per-haps I ought to get treatment from...
Show moreDear Mother, You told me sure I could call up whenever I want to, so I shall do so next Sunday before temple, between 9 + 10. Do not be worried. I feel so perfectly rotten, and goodness knows, I am obeying the doctor's instructions. I want to speak to you to get some advice, so that you can ask the doctor if he has any suggestions about what I should do. I thought it was the railroad trip, but it is already Friday morning + there is no improvement. Per-haps I ought to get treatment from that Poughkeepsie doctor. I ought not to go on like this, I am afraid the whole darn thing is coming back again. Don't be angry - I want to know what you have to say about it. If I had gone to the [Herfelz consent], I would have spent the $2.88. Fannie
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Title: Shipp, Margaret M. -- to Sister, 18 March 1902
Creator: Shipp, Margaret M.
Description: VC 1905
Date: 18 March 1902

Title: 1st Hall Play -- Dec 1929 (12 of 12)
Creator: Wolven, E. L. (Edmund L.)
Date: Dec 1929

Title: Elizabeth French Babbott 1910-1912

Title: Page 47
Description: Included in Babbott, Elizabeth (French). Scrapbook, 1910-1912
Valentines - from "Anthony" [Rogers] -- Valentines - "It is ages since we've met. Do you care a little yet?
Date: From scrapbook dated August 12, 1910 - June 22, 1912

Title: Letters - from Julia [Cooley, VC 1914]
Description: Included in Babbott, Elizabeth (French). Scrapbook, 1910-1912
Date: From scrapbook dated August 12, 1910 - June 22, 1912

Title: Letters - to family
Description: Included in Babbott, Elizabeth (French). Scrapbook, 1911-1912
Date: From scrapbook dated c. September 1911 - August 12, 1912

Title: Page 61
Description: Included in Babbott, Elizabeth (French). Scrapbook, 1911-1912
Objects - Dried flowers with tag reading "Happy" [nickname for Elizabeth B. French, VC 1914] -- Newspaper clippings - "Justice Hughes' Son to Wed Miss Stuart; A College Romance" [Marjory B. Stuart, VC 1914] -- Visiting cards - "Charles Evans Hughes, junior" [brother of Helen Hughes, VC 1914] -- Envelopes
Date: From scrapbook dated c. September 1911 - August 12, 1912

Title: Pease, Julia M. -- to "Dearest Dear" [unknown], Dec. 1874:
Creator: Pease, Julia M
Description: VC 1875
Date: December 2, 1874
Text: Vassar. Dec. 2. 1874 - Dearest Dear, Having no new lesson to learn in Churc- this morning, and not feeling like studying review, I take this period which is usually devoted to perusing stupid notes for scribbling off a letter to you Carrie - Yours of the 26th was just this moment handed me, and gave me great joy, although it was such a bit of a letter - I can rejoice with you all at the return of the treasure Julia, for you know my antipathy to housework at any time, and my longsiege of bed...
Show moreVassar. Dec. 2. 1874 - Dearest Dear, Having no new lesson to learn in Churc- this morning, and not feeling like studying review, I take this period which is usually devoted to perusing stupid notes for scribbling off a letter to you Carrie - Yours of the 26th was just this moment handed me, and gave me great joy, although it was such a bit of a letter - I can rejoice with you all at the return of the treasure Julia, for you know my antipathy to housework at any time, and my longsiege of bed-making and other work makes me long, when through here, to have nothing to do but sit with folded hands - Of course you had a pleasant Thanksgiving, and so did I - But yet I could but think of my place at the home table, vacant for the last year I hope - Two or three eights ago the Prez, announced in Chapel that the Christmas vacation Instead of beginning as the Catalogue states en the Tuesday preceding Christmas will begin on the Friday! For a few momentsafter the announcement joy reigned supreme, then we could not help a tremeadous hand-clapping. I think we never were before quite so anxious for vacation- Every body seems tired but and needing rest - I am one of the "pine-knots," and never sick, but yet as Miss Terry said to me the other day, "Miss Pease, you can feel tired", and I rejoice with all my heart that we have five more days of rest - Clifford Loverin, and I walked from the Chapel with the avowed intention of going home So unless strict orders to the contrarycome, you need not be surprised some bright day to see us briskly walking into our respective houses - Indeed I don't know what I shall do this vacation - Aunt M. has sent a most cordial Invitation for me to visit her, and if I go away at all, shall probably go to Binghamton. Then Lillle Lewis has no invitation for me in Burlington, but of course Aunt's has the prior right - Our vacation is three weeks long -Did I ever write you that some time ago came a letter of introduction from Miss Moffett, who is at school at Cook's in Po'keepsie - Of course I immediately answered saying I would call soon, but my soon did not come until last Monday - I find her very pleasant, though younger than I had anticipated. She tried for Vassar but did not enters now expects to come next year as Freshman; also expects Minnie D. will enter with her as Preparatory - It made me right homesick, talking aboutAustin people with her - Philathean Day comes on Friday, when I suppose we will have another festive time - Think I shall send complimentary Invitations to "your beau" Lewis and charming Charlie Wheeleck - Wasn't it a joke for Judge H. to think me "sweet sixteen". No one else in Austin does, though - Our class pins have come and are quite pretty - It really made me feel old and sad to see them, for It shows how must "shakeoff this mortal coat" and allow others to walk Into our shoes - It is not a pleasant thought that others will step into our places so soon, without one regret for our departure - You will think this an awfully doleful letter, so rather than inflict any more of such nonsense upon you, I will close - with the hope that with you "all goes merry as a wedding bell," but that those bells are yet afar from you, dear -
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Title: Raymond, John H., 1814-1878 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: [unknown]
Description
Date: [After 1878]
Text: JOHN H . rmvmowo 181a - 1878 At the first meeting of the Faculty of Vassar College after the death of our late honored President, John H. Raymond, we record a brief statement of his work in this College, and an expression, altogether inadequate, of the love we have for his memorye We appreciate, as others cannot, the unceasing toil, the perplexity, the solicitude, the many discouragements which attended his heroic and successful endeavor to secure for this College its present eminence among...
Show moreJOHN H . rmvmowo 181a - 1878 At the first meeting of the Faculty of Vassar College after the death of our late honored President, John H. Raymond, we record a brief statement of his work in this College, and an expression, altogether inadequate, of the love we have for his memorye We appreciate, as others cannot, the unceasing toil, the perplexity, the solicitude, the many discouragements which attended his heroic and successful endeavor to secure for this College its present eminence among educational institu- tions. We appreciate, as others cannot, the complica- tions of the problem given to him for solution at the time of his election to his office. At the outset, there was a Board of Trustees having the heartiest interest in this work, but pre- senting many shades of opinion on educational questions. And the Faculty, organized under peculiar limitations needed time and trial to give it experience and strength. And the demand made by the public upon this College in its earlier years, insisting that students sent hither should be trained to the accomplishments of the fashionable world rather than to the earnestness of the scholar, was a demand that he resisted with an unfaltering, a religious con- stancy, and defeated utterly, so that under his leadership a victory, complete, enduring, has been gained for the higher education of women. Beset by the ill-advised and persistent appeal of the parents of our students, with no pioneers to guide him, President Raymond cautiously and safely led this College through the wilderness of its first years. We know what his thoughtfulness has accomplished in the improvement of all the appointments and properties of the College, in securing for it the respect of educated people, in winning for it the loyalty of students, and in organizing a happy domestic regime. But these achievements made by devotion to the duties of his office, though they have commanded expressions of public JOHN H. RAYMOND (Continued) admiration, still seem to us to fade in comparison with the result he attained in promoting the steady growth of our educational work. Comparing the Scheme of Instruction" published in our first catalogue, with the clear and well adjusted cur- riculum now followed by our students we see the traces of his most difficult work, and his brightest success. While others point to his temperament, or to his scholarship, or to his literary and oratorical skill as the secret of his power in this College, we, recognizing all these qualities in him, point to his rare gift for organization as his prime endowment - a gift blending with comprehensiveness of plan a conscientious zeal for the performance of smallest details. This endowment made it possible for him to watch every interest related to his office, and insured the uninterrupted progress of Vassar College under his administration. We remind ourselves that our late President himself grew to loftier ideas under the discipline of his work. Each new success inspired him with grander hopes, to more intense endeavor. He led the way to broader freedom in the discipline of the College; and in presiding over our legislative deliberations, he had come to be the most advanced among us in demanding an unfaltering respect for the womanliness of our students. Always considerate of the weariness of his fellow- workers, he gave himself no rest. In recalling what he has done for Vassar College, we pay our reverent re- spect to his industry, to his fidelity, to his sacrifice of self, to his wisdom, which have laid our foundations so secure that no adversity, not even his death, can overturn them. He was modest, he was honest, he was cautious, he was patient, he was just, he was devout, he was faithful in all things. He was eminent, and he was eminently good, He is dead, but his work survives, I - 391-393
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Title: Aaron, Fannie -- to Mother, Father, and Pete, Oct. 9
Creator: Aaron, Fannie
Date: Oct. 9
Text: [Oct 9] Dear Mother, Father, and Pete: Marse's letter certainly was interesting, Pete. I am sorry that one of the passages that i could not make out was the reference to me. Mother, I cannot tell you yet whether I want to go to Boston or not immediately. I would like to do that, if I don't come home. I sort of thought that I would like to come home and let Dr. Sanes look me over. It will depend of course on how I am feeling. Can't you possibly come East a week later. Sophomore...
Show more[Oct 9] Dear Mother, Father, and Pete: Marse's letter certainly was interesting, Pete. I am sorry that one of the passages that i could not make out was the reference to me. Mother, I cannot tell you yet whether I want to go to Boston or not immediately. I would like to do that, if I don't come home. I sort of thought that I would like to come home and let Dr. Sanes look me over. It will depend of course on how I am feeling. Can't you possibly come East a week later. Sophomore Party is the night of Saturday, October 30. I don't see how I could possibly decently miss it, besides which, I don't want to miss it. Or could you come a week sooner? If it were not that we want to get the coat, I would suggest that you come up here. You would enjoy the party very much, I am sure, inasmuch as all the acting and everything is going to be done by my class. The Freshmen come in masquerade, you know. R.S.V.P. I aksed some time if you remembered what happened to my thermometer? Do you remember? It is a good thing to have around. I slept quite late this morning, then I dusted my room(!) and did some Spanish. I had intended to do more studying but Harriet Haynes came up with some more typing for Sophomore Party and she was in a hurry for it, so I just did it for her. I certainly am doing my share of the work for that affair. The only thing I don't like about it is that I probably won't get into the performance itself. Of course, my services in this capacity are probably a lot more useful than they would be in any form of acting, but nevertheless I would like to be on the stage with most of the others in the class. Yesterday afternoon I had my hair washed at Jane Wilson's, got my blankets and bath-robe and brought them home, then walked to town with Elizabeth Dinkey, or Braddock, Pa. We rode home. The street-car is all right, now. Last night I went to hear the violincellist, Maurice Marechal. I enjoyed the concert very much, (please don't laugh) and tried desperately to educate myself along a most needed line. I then paid my bi-weekly call on Dr. Baldwin. After that I got into my little trundle-bed. I hope to read about three quarters of Kim" this afternoon. Wishing you the same. I did not have Eva Vogel in Sunday School. I got a "thank you for your good wishes" calling card from A. Kaufman.
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Title: MacCoy, Marjorie Newell -- to Family, 3 October 1909
Creator: MacCoy, Marjorie Newell
Description: VC 1911
Date: 3 October 1909

Title: Signs - "There will be a meeting of the class of 1914" by Elizabeth [B.] French [VC 1914], October 25
Description: Included in Babbott, Elizabeth (French). Scrapbook, 1910-1912
Date: From scrapbook dated August 12, 1910 - June 22, 1912

Title: Page 42
Description: Included in Babbott, Elizabeth (French). Scrapbook, 1910-1912
Concert programs - VC Department of Music, "German Folk Songs," February 15 1911
Date: From scrapbook dated August 12, 1910 - June 22, 1912

Title: babbott02-876

Title: babbott02-1161

Title: Letters - from "May" [Mary Tier Sutphen]
Description: Included in Babbott, Elizabeth (French). Scrapbook, 1911-1912
Date: From scrapbook dated c. September 1911 - August 12, 1912

Title: "Programs - VC Class Day, June 9 1896"
Description: Included in Mansfield, Adelaide (Claflin). Scrapbook, 1893-1897
Date: From scrapbook dated c. September 1893 - November 27, 1901

Title: "Printed materials - VC Mohonk Trip, ""Mohonk Lake Mountain House,"" October 31 1896"
Description: Included in Mansfield, Adelaide (Claflin). Scrapbook, 1893-1897
Date: From scrapbook dated c. September 1893 - November 27, 1901

