Merrie [Merry] Christmas
From Sister


Fannie M. Bromley
Castleton, Vermont

Take it up bravely.
Bear it on joyfully.


[Calendar of 1873]


[Rates of domestic postage]


of the moon for January 1873]


of the moon for February 1873]


of the moon for March 1873]


of the moon for April 1873]


of the moon for May 1873]


of the moon for June 1873]


of the moon for July 1873]


of the moon for August 1873]


of the moon for September 1873]


of the moon for October 1873]


of the moon for November 1873]


of the moon for December 1873]



January Wednesday, 1 1873
Into Isaiah
What does that make you think of Fannie as you read it to-day? Play that I asked the questions a good way [from] to-day
when I have given up and out and beyond! To-day as I write I only remember the words that have comforted me so and
given me out of my storm a great calm. "For the mountains shall depart and the hills be removed but my kindness shall
not depart from thee. Neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed." O, years still let the promise hold [us]. Still
let the [quiet] of the day be [ ] [ ] always.



Janauary Thursday, 2 1873
Into the ditches.
Before we were out of one we went immediately into another. Sprang [dashboardward ] and performing gyrations not
compassed by Mark Twain on the [Musican]. All this when Aggie and I with Mr. Briggs horse went way off. An
informal gathering in [perspective] which is [with], from, in or by the aforesaid dashboarding!
Will there be icecream and cake and coffee? Mother says she belives it. Agnes interposes, "Nice. [ ] little ma"



January Friday,3 1873

Into- "informal gatherings" and often [after] claps. One day there was a great noise in our house. It was us-and we were
all Glory [McWinke!] Old [Normals] and new [Normals] met and [greeted] and things [reached] no limit!
What absurd times we all had getting to sleep.It took an "awful" while to get locked in slumber and [behold] we were
unlocked so quick as [never] was by a [...] and lightning storm in January.



January Saturday, 4 1873.

Into Visiting.
And Annie Adams dawned upon us and in my well known vernacular we felt good. Besides Abbie was there, Anne
Phelps dropped in and Miss Bissell came and if I am Patience Strong this is an ["inting"]. And so as you can see to-day
there was cream for my coffee. The end was not [yet]. There was still the long easy evening for us to visit in and poke
the fire - and poke each other. Did we?



January Sunday, 5 1873.

Into-Mr. Briggs [cutter] and out of it. The mare is not swift of foot. I may or may not have intimated as much before.
As a fact is is indisputable whether the [Haydinlle] S.S. is like the mare in the quality of [swiftness]. Mr. Proctor
belongs to the Old School. What does that mean. It means what we call in music -- ritard! The Holy Communion like all
of God's beautiful types was very silent and indeed [ ] could not add. Does Jesus say again - I am that bread of life?



January Monday, 6 1873

Into a Prayer Meeting.
[Austiss] said- "God knew. I know this day that he did know" - And this was long afterward when much was lived for
God to know since then. There's a deal of comfort in this for me. I never did want God so much before. I have come up
out of weeks to answer Aunt Winifred's question, "What do you want there now?" The coming home part of the meeting
was nice to me. It was like coming up through the [pines] into the world again!



January Tuesday,7 1873
Into--Charlotte's Future
A surprise awaited the juvenile members of our family, me included. It was no less a person than the pater familias of
the little gals! The usual events attending such an [explosion] of the Taj Mahal followed. Mother was culinary. I, left to
him. We fell to dreaming and the outgrowths were plans. What shall [Lottie] be, do? [Ah] is all architecture [vain]
when built with hands. Some day she shall look back on these yesterdays and speak.



January Wednesday, 8 1873

Into red bows and vanities.
Did I wear a red bow? When my existence for a long time has been a protest against them. I reasoned that red bows are
for black eyes - My eyes ae not black. Well I deliberately marched to the store and picked out a red bow - came home
and tied it and donned the same. Alas. If I were the only one who walked in the lifeless bodies of my convictions. By
and by I'll begin to resurrect! Addie laughed about it, of course. Mother and Mary are hurting themselves. [Well, I no
helps it.] Am I sane, apparently? I fear not. That they should think I to be taken and they left.



January Thursday, 9 1873

Into pentameters and hexameters.

A great many. After all there's a droll satisfaction in dealing in measures. It's like a boat ride and is in rhythms! Besides
we know how we're coming out. Down home I have to make all the rhytms, and when Mr. Williams lets me be I can
now and then get pentameters. Mr. Tremaine takes to himself the wings of the evening and flies. The children mourn not
as those who have no summer vacations. Mother and Mary [raise] [Ebenezer] but I don't know what that means.



January Friday, 10 1873.

Into the light that is not Divine enough. Yet a little while, said Jesus and the world seeth me no more, but ye see me.
Yes, we open the door some times and the light form within breaks upon us like tonight in the meeting. I come home
glad to say "it is hining onme as I go". I keep forgetting to tell the [...] things about school. It's full of little things that
run to meet me, just like the little boy's in Schenectady with flowers.

Addie is at the bottom of the hill and I am standing a great way off.



January Saturday, 11 1873

Into grinding processes. Yes - and close on the retreating form of the light. So goes it. Nothing ever fits into the notches
of a Saturday or as mechanics would say dovetails - except a very few things - and today was [blest] by the presence of
none of them. For instance, Pasting, Visiting or Sleigh-riding. I leave notches open for the latter but I needn't. I wish that
Mary and Addie would somehow get up a makin up between them. Why can't they? Things lately fit the language of
Georgie's famous song, "And then the feathers fly"- Don't tell.



January Sunday, 12 1873

Into sick rooms
No, I couldn't stay away from Brownie any longer. I must go and see if she is sick. She didn't want to be glad to see me
or be my little girl but she did be. She got good and let me nurse her and we got down on the pillows close and had a
fine time and pretty soon she felt better.
Let me whisper to the sick and afflicted: Don't cherish in your hearts any belief that Mrs. Briggs knows how to cook for
sick folks. I'm afraid she don't. I have premise first and premise second and don't the conclusion follow?



January Monday, 15 1873

Into a Cumulo-stratus.
I don't seek such places. Don't misunderstand me: Sometimes I awake and find me there! Sometimes I'm pushed there,
like a pneumatic railway! Sometimes Mr. Williams holds one up for me to jump through. Today my happy thoughts
have dwelt on the Corporation--but the heavenly assembly who rest not day nor night crying. Nor more terrestrial than
that! The Castleton Corporation who rest not day nor night crying.



January Tuesday, 14 1873

Into droopings woful[man].
My picture would not be calculated to light up a prison or cheer a Russian exile. Our gazing on it might be reminded of
this vanity of all things mortal or the visions of Joel and Amos.
My friends can still see me at the old stand -- No. 2 Seminary Street.



January Wednesday, 15 1873

Into a lively hope.
Lively for the contrast, lively with expectations. Sure nuff. I am reassured. The Corporation will not see me wronged! O
no. I believe it and hope taketh hold on things behind the veil. I'm sorry that I cannot finish out this page without using
slang. Please excuse me. I shall have to say -This [Normal] School is too [thin]! Georgie's sick. Addie's sick. Mary's sick
and there's room for millions more.



January Thursday, 16 1873

Into spunk and [spasm]. In this case the first cause is to the first effect! Why? Have you [learned] to be made? You see it
all came of an example in simple subtraction. Strange that I should prefer to say when I want to pay debts. Forgive his
weakness!