Title: "Programs - Class Supper, June 9 1897"
Description: Included in Mansfield, Adelaide (Claflin). Scrapbook, 1893-1897
Date: From scrapbook dated c. September 1893 - November 27, 1901

Title: Page 4
Description: Included in Mansfield, Adelaide (Claflin). Scrapbook, 1893-1897
"Visiting cards - ""Miss L. Marion Lockhart"" [Lizzie Marion Lockhart, VC 1896] -- Visiting cards - ""Miss Angie M. Myers"" [Angie Martin Myers, VC 1894] -- Visiting cards - ""Miss Jennie Agnes Estes"" [VC 1895] -- Visiting cards - ""Miss Fanny Cohen"" [Frances Cohen, VC 1895] -- Visiting cards - ""Miss Warner"" [Maude Loraine Warner, VC 1896] -- Visiting cards - ""Miss Abby A. Vaillant"" [Abby Augusta Vaillant, VC 1894] -- Visiti...
Show moreIncluded in Mansfield, Adelaide (Claflin). Scrapbook, 1893-1897
"Visiting cards - ""Miss L. Marion Lockhart"" [Lizzie Marion Lockhart, VC 1896] -- Visiting cards - ""Miss Angie M. Myers"" [Angie Martin Myers, VC 1894] -- Visiting cards - ""Miss Jennie Agnes Estes"" [VC 1895] -- Visiting cards - ""Miss Fanny Cohen"" [Frances Cohen, VC 1895] -- Visiting cards - ""Miss Warner"" [Maude Loraine Warner, VC 1896] -- Visiting cards - ""Miss Abby A. Vaillant"" [Abby Augusta Vaillant, VC 1894] -- Visiting cards - ""Miss Latimer"" [Ada Lombard Latimer, VC 1894]"
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Date: From scrapbook dated c. September 1893 - November 27, 1901

Title: Page 99
Description: Included in Mansfield, Adelaide (Claflin). Scrapbook, 1893-1897
"Photographs - ""Prexy's [Vassar President James M. Taylor] arrival from Europe -- he and we"" -- Songs - ""Honeymoon March"" -- Notes - from ""Bertha"" [most likely Bertha Kedzie Young, VC 1896] -- Advertisements - Advertisement for ""Literary Production"" service for students from Colchester, Roberts & Co., February 20 1896"
Date: From scrapbook dated c. September 1893 - November 27, 1901

Title: Aaron, Fannie -- to Father, December 14,1920
Creator: Aaron, Fannie
Date: 1920-12-14
Text: December 14. Dear Father, I [had] a letter from Aunt Bessie saying that Uncle Ike would meet me, if possible. If not, I was to take a taxi to the Pa. Station. etc. + [some] directly out to [Woodmere]. She sent a time-table ([Long] Island) She also said Uncle [Ike] had theater tickets - she did not say for what - and that they would see me to the train. You might [communicate] with them inasmuch as I would like the pleasure of your company. I had no idea you could stay over. I plan to take the...
Show moreDecember 14. Dear Father, I [had] a letter from Aunt Bessie saying that Uncle Ike would meet me, if possible. If not, I was to take a taxi to the Pa. Station. etc. + [some] directly out to [Woodmere]. She sent a time-table ([Long] Island) She also said Uncle [Ike] had theater tickets - she did not say for what - and that they would see me to the train. You might [communicate] with them inasmuch as I would like the pleasure of your company. I had no idea you could stay over. I plan to take the 12 M. special Friday. Possibly the 11:38, but I think the special will get in sooner + it won't be such a rush. The debate [was oreal]. We lost 2-1. I am dead. FannieMr. Marcus Aaron, C/O Hotel Astor, New York, N.Y.
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Title: Aaron, Fannie -- to Mother and Father, January 14,1920:
Creator: Aaron, Fannie
Description
Date: 1920-01-14
Text: Jan. 14, 1920. Dear Mother + Father: I am extremely busy today. I am going to lab for an extra two hours, as I don't want to have so much the last minute before exams. I still have a good deal to do on this week's history topic. Had a Spanish confer-ence this morning. Am sending my laundry today. Had a letter from Aunt Hattie today, in which she [adoised] me to take all the [snap] courses + no hard ones henceforth! I wonder what she thinks you come to college for. Your new picture...
Show moreJan. 14, 1920. Dear Mother + Father: I am extremely busy today. I am going to lab for an extra two hours, as I don't want to have so much the last minute before exams. I still have a good deal to do on this week's history topic. Had a Spanish confer-ence this morning. Am sending my laundry today. Had a letter from Aunt Hattie today, in which she [adoised] me to take all the [snap] courses + no hard ones henceforth! I wonder what she thinks you come to college for. Your new picture reposes on my desk, Father. It is growing on me - in fact I think it is quite good, now that I have gotten used to the fact that my Paps isn't as beautiful as I once imagined. Love. FannieMr. + Mrs. Marcus Aaron 402 S. Winebiddle St., Pittsburgh, Pa.
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Title: Invitations - "Juniors bring the Freshmen down"
Description: Included in Babbott, Elizabeth (French). Scrapbook, 1910-1912
Date: From scrapbook dated August 12, 1910 - June 22, 1912