We have snow up here in Vermont and I'm inclined to think eternal frost! But throw up your hat -- the days are growing
longer.



January Friday, 17 1873

Into play grounds of sentiment. A play ground perhaps as it is when the sounds of retreating footsteps are lost in the
distance, and bat & ball are throuwn aside and the grass so lately trodden down again peeps out. When us can think
uninterruptedly! How can I come to this play ground this last Friday night without bringing with me the faces that will
vanish before the next week closes. I think and think of it, and the only words that come to me are those old, sad ones,
"Thou shall near the never, never, whispered by the phantom years."



January Saturday, 18 1873

Into stubborn things.
What more commendable employment can a lady of my sobriety engage in than that of writing facts? All the Mr.
[Chadbands] answers, "None, my friends. So does Solomon, John, Elizabeth, Eliza, and the little boys with the india
rubber boots! I don't do much else tho I'd [ ] -- much of my time was fun to waste in measuring fingers, preparatory to
class rings-- and in [trotting] [ ] down to Mr. Preston's!
Mary truthfully speaking is as flat as a flounder.
Flat, that!



January Sunday, 19 1873

Into joys "no man taketh."
Tell me quick. What brought about my Mr. Briggs betaking hisself to the Methodist Church? How did he suppose I'd
get to Hicksville? Careless old man! The last I saw of me I sat waiting for the wagon! The only bit of Sunday that ever
stays is the heart part of it! What slips in and stays because it is the joy he sendeth! How little like that the world giveth.
All that Jesus promises includes two words--dear words--that I long for and pray for. Joy and peace.



January Monday, 20 1873

Into the event.
Then let him that is in India flee to the mountains. We didn't - so here we are! What's a deciduous plant? Where is
Duluth? "Don't know [one]" say the seven! Who is boss in here? It's time, I knew, desirable too at this date. [The]
[noun] says [we may]. The Verb says we [mustn't] So poor [Spencer] and I take up all the festoons tenderly and lay
them to rest! Not as the Noun said but the Verb. Dan in the meantime cuts off his foot and casts it from him that we may
make more [festoons]. We do.



January Tuesday, 21 1873

In farther.I should think it was, but the seven are an invisible armada! They stand it! Fresh incidents arrise to confirm
Mr. Williams manifest benevolence. Why should the spirit of mortal be proud? Why should Addie's and Mary's? He
interposes that they have not been here forty weeks! Who keeps the [rolls]? We behold before us the works of our own
hands. [Cedar] and [curtains]. But we will plough no longer in that field. We'll be good and listen. What does [aches]
and grease and water [make] Miss Bryant! But my page is full!



January Wednesday, 22 1873

Into the last of it. I can't sit down by the parlor window and see the girls go up for the last time and know as I do that it
is the last, withoug a feeling of pain. Otherwise my heart would say, A merciful, beneficent deliverance. Hope comes
and in its steps forward it becomes almost ecstasy at Dr's words. Just such ecstasy as we fall from always, carrying with
us every vestige of our dreams. Buffalo is or is not for me!

My girls did well to night, but their teacher could not be invited to the reception.


January Wednesday, 22 1873

Into the last of it. I can't sit down by the parlor window and see all the girls go up for the last time, and know as I do that
it is the last without a feeling of pain. Otherwise my heart would say, A merciful beneficent deliverance. Hope comes
and it slips forward, it becomes almost ecstasy at Dr's [made]. Just such ecstasy as we fall from always, carrying with us
every vestige of our dreams. Buffalo is or is not for me! My girls did well to night, but their teacher could not be invited
to the reception.



January Thursday,23 1873.

Into a picture gallery and an old satchel. I am seized and [borne] on troubling wings to where the camera ne'er breaks up
and bolsters have no end! My won'ts are made over into wills, and seven are too many for me! We sit and are taken,
none left. What a happy thought of mother's in setting before us oysters! Addie has found her stomach! Our family
possess one satchel. Its mothers. She lends it but mark, it is never to be checked, in this dark vale of woes, Never, no,
never. I take it down.



January Friday, 24 1873.

Into the cars. But first came the snow storm. You can form no adequate conception of this except you've been to St.
Petersburg! Train into here late. Boston train gone, none of these things moved us, so we divided. The space between in
measures. Not the hop, skip & jump of the school boy but the stably tread of the soldier! To Centre Rutland to scure a
big boy, nine miles, to East R. with a funny old mand two miles. To East walking, food twelve miles. "Josh" was not up
to see me and I'd centered hopes on it.



January Saturday, 25 1873.

Into an old-fashioned stage coach. Just a few little catch talks with Addie, a romp with Josh, a tug with baby, and we're
at the depot. I carry Addie's face with me on through all the journey. Chester, shouts the brakesman, and I look at the
encircling hills remembering that behind them are hid legends that have become lively to me, sad now because of the
joys that did not come to pass. Don't suspect any one to tell you what staging is like. Take a good round one like I did,
only be sure to keep equilibrium.



January Sunday, 26 1873.

Into Pondville "mutin house". Don't say church. We are plain folks here. This is Pondville's first temple! I'm sorry that
while their minister is working so for others to reach heaven he must himself stay out. His name is Rich. There is no
promise for a rich man's entering. Georgie's mother says "Now I want to see you [not]".
She did. It's easily accomplished here. It's a pleasant sunny side of the orchards Georgie has had to grow on. It's on the
south side where the sun shines best.



January Monday, 27 1873.

Into scraped apples and things. That is an old maid's whim! Nobody eats scraped apples but grandams and single ladies
of advanced years. But there was no reason why Christina should not wear white socks nor why I shouldn't wear red
bows, neither can I find valid reasons for not taking my apples in a pulpy [nitrogenous] mass instead of sliced or in
multitudinous [bites]! Talk of snow. Behold with your eyes, and wonder not that my heart sinks, when I am about to
throw myself at the mercy of trains, and thousands of snow drifts, walking together there! But Georgie and I talk quietly
[...].



January Tuesday, 28 1873.

Into Gotham. Some people depose and say, I don't believe in that, so while I say a great deal I depose only some. My
fears were in vain. The [...] there move formidable [...] in the programme, but we tilted along like monarches over the
crust fallen snow, [thin] and away, and up & on & before I knew it I stood on the platform at Springfield pursuing the
New Haven E & prices! The ride was "[Patmore] and poetry" and the descent from that into N.Y. "abrupt as it was in
Gail's time". Uncle Bill opened on me like a sack prepared for sausage.



January Wednesday, 29 1873.

Into the Promise Land. For what is it but a land of promise to me? Its golden fire suns not forshadows have never set.
I've held it to my soul thro' thankless tracks and many happenings, have said it [night] after days when we had been
more than usual. William and I less than ever, Frances. That she was there, was all, and everything to me. Into that real
land of promise, when I glide through the open door into the first glow of the warmth and light will the first feeling be
one of closely supressed pain, as I feel. My whole life for this?

And then [...] had to up & say "She's changed in everything". No, she aint', it will take a little while for the broken up
places to join into the new again.



January Thursday, 30 1873.

Into the fun of it. Let me quote Gail again on New York. "For a city entirely unobstrusive & unpretending it has really
great attractions and solid merit." It was here Gail learned the nature and uses of the bell rope. I was saved for a later
scarcely less beneficial lesson. The nature and uses of lady prinicipals.

But the fun of it was in the streets, here and there, not a soul to know, or to desire to know, but enough to watch and
guess at. I am indeed truly and never more than this minute "a stranger in the gate".



January Friday, 31 1873.