Title: Bromley, Frances M. Diary, 1870-1877
Creator: Bromley, Frances M.
Transcriber(s): Hausam, Josephine
Descriptor(s): Ditkoff, Andrea
Description: Frances Bromley (VC Ex 1879) was a prolific diarist, contributing seven diaries to Vassar College that chronicle her life from 1872 to 1877. Bromley's diaries all contain reflections on her daily activities, observations about other people, and literary and biblical quotes. Bromley also writes extensively about illness throughout her diaries. This volume focuses on her religious thought, reflections on death, feelings of alienation from herself and the world around her, and general disjointed...
Show moreFrances Bromley (VC Ex 1879) was a prolific diarist, contributing seven diaries to Vassar College that chronicle her life from 1872 to 1877. Bromley's diaries all contain reflections on her daily activities, observations about other people, and literary and biblical quotes. Bromley also writes extensively about illness throughout her diaries. This volume focuses on her religious thought, reflections on death, feelings of alienation from herself and the world around her, and general disjointed observations. Initially, she describes teaching and studying at a Normal School. Although she is accepted to Michigan University, she cannot attend because of financial troubles. She chafes at gender norms (e.g. she is promoted to the head of her school and then the board decides to give the position to a man instead: see August 25, 1874). She starts at Vassar in 1876, struggles with her health, and experiences periods of great optimism and others of crushing sadness.
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Date: 1870-1877
Text: PLEASE NOTE: Blank pages are omitted, and pages with text are presented in the order in which they were Written (in the original, the diarist left every other page blank from the beginning, and upon reaching the end of the book, began working her way back, Writing upside down on pages that had been left blank). From "The Checkered Scene"-- Dansville, N.Y. 1878 "Mr. Little has been telling me how he went home last night, after our little talk up in Paradise Gate, and had a dream...
Show morePLEASE NOTE: Blank pages are omitted, and pages with text are presented in the order in which they were Written (in the original, the diarist left every other page blank from the beginning, and upon reaching the end of the book, began working her way back, Writing upside down on pages that had been left blank). From "The Checkered Scene"-- Dansville, N.Y. 1878 "Mr. Little has been telling me how he went home last night, after our little talk up in Paradise Gate, and had a dream about me. He did not dream that I got well, he said, but that I became helpless. That I was placed where scarcely anything about me was as I would like it to be - in a hard place - where nothing fitted - and the people about me were uncomfortable people - and little to my taste - but that amidst it all I was sucha happiness to others; which was so much better than getting well." "A little talk with Mrs. Evans tonight. I leave her feeling that there is a blessedness greater than any sadness in knowing that the Master is even now at the gate." "Dr. McLean said to me: 'My wife and I have remarked ever so many times that we would give anything if we could always look as bright as you do.' Blessed be the help that comes to do it! The Master remembers.""Pet's letter came today; and her "why nots" are so full of the unselfishness and heroism that I love so in her that I feel an uplifting. But, O, how it makes my heart ache!" "In due order breakfast. We might pass this over were it not that it gains in importance unspeakably the nearer one comes to not having any!"Sabbath evening- Oct. 9" 1870- A log-book! and mine! I said I'd have a log-book - said it long ago - said it every time I had a peep into Sue's upper, unstratified, bureau drawer, where hers lay nestled - comfortable and un-searchable. I'd like to be born such a night as this if I could be born to live and not grope. day times these mountains make us toil - climb - drag on! "To the heights" is what they say. Tonight they let us look at them and rest. "As the mountains are round about Jerusalem so the Lord is round about his people." Does that mean Hewouldn't miss us if we died? Not even a sparrow falleth to the ground without your Father__Christ said that. He came down from the singing and the glory to tell us that. He cried for us, too. Oct. 16"- Blue and black_all wool! Pretty thing to run in one's head when the minister's text is "consider the lilies". I know the prayers and the metre_Long and common! Doctor told the Lord that "yesterday the icy streams dissolved." I did not know it. Then came the intense heat of summer, and the growing crops, and now the fading leaf reminds us of ourfrailty. It doesn't me! When I see the royalty of everything I remember that I'm born a queen, and longing for my kingdom possesses me, and never a thought that 'tis frail to be royal, or sorrowful for " the king to come to his own." Oct. 23" 1870 "And while he was yet a great way off the Father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck and kissed him." As long as those words read just so i shall never be afraid to die. i shall dream of the Father's house, .. as I dare dream of nothing else. I get so tired of myself. I want to run away from myself and be pleased andhappy just a little while. Nov. 4" 1870 - God can make a beautiful life even out of mine. I pray for it as I pray for nothing else. Twenty two years blossoming in frost flowers - only frost flowers - no pansies, no myrtle, no goldenrod. Nov.13" -- I want to see Paul - I want to know him. It is one of the dear dreams that are to be worked out in Heaven-and Heaven is a great many years long. I could sing tonight. I could talk to Christ. I can't always. Will there be any great blanks up there-can there be? Will I ever say when I have gone to Him and seen Him, "My vacant days go on-go on"?Dec.11"_ My thoughts tonight are organic & inorganic! The way of life is plain.._but tell me-Is there anything else that is plain? When do I pray & not feel the first heart throb those old words-"Friend of sinners! we are in the dark, and bewildered and sick at heart"? I've done a heap of thinking since Wednesday, or dreaming which is only prismatic thinking... A great deal of it is Castleton, but the space between and the way thither is full of shrinking and dread. It seems so hard to stop here - break off the little plans and comforts, and live through shrinking and desolation again! How I amlearning to love "being led" thoughts. Rain day-Jan. 15"_ Doleful! I kept away from myself all day. Blank verse - blank verse - will it ever be anything but blank verse? Aug 8- There's good natured little breeze frisking around here like curly-headed children in a hay mow._________ We touch lives at all angles that seem so satisfied, and I renounce such as I do the world, the flesh, and the devil. I grasp eagerly at any thought that makes the infinite distance between my life here and my life after some great change, called death, grow less and not so terrible. My child! my chicken! More help! more love! more light! .... Senior Editor has fled. The editorials, compositions, printing presses, type, ink, proof sheets, galvanic batteries, reviews, exchances, masculine tone, spurts, printing office, Willow St. & all the chicanery is left on my hands - two poor, bony hands! Life is span- I'm in a stew- Now will you help? Write an editorial-..I'll thank you someday. Prayer meetings may make some people think of tabernacles & Mt. Tabors and whatever's the pural of "good to be here" - but from some of them I couldrun and not be weary. That's the most orthodox way I can find to tell it. Blessed are they that ask for bread and do not receive a stone. The feeling of a great need is grateful to me for it is the precursor of a great pity and great fullness not far away. Castleton -- I feel to strange and lost for anything - I'm afraid to look in the glass for fear it isn't me.... I'm pretty well but tired. It doesn't pay to be tired but what's a man to do? Normal School - Mar-ch-ch-ch-sh-sh! +++ We have more prayers than provender. We have solemn roasts, solemn potatoes, serious pie, & a realizing sense of concocted rice. What will becomeof me in such a frame as this? Laughs are my vital breath.... Soon the bell will ring for supper - not to be eaten but served. Our conversatoin will be heaven, our bread emblematical, our digestion ritualistic. .... My doctor tell me..I must rest or die. Which is the biggest? I don't know which to take. .... These are days of heaven upon Earth, and I rejoice through & through. I'd blossom in purple & red if I knew how. Do you? - Mar. 14" 1871 - Patmos without the vision! Sunday, Mar. 19" 1871 - Mr. ___ is an exminister. I'vespanned him with Montgomery's measuring line wherewith he sounded the ocean's depths and pierced to either pole & his height is seventy six inches. His brain is the seat of sensation. ++++ He prays in minor scale-very minor-and is a very Jeremiah.++++ Mrs.___ you've read about. don't say you haven't for I know better. She abounds in S.S. books and religious memoirs. I never saw a live one before. ++++ I haven't made up my mind whether to be very much afraid of her or make a gasp or two toward "appreciating her worth"! The "Normals" here are awfully old. One of them has taught 37terms! but I find her docile+++ Imagine me before the old, the married, the big - to teach without a book! To be infallible, judicial, celestial, didactic four times a day! Sunday, April 16, 1871 -- I've written the date - anybody could do that. I wonder why we have to live such days. There is discipline in "so as by fire"- discipline even in vacancy - but to have no heart in anything and be simply stupid - where is the help in this? I don't believe I ever felt so utterly cut off from human help beforeAnything that makes me talk to Mr.___ is a terror to me - all his way are. But I believe God is going to help me through. +++ If I never why I was sent to Castleton God has known it all the time. If I could be necessary! - to you - to just a few as i would love to be - as I long to be just once and for always - it would not seem so often, "My vacant days go on - go on". +++I cannot be just a little to any one. I must be a great deal or nothing. "The heart to be all to" will not come to my life. It is one of thebeautiful things that is left out. Love calls to most. It called to me years ago and I Passed it by. It will not call again. ++++ Goodbye. I am very, very tired and only Fanny at that. "half of heaven is the not parting". Why the thought is half heaven! What won't it be to be there and say to each other "Always-always!" And Susie will let you come into her garden and mine where the glorified sumachs [sumacs] and firs are to be. There have been reasons for things, hours for things, andthings and things without hours for them. I used to wonder nights when I went for the milk, and used to [do] up much of my thinking, how it would seem to be twenty three. Now I wonder how it would seems to be a little girl and go for the milk. +++++++++ More than anything I am longing for the woods and hills. Does anyone love a wide stretch of sky and meadow more than I? +++ I thank God for anything that roots and grounds my faith in others. Living & working in thisworld is such a tearing down, pulling away process. My window opens on the grass-plot, which to be truthful must be further limited by the statement that some of it is brick plot! I am thankful for the little bit of green & the little bit of sky bending over it. All around is a high board fence +++ how much of my life lies before me in the pent up struggling grass. How it does fight! "Walled in", I say to myself, remembering how much of me is walled in. "All about ++ everything"! How very modest! Where shall Ibegin? When shall I stop? Would you have any objection to my taking a little bit of the time up in Heaven to finish? I'm afraid I shall hardly be able to get it all in this side. My experience has been that I never seem to get any father than Mr. W. in this world. Castleton--Jan. 18-1872. Something sent Miss H.__ up after school to kiss me & say somehow they all liked me very much. After she had gone one tho't was in my heart. It came rolling up from where the tears are, & the springs of life: "I don't believe I shall every be cross to my girls again."Sunday-Jan. 21--- Something must be done. I am all adrift. For days & days & days I have just gone on; and I must stop a little while & rest & think Tues. 23"- Spoiled another day for my girls, & wish-O yes-yes-yes- that there was help for it! Monday-29".--One thing I lay down for Frances-she must listen to me. "Don't let me hear one cross word this week! Love your girls too well-please do! My life opens into such large wide ways-&&the work makes me so happy && it is like giving the little ones the kingdom. Feb. 24"-- Our friend, philosopher & guide R.G.W. surprised everybody by rising to remark that he had nothing to say on the subject of grammar, butwould introduce to the association Miss Bromley. Nothing less than me - I might say "me less than nothing"! I remember one distinct thrill - from the rest I shall never rally. Monday, Feb. 26"-- What is macaroni? Who first harrowed mankind with it? Why must it be set before me & not desert [dessert] but gingersnaps? A gingersnap is a desert [dessert] but macaroni is dead men's bones. Tues. 27"-- The best thing we have set before our hungriness is rice pudding. How it came to be so good doth not appear but it possesses many saintly qualities. We always have it with beefsteak. Those days do not smile on butter. Thurs. 29-- Again the big noise in our house was me. 'Twasn't bringinga trunk down nor taking a trunk up, but talking Mr. Williams down & bringing life, liberty & the pursuit of happiness up. ++ You mustn't scold a man unless you want to ease your mind, or see what you can do, or show him you are not afraid, or give him an idea of his meanness - but to carry a point-never! Take a silken shuttle & silken thread & spin a man into anything you want - but don't scold him. Tues. March 5"-- Mr. Williams is on a perfect rampage. Stands primed & ready to go off any minute, usually: lately, he runs round to find things to go off about. hawk-like in his nature he looks for achicken & finds one. ++ I've heard of four-footed beasts, & creeping things, & fowls of the air: don't remember to have seen them combined before. +++ Do I get cross any? Not much. There is untold sunshine at the heart of things & it touches me. Thurs. 7"-- Annie A. looks like an untimely frost--bluely dreadful! Sat.9"-- The right proportion, said Miss G., is an ounce of serpent to a pound of love. She was in my room writing a cross letter - both of us cross everywhere but inside. Miss ___ wants to know. Do I tabulate food & clothing? Do I diagram what I don't tabulate? ++++ Mr. Williams prays with his eyes open & [L.] wonders if it isn'ttime his ... was multiplied! March 12"-- Another something that stopped: & I only stop once in a long times to think about it. "Time driveth onward fast, & in a little while our lips are dumb". +++ O for the quiet-calmed-down-toned-down, if need be! only let it reach me. "Friend of sinners! I am in the dark & bewildered & sick at heart!" March 15". O, if the breaths of spring would come faster, would do anything to make the leaves come out. We are cheered by prospects of snow! +++ All the poly things possible to e condensed within four walls take this howling wilderness as their business center. Sat. Mar.15"-- I have learned to fill my soul with a horror of Saturdays. I am in terror over the long dark hall, the sweeping around, above, below me, the orders from below, the inspection of drawers, the bells, the dinners, the harryings by R.G.W. But then I am not a ghoul. If I only had a nice sense of propriety all this would be vital breath - native air. March 27"-- In which I find time to pity myself.== The pivot on which the state turns appeared to us at the first class. We all came in in the afternoon without feathers - we had been picked clean!== The rest of it ishard++but I can bear it. "To distil the one elixir patience" - Must there be another crucible- & another- & another? Will I learn? March 30"-- spring is waiting be wooed-& so is somebody else. Well! March. 31"-- March dies in just such a storm as father died in. Such storms bring it back even over ten years. April 8"-- I am going to adopt Milton's style of address next time I talk to Mr. Williams, Like this: "Sole partner & sole part of all these joys, Earth's hallowed mould, O prince of men, off-spring of Heaven & Earth & all Earth's Lord, O sacred, wise & wisdom-giving Plant, my author & Disposer, what thou bidst unargued I obey"-- And he will answer (probably) "Fair Consort, my latest friend, associate sole"! April 13--Memorable for the contemplated talk with Mr. Williams. Are you sorry to hear that Milton's style was not ours? I know now - how things look different to us as we learn - I can that it is better for me to keep the assistant's place; even tho' conscious that upon me falls the principal's work & more than the principal's care. April 16"-- Winter has very fairly set in! "Come gentle spring! Etherial [Ethereal] mildness come." April 18-- I wish etherial [ethereal] mildness would come to me! I don't possess much. +++ Tt is such a relief to me to be busy setting myself right instead of other people. I know better where to begin! April 27"-- Mr. Williams asks t dinner would we have hot scotch or solid meat? We live to regret the hot scotch & long for solid meat. May2-- It is a sad & sorry thing when one is made to stand before one's self as I have today. +++ I have seen the good, the glory of living, & have fallen in the very presence of it. ++ I stand such a sorry wreck before myself. I have made shipwreck of a whole year. O how the words hurt! May 6"-- We ride down to see them go, & come back to put something in the vacant places so they won't look at us so. We can't see "flame & azure [b]indingeach other - we only see the moving & the places left. May 26" One of the kind of Sundays that I dread when I lie still all day. Thinking is so close to doing that it is hard to have to think when one cannot do. May 29"-- Annie is all in a maelstrom. She makes it a duty to be happy as little as possible, & stay so short a time as possible. +++++++ I will not worry. A pain to bear now that came near enough to be a pain would make me so miserable. I can lay "no plan for next year - not one. I can't see the way. May 30 Would I decorate? I saidnot. She was mistaken. Miss G. & I went ahead with a flag & an umbrella & a flower or two. +++ We came home for the loaves & fishes & found loaves but no fishes. may 31-- A. comes up & I do not spit out much of the hardness that is in my heart lately - the bitterness that comes over one when they have wrought much, loved much, & lost much. June 3-- And the mill goes round & round - & I - if not a hopper what am I? On to the day - the good time out doors - the gala time up in the trees - the rest up in the blue - the whirl in the mill - & the heartsick of it! And what did I do to drive awaythe heartsick for somebody else? Anything? How can I tell? ++ I come up stairs so whizzy & perplexed! June 4--Miss G. asks for tea at dinner. Mrs. Williams arises in presence of us all, unlocks emerald treasuries, wafting odors of Yaddo & Changcha fu chun passes to mysterious precincts eastward. Is gone a long time. We eat on. Reappears - gets a cup. Disappears. Is gone a long time. The door opens. Mrs. W. & the Tea! Someway I'll not ask for tea at dinner. June 6-- "the Lord knoweth them that are his"-- I'm glad for we have a hard time finding it out! The butter is abominable. Never mind - its intentions are all right -it meantto be good. June 7"-- I wish we could browse indiscriminately. We don't. We take "meals regularly". June 22-- My trials consist in getting hammer & nails. Mr. Williams deals out nails as he deals our matches - companionless. +++ We behold with our own eyes a bouncing shortcake in the kitchen window, but not for us. We go down to bread & butter & platitudes.. June 25-- I have had my talk with Dr. F. He made me see things & feel good & now I am coming back next year. June 26-- Pretty hard day, Frances - pretty hard day! June 29-- I do love a wide stretch of sky & meadow: it gives me sucha feeling of perfect freedom - especially when days stretch before me as wide & free as sky & meadow, as full of places for the sunshine to fall & soil for daisies to blossom. +++ How jolly it seems to be company-warranted to rest. July 19" Albany. Today has touched me where I ache & long-on my book side. It was gala-time to me up there in the State Library. I come back elevated seven pegs & a pole! Aug. 10"-- ++ O how glad I am that no one but me knows how I am longing for Broadfields! If only a little piece of it could come into this vacation! At home things are real & hard. We know not anything save "getting a school" & "earning money" & "paying it back".Aug. 17"-- The nicest thing in all day was sitting down by the window with Grandma to knit after the tea-dishes were washed & put away. i wish my life - the whole of it - could be washed & put away for a long time. Aug. 20"-- I cook a great while but not much! Aug. 22"-- It's "no not yet" day! Sept. 5--Castleton-- Things look better. Mother brings deliverance in her very eyes & we set to work cheerily. I never went to my first day with such a heartache & with so little to expect. ++ But I can challenge the promise of this word. I met Miss Bissell first & she throws her arms around my neck & bursts out crying.Sept. 15"-- The silent side - mine - is growing more & more silent as there is daily less to tell & more to bear. Sept. 21-- I wish these days would stay. Why need I when it isn't weather that keeps me fit to live but grace? Sometimes grace takes the form of weather! +++ Folks come & I see them: & they go & I'm properly thankful.... Sept. 29 - Sunday - ++ If religion consists in being pleasant to have about I might as well ask the dear Lord please can't I begin again! Oct. 7"-- When the base & rate are given how do find the percentage? that's what we talk about up at school. Can we afford a new oil-cloth for the dining-room? that's what we talk about at home. How can I come close 7 know - that's what I talk about all to myself. Oct. 18"-- Folks can live & still not have things as they want them. They can still live & not do as they have a mind to. These significant facts are chapter from my personal experience! Oct. 19-- The weather is like last hours with friends before they go. Oct. 28"--What makes me get so tired - so right down tired? I almost wish what I never wished before - that there not five days in a week - that there not forty weeks in a school year.Oct. 29"-- ++ I get up cross - so cross - so cross as never was. Nov. 1"-- ++ I go to school. Sometimes I teach school - other times I only go! Nov. 21"-- ++ I go upstairs to the hall to be alone. Things go so wretchedly I cannot teach. ++ A. comes up softly & puts her arms around me & says, "What do you want me to do about that?" I look about about as pleasant as the piano box & don't want anything. Poor A. goes down. I call myself a narrow neck of land, chiefly stone! Jan. 1" 1873-- Into Isaiah! What does that make you think of Fannie? Play that I asked the question a good ways from todaywhen I have grown up & out of & beyond! Today I only remember the words that have comforted me so & given me out of my storm a great calm - "For the mountains shall depart & the hills be removed, but my kindness shall not depart from there, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed." O years! still let the promise hold me. Jan.6"/73 - Into a prayer meeting. +++I never did want God so much before. ++ The coming home part of the meeting was nice to me: it was like coming up thro' the pines into the world again.Jan 8"/73 - Into red bows & vanities. Did I wear a red bow? When my existence for a long time has been a protest against them. ++ Yes. I deliberately marched to the store, picked out a red bow, came home & tied it & donned the same. If I were the only one who advances on the lifeless bodies of her convictions! By & by I'll begin to resurrect! Jan. 11" - Into grinding processes. Jan. 13" - Into a Cumulo-stratus. I don't seek such places: but sometimes I wake & find myself there; sometimes I'm pushed thro' like a pneumatic railway! sometimes Mr. Williams holds one up for me to jump thro'.Jan. 29"/73 - Into the Promised Land. For what is it but a land of promise to me? ++ I've held it to my soul thro' thankless tasks and heavy happenings++ in days when he was more than usual Williams & I less than ever Frances. That she was there was all & everything to me. In that real land of promise when I glide thro' the open door into the first glow of the warmth & light will my first feeling be one of pain as I feel. My whole life for this? Feb. 3" - Into her eyes - & down deep. " 15" - Into the Spanish Inquisition. ++ One chairman to face & four gold-headed canes - I had never sighed for such bliss! Mr. Williams lookedlike the strongest fortress the Moors ever held in Spain. I only it is ended & Mother's room is the refuge whereunto I flee. Feb. 21"/73-- Into seas of it! Floods of it! ++++ But oh, how cosy [cozy] it looked at home when I came into a nice tea, & a big fire, & a Friday night spasm of content! Feb. 24"-- Into bliss for which I did not sigh. Mother say, "Never mind, it's your last term." The bliss is object lessons & Mr. Williams' face as he looks on "to see if I have the idea"! Feb. 26"-- Into a blue that is the most blue! and I got into it. No alternative is left me, not even that of the man who found hiseyes were out. +++ Poor Mother! how pale & sick she has looked all day. Mar. 2",/73 - Into losing the name of disciple. +++ Could I not have borne for Jesus' sake? I must impose on me sterner discipline, & heart pleadings for strength. Mar. 19" - Into a little more powder now, my boys! Mar. 28" - Into a long pull & a pull a good while. A day of gaspings in Arithmetic, of giant strides in grammar, of much ado about nothing in Eng. Lit., of clutching at & panting in Botany, of crawling Orthography, of leaping for joy in Natural history, of feeling along in other history& going at Algebra in gunboats! What does anything mean for me but school? Mar. 29"-'73-- Into Terra catena - in libera poena-desidero te - English cannot express it. I go reverently to Latin! How much drudgery can be squeezed into one day, & that a leaky, Scrooge-like A.M. - M. P.M. in March I shall know hereafter more definitely than hitherto. April 25"-- Into bein' & doin' & sufferin'. " 17"-- Into matronly perplexities. I do not entertain guests after the primitive style! To turn a cake or bake a kid is very different from nineteenth century breakfast getting. I am sadly inexpert in slicingham, or cutting cold pudding, or finding where Mother keeps things, & I forget to salt! But I do at last muddle a breakfast together. ++++ April 28"/73-- Into knowing how sublime it is to suffer 7 be snapped! I do not bear snaps with dignity. Gentleness & forbearance seems to have been left out of Mr. W.'s religion this morning. My religion was not expecting to be snapped-And so-! April 29"-- ++++ Then I went over to help Ella with her Latin saying sadly to myself, "O Fanny, you have a queer way of laying your life down". April 30"-- Into being a benefactor to Miss Bissell by giving advice which she does not follow!May 1"/73-- Into a night more dreaded than the day. There's no telling what a Board will do. I've always said that. So I was not surprised today when lofty honors were confered [conferred] upon me in the form of a call from Dr. Webber & Gen. G. to learn that it was the wish of everybody & everybody's friend that I should remain here another year & teach with Mr. Williams. I've just sat & held the dreaded thing in my heart until it seems too hard for me - & then the night came for me to toss in & wake every few minutes to think how near heaven was - & now how far. May 2"-- +++ I've worked two ways today. Outwardly - mechanically atthis & that: inwardly at the question "Shall I lay down myself next year that mother & Danny may still enjoy our home here, & the girls come back? or shall I go away?" There is no answer & the rain falls heavily - drearily. May 4"-'73-- Into holding out. ++++ I finish "Middlemarch" & lay it down saying over & over to myself its closing words: "That things are not so ill with you & me is half owing to those who lived faithfully a hidden life & sleep in unvisited graves".keep on asking in my blind discontented way, "What shall be done with me next year? Where can I go?" There's not an answer anywhere. May 9"/73 - Into a next- ++++++ "The one elixir, patience!" How often do I think of that when it seems as if all of me was being thus distilled. There will come a day when there will be a next - so I work hard & find a "forgetting" even in the life of a first assistant. +++ And grandma knits & knits-- May 11"-- Into wishing to be less miserable! May 13"-- Into the more I think I will the more I won't. +++ I know all the words in the Englishlanguage but rest. I rejoice to see the last skeleton of an examination paper dissected, compiled, & filed away. No wonder I never see sunsets any more! May 16"-73-- Into finding people to please & nothing to please them with - such experiences fall abundantly to my lot - they prove disciplinary. May 19"+++ I fish away with imaginary lines in imaginary water & fish up what might have been. ++++ May 22"-- Into feeling heart-bare, heart-hungry, very poor. I am glad to come & find rest in Jesus. Glad of anything that takes me near to Him. May 28"-- +++ Today in my half-decided, sadly tortured state comes a letter from Edward Conant. "Will I go to Randolph next year? "O, yest," I say in my gladness at the thought that anybody want me - that's there's any place for me but this. "O no," I say by & by as I think of Mother & the pretty new house. +++++ June 4"/73.-- Into the new home. We enter it joyfully. Who can know how very good it seems to us? not in ++ its comforts alone but in the happier thought that, if God will, it shall be ours some day. We want mother to have a home all her own again; & we have brave hearts to work for it for her. ++++++++++O Father, reveal to me my duty! direct my feet for I do acknowledge thee! +++ June 5"/73-- Into a deep hard question that I cannot answer. And it grows deeper & harder & makes a burden of my thought to weary me. I am helpless before my life-problem. An answer now & here - its result for all time. I can't stay here next year - how can I! It seems almost wicked when I feel as I do. I can't go away next year - it seems too selfish in me to think of it. O is the right choice always the one that involves the greater self-denial? ++++++ June 7"-- Into taking comfort in the new house with Mother. ++++++++June 9"/73. +++ A new plan possesses me, thought up in a twinkle, but taking may twinkles to work it out. That's one reason why I don't like this world! ++++ June 24"-- +++ All feeling has left me but passivity to accept the best that comes - to let Dr. F. decide. He say stay. +++ July 6 - Albany... There is an ache - a dread in my heart - I have no strength to face next year with Mr. Williams. July 10"-- That Mr. & Mrs. W. will not go to Troy is evident. Won't I live to see the earth open somewhere & gulp him down? Why doesn't somebody want him?July 23/73-- My Latin moves slowly. It is hard for me but I creep on. My hopes rise & fall as a distant college looms before me-- And what will Mother do? is the only pause. Aug. 12"-- ++ I have not knowingly touched terra firma today. I have moved in one most joyous dream of Michigan University, until the year I have so much dreaded seems only as door. Aug. 30"-- I feel restless & stirred up. Nothing rests me or brings free visions of that all enfolding peace; & so I chafe on. +++ It seems so easy to let the Normal School & its troubles swallow me up body & soul: & I lend myself so ready to be swallowed.Castleton Aug. 31"/73-- Into standing before myself. +++ I need greatly these days the strength that comes from the Cross - the look from the Master that humbles. ++ Night comes - & I walk the streets & toss & toss! O Jesus! other refuge have I none! sept. 8"-- Into finding the stuff that R.G.W. is made of! Sept 10"-- A man has been raised up to teach me Greek! Like everyone else raised up for me he wasn't made to order - but I'll make him do. Oct. 12"-- Into the return of blessing. The day had so many things that were restful Oct. 19"-- Into beds of dying leaves.How lovely the trees begin to look. ++ And I, in among the rustling leaves & the lovely places can only think how near I am to being 25. The desolate places would not look to bare to me if Mother, too, was not growing old. Oct. 20"/73-- A letter- +for me. It treats of a fall of 45 ft & no bones broken; of a boy who will study good next term; of money to pay for a slate; of a lamp chimney & four window-lights broken! Oct. 21"-- What I feel like tonight is better conceived by the members of my profession than developed & recorded. Oct 23"-- Dreams of Michiganare like cold water to parched lips, like rest to heavy lids. Oct. 24"-- Into "This is the way the mill goes round"! Oct. 30"--Into patching up today to make it do! Oct. 31"-- Into the Greek Testament. Nov. 1"-- At home this evening is long & cheery: but I want Mother. That isn't all i want. i chafe so under this year's cross - it grows hard to carry & spring looks like a far-off speck. Nov. 4"-- It is what goes out from us from a gathered richness within, more than what comes to us from without that makes us know we live. A bright day - Nov. 5"/73-- Into a little more Greek, at once, my boys! That's all there seems to be of anything except school. A little Greek to read - a little Greek to study - a little rule or two - jump up in my faced every tired minute. But I don't die. I am quite alive. I shall sit up there & feel my way thro' 150 more days, just as tired as this, & then come home to 150 more Greek lessons increasingly hard. Where shall I find something good? In my new garters? Possibly! In Mr. ___? Who can tell? In the original Greek of St John? Always! Nov. 15"-- I've set everythingto rights but me, & I'm all to wrongs! Nov. 20"/73-- Our boy at home. We think he has improved. If God would only give some of us wisdom, strength, influence to hold him back from the pit that is digged - from the snares that lie in wait! Nov. 23"-- Into feeling unfeignedly comfortable.! Nov. 27"-- Home is so full of cheer today - there is so much in it that I want to keep. Nov. 28"-- A boy set down in our family seems to have been an unprepared for event. It is almost sufficient to furnish matter for the Tragic Muse. My hopes lookforward - But, oh "Thou Friend of Sinners! I am bewildered, & in the dark, & sick at heart." Nov. 29"-- Into a cheery Saturday night. I revel in the cosy [cozy] evenings by the fire with Mother. Nov. 30"-- I felt so good this morning so well, so strong. +++ Mother & I walk & talk, & plan for our boy - & next year looks at us wistfully. Dec. 3"-- Mother sat up till three o'clock sewing for Dan. That worried me wide awake: & i thought, & thought & thought if I could give up Michigan next year & let Danny stay in school. Dec. 6"-- Into "[Bils] of Work" by F. B.! Don't look at me, or talk to me. I don't dare look at myself.Dec. 7"-73-- Into a rest