Into the valley of blessing so sweet. I found a new way of getting to her and its easier than the old one requiring more
foot and less horse power. The weeks [meet] today in one gathered [...] load of what there was for Hope, just as into
October meet the weeks of sun and shower, of scent and song, of morning and evening joy.

We don't finish our sentences. Everything knows just where it belongs and fits itself to it.



February Saturday, 1 1873.

Into Booth's Theatre. But first my friend you ought to say "Into [...]". In that place how grand a thing to be born rich in
the eyes!" The soul of the painter was in those landscapes, and further on the soul of Booth was in his words. It would
not be grand Booth to do else.

As, is here the secret spring to great success in art, in soug, in work? The soul is in it!



February Sunday,2 1873.

Into Beecher's Church. Henry Ward Beecher. Fanny [...] has two things against you, I have but one. "I cannot get a seat
at your church", a decent one, have it not for this, like the above named lady I should be your faithful adherent. After the
sermon I was willing to make the circuit of the church to get out. It be pushed into a fuzzy mass to elbow out, to run to
get to the boat, to hear the dreadful ice shriek and groan under us, to get my feet wet walking from [...] to South Ferry,
to eat cold pudding without much sauce! All this for that sermon. Is this [mostly] praise out of the mouth of [...]?



February Monday, 3 1873.

Into her eyes and down deep. It is a pain of sad patient eyes that I look into. Eyes that have looked upon the river that
winds down through the night and yet have been held back for me to see again. And from her I have the lessons Christ
taught her way down to the very edge of that Jordan!
O, it is not [alma] the girl dreams that vanish while we learn! To day is best of all the days with her. It was a [...] and I
day.



February Tuesday, 4 1873.

Into Aunt Mary's big chair. We rolled out of New York again into Patmore and poetry. Between two lighthouses, near
an old forest, the sun risses [rises] one spot joined to the summer [...] of [Eden]. I cannot pass it even far off without
falling tears. It takes hold so close on summers that have gone into my heart.

Aunt Mary & Grandma were all alone. Thank [benignant] fates!. And I took the big chair by the sink and made hours of
minutes, for you know the old man might come in!



February Wednesday, 5 1873.

Into the modern Sanhedrin. This does not refer the reader to eclisiastical dignities. You may infer the time is
Pedagogical! So are all of us. Aggie is summonded [summoned] by a virtuous body, all, all honorable [...]! But they
know so much, they talk so loud! Aggie is a burning and a shining light! Why must she sleep on splints! It is not the
proper disposition to make of her! [Cohoes] is a billow. Aggie a propeller. I a tossing [back] to move up and down, here
& there, you must, says she!



February Thursday, 6 1873.

Into mother's room. Now says I, I can rock, kick, move my hair, eat, talk and hope for [H...] without fear and without
reproach! Mother's room is a Paradise found, and if the best of my journey is yet to come, I dilate between happiness
past, esstasy to come! The presesnt is only intensified pain. [I] [...] has news for me. The lion has [bearded] me in his
den, and I away. Dr. Webber writes for me duly to appear before him. That worries me! But we put on our best bonnets
mother & I and under the friendly protection of a thaw pay our vows to calls and callers.



February Friday, 7 1873.

Into wonderings many. Mr. Williams is a destiny that shapes my ends rough. I've heard as I will pretty long time.
Getting tired. I am in Sue's state likewise. I need Firm Etymology. Sue's letter was on green paper and [...] all over with
rakes and stomachs. I rejoice over the new rake, with those that do. No Etymology comes to my assistance. Not one.



February Saturday, 8 1873.

Into that which cannot be again. I wish it were easier to tell. I feel and know that it is best as it has been said to me. Yes,
I "had better resign". They aren't easy words to swallow, but as it is a matter of advice, as it only reiterates what I had
decided on long ago, and as the message to me from the united Board is what it is. I feel no pain only intense relief.
There is no cause for pain in such and [interior] as ours. Full of appreciation and confidence, & praise, sorry only that
Mr. W.[Williams] would not be pleased, bidding me a cordial reassurance that I should not leave the state.



February Sunday, 9 1873.

Into dish water and monarchical government. Yes I took off my coat and rolled up my sleeves and waded elbows in dish
water and griddle cakes in the form of batter! The monarchical government was me. I had to be boss and keep the house
in darkness and seclusion because mother was sick. Nothing was heard of Dan until nearly the hour of noon, and Lottie I
sent to [Haydenville], the rest to church in town, and not [censor] on the lovely isle was more a patriarch than I, or more
innovative! Own up.



February Monday,10 1873.

Into ink and paste. Quite as much, my friends, as there was any fun in. What isn't ink of me is germ [magacanth]!

Wtiting up us not my worst agreeable pastime, but I spell off by minding the door. Dan says, "I wish I had a [waxed]
end". "That's what you have got" says mother. While I delve into the paste mother goes into spirits of ammonia and
[dogwood].




And it's gone at last and such a sense of relief comes as I cannot speak of. Yes my imagination has gone to the State
Board.



February Tuesday, 11 1873.

Into yams with mother. Can you see all about how it is. Mother stations herself at the window lookin toward Mr. Briggs
and I at the "Old Stand". Sometimes I'm " a writing" and sometime's I'm a pasting! It don't matter much which. I yam
just the same. We have a jolly supper full of yams. Mother cooks it before school is out so she and I can have great
times alone. Is pasting one of the things not joyous but grievous that yields afterwards the peaceable fruits of my
righteousness? Let us meet so.



February Wednesday, 12 1873.

Into visions of a Spanish Inquisition! In form and substance one of the most exquisite of systems! Mrs. Briggs comes
over in a smiling humor. "I hold out any hand affectionately". According to Mrs. Briggs all present pursuits for a wide
section of country are at once to be thrown aside that all may attend the Normal School! I believe it. I believe every
word and I put up my hat and follow Mrs. Briggs home.

Spring sends out as yet no wafts of breath. We wait with longing unspeakable!



February Thursday, 13 1873.

Into my chrysalis state. And the bell rings and I go up, as it will probably never summon me to a first day again. For you
must know that I am only waiting this time for wings of a larger growth! The faithful in any day and generation are a
few and so today a few tried and faithful souls marched in and out of chapel! The best are single things or ones of any
kind!

I rejoice that mother put up a great many cans of huckleberries.



February Friday, 14 1873.

Into the sitting room. How easy for anyone to be a criminal! How easy for me! Moses did not construct the dialogue to
meet the sins of Seminary and Normal teachers. Paul never thought of them in the sprited. And so we go on sinning
recklessly. We meet and "talk awfully". How long shall we go on in sin? Shall Mr. Williams roll a Dead Sin between us
forever more?

While I'm gone another does not think of sin or Dead Sins but of walnuts to be cracked for me. Mother's good.



February Saturday, 15 1873.

Into the Spanish Inquisition. Yes and with her new gloves on! My willing soul? O, no. One chairman to four and four
gold [huckel] canes. I had never sighed for such bliss! Mr. Williams sat and looked like the strongest fortress the moors
ever held in Spain! I only know that it is ended and I came home to a bed and [beviled] how Mother's bed is a refuge
whereunto I flee and am safe! If scarcely, then where do?



February Sunday, 16 1873.
Into plate, not Conley.
Ella Mills is breaking several of the commandments and she indeed is one [...] of whom any father [...] have applied the
excellent titles, "undoubted veracity". She's taking a hand in several games which are promising to be trumps, musn't
tell!