spot. Days at home, lately, are so nice all of them! Dec. 11"-- Into whatever is the opposite of "outing": I suppose Patience Strong would call it inting! +++ I go into winter quarters in Greek! Sunday, Dec. 14"-- A day that came like a hope of heaven in a field of graves. Dec. 20"-- Into little done or thought, or dreamed. That last is much missed out of a day of mine. +++ I keep thinking of that pitiful little note from my boy - the sick. Dec. 22"-- I was mercifully spared from a dragging-on existence.Dec. 17"-- Mother has been gone three days. The fires have gone out only three times around. We have eaten starch for soda in our cakes only twice! Dec. 29"-- Into finding things to be glad about. Jan. 10 1874-- I live too fast - so much is certain. +++ i write Greek exercises, & get girls ready for examination & answer the door bell - & after my hands at last drop, & the light is out I want to think of our absent boy & pray & pray & pray for him - but I am too tired to lift my heart. This not the way I was made to live, & my release seems far-off.Jan. 11"-"74-- ++ I am glad of the Sunday - glad to be more & more ashamed "to speak of burdens to a Man on a Cross". O god! give me the life Thou didst give Thy Son! And home - all of it -makes me sorry. Jan. 15-- ++ A vacant day: not music, no dreams - no incense - only vague reality - a living on. +++ Jan. 19". +++ Dr French appears, armed & invincible. he says, "Don't stay here." My heart say "No - I won't." But I must wait. He only, of all others, says "Go to college." Every one else says no. Feb. 3"-- We have ups & downs since Dan's letter came. What he means isincomprehensible. We are left to worry about it - which we do in a manner never before attained. It was a mistake sending a boy down in our family. But we are learning so fast that the next generation may all be boys & we'll be ready for 'em. One can live & worry, too. the latter doesn't kill one - at least not me - any more than teaching with R,G.W.! Feb. 7"-'74-- A good word comes from the boy & our hearts take rest. It is a blessed giving from the King in answer to my feeble asking. He cannot fall away & be our disappointment - not as long as I bear him up to the everlasting Arms. Work makesme feel good today. It is so nice to work at home. Feb. 12" '74-- The bell rang a year ago this morning &, Fanny, do you remember that I promised never to make you walk up to answer its call another first day Feb. morning? This seems like one of the problems where the slate & pencil were taken away from me. The girls bring good cheer. There's a spirit of good times in Normal Hall. ++ I go home from it into a cloud that settles black & grim & sends tears to my eyes. Feb. 13"-- What can she do! I suppose this is one phase of the woman question! +++ The answer seems tobe to start a school, to be its first, its motive power, & its waste material. Feb. 19-'74 ++ I feel so unsatisfied & forlorn today. I can't find higher level & no pastures are green. +++ Feb. 20"-- What the final decision is. I don't know what the [number] of this final decison is. There have been so many since the first one I've lost track. Today proclaims we move. It makes me tired & sorry. +++ There have been cheery things today, & I have been in smoothe waters without much of any head wind. March 1"-- I take long looks at mother & the cosy [cozy] sitting room & envy & enjoy till I am dizzy withthe blessedness. Home never seemed as nice as it does this winter. Mar. 3"-'74-- +++ How proud I should be to have my boy turn out well! Now my heart calls for this as from the Father who had a son in this world & gave him power to overcome mar. 11"-- There are some of my girls that will never let life look very dark to me - some that are as priceless as these priceless days that are taking them from me. Mar. 12"-- I know one thing thro' the day-school. I know one thing thro' the night - Greek. +++ i can't erase mistakes & i am longing to right all things - to make myselffelt forever. ++ if I only could! I love my girls so! March 17"-'74-- I am in my martyr mood today: that is I go about kind o' pitiful & work with my teeth set & my hands holding on hard; but not a word do I utter! This well for those who learn of me. Mar. 19"-- I feel a good deal forlorn. I drag Fanny around. I make her teach & write & translate - & the child doesn't want to. Even Michigan is a terror to her. Mar. 20"-- I change my habits & become a guest. ++ E. has a pretty home. I envy girls with a father. ++ There is a plant here they call heartsease & I love it. Mar. 23"-'74-- ++ I'm tired of buying coats for a contrary naughty boy who will do what we don't want him to. Don't let me worry about it. ++ Let me grow patient & keep busy with living. Let me lay day - & lay down -& lay down - that I may take again. Deny - deny -deny- thyself. Mar. 24"-- In which I cannot face a frowning world. +++ Danny is head-strong & unreasonable, school stormy & discouraging, & my head fairly swims for want of rest - & all of these things move me. "Jesus - A Saviour" - I need nothing tonight so much as to be saved. Mar. 25"- There is a happiness in the bright morning when soul & body wake together strong for whatever comes.++ O if I can only keep tender, loving feelings & be patient nothing else shall worry me! Mar. 26"'74-- In which I am "pleasant to have about". The rarity of this accounts for its being recorded! The whole day has been like a hope of heaven. I love these new fresh days! Mar. 28"-- it seems so strange to feel the shackles of my work so unceasingly. I reproach myself for taking one moment to play. But rest is coming. April 1"-- In which i lift up mine eyes unto the hills & help cometh. There's spring enough to smell the sweet breath of pines, & see the water running, & watch the sunset glory on bare hill-tops. ++ I thought of Sue. She must bethe poetry of my life for there is no beautiful thing that does not bring me thoughts of her. All before this lay a day of hard work with a headache & thoughts roll & roll. April 7"-'74-- ++ School is such a treat to me when I feel like work - & I do today every inch of me. April 9"-- I go to prayermeeting & hear about living above the world. I know less about that than I once did. The work of this world - the hope of success draw me & chain me. ++ "Bringing every tho't into captivity to the obedience of Christ!" Ah, I have work to do-- There's mud & sow & spring is an ancient myth. April 10"-- ++ It's so nice with Mother today. What I shall do when I can'twork by her & talk to her next year I can't bring myself to think. April 14"-'74-- In which a wave of trouble rolls across my peaceful breast. It takes the form of a coal bill. I have been so in hopes those old bills could wait a little. I feel bound hand & foot this spring with Michigan before me. School partakes of the coal bill - so does the sitting-room & the coal stove! Not much "Broadfields" about me today! April 18"-- +++ Well - there's one thing - my salary is a comfort to other people! April 19"-- Heaven has sent us a reminder of itself in the day: a suggestion of what may be somewhere. I felt like resting my heart in thetenderness that is in the Almightiness. I asked for bread & he gave me a creed! never mind. The beauty of God & the glory are all about me. ++++ Mother & i have a nice visit. We talk of the time when Danny will be thro' school, & be a joy & comfort to us - when the old debts shall all be paid, & our new house shall be builded! April 23", '74-- +++ These are pleasant days to me after all; full of the work I live & the light of young faces & loving hearts. April 25"-- We are in another [woful] snow storm ++++ I suppose all we can do is to shovel paths & hope. +++ A letter from Cousin Mary lays hold of me: "You cannot do too much for your mother. If you could see things as Isee them now would love, trust & indulge her more than all the world." April 26"-'74-- The ninth regular snow-storm in the series was delivered today! ++ but there's cheer inside. I am very tender to Mother all day. Can anything ever take her from me? How weak I feel to keeps her! - & yet how strong! April 28"-- In which I don't know what to do with Fanny ++ If she had said anything today it would have been cross. ++ How thankful I am for the little sources of discipline. I wish I had enough more to make me behave. ++ O for power - for power to become a son of God! April 29"-- ++ I'm so cross I can'tstand it! +++ The mignonette, in the dear little bouquet that came yesterday, has helped. It holds me fast like soft hands touching mine in the dark. May3"-'74-- In which I consent to live. It begins to smile out of doors, & the desert places are going to blossom. +++ Mother & I chatter, chatter thro' the day. ++ I write to the boy, too: & I lie awake & think & pray that God will give his angels charge concerning him. He must ot break my Mother's heart. I think over & over what Mary wrote - "Trust her, love her, indulge her more than all the world." May 4"-- In which "heavy, heavy hangs over me." I go up the Monday steps slowly & not steadily. I ponder overin my heart the things R.G. said to me & I take fire. ++ I guess I shall stand it! I've had an extended course of standing it. +++ Comfort comes in the girls' prayermeeting. May 8"-'74-- ++ I think & think what we will all do & how we can get along: but nothing comes of it. In the meantime I write to Michigan & ask big questions. And so the days go. May 15"-- In which there is something new to be glad about - my copy of De Quincey. +++ There's an end to every trouble under the sun. Even examination papers will fade away. But there's no end to a joy. My books are durable riches. May 17"-- In which serene is thelight in the soft May weather." My heart rests & sings. ++ "O moment gone too soon & morning left behind!" The pale gray night comes down, & in the stillness I am left with God +++ He is nigh even at my doors. May 18"-'74-- In which one girl gets tired - too tired to think or be good. But as old Mr. ___ says: "It's a good deal to ask any body to be good all the time"! May 19"-- In which the things that make me tired are not less. "A lodge in some vast wilderness" has had a pleasant sound of late. +++ I am a living martyr to the present ideas of education: & I scold to myself about it which martyrs never do. May 24"-'74-- In which rest remaineth. ++ It has been a hard week. +++ My thoughts of heaven are alloyed with thoughts of work, & dreams that do not centre near the Throne. I never needed more a tidal wave to sweep over in my life & carry me out of myself. Will not God send it? Or must I always live this way? May 26"-- In which I am again in the crucible. === I go to bed but cannot sleep. Life touches me at so many points: & who is sufficient for these things? May 27"-- +++ My head fails me. Every little nerve sends up its feeble protest. But there is no help. I must workFanny still: & if she runs over & lets out cross things how shall we punish her? Ah, the punishment is swift & sure! There are nights of pain - unknown. June 2"-'74-- In which I find plenty to do. You may have heard something of this kind before! ++ This is Sir Launfal weather; & the nights are those in which Maud came into the garden. ++ Life is full of grammar & arithmetic & essays: but the blue is somewhere! June 6"-- In which my desires lie in the direction of a ride & not in the direction of Botany questions. But I do not take the ride & I do take the Botany. I can't set myself to work. I have to drag the child to it & pin her witha star. She has things on her mind & she is restless. June 9"-'74-- ++ School is pleasant. It's one of the days when I resolve to teach always. June 12"-- ++ I'm glad I'm just as I am - mostly. I'm so up when I am up & so down when I am down. But it's good to enjoy with all your might even tho' you suffer in the same way. June 29"-- In which our mode of life is primitive. ++ I wash windows & sweep, & contemplate my work as the gods eat ambrosia - in a fit of divine abstraction. ++ My greatest housewifely accomplishment consists in being able to be here washing windows, & being off somewhere else at the same time - in fingering & thinking at opposite ends. July 1"-'74-- In which chaos is no more. One only needs to move to be reminded of the creation. Cohoes-July 13"-- I am full of the summer pleasantness, & a quiet, restful content. I have a feeling as if I had just been converted: & what is that like but opening tired eyes & seeing the "place prepared" for the first time. July 17"-- In which I am in the middle of the pasture, & do not even put my head over the fence. July 21"-- In which courage predominates. She kind that works & will not stop - that dodges pain - &will not worry. Aug. 1"-'74-- In which August drips in. Greek & I are getting on very good terms now. +++ I don't jump around at my work & sing: I creep when I'm up & sit down pretty often. +++ The moment D. leaves me nights I worry & I worry until he comes in. It makes me feel better, little book, to tell you about it. If I could only look on & see him safe-! Aug. 5"-- In which my boy is good to me & shows me his best in our quiet talk. Almost every summer has had in it some intense longing which has been put into words only for God's ear. This time it is all for my boy - the pain & longing. God is God -"To doubt is still disloyalty". My neuralgia is assuming painful proportions. I am found pitying myself. Aug. 9"-'74-- In which it might have been glad & heartsome. That is hasn't been makes me toss & toss. buy why do I chronicle my tossings as if they were good things to keep? As if in God's world the aches & sorries did not perish & the bright things only live on? God tells us so much about blotting out. I sat up stairs a good while & the quiet made me over. Aug. 10"-- Everything at home has taken on the most uncomforting aspect. I do so want Mother to be at least a little happy: & I think &think & plan & plan - but the night takes it all up away from me. Aug. 15"-'74-- In which its time Sunday came. I love the Sundays - look, long, wait for them - most of all when I am with Mother. I keep in my heart most lovingly the memory of our Castleton Sundays. They'll be dearer than ever when the little mother is gone. What made me think of this? It must be because she is so pale & tired today. Aug. 17"-- In which I make great efforts to be a hero. My most desperate attempts have been in two directions - to study some, & to sit up straight & still & bear the toothache. I've a great desire to see someone who achieved heroism by this method. I'd like also to knowif two of their teeth ached. +++ The little Mother is better. Her face brightens & she is her own dear little self again - our everyday hero. Aug. 19"-'74-- After a wilderness I come upon a goodly heritage. I am requested to be in Castleton at one & "take charge of the Normal School". +++ I hasten to order me a hat, & walk as the head of a Normal School would be expected to walk: & I dream as girls dream. Forgive my weakness! Mother comes home springing. Castleton - Aug. 22"-- In which I am fully instructed as to the kind of charge I am to take of the Normal School. My reception at Castleton partakes of warmth: I am waited uponby the dignitaries of the town, & compose myself to a placid benignity in the hotel parlor. Developments are not slow: i soon see that taking charge does not mean taking charge at all. What I think of it will not now be recorded. In the meantime observe my benign placidity. Aug. 23"'74-- In which He strengthens my heart. I have so dreaded this Sunday without the little Mother. God has not let me miss Him, too. +++ I am ready to take the place I did not choose - to be subordinated & humiliated if it be His appointing. Aug. 24"-- I go to the task of filling up the Normal School with a vanishingcourage. Lilly C. comes & takes me to ride - carries me off to reverie & dreams. I do not come back as I went. I am so like a child about going into the deeps of a joy; & so not like a child in my efforts to rise above the heights a a sorrow. Aug. 25"-'74-- In which they sent Mr. Sherman to talk to me. It is the old story that is told to girls & women as they learn with every struggle that they contend with men. A college boy, because he is a boy, is preferred, without experience or years: & the woman is passed by. Ah! don't I know how it feels. A man, they tell me, "will give the school more of a name." Andso the letter is already on its way that recommends Mr. Hyde to the principalship of the Normal School; & I, who have loved it so, & worked for it so long am out of sight. The whole of me says, as I toss 7 toss, "I will not stay." Aug. 26"-74-- In which I look for God's answer in a calm that is strange & welcome. The drawing away of the profs in Castleton means, does it not? that I shall realized my dearly-loved purpose & see Michigan. Aug. 28"-- In which there is a high tide & low tide. ++ I find myself the joyful recipient of a letter or two stating the certain coming of a student or two;& in the same mail I find myself the woe-begone recipient of other letters stating the certain staying away of a student or two.! ++++ R.G. Williams is vanished from my horizon! I have lived to see this day! Aug. 30"-'74-- A day of peace in country places. +++ Tonight I could pray for my boy & it has seemed sure, so sure, that he should be preserved from evil, for my faith grows stronger & stronger. Sept. 1"-- In which the tendencies are domestic. I sit on the upper piazza & aspire to make good sheets! +++ The day is full of the thoughts that almost always come with stitches. Someof them are restless; but those that stay are calm & full of courage. I feel so sure that the best shall be for me & mine. Sept. 4"-74-- In which I am at the height of all dreariness. ++ Which means that the Normal School is not filling by tens & dozens. ++ How am I to get up any spirit? I must find a way out of this. Come-arouse! The generations are calling & you are not a hero! sept. 6"-- In which there comes a growing comfort & a Sabbath peace. I wish I could make myself feel something away down deep - as deep as I ever feel. What is going to come upon me to bring me out of this valley?Sept. 10"-'74-- +++ The Board has met & it is done. E.J. Hyde is principal. God is plainly calling me to do a hard thing - To stay here & take the lower place - to stand here in the dark & suffer! Sept. 13"-- In which I am quiet a few minutes. How well for me it is! Anybody like me ought to be quiet a great many minutes: but my life spins on ++ while all the time I am wishing so still to myself that I had a little home & my work could lie inside of it. +++ I take all my steps in a maze - for where do they lead? Sept. 21"-- +++ I come back from the dear little home-visit with the firm purpose of making all the peoplepossible glad that I am to live among them! Sept. 24"-'74-- In which my hands are unequal to their burdens. Oct. 3"-- In which the King comes to his own. ++ It seemed God's message when the doctor came & took us up to the lake & among the woods & hills. ++ Was I ever known to forget my rides -- they form epochs! Oct. 5"-- ++ This girl is a mystery unto herself. She might be always kind, tender-hearted, forgiving - but she is far from it. O-God help her! Oct. 7" +++ Work is a delightful solace tho' I can't talk & explain. I sit in a grim silence which means only sorrow.Oct. 9"-74-- In which the evening is long & quiet to myself alone - one of my lovely times when I can bear to look out upon things as they are & not lose heart Oct 11"-- In which the day is delighted in ++++ It is easy to be homesick but I won't let me. ++ Everything cosy [cozy], even a cosy [cozy] thought, is a comfort - & I find a few. Oct. 12"-- ++ My courage is slowly coming back, as the old work is taken up & the put-away things are taken out. How funny all my dreams see - I who was to have been at Michigan! Oct. 13"-- ++ A metamorphosis going on. A cross girl is to be fixed over into a sunny girl. Come & see!Oct. 14"-74 ++++ The girl wakes & clings - oh, how she clings! - to the hand held out to her - lest a cross word come - a heartless word - God help her! I think the struggle going on down here in the dark is part of the battle for Christ. I can feel Him so much nearer since the conflict began. Nov. 2"-- In which the leaves go & the comforts begin to take their place. Nov. 3"-- In which the girl wonders how so many happy things could come at once. Nov. 4"-- In which mine is the deep joy, the unspoken fervor the sacred fury of the fight! This is one of the days when the girl likes to talk to herself - & to God. What she says in those still moments,let us hope will make her what she finds it so hard to be. Nov. 11"-'74 +++ I am clasped in the cold arms of Duty! This is why I am not at Michigan. You find me a favorite phantom chased & not graceful Sophomore. I am learning - how slowly! - not to expect all things to move for one girl. Nov. 17" ++++ I've not watched this girl today & I feel - as if it would never be helped. Do I not know the sunless depths that come after such a day? Am I never to be helped? Or must I be shown & shown & shown that without Him I can do nothing? Nov. 24"-74-- +++ There's a girl here that's wanting to go home. Some days she never hears the cars : today every car-ring goes thro' her. +++ I don't believe she is sorry down in her heart for this hard day. The pain is so sweet - the help so precious. +++ The home letter teases the child to come. Danny, bless the loving boy-heart! - sends dear words to me. Nov. 25"-- In which this looks pretty hard. ++ The joy that I can do it makes my face bright as I kiss the girls off & watch the trains go. How good life is even such times! Dec. 2"-- In which I make the world a little brighter for some people. +++ I take some time tobewail that I have downs as well as ups. This is also a source of regret to those who have to do with me! I stand the girl up straight & say, "Are you comfortable to have about? Then I'll know how much of a Christian you are." +++ I tell you what you may believe it or not but I'm good today. I've embraced Miss W. 1 I try to radiate geography & make the highways of grammar & arithmetic glorious. Hard job! Dec. 5"-74-- in which it's about so! Dec. 16"-- in which I come to a standstill. Dec. 19"-- in which I embrace my Mother & enter into rest. +Dec. 27"-- In which I come to a great calm.Jan. 8-/75-- Gives me the idea! I comprehend at once about what I've got to come to. I can get a good deal in a taste! All the joy there is in holding a girl down tight & making her stay is mine to the full. How thankful I ought to be for blessings like these! Jan 26"-- Shows me prospects of continued discipline. I fight at the very thought. I raise up an armed insurrection in my heart : but there's nothing to do but quell it & meet my fate. Jan. 29"-- Has to go chasing about for endurance. It is a pitiable sight. One can't gaze upon martyrs every day. Jan. 30"-/75-- Gets where the Dark is. These are cheering pages. What an addition they would be to the literature of the desponding! Such chroniclings of love rising triumphant over frowning worlds - of a brave will conquering & defying fate - of a patience that is not afraid to walk alone! Let the heroic record stand for "some forlorn & shipwrecked brother," +++ I go sorrowing these days for appreciation. Isn't this high moral courage? Feb. 2"-- Brights & darks alternate. Anything like a bright even with a dark tied to it comes as hopeful as the sounding tread of a victorious army to the waiting prisoners in the city!Feb. 3"-75-- Floats me about - My catch words do not of late convey any idea of fixedness. I am a spar floating, or a spindle whirling, or a speck wherving, or a piece of endurance chasing about. Feb. 12"-- Pushes into worries. The way there is so plain that I never lose the path. Feb. 16-- The girl thinks that she will do a great deal but she doesn't - she worries. She sees herself in the midst of things she ought to help: & some of them she does help - & the rest torture her. Feb. 19-- Do take a chair! That's the way people talk to you when your back aches. People whose backs never ache lay out the straight & narrow path.Mar. 4-/75-- I was glad to creep under the shadow of a trouble greater than mine. Glad to think of the eternal peace into which another soul has drifted. Mar. 21"-- Sunday - strengthens my heart. I am always so glad to see the Sundays come: & the Sundays here this year have been particularly dear & holy to me. Mar. 28-- Sunday - makes me fitter to live. ++ At church the flowers told us of resurrection & the sunshine made us glad. Mr. __ had caught none of the Easter joy. He threw his sermon at us, fiercely. April 2"-- All the melancholy verses of the forlorn poetswould apply. Minor strains wail through the rain. I grow & increase in ability to worry. What becomes of my religion such days as these? Cohoes - April 3"-75-- Is ready for a hallelujah or two! Delectable mountains have risen between yesterday's rain & today's clear blue, as I rush towards home & the little mother waiting on the hill. April 4"-- Being allowed to wake up in a christian manner is an ecstasy I had almost forgotten. I have been rung up so long! I never felt so tired before.Castleton - April 26"-/75 It looks as if there were a demand just now for a heart for any fate! I'm not on a quest for the immortal glory part of anything. To see me mount heights (stairs especially) would give you the most painful sensations. +++ I crawl on - & doze & doze when I can - & call it getting along. "Lift up your eyes & see!" April 30" - So glad not to have a headache. So glad to go into the schoolroom & find so much work waiting for me. I had thought for a little while that I could never go into the schoolroom again.May 13"-75. Something lovely & new is being done out of doors every day. It rests me so - I can teach 7 teach & not get tired a bit. It makes me just as happy in my work as I can be. The poetry of the May weather steals in & makes rhyme even out being rung up, rung down, rung out, rung in. June 21"-- Dreams of a better world. Anybody could with a lap full of essays. I know of nothing more likely to awaken thought of a heaven for you & a heaven for me! "How do you do it?" says Ignorance. "Why, re-write them, stupid!"June 24"-/75-- You'd better be careful, Fannie. There's always somebody near enough to get a part of your shadows. June 29" - Cohoes - The home door swings wide for me. God keeps me still a mother to be glad I came! July 1"-- Many of the interesting details which have hitherto been all-absorbing to this journalist will appear no more. There will be no more mention of bells or of anything that may, can, must, might, could, would or should be done. There will be only resting & dreaming with no money in it anywhere! I want it under-stood that I want my dreams aerial, etherial [sic] - that kind. July 3-/75-- I delight to record a visit with my mother & her mother in the open door. This is a good world as long as the mothers stay in it. July 5"-- Mother's short cake roused all our slumbering patriotism. We sat & loved the country where such berries could grow. July 17"- Crawford - ++ I've left the hard part for this last little corner. A little place is big enough to fret in. I've come to a standstill. But the Lord knows what to do with me. I am trusting a little.July 18"-/75--Knows how His love went before me each day. It came with all its beauty giving no sign. Night ended in day while yet tired eyelids lay upon tired eyes. July 23"-- My early ride was perfection itself. Such an air as I have not breathed since I left heaven, long ago. July 25"--Sunday - Lives in sunlight. Aug. 3"-- Lives in a What shall I do? +++ Everyday it seems harder to go anywhere & leave Mother. Weak-hearted girl! But she does love Mother so! [O years]! speak tonight. Open just a little way & tell me things.Aug. 4"/75-- Things look better to me today - brighter. As if I could do things - sometime. As if mother should have a quiet, happy old age. Aug. 9"-- Brings so much. ++ I was so happy I woke up in the night to think about it. I felt so good all day. Nothing could mar it. Aug. 19"-- Cohoes - Horrifies me! This page is for the desponding. It starts out as if it might be so bracing. +++ Yes, it comes over me - the darkness & hopelessness of things. Looking forward makes my heart sink, & I seem not to touch the solid earth. Why I never can go & feel like this. I never felt so before.Aug. 22"-/75-- Has a hope in it - that the head will be better tomorrow. +++ Talks at home have been more cheerful. It looks a little as if it would not seem quite so dreadful to go away. Taking up a new life in a new place, among indifferent faces sets me to hunting up all my courage, just to think of it. Aug. 29"-- [Woos] me away from life's tangles & perversities. It seems easy for such things to heap up, & where the biggest heap is you'll see me standing round most generally!Aug. 30"-/75-- I got up with the spirit of the morning in me, & everything that came near me touched some happy spring. Sept. 7"--the part of me that tosses & dreads things finds this a shut-up summer. Sometimes it will not rest on the promises that lie like solid rock under my life. It wonders if the time for sacrifice is come - if the taking what I so wish & yet dread to take is God's will for me - It wonders if anybody at home must give up one little hope or joy to give me this. Sept. 8"-- Keeps me pondering. These are bright days. Whowould think that in such days anyone would flounder in the dark asking questions. But I know who does. Sept. 11"-- Waxes not valiant. ++ It took me way out of myself to watch the hills tonight. I realized then that there was a shadow to lift. Such a dreary miserable sickness these days. Next week I must be better. It can't last always. There's been good cheer at home today. Sept. 16"-- Looks forward too much - & back plenty enough. What I fail in is "lending a hand". I look enough to supply all the demands. +++ Why-how can I make you know how dreadful going away looks to me! Sept. 23"-- Fixes clouds in the sky. It seems as if they were fixed to stay - as if it would never be bright & glad in my world again. ++ I can't say, "Not as I will." I hold up defiant hands at fate. I can be a weak little girl & cry & cry & cry. I keep thinking "I will be well - I must go." Have I not asked God all summer to tell me what is best?Sept. 24"-75--Lets the sun shine in. I kept looking to the hills all day & thinking how lovely it was. ++ Today my heart doesn't say "I will go" - it just waits. sept. 25"-- Stands in the dark & suffers. +++ The doctor has been seen - we know now. The day was so bright it almost seemed as if I couldn't ask anything but what I should have. Not so. It gives not & it takes. It falls upon me. Be He knows - that God for that. Sept. 26" - Sunday - All alone with the day & the pain. Sept. 29"-- Has a little help in it. In any trouble howI dread the first waking thoughts - those that come before we are wholly ourselves to face things & get courage together. Oct. 3"-/75. I noticed how bright everything was this morning because I wanted it so. +++ A long ride up the hill & drearier thoughts than I shall ever tell you or any one. I go off to bed alone with them. Oct. 4"-- Anybody would think I might revolve a little even on a creaking axis : but there wasn't any such thing done. I decide to think today & achieve tomorrow. Oct. 9"-- Has a ring of triumph in it. ++ God's great sunrisehasn't found me out but one of the best little earthly ones has. Oct. 13"-/75-- I pray so to get better - to be well. I will be so careful of the child if she will only get so she can walk once more. It is so hard to sit still these days & wait. But His grace is near. Oct. 14"-- Looks out for courage. Do you think it failed to come. It did not - it is there - ready - sure. +++ I am really getting better - O am I not? Isn't something the least little bit better? I get so sure of it - I feel way up. Oct. 17"-/75. +++ It makes me wish for the work - some work - any work. O God! anything but this! Nov. 14"-- Tosses - as it did one day before. +++ There's nothing down-hearted in the talk & I keep where Mother & the children are a great deal. When I do go off by myself the white chrysanthemums make me cry. The little thoughts that come of mother are so dear & close. In my thought of what I am to do or be I find myself in a perfect struggle. I can feel my heart beat as I try to decide which way is best - as I try to know just what God means for me. I try to see His way -but, oh, I so want His way & mine to be the same. Mother doesn't say much - O if I only knew what to do! Oct. 15"-/74-- ++ I go down to River St for Agnes - my one sister. I feel kind of sorry for this child as she trudges along, choking back the tears, as she thinks how hard it is to plan to go to Smith College - & how much she wants to do for Mother & the children. Well - well - we won't feel sorry. We'll just work all we can & trust God for the rest. Nov. 16"-- It's a pull & haul day. +++ I hate to have Mother get tired. I would so love to have a home for herfree from all this - just as some mothers have it. Nov. 22"-/75-- I go down to the doctor's & come back on wings. He says I am better - that I may get well. What could I hear that would be like this to me? Nov. 25"-- Thanksgiving - "Rejoice in hope." The girl that was down yesterday, down at the bottom of the hill where it is lonely, lonely, is way up today. I was so glad all day just be at home. Nov. 27"-- Mr. Johnson's words to Gertie about Vassar for me seem like an answer straight from God. I have so prayed that if there was any other way He wouldmake it known. Nov. 28"-/75-- ++ I think of Vassar & think, & think, & wonder if it is for me. Wonder what God's answer will be. Dec. 2"-- Brings the answer! I believe it is from God -- I believe I shall go. I get all my Latin books out & begin to climb the mountain is before me. Dec. 3-- Associates itself with dark closets. This is where I get some days & peep out on life thro' chinks. Dec. 10"-- A little better - a little brighter - but so tired! How could she study with the pain & the restlessness? +++ I can't bear lately to think how much I love mymother. Oh how close they lie - the tenderness & the pain! Dec. 11"-75-- "Let me hide myself in Thee!" Dec. 12"-- Gives me rest - not because I am worthy, but because He is good. Dec. 18"-- Insists on being an anniversary! +++ I feel stronger today & very hopeful. 1876 Jan. 6"-- A day when the steps turn away from home & toward a new unknown. One of the solemn days when we touch reverently all the little things that we must leave. +++ The last rolling away - the space between & the beginning of the great loneliness that already threatens to swallow meup. The ride up the hill to Vassar - the first look at its walls in the moonlight! Jan. 8-'76-- Will I go & be Lady Principal of Waynesburg College? says my letter. We will see. Jan. 10"-- A day when things don't begin. It takes an interminable length of time to get planted here. One has to be laid above ground sever days. +++ Jan. 14"-- ++ When I think of where I am & how I came here & what I have the chance to do my heart grows so warm, so glad that I know I can bear anything. +++Jan. 19"/76-Vassar-- A day when I lived tho' it! ++++ I feel a little fresh & good with the first of things: but on into the day I get to wondering what is to become of me. Jan. 20"-- A day when I stand like one bewildered. As given below: I want that position on Waynesburg. I just do. I want the course here - I just do. I don't know what to do - I just don't. ++ Jane. 22"-- ++ For me, the hermit, there was plough boy's work without the plough-boy's whistle. ++ Five pages of Cicero's first Oration, interrupted with flashes of Waynesburg. A solitary walk with a storm threatening, & my perplexities also threatening. Never mind. When I am oppressed Hewill undertake for me. +++ Jan. 26"-/76-Vassar-- A day when my career continues to be spectre-like. To stop & think about it, which we never get time to do here, it is easy to appreciate the feelings of a phantom, gliding thro' these halls & sailing around these woods! Never to be thought about, or missed, or noticed! ++++ Jan 27"-- A day when I will be glad anyway! +++ Jan. 28"-- To remove my spectre habiliments & find somebody that wants to talk to me because they do & not because I am alone, or a stranger, or woe-begone, is now the desire of my heart! +++Feb. 1"-/76-V/C.