It's praise worthy in recommending the path of virtue and discouraging [humbugs], to say "I never do". I've seen it tried
with sudden results. I can't say "I never do" tonight. I shall have to say , "I always do" for I helped! I drove to Cookville.
I enticed Ella.
Near the shameful advantage, when your Mrs. Briggs was sick and couldn't so!



February Monday, 17 1873.

Into Mary Bibbins adjectives.
They, the adjectives, are the safety values of the globe. Only they can vent the surprise, [midrifest] under the new order
of things.

Things may sometimes work, sometimes they do. The present effect on the principal sufferer is quite apparent and
shows itself in seeking the lotus eaters island, "demurage" [demurrage], she said all day, and pointed toward the land!

An enduring misery is tight shoes. They pinch, they squeeze and I am free no more!



February Tuesday, 18 1873.

Into a melancholy day of compressed feet and scratched neck. How sad it seems in one so young! The neck bears up
better all things considered than the feet. Canals of pain run through every toe, intersecting large portions. The two and a
half shoes have got into the wrong district!
Is there no help, no comfort, none? Present prospects comtemplate a thaw. Mother begins to act that way too. To her
Mr. Tramaine is "the [...] sinner". No longer shall her lamp hold out to him.



February Wednesday, 19 1873.

Into a crow story. The girls go home singing not "There was three crows", but there was one crow! It was me who
wanted the new song. If you want a new song you must - 3 - etc. Must I? All things begin and end in school. At home
mother queries. What can I eat? What shall she fix? I am exceedingly mild in my [behests]. I expect henceforth to live
on ice cream, hickory meats and hulled corn! Mother doubts it. Lucy says, "I just wish I could be Mrs. Brown for a
day".



February Thursday, 20 1873.

Into the merits of sloths, opossums and kangaroos! The subject grows on me and Lucy too is moving along up. She was
giving us a vivid description of the sloth and among other things stated that it was very helpless, did nothing but sit on a
tree stump and howl. "Howl for something to eat!" said the "fond" teacher. "No, ma'am, howl for fear it would be
eaten." That is the result of my teaching. I come home to rejoice over rivers and cities on rivers. I look around for a man.
I want a vigilant, thorough giving man two days in this week. His only business is to get Dan up to his music lesson.



February Friday, 21 1873.

Into seas of it! Pools of it! This suggests snow and in snow we abound. We cast thoughts about us looking toward May.
There's only Moll's Winds. "If I thought there was". I gather about me all my enthusiasm of humanity and sail through
snowy seas to carry plums and pickles to Florence and Ella.

O, how cosy it looked at home. When I came in a nice ten, and a big five! and a Friday night spasm of content!



February Saturday, 22 1873.

Into a hope not attained. Ay, this life indeed is like the [...] man's favorite parson. "It jumbles the judgement and
confounds the desire". I looked forward all day to pasting, the day died aws in a fiery sunset and still no getting at it. All
along of Natural History and happenings.

O give Ella her first Latin lesson. It sends her up into Everest latitudes of transport. Annie comes in the opposite
condition of Dead man's Valley, expecting me to fish her out. Mother sends thrills over us in many ways, chiefly today
by little comforts of all kinds.



February Sunday, 23 1873.

Into a joke on Dr. Sanford. "Will I subscribe for Oliver Optic's Magazine? My mother wants to know. He has the
importunity of the widow who cried night and day unto the judge! We get tidings that Mary has the means which brings
Dr. Sanford over. He makes a slight mistake on the question of doors, bowing out he backs into the cupboard. We
promise we won't tell. Mrs. Forte doesn't waste any time. When she's home she canvasses me.

Tonight my thoughts linger lovingly on the face of a tired man at the well long ago.



February Monday, 24 1873.

Into bliss for which I did not sigh. Mother says "never mind, it's your last time". The bliss is with [...] in or by object
lessons. What makes them superlative is the [fire] of Mr. Williams. He wants to see if I have the idea!

Dr. Sanford has. He [...] me away on his snowy [zings] and I found Mary Bryant at the bottom of the hill. So are all of
there up there.

At home thigs work together for good.



February Tuesday, 25 1873

Into a backache and no help for it!

Daniel being duly installed as a Normal pupil writes his reports as follows: "I have washed myself today & have tried to
observe the highest standard of ordinary for me that I may be faithful". I build hopes on seeing Jennie Crofts a Normal
pupil.

Does such triumph await me? How sweet to reflect! My vertibrae is more trouble to me than to most animals! How
sorry I am! Not to every one does mother give ham omelets for dinner! Now Mrs. Matthewson send tracts!



February Wednesday, 26 1873

Into a blue that is the most blue! And I got into it. Which language is plain! No alternative is left me, not even that of
the man who found his eyes were out! When the [...] finds a resting place in lapis lazuli object lessons do not help out,
now constipation.

I am set on Annie Crofts. Poor child. I dote on her. Spencer. I build dreams with him of a good time coming when he
shall be allowed to make his bow! (wow!)

Poor mother, how pale and sick she has looked all day.



February Thursday, 27 1873.

Into "school management" with a vengeance. "It wnet the length and breadth of the blackboard and would have gone on
to this minute if the gong hadn't sounded long and loud. What to do the first day. Who shall hereafter rise up and say, "I
know not". It was told in both and proclaimed in [...]. Meeting only half the world in Dan & walked over to [...]. Mrs.
Williams kissed me tonight. "Nevertheless, I" shall probably be dismissed [soon].
At home I am blessed with ham omelets and comfortable shoes.



February Friday, 28 1873.

Into a wind that proves to be east! Winds are variously constituted. All winds do not waft ships or bring good tidings.
East winds are my agony. Emma Thomlin's how [di-do]. And nothing to do with east winds. No er long story blew east
winds in my face, right along. Few winds that blow from Miss [Martin's] track are gracious.

I walk leisurely down to the six o'clock freight but am overtaken by that east wind and return [...]. The next call bids me
[lie] to Mrs. Briggs, to see another vision, a new Normal. We now possess both Marsh and a Lake.



March Saturday, 1 1873.

Into the order of the subject. Not the order of nature! Ther order of nature is very different from this! It would have been
as follows:
A cup of paste, a brush, sheets of paper and me before them joyously . Several glances at Hearper's. Pen ink and letters,
to invite innumerable. Satisfaction at seeing it done! Sleigh brought around visions of a great deal of grass hid under a
great deal of snow. Me beholding! Yes, and Addis [mild] have come, but night would not have brought Mrs. Foote.

The order of the sujbect has not been this.



March Sunday, 2 1873.

Into losing the name of disciple. I feel to night as if it were so for I might have borne for Jesus' sake. I must impose in
me sterner discipline and heart pleadings for strength. I get shown any weakness sometimes.

It [...] me to go off alone in Mr. Briggs' cutter and I rode on and on because it seemd so good to me. I was even glad
there was no church hour of the Sunday sun [...] [come] in from south or east window, but I look for Christ
strengthening.



March Monday,3 1873.

Into memories of the sunny corner room. And what brought them but dear little Miss Reed, one of my sunbeams bright
all the time. She has brought back the spring nights over on the Piazza. The little vases full of lily of the valley, the
weird nights when I had to cross the long hall with my shoes in my hands! There is not a thought in the many of those
spring weeks that has even a border of pain. And we add to night another flower to the wreath and lay it away where the
wreath can never quite fade.



March Tuesday, 4 1873.