-- A day when there's a great flutter of things. Things here means heart. Put in the plural because I have a great many of them & all fluttering. +++ Feb. 22"-- A day when I sould keep his memory green! +++ God help me to fulfill in my life the best, the noblest wishes of the dead father, & care always for the one boy he fain would have taken with him! ++++ Feb. 25"-- +++ Worst siege yet encountered in V.C. Miserable floundering in Greek, & another squelch in Horace. I do get up stairs at last. Cry it out! +++ A day without a smile from any human being: & a long stretch of hard work without a letter. Vassar - Mch 5-76 +++ had my everyday siege of homesickness - the awful sort. No dear little Mother to come in. ++ Why can't I have her a few minutes? +++ Mch 24"-- Not a day to be blue in. Everything above & around laughed & shouted or was just going to. +++ Greek & dinner - neither in any demand by yours truly. A feeble attempt to walk. Abandoned! No more attempts to chronicle except the scramble to live tho' the President's prayer. April 4"-- ++ A great many bodies are packing. Found Laura Skinner at it & ventured to say "What does this mean?" "It means 'Exit Skinner'", quoth she. ++++April 13" '76 - Cohoes-- Here's a girl no good to anybody, wriggling this way 7 that under excess of aches & ills +++ looking forward to day after day just like this, pitiless & grim. What a queer standstill I've come to! Let's talk about the lilies in the window How they grow; & the pin, how fast it is opening to the light-- & the baby at the neighbor's window-- & Grandma so safely past the din & the struggle-- & of a sure safe time past all this weariness. No - it isn't for nothing that we hope & dream. April 17"-- ++ How comfortable that big rocking chair is with the huge pillows. This is the bestlife & the world can do for me now. The best I can do for me now. The best I can do for myself is to wait in patience for the sunshine to come back. April 19",/76 - Cohoes-- A day when the story reads not a bit as I had written the plot! There's just about as much of the awfulness of living on as there was when I came home - & I ought to be in V.C. this very day. +++ The doctor leaves some miserable little concoctions, vile & ineffectual, & says I'm pretty bad off. No, I aint neither! There's fifty years in me yet - good solid ones too! Cohoes - April 20"-76-- A day when I have "hurries to go". There are all beginning down there, & I'm up here fenced in. +++++ Sunday-April 2[5]"-- +++ It seems a myth to me that I ever got up Sunday morning & walked down to church - ever got up at all in fact. Little snatches of minutes between the pain - these take the place of all larger ambitions. ++++ April 24"-- It's surprising how little I can get her to caring. Dying or coming back to life - it seems all one to me +++ April 25"-- ++ The nights are very long. The great thoughts - the thoughts that have carried methro' so many unfilled hours - will not come to help me. But God's promises come & lift my heart up into the blessed places. +++ April 26",/76-- +++ How could I love my home more than I do? If God will only let me be well again - well enough to work! But I lie here waiting. I may be taken & these left. ++ "O God our help in ages past - Our hope for years to come!" April 27"-- +++ I get more & more glad of little things: a little brightness - a little ease from pain - a scrap from out of doors - all these have it in them to bless me. As my horizon narrows - as Isee this denied on one hand, and that taken away on the other, I stop resisting, & cease to demand. ++ Just as if at first we should want all outdoors & should say at last, "If I can only have this one green plant in my window!" Vassar-May 17"-'76-- Given a problem to work upon: To want to do a great deal - wonderful things - to be set in a place where everybody is driving ahead & turning out wonders - & then be forbidden to exert yourself under penalty of forfeiting forever all you want to do & be - & then be patient & unworn & light-hearted! ++++Vassar - June 1"-76-- Light & beauty enough out doors to fill us, satisfy us - if we would be good & rest in it. ++ I feel stronger to do & bear, today. O, if I could only walk! June 5"-- Dug a little at Greek with Laura. The Greek words took it upon themselves to be clothed in unsearchable forms & Laura says, "Lets hang ourselves!" ++++ June 10"-- Sprang to my feet with a delicious sense of joy in the early morning - of being glad I'm here - of an assurrance [sic] in my heart that my steps are ordered by the Lord & a determination that I won't be troubled. ++++Cranford-July 8"'76-- ++ I just love Susie, & it makes me happy as I need to be. Her home is beautiful to me - & someway i seem to breathe only when she is looking at me. ++ Aug. 30" ++ I am in the delicious dream of a may-be college. Dare I try it? I am asking God. His plan for me is larger, nobler than mine. Vassar-Sept. 29'-- +++ I know what one week of Trig. is. Fifteen more come up from the statistical corner of me - don't say grimly! You can't afford to be grim - 15 weeks. It is Friday - a breathing-space let down. It's like prairie-land between Fri. 11:50, & Mon. 8:15 - a smoothgreen stretch all level! Huldah keeps up an intermittent dig - that is her measure of prairie-land & hill-regions. Polly's digs lie in the last five minutes before she goes to something. Sept. 30"-76-- ++ Don't know who is steeped in homesickness! Oct. 10"-- +++ I got up this morning wishing I didn't have to. More cold, more strain, more something to make me an exact misery. ++ Laura lets me lie still & says nonsense rhymes to me whereat I rejoice. Laura's new word is "whaeck"! Oct. 11"-- More to get up for - so it sort of somehow seemed. This suggests Prof. Hinkel's[Greek letters]- & also especially those! We have actually left Chap. I in Herodotus. There is every indication of our making a continuing city of Chap. II. "Come up & gaze upon the felicities of cot-beds". I go. "This was the out-cropping of our brains", explained Laura. Oct. 13"-/76-- I come to it aching - I got tired - the big kind - over my rally in cosines. ++ The little Greek man says, "I will explain & then we will go on". So we sit & are poured into. It's a way he has. Huldah get a letter & goes around saying, "Poor Aunt Mag! poor Aunt Mag isdead." Somebody's always dead in the letters Huldah gets. Polly's letter makes her shout. It comes pealing forth from the bed-room & I take a new lease of life. Blessed Polly! +++ Oct. 16"/76-- A sort of clear grit morning. It is not brilliancy I astonish people with in Trig. - nor brevity. My demonstration only covers one wing of the college! +++++ Oct. 20"-- I am tired out trying to make my girl attend to things today. I had to make her get up in the first place - tendencies all against me. Then she staid up, in a dreadful poking way,keeping me pushing her up to this & steeling her against that: but now I've comforted her with the assurance that today is a kind of exception & tomorrow she won't ache in so many places. ++ O - one of my low-down days! Nov. 3",/76 - Vassar-- A sort of uplifting all thro'. I pray for days like this - ready for anything - glad in what is. Nov. 4"-- My birthday & how bright it was! ++ I had to be glad - there must be no dark guesses, no restlessness. There was help to see "the real whole best." "God is known in her palaces for a refuge."Nov. 5"/76 - Vassar - Sunday & I have lots of time to think how many days it is before I go home. ++ I believe if there was only a day between me & Mother I should think that day would never end. I am sure I never wanted home so - or tossed so to see it. Nov. 9"-- Could I get up? could I stay up? Rather singular questions from a girl who has Senior Greek & Sophomore Latin on her hands! There was a great mustering of forces: every available one was summoned, & I did squeeze through the day some how. +++ I have seen Dr. Webster. She makes no mention of death's door, but speaks of a time when I shall be well - bless her!Nov. 15"/76 - V.C.-- Huldah says that in the Bates Mitchell's class they are all "revolving around the marks." Heaven help them! Dec. 19" - Cohoes-- A good deal to it that wasn't consoling. I come home to add to Mother's troubles &, as far as I can see, to be of not the slightest use to any body. +++ Miss -- comes in like a fresh morning breeze. I'm so devoutly thankful to be relieved of my thoughts for an hour or so. Dec. 23"-- +++ I wish very much for the use of my feet. Have longings for the pretty shop windows, & the people withbundles & pleasant secrets to keep; want to see the cutters skip along; want to get stirred up. Instead of that I am a city set on a hill. But Aggie brings some of the good cheer home : there's almost always a next best. +++ Dec. 27"/76-Cohoes +++ D. brings up two tickets for the concert. "Can Fanny go?" It has not yet got fully settled here that "Fanny" can't "go" - can't ever go. She say "No - ask Emma." +++ Go! isn't it one of the nights when she would scream if she could go!1877. Jan. 1"--- I've found out how the courage of one is the courage of the souls that live near it: that good cheer is nothing short of an atmosphere: and even of a little patience the world has need! ++++ The worries that we began last year with are most of them here to start out with us again. +++ But I am a little surer that the storms are in the lower strata. We shall get above them by and by. I have reason to be more sure of a few things than I was a year ago. "I tell you that One knocked while it was dark."Jan. 2",'77--- The spell of silence is broken at last. Somebody has sent me a written communication. Huldah is noted for breaking silences. It is her voice, grim and inauspicious, that comes summarily into dark mornings : her alarm is that it is six and something, and I am too far gone to contest the point - usually. ++++ Jan. 3" ++ My letter from __ makes me feel rich - well-to=do in the world. I won't say that there were any bluish tendencies for her to counteract, but still I view her eight pages in the light of a "marcy".Jan. 6:, '77--- D. says, he starts to go, "Oh, I forgot!" and hands me - why, it was one of the loveliest things - L.s letter! What a new face everything wears for me. Jan. 10"--- V.C. and no. 11,d once more enfold me. Polly and the girls come at me. And - well, there's an example in Trig. for tomorrow with two solutions and six answers! Ye fates! I spend silent time with L. - bless her! Jan. 14"-- A severe talk on the married state - Parlor 12 all there. L. comes in for the woful [sic] summing up -- "It's a wuzzly world!" L. thinks there area few happy marriages - not many, perhaps, but a few! H. sets her foot down - "None - whatever!" We feel the projection of the great circle of hopelessness crossing our celestial equator. We turn reverently to the Greek of Matthew. There's no hopelessness there - no dragging down sensations. "Come to me" it says. Well - we are tired children, and He knows. Jan. 15",'77-- Head streaks of disaster in it. But then - why should you sing, "Increase my courage, Lord" if there's never anything going to happen to make courage, and lots of it, the thing to have?You were torn up by the roots when you got out of bed this morning, and you lay around on top all day. +++ It's L. who packs up 82 and brings it down stairs for my present comfort. Jan. 16", '77-- We aren't going to have any mournfulness about this business. You've got it on hand and we see you wriggling it through. Trot right along. You stand up before Prof. B. gladiator-fashion, and impress her with the fact that you embraced a hot water bottle last night and not Trig.-aches, and not cosines. She doesn't act as if you were confessing incendiarism to her, and you sit down,meekly, as is your wont. You persevere through half a chapter of "thought-weighted Thucydides" with L. and then her good angel comes down and enlivens the world by Keeping you up from tea, spreading for you a famous little supper in 82, and making you feel the blessedness there is in love. Jan. 24","77-- To be sure you didn't have your Trig. but as L. says, "That's nothing!" "Same problem for tomorrow," says the sharp-eyed Professor in drab. "You may get it." Another little supper with L. in 82. You peep into "Sights & Insights" while she lays the cloth and brings out the cunninglittle cups. She buzzes about & you call it "being out to tea", and almost forget you are a Sophomore with aspirations. Jan. 15, 1877-- For steady help from outside give me a day of sunshine. It is impossible to feel that you are fighting single-handed as long as there is sunlight that will not forsake you. ++++ There are lots of things left over that you wanted to do. Left over for when? We shall see. Meantime we are glad - glad for life just as it is this minute. Jan. 27".-- Undermining forces are at work again. You've heard about such days before.this week, though it ends with full noon, has had its hard places : but which one would I have had left out if I could? "Until He says 'Come up higher', let us be content at the foot of the board." Feb. 2", 1877-- For one day freedom from that pain has not left you for weeks before, and that has made everything you did so hard. You almost know, for a little breath, what the better day will be. Feb. 4"--"It's a lovely day, Fanny. Wish you could go to walk." Have not yet attained to any such paradise. Yet nights I dream of walking. +++ "Edith isgoing to read some of Hale's Christmas stories - don't you want to come up?" Inclination wanted props. Supplied by the maiden who wanted to know - "a maiden who wanted to know - "a very young Freshman". Feb. 5", 1877.-- A review of Herodotus is about to be entered upon. I like this way of taking it - viz. me on the bed, pillowed. L. in a chair, with dic. "Curtins" and most of it in mind, gives me exact meanings and optatives "with and without ar". I, purely receptive. Then we have crackers, and beff-tea, and Jam up in her room, and I am spared the dining-room. ++ Great uncomfort-ableness today. If I only could feel better! "Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise. God help me!" Feb. 8",/77-- Trig is over & gone. The examination did not bear as strong a resemblance to "the Assyrian" that "came down" as we had darkly pictured, though there was a slight disproportion between the number of questions and the number of minutes. ++++ How we've laughed today! but tonight we sit very still. To think that this was coming! Sunday, Feb. 11"-- The first thing was the breath of the flowers. Then the dawning sense that this wasthe last day - that the little Greek books lying in the window meant nothing any more. i got up with my trouble and went out where the girls were. Everything has been very sweet all day. My comfort has been thought of and thought of till I am strangely confused at being so cared for. ++ To see the day die over Sunset Hill and know it is the last time for weeks 7 weeks--! Feb. 12"-/77. +++ The sight of the little Greek books in the window, where we left them last Thursday, is more than I can bear. When I am bravest I can't look at that window. +++ It's all over now. I see them waving to mefrom the platform - my train moving slowly away. One of the hard times, Frances - one of the very hard times. "O Lord! only to be made like Thee in Thy great love!" Home - where are those who care also - who care most! Feb. 14", 1877-- Last night I woke in the night and heard Mother praying. It went to my heart and left the sorest kind of an ache there. How can I die when I know she wants me like this! If she were anywhere - anywhere in this wide earth and wanted me I would go. But how can I if it is that River I must cross? Bit it isGod she is talking to. Her cause is safe with Him. Feb. 15", 1877. "Faint yet pursuing" - to have this said of you because you washed a handful of dishes! Think of coming to this! Feb. 16"-- Yes'm. I keep very very still. These are not days for talking. I would not like to write what I am living. It is all too solemn, and I shall remember it all. It is not such days as these that we forget. Feb. 17".-- Saturday night - in the harbor, I. My boat rocks gently as the night comes down. There are cities full of busy people buying & selling; but I seemout of it all - with the feeling of one who is to be forever out of it. "Under His wings thou art come to trust!" Feb. 19", 1877.-- I feel as if I were following somebody over a thorny path between tall hedge-rows - and yet I know that it is not a stranger that I follow. Albany, Feb. 20"-- +++ I watched the little mother's gray shawl and black dress and little bonnet out of sight. I think after that I had the heartache. Tonight it seems as if there could be nothing grander than to have, like the Lord Jesus, power to heal such trouble as mine.
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Title: Frederick L. Ritter: Vassar College music professor, 1867-1891
Creator: Notman, William
Description: Head and shoulders picture of Frederick L. Ritter with mustache and beard. He is wearing a white shirt and dark suit.
Date: 18--