Into tripping the light fantastic toe. I keep doing it. Am yet. Shall rise up early in the morning to begin again. Mr.
Williams escapes me, every time and I see him not. I [sorrow] over that Thomson class even as those who have no hope.
How can I make them quik to speak?

[Hensey] trots herself into it. My will is good to trot her out. I break a vow and buy another book. Said I wouldn't! I take
to my heart in its possession the hope of learning how to teach Geography.



March Wednesday, 5 1873.

Into being at ease in Zion. Don't begin to condemn me, my ease is not censurable, it is even recommended in young
persons! I compose myself and am at ease to know that Mr. williams has at last constructed a programme for me to
work on. My light fantastic toe reposes.

The Grammar is still a problem. Who can work it out. Another benignant thought is mine. "Does the agent owe the town
or does the town owe the agent?"



March Thursday, 6 1873.

Into many marvels resulting in a new clock. Also a six o'clock freight. Miss Thomas is a strong one in her math. Taint
my fault! I build a hope that Addie will come in the six o'clock freight. I go up to see and rejoice to see her little self
trotting off the cars. I've been before.

We install ourselves immediately in my once warm room, made nice by mother's fingers, and proceed to enjoy
ourselves forthwith.



March Friday, 7 1873.

Into what she thinks of it. She is third person singular! First person singular has long cared to proclaim what she thinks
of it. Miss Thomas will speak if she [dies] for it. She formed me, will not probably be dismissed. What we are to
understand is that she was not hired to teach Normals! I have learned to maintain respectful silence.

George Preston makes his best bow and comes and carries Addie off while I muse on several things and snatch up the
minutes to write Natural History lessons!



March Saturday, 8 1873.

Into meadow broadenings. Saturday are always broadenings and have that stretch on in unlimited cosines and deer are
meadow broadenings because they remind me of the dear large meadow lands that hold no end of sunny content and
cheer. That's like no time today up stairs. Addie and Ina came in and Jennie Croft. And Annie and Mrs. Sanford and
Libbie Whitlock, but there is no disturb. And the sunshine comes and go and the night comes on so I cannot work. Then
I take her in my lap and she lets me talk to her.



March Sunday, 9 1873.

Into a whisk and then Addie and I set up for rings. You see Mr. Briggs is still sick and so to me [palls] the right and
[tille] to the mare for the day. Poor little misguided heathen! What did we know about the south west wind? Our teeth
they chatter, chatter still! Mother pets us with cocoa-nut pudding and ice-cream, which results in good!

Then we go up stairs and mother comes up to visit us. And the moonlight comes taking me far back to cosy Sunday
nights with Sue.



March Monday, 10 1873.

Into how to buy beef and when. Only received and he calls himself Williams, which does not of itself install him into
my good opinion, but I incline toward him since he's brought the beef and cut it up for nothing. One more arrival in the
form of Harper's Weekly. I [...] build hopes on reaching middle march!



March Tuesday, 11 1873.

Into indescribable honor, no less than and invitation from the Professor to sit at his board which I do with little ease and
great dignity. It seemed scarcely less than an ovation to my majesty. Miss Bissell would make me add to my sins
ingratitude! Would make me go up to forbidden prescincts. Let me [...] record that I maintained my uprightness and did
not walk in the counsels of the ungodly.

Made poor Addie go to Annie's rehearsal and it came very near being the end of fun. Only figs could pacify!



March Wednesday, 12 1873.

Into how to teach Philosophy. Ella and Addie have been showing me all the evening! Their revelations are too high. I
cannot attain unto them! I'm in a way [...] since I have James Smith. When have I laughed so? Mother never slackens
her attentions. She does and does for us. To night she made orange ice and it almost choked me for I knew how tired she
was. It makes me tired to have her do so much.



March Thursday, 13 1873.

Into a perfect success. We all had a hand in it. And we succeeded in keeping Addie. And I'll hold her in my arms all
night praying still that she may be led to the light. School was and is not and I seek mother's room with all possible
speed to realize the reward of him that works all day in the vineyard.

Our family are all fired with military spirit occasioned by a brutal attack on Daniel's submaxillary. I say little.



March Friday, 14 1873.

Into Colonel Parker's ear. Unhappy fate that sends Colonel Parker to me and me to Colonel Parker. "It's a slow train!"
"What?" "It's a slow train!!" "What?" "It's a slow train!!!" What did you say?" "Slow train." Anybody would think so.

I leave depots and trains and tympanums for a slow school and a prolonged what. I sound any reports into the ears of
Professor and retun to figure in wax in an exhibition.



March Saturday, 15 1873.

Into being carried off. Yes among folks I never saw, but heard tell on. Can't say much in form of the weather, for the
winds blew us through and through going up there and got me together coming back. Emma came for me in the middle
of my History questions. I left them tearfully. Her folks are farmers and in her house the stories have not told themselves
by [hands]. Alas, how many of the yesterdays speak! I return to Natural History sadder, and wiser.



March Sunday, 16 1873.

Into much that isn't so nice by half. It began and ended in a tied up threat and many blankets. The horse knoweth his
master's crib this day. I disturb him not. I lie still all day and have things to myself. I prop myself up with hopes on
Ella's Latin, on reaching Middle March, on seeing Aggie and grand mother, on seeing bare ground again, and being
wanted somewhere next year. All this is [emotional] but the best I haven't told.


March MOnday, 17 1873.

Into having all the bark scraped off my outside and backing all the bark out of my inside! Mother did it. It began Friday
night by rubbing vile ammonia on my tender skin. Since then it's gone on increasing by a common ratio. And I'm hourly
growing into the pitiful condition of Mark Twain's dog.

School as is usual with Mondays, is noted for paucity.
I have failed to see much from it.



March Tuesday, 18 1873.

Into a great secret which I kept! Early I arose and hastened with celerity to the far off depot. That was a part of the
secret. Being comforted by being told that the telegraph would reach her in an hour I returned to my hot cakes. School
dragged as it always does when I have secrets to keep. And night was heralded in with boiling, whirling, foaming,
thundering through! I didn't mean to have it so. Mother says, "Where you going?" "To see one of the girls". Thankful to
get off so easy I betake myself to that depot of magnificent distances and the train brings Aggie. I march home with her
as the [conqueror] comes.



March Wednesday, 19 1873.

Into a little more powder now my boys. Order was more being restored and thankfulness that I had no more to do with
Boards being installed. Two letters lied before me, evidently designed to show me how sublime a thing it is to be stirred
up good and strong!

Dr. Webber invites. Dr. French invites. Is it not of pure hearts fervently? I only stand and wait!

Aggie establishes herself duly and Dan assists by often reminding Mother that she mustn't forget the interests of the
heathen!



March Thursday, 20 1873.

Into a scare and what will come of it. Miss Bissell has found the missing link between man and angels. Its Mr. Williams.
While I stood unlawfully before the class proclaiming school management the missing link entered bringing Sir Isacc
Newton Edward [Con...]. He gave a little twist to his mouth as much as to say, "I am in hopes of boring you. For this
[course] I am come". I said to myself, Vengeance is mine and at once set about boring him!

Every nicely nourished hope of going to Randolph was vanished.

After a poky call at the Sun, on the teachers I come home to write epitaphs for Mrs. Thornton. A [belting] pastime.



March Friday, 21 1873.

Into what did come of it. It was him at dinner. I am so unaccustomed to the society of such eminent persons that I did
not behave at all to my liking. Now that he is fairly on the road to that hill of his four miles long I duly repent. Frances.
Where's your independence that I've so prided you on. Where did you hearn to be supercilious? Away with it.

I sit down at home after school had dragged itself out fairly and try to find enough cosy to get rested with.



March Saturday, 22 1873.

Into the sad, sweet by-gones. I come upstairs with my work and sit down among the pretty things up there written over
and over with little stories that are sad now because they are concluded. I work at my National History and still go back
to the stories. I am in a strange mood for it today.

Mrs. Briggs from the goodness of her heart vouches for the hour long enough for me to run up and see Mrs. Stephens. I
only have time now & then to take little peeps out to see the weather which my friends is dismal enough.



March Sunday, 23 1873.

Into a visit with Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. I don't know just how it came about but up in my room it was so still and warm
and nice and I felt so far away & lonely for the tired man at the well that I couldn't help thinking of Elizabeth Stuart
Phelps. I almost always think of her when I want the tired man at the well. So we went to visiting and I feel more like
[life] than I have in a long time. "How can I complain and talk of burdens to a man on a cross?"



March Monday, 24 1873.

Into losing my breath and catching it. It had to come about that Aggie must go back to the Maggie [...] and Annie
Murrays and all the rest, and it had to come about thatr today was the day in which she was to go. I had exultant hopes
the train would be on time. It came twenty minutes late which was a century to me who had [...] wasy and breath to
catch!

Dannie builds hopes on a promising family of young chicken Footes. He is chicken hearted. When will [seventeen] eggs
be launched out from those ill-begotten hens?



March Tuesday, 25 1873.

Into an opening future for the Natural History Class. A pleasant man hailing from West Haven dawns upon us.We're to
do unheard of things. We are carefully authorized to send him eggs, also to go en masse to Dr. Ponds.

I came home to the measure of jubilate [Drs], and shut the valves-cool down and am for the rest of the day very unlike
the irrepressible Charlie. Very!



March Wednesday, 26 1873.

Into this way for the Normal School! People are finding us out. They swarm to borders and we nice in self return!
Ella [Mills] Latin has its ups and downs. This week chiefly downs, but with all the halts its a deal of comfort.
Wednesday evening.
Mr. and Mrs. Cole are summoned. I shall after a time get more accustomed to the society of eminent persons.



March Thursday, 27 1873.

Into scientific explorations. We manage it with our usual adroitness, very usual, very adroit. On the way to and from we
plan a few things. We will make a collection of eggs, of nests, of birds, of insects, of cocoons, of stones, of herbariums.
We will be let into the mysteries of stuffing birds. We find ourselves at the house where our explorations end & begin.
We look upon Audubon's creations with awe. We go home to dream of birds, of eggs, of nests, of insects, of cocoons, of
stones, of herbariums, of Dr. Pond.



March Friday, 28 1873.

Into a long pull and a pull a good while. It means school. A day of quick gaspings in [with]. Of giant strides in grammar,
of much ado about nothing in Thomson of clutching at and panting in Botany. Of crawling in Orthography, of leaping
for joy in National History, of feeling along in History and going at Algebra in gun boats! What does anything mean for
me but School?

There is not the least token of spring in anything. Only dreary piled up masses of snow, and winds that blow at you
awfully cross. And just see how patient I have been for so long.



March Saturday, 29 1873.

Into [dura catina inlibera poena desidera ti], English cannot express it, go reverently to Latin. How much dredgery can
be squeezed into one day and that a leaky Scrooge like [A.M. - M - O P.M.] in March. I shall know hereafter more
definitely than hitherto.

I decide upon dire contemplation to institute for Frances a new regimen in what goes down my throat, down on the
pillow, and where tooth picks are desirable.

Will my jolly friend teach me his secret?

Farewell Nat. History, Grammar, Plural Numbers & [Pl...], Parts of verbs and birds & birds & verbs.



March Sunday, 30 1873.

Into the New Testament. Part of it. Thinking of the dear, near holy [price] that came with my visit with E.S.P. I trace
mother for a fire upstairs again this Sunday and bless her dear heart. What does she refuse me. I install myself in the
chair and try Sydney Curtin for company. I wait for the Sabbath pure and it comes not. OUt doors it drizzles and drips. I
think every little while. I'll attend to Sydney Curtin in a few minutes when I'm tired.

The day [...] but even in its quickly gathered gammuts [gamuts] of [cleared] [...] storm ot leaves me a large blessing. I
pray for entire conversion and utter forgetfulness of self. Mrs. Sanford must be [...] with me.



March Monday, 31 1873.

Into what may be for my darling Sue. I can't think of anything else. The words seem, to take me into a great dark and the
glory and beauty of my isn't far off. July have vanished, even in this March weather. Only that pain and darkness hasn't
me. There is no help for the darkness, except coming close to know, and Sue will.

Of the real whole best is to be seen revealed to her. Who are we that we should hold her from the vision. O, that pain
and darkness! But we cling simply. We can tell even a man on a cross in such hours for he so loved!



April Tuesday, 1 1873.

Into looking this way and that way and all ways. Every one looks so imminent, so wisely honest. Why should we
suspect mischief lurking in every passing before? But suddenly all are on the [...] vive and I the unsuspecting victim of
plans inummerable succumb! The walking, Heaven defend us from much more like it. If I only could vow or swim, or
fly. Why can I not fly?

Can we walk in that stream my friends? Can we walk in that stream? Why, my friends? I write to see full accounts of
Dan and the hens.



April Wednesday, 2 1873.

Into being a water bird! I belong to the family of waders sub-class Water Birds. Class Mammalia - Brach - Vertebrates!

If I could only manage to see any way through but I can't. There's the water and the snow, and the natural organ
designed to thaw and make good walking has not been heard from this week. Alas! We have faith and the Dolly, but no
sunshine!

I wonder when I get time to , what things mean which I hear. I dare to hope the missing link will be missing next year,
but I don't hurry to hope so.



April Thursday, 3 1873.

Into James Smith's segments. When segments present the form of a yam!

Our cabinet of Natural History begins! A pigeons wing! We look imploringly for glass cases! Note. Our [rat] we had to
throw away! All our segments present the form of a ......

Mother says, "Come go and hear Comical Brown". I depose and say. What a young maiden of propensities would be
expected to say under those distressing circumstances!

I take up the hill braving morasses and swamps to see Jennie my girl!



April Friday, 4 1873.

into what may turn out to be spring. The sun smiles upon us and what is so rare as a day like this? We are full of it. We
took great pains to keep it but we couldn't. The snow acts obstinate, it won't go. Did it act so last spring? I am still a
wader.

Why don't Susie write? Is she up there in Delaware Co.? Am I never to find it out? When? I dont' feel like reading
reports to night? Guess I won't.



April Saturday, 5 1873.

Into good tidings and I hold my peace. I am in the Dutchman's heaven. Just now, close by, near to, just a little way off!
It's all Judge Bromley's fault. He was sent to conduct me there. You will hear of my descent soon. I'll go down saying
with Will Carlton. If you want to know what [Hachs] is, live a little while in heaven!

Miss Birrell and Irvine make me a dear, happy afternoon. It's only a little piece of life's many afternoons but it's bright
on both sides!



April Sunday, 6 1873.

Into the sorrows of Jean Valjean! I always lay that book down sad, but I'm glad I read it today! You see out doors nature
kept her secrets deep hid like Jean Valjean's! There was promise of glorified May days in the glorified fulfillings of the
past. This too was like Jean Valjean. It was still and dark and almost cold out doors.

Life looks larger to me tonight. It seems easier to go to a Congregational Mission meeting with Mrs. Foote!



April Monday, 7 1873.

Into a new regime! This refers to any coming under the laws and principles of good digestion. Details would be too
exhausting. Suffice it to say. I put myself today on the two meal system, begin on Graham [brans.] fish, and vegetables.
The example of the thirteen ounce man inspires me but do I want to live eighty years?

Mails are prolific and I am content even though no supper is written against my name. I read reports to R.G. and it is not
sitting together in heavenly places. Far from it. How have they [dealt] with me at that Board meeting tonight?



April Tuesday, 8 1873.

Into finding and securing a valuable specimen for Natural History class. Jennie Croft must look out for herself. She goes
up stairs to copy her lesson and assumes the form of a rare species of Reptile. I give the girls notice and she will be
deprived of liberty. She says I know how to stuff her. We have none of your common rains today. I assure you. It
descends in sheets and mother laments the piano box mishelterred!

James Smiths' corn has sprouted! He give Amidas & Barlow accounts of his garden.
We all fall to scolding Dannie, poor child.



April Wednesday, 9 1873.

Into welcoming Middlemarch. It has just made and excursion to the "girls hall" and been gone ever since I need it in
full, how I hold out my arms as if I would embrace it! I don't like Dorothea nor that old curate she's going to marry. I
don't see why she should marry them at the first of the story. What else is there to tell?

The wind has come up and it will turn around and be cold or else favor us with a thaw and good humor.
Jaeger's life of North American Insects is long on the way. Where doth it [tarry]. Why doth it let me [stine]? I fear not a
breath from Village Board, State Board, or my Bored!



April Thursday, 10 1873.

Into the turn the wind took! We begin the day with two great causes for thankfulness. An appearance of the sun
positively not the last and a holiday tomorrow!

The pleasant good cheer of the sun all came about by the turn the wind took. We get into what is known in the house as
a real-estate fever! We all want to buy. We talk no more of hens, or eggs, but of doors and casings, intent taxes, and %
off for cash! Nothing comes of it, neither am I blessed with tidings from the Bored or Jaegers Life of North American
Insects!



April Friday, 11 1873.

Into "father's chariot". There it was waiting for us at Rutland, the very minute we landed. Father wheeled round and we
mounted aloft. Before this I investigated the morphology of turtles, lizards & alligators, and treated of letters, syllables
separated words and spelling, besides buying Armstrong's new house and lot, and waiting one hour of the wheel barrow
in front of the depot tormented by the crunching of [maple] were in the room above. The cars came. I skip what came
next [over] the muddy part of it. And [...] was in around above before, for three miles!



April Saturday, 12 1873.

Into sugaring off. We dressed first and washed. If there's anything I respect its chronology. There was a long space
between where the days left off yesterday and where today began! I woke up in the space between and could not find
sleep again for I don't know how long! Well, we sugared off, out in the big kitchen you know. Where the sap was boiled
in a big dish. What do they call it? Does my jolly friends secret include maple wax?



April Sunday, 13 1873.

Into denouncing April, announcing President Buckham and renouncing the world and the flesh. Why not denounce
April when she has brought us wind and storm and made all things look brown and bleak. When we behind in her as in
me who bringeth good tidings. Why not announce President Buckham when his good, noble face peered above the
Congregational pulpit and spoke to us of these grand days in which we live.
Why not renounce the world and flesh when the first is all a fleeting show and the second allows us no supper!



April Monday, 14 1873.

Into a box and what was in it. Don't think it was Jacqueline Corsets as I did. It says so on the box. Don't think hanking
after things are never fulfilled. I hankered for birds and Jennie lets me hanker no more.

Don't think I am not hankering for a stuffer and stuffing! I surely am.
Don't think Dan didn't like his first price today. He surely did!
Don't think it was not early when we arose at Mrs. Brown's. It surely was!



April Tuesday, 15 1873.

Into the woods!
"What a dreary thing it must be an existence to flop!" I take this from Grace Greenwood and do wonder if she has ever
flopped! I can't tell when anybody has found a word that so exactly tells what my verb is, of being, doin, and sufferin!
But a day comes when it was time to go in the woods. The grand, dark woods whose every breath was God's license to
be glad and the mute faces of whose mosses looked a volume of welcome to us. The only obstacle in the why of
unrestricted pursuit of happiness was Jennie's veil. Where shall I find room to tell how it acted ? A [Le D...] is in my
soul for spring has come and I have seen the woods.



April Wednesday, 16 1873.

Into thoughts of the dark valley. Two things keep me in the shadow of it. That it was hard for Mrs. Guernsey to die and
that she was taken just as mother is. When the death rattle came in Mrs. Guernsey's throat they told her what it was. She
raised herself and took her fingers and cleared out her throat saying as she turned to lie down "I guess it wasn't ". There
were her last, her dying words. Let me go away and talk to Aunt Winifred about it. Let me think of the exultant face, the
ecstatic longing as she looks upon the opening vision. "John, why John!"



April Thursday, 17 1873.

Into being entirely devoted to the interests of mother and Mrs. Branch. One of my mother's aversions most decidedly
marked relates to calling. Who can nightly estimate judging from this fact the length of one of her calls. I never dreamed
of it until I tried it. What a teacher is experience!

Mrs. Branch affirms that I ought to call and see her often. Little does she dream in the loftiest flights of fancy that I give
reproductions, that I correct diagrams, that I write Anthography questons, that I write twice a week to Sue that I give
essay subjects and write "heads" that I owe somebody a letter, that I am reading Middlemarch!



April Friday, 18 1873.

Into becoming sensible of possessing a ride! One question is uppermost. Is it rheumatism? "All things can be traced to
their ultimate source." How did this originate? Does the fact that a week ago I went one hour without a flannel skirt bear
on this print? Did my wielding a broom so dexterously yesterday connect itself with this? Mother says "Did I wrench
it?" I can only echo. If I trace it back to it's "ultimate source" will I find a wrench?

Mother and I go around spending evenings. We will give a like entertainment time not assumed on all our friends in this
street!



April Saturday, 19 1873.

Into a "love problem". I suppose it is, ours is a statement requiring demonstration! Jennie Croft and I are working at it!
The idea suggested itself in George Eliot's "Three love problems". Jennie is unlike any of my other favorites in
everything. She hasn't Sarah's confiding ways, Addie's demonstrativeness, Laura's hyperboles, George's straightness,
Mathe's quaintness, Ella's eyes, Annie's poetry , Lucy's heliotropes, Mary's mild searchings for beautiful things, always
hidden, Addie Taft's pink, or Libbie Whitlock's daintiness. But Jennie is by herself an individual. I cannot describe her
for at least a year.



April Sunday, 20 1873.

Into a day that went out in a rainstorm. It commenced in glory. There was nothing but joy in it and I knew Mr. Briggs
would come for me with his carriage. The day told me so! I knew I should see the hills and the [outlet] of the lake
gleaming in the sun. It was all a part of the day God sent! But by and by toward the coming night the clouds made
known their presence and in pauses there was rain. What a nice little walk of ours it spoiled, mother's and mine. How
wet we got but heaven be praised we keep our tempers!



April Monday, 21 1873.

Into unexpected blessedness. Our ends have been shaped, but not rough! No cooks shall be our neighbors. The new
house we shall inhabit, and fifteen hundred immediately becomes a monstrous sum for Mr. Buells house that might have
been our [hilled] lands and is not! Our title is read clear for more habitable portions of the globe!

Mrs. Foote seems paralyzed with terrors. Couriers are dispatched with all possible haste in all directions to find a new
tenant!

In the heat of the conflict Mrs. Preston calls!



April Tuesday, 22 1873.

Into finding hepaticas. It is very common in these days to make unsuccessful expeditions. As for me not being willing to
be duped in any such way I vow and hold fact not to come home without a trophy. Brave girl! Noble resolve!! Behold
the sequel, treasures wait for me, hidden nooks give me the key to chair recesses! Has any one the honor of bringing out
the first spring flower? Nay that honor is reserved for Jennie and I! How grand we feel! Mother gazes for the first time
in the far famed Seminary Chapel.

We're glad we've come! [(Did "dearie' hear?)]!



April Wednesday, 23 1873.

Into an official visit from Judge Bromley. Judge Bromley is not a gold headed cane, he is Hobbs! He is the irritable
Hobbs, without a hobby! He bids me stand on my feet and don't give it up! He comes from the [Cincinnati] action
office, and I & the Normal School are carried into the hands of [circumventors] who are mean and I wait one more
Board meeting! I say to the good man, "Judge it seems so strange to me a lady in charge of this school". "It's never been
tried in the state". "We'll try it then!"

I came out to [mother] full of it. I fall down before God wondering at it.



April Thursday, 24 1873.

Into a pussy willow romance! The last, the only record of yesterday has gone to Sue, and in my Log no trace of it
appears! What historian then shall know that we stood in the red [...]. That we walked home with the boys! That the
Edict of Mary not France was ! and is! and even shall be!? What trophy should we bring to night. Spies from the [...]
land are met, they lead us in the way of all pussy willows, and we follow, follow!

I am a business girl of the first water! If I ain't that Mr. Cole is the matter. I leave $100 in the bank and not even a piece
of paper to show for it! They always do so in business!



April Friday, 25 1873.

Into bein and doin and sufferin! I've had to come to mark Lapley's definition of a verb to get the story begun and I shall
go to Mrs. Partington to get it "wound up". "On whom shall her mantel piece fall?" My standard of sleep is good! I
usually [obsess] the highest standard of order in all things that have to do with sleep. Last night I cannot say that sleep
was anything but form of a mild type! Mother breaks up my little naps with "Fannie, shall I boil you some corn beef?
Fannie do you know where the key is to your room? Fannie, where's my shoes, did Jennie bring them home?"

There goes three naps, three precious naps, beyond this my memory fails me! I am up at half past four to see mother
take a half past five, alias six o'clock train! O, for room to tell of going up to Delia Clark's and of the cake I baked!



April Saturday, 26 1873.

Into growing into disfavor with Mrs. Briggs! I never shall resume my old peace in her affections!
Nor can I ever hope to be considered again in the eyes of Mr. Briggs, one of the elect! He will never ask me any more if
the Jews baptized, when Sunday begins. Where Daniel was, why the Lord wanted I not to tell a lie! I got the carriage
muddy! O, faithless me, and yet you cherish in your heart the memory of one blissful morning, in whose cursory
moments was no trace of Mrs. Briggs going out to clean the carriage with oiled silk, and Jennie was with you.

Ma's mantel piece does not quite fit me! Tea for some is like building the great Cheops!



April Sunday, 27 1873.

Into matronly perplexities. I do not entertain guests after the primitive style! To him a cake or dress a kid is very
different from a nineteenth century breakfast getting!
I am sadly inexpert in slicing ham, or, cutting cold pudding or finding where mother keeps an [...], and I forget to salt?
but I huddle a breakfast together & call Addie Taft and Laura . Breakfast is only a commencement, there's a house to
keep, which means with Miss Teborde's everlasting emphasis, Work away!

I get to hear Mr. Mathersons farewell sermon and then there's supper to get. But the day has to quiet [...]. Just a little
while it was in the kitchen by the fire.



April Monday, 28 1873.

Into knowing how sublime it is to suffer and be snapped! I do not bear snapw with dignity! I mean inward dignity.
Gentleness possibly forbearness are elements that seem to have been left our of Mr. W.'s religion this morning! My
religion was not expecting to be snapped. And so!

I prepare for mother. I believed her when she said Monday, so I made ready. Sat in expectant readiness for a coach
which came not for our boy which appeard not and there was nothing left to do but be gracious and get supper and break
my [pact] which had been kept that I might eat with grandma!



April Tuesday, 29 1873.

Into biding my time. This has a worser story than the other and my patience shook. I made unparalleled preparation,
even built two fires. Everything was swept and garnished but me and it wasn't quite time enough for me to be. I listened
for wheels until I grew desperate, rushed out, into the street. Saw only Dan and a blissful note saying mother'll be home
next week!

I too was swept and garnished.

What again was there left for me to do but go in and get supper? Then I went over to help Ella with her Latin, saying
sadly to myself, O Fannie you have a queer way of laying your life down.



April Wednesday, 30 1873.

Into being a benefactor to Miss Bissell in giving advice which she did not follow! I am sometimes consulted on matters
of grave interest! Sometimes matters of [...]. It elevates me, it gives them an exalted sense of their necessity to human
kind! It fell to me today to advise Sister Bisssell on the important question, shall she go to ride with Mr. Pattinson?
"Whoever knew me to put one word of protest against a ride with any one, anywhere?" [Honsey] and [Mordy] fail to see
the eternal fitness of it! It was not the eternal fitness that made the plan fall through but the horse. How much horses will
have to answer for!



May Thursday, 1 1873.

Into a night more dreaded than the day! There's no telling what a Board will do. I have always said that! I do not need
additional proof, so today when lofty honors were granted me in the form of a call from Dr. Webber and Gen. Grandy I
was not surprised to understand from them that it was the wish of everybody and everybody's friends that I should
remain here and teach another year with Mr. Williams! I have not winced under it. I've just sat and held the dreaded
thing in my heart until it seems too hard for me. And then the night came for me toss in and quake every few minutes to
think how near Heaven was, and ever how far.



May Friday, 2 1873.

Into welcoming on this very rainy day H.H. and her Bits of Talk. This is a compensation, and I know as I see it's darlin
face that it will become more and more. H.H. [...] letters that ring in my life and will always strike me deep as long as
there is left a line of Dropped Dead!

I've worked two ways today. Outwardly, mechanically at this and that. Inwardly, working at the question. There is no
answer and the rain falls heavily, drearily!



May Saturday, 3 1873.

Into news from a far country. New attempts at gravy and a scrap-book campaign! One of my great ambitions has been
how to make palatable gravy, gravy without lumps, with salt and otherwise edible! Today such a result has crowned a
series of causes. Here is another compensation! Something perhaps a memory of the days far back that came when
threads are brought up made Aunt Fancy write to Aggie. The appearance of her letterr sends my thoughts from gravy to
things national! Many things. Hath paste & paste. I'm [Bozzaris] for I cheer. It was another nice little time Jennie and I
had for we like each other.



May Sunday, 4 1873.

Into holding out. How do you stand the heat? Only with the comfort of a relief tomorrow. Mr. Briggs' house is having a
very bad time. He may die. Dan remarks learned on the nature of the disease but his wisdom awaits me little.

Today has not been exceeded in glory this spring. I sit by the window and finish Middlemarch. It does not seem easy to
forget how empty the rooms look. I put away Middlemarch saying over and over the closing words: "That things are not
so ill with you & me as they might have been if half owing to those who lived" faithfully a hidden life & sleep in