Title: Adams, Ruth -- to family, Jan. 1901:
Creator: Adams, Ruth
Description
Date: January 14, 1901
Text: Vassar Friday Dear people:- How nice it seems not to have any lesson tomorrow. We are going to bed rather early tonight. This morning in English we had rather a nice time, particularly as it only lasted about had an hour. We were taken over into the studio and had pictures thrown onto a sheet for [?]. We had to take notes on them for writing themes and essays about later. First they showed us Mona Lisa and Beatuce Cruice and are to take eitherone for our next essay. There they gave me a...
Show moreVassar Friday Dear people:- How nice it seems not to have any lesson tomorrow. We are going to bed rather early tonight. This morning in English we had rather a nice time, particularly as it only lasted about had an hour. We were taken over into the studio and had pictures thrown onto a sheet for [?]. We had to take notes on them for writing themes and essays about later. First they showed us Mona Lisa and Beatuce Cruice and are to take eitherone for our next essay. There they gave me a portrait of Van Dyck by himself and a peasant of millet to compare them. Then the Madonna of Botticelli you have over the piano and that Madonna among the Rocks by Leonarda di Vinci. Do you remember where that was and who the other woman besides Mary was. We have had the greatest discussions about it. Then we had math and Miss Richardson gave me a lecture on taking exercise and held the English up as an example to me. I wish youcould have heard her. She told us to take walk before lunch and a nap after lunch and go for a walk for at least 2 hours. She said the English woman accomplished twice as much as we did in the same time because they were about to concentrate their minds. An American's girls conscience is only satisfied when she studies all the time while and English girl tries to get her work done in as short a time as possible. I thought I would walk around before lunch, and while I was out I met Miss Richardson. so I told her to see how she had impressed me that I took her advice immediately. And she patted her on the arm (right on my vaccination spot) and said, that was right and I was a little girl who needed a great deal of fresh air. She had noticed. I am quite a favorite apparently. But it is perfectly true, I feel miserably if I don't get out. Thursday it poured all day and I felt dreadfully and didn't sleep that night as well as usual. So Friday I went out notwithstanding it was stillpouring and had frozen during the night, and the roads were covered with ice and very slippery. Helen Graves and I walked into town and out again. They fixes me all up nicely. I had a pair of leather gaiters, that came up to my knees from Dubir; and Edith gave me her maclinetoch which made short enough by taking a tuck in it, and I had on my shortest skirt and was very fine. People were perfectly astounded when they head we had been way into town on such a day, but it didn't so us any harm and I felt much better. What do you think I am going to do. Cara and I have been asked to bin the next hall play, just as figures you know. There are to be a whole lot of us and it's more fun. Dubie and I are to carry a sedan chair & Cora and all the others are in a ruffian crew. The play is "Les Romantic" by Rostand and is capital. Saturday afternoon we went to a rehearsal and had more fun. It is going to be very good I think. Margaret Jackson is to be the hero and she acts beautifully. Saturday morning it snowedand I went out for a walk and did some studying. I someway can't get up my courage to being reviewing anything, but I suppose I must get down to it. All the teachers advise us to very strongly. My sweater foes beautifully. Saturday evening I went to a German play. it was so funny. The name of it was "Das Schwert des Damarkles" and the girls did finely. Our cheeks fairly ached when we came away we had laughed so. This morning we lay in bed until 10-30 as usual. Lucile & Edith brought us some bread and butter and milk.Then we had morning Chapel which bishop Potter bed. He gave us a fine sermon Poor Prexi had to read the lessons, and he had forgotten his glasses so he had to put his nose right down into the bible on the reading desk. Poor thing. I couldn't sympathize. Then at dinner I asked Elizabeth Allen to come to the table, because you see there is an empty place as Miss Hastings is taking her vacation now. After dinner Cora and I went for a walk up on Sunset hill, and she forgot to put her fibber on and so got her feet soaked, so that she had to spend quite a time drying them. And while she did it she read aloud to me, and I lay on her sofa. We have read the first chapter of "Alice of Old [?] Do you know it? Then we had a spell of writing letters and then the sweetest little black kitten came to call on us. That is I heard her crying outside the door so I went and let her in. She was evidently making the best of her way down to the parlors and I thought she ought to be intercepted. She was a very agreeable cat, as Miss Will and used to say. Then we wrote letters some more while the cat enjoyed herself on my bees. And then Lucile came down to get us to go for a walk and we were in our wrappers and very lazy, and couldn't make up our minds whether we wanted to go or not. So we tossed up for it and found we had to go. Then it took a long tim to get dressed (Lucile was very much disgusted). But finally we got up and went up Sunset again and saw the sunset. Which was glorious and then went down into the glen, which was perilous and the path is very steep and it was all icy. Then we sat on the bridge over the little stream and sang hymns while the dark evening mists rose from the water and the darkness and chill fell around us. Then we continued our way home in the dark and just had time to get ready for supper. I think you would be interested to hear what Cora heard while shewas taking her bath this morning. one girl was telling another what they had had for breakfast. First some hot chocolate, then some sardines and crackers next mince pie and peaches. Wasn't that delightful? Do you want me to send Miss Sawns a Vassar Cataloge, and if so will you send her address. You see my pen has arrived. I never was so lad to get anything. How much did you have to Pay. O, My watch keeps coming open. Do you think it would be safe to trust somebody here to fix it? Ruth Prof. George B Adams 57 Edgehill Road New Haven Conn‘ Vii, _ v(,‘_ 11 _‘_ ‘X4, 3 _ Y‘),-‘lf
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Title: Alida C. Avery, 1872 or 1873: Vassar College physician, 1865-1874
Creator: Slee Bros. (Poughkeepsie, N.Y.)
Description: Head and shoulders, oval picture of Alida C. Avery as a mature woman wearing a white collar, dark cross and dark, button-down clothing.
Date: 1872 or 1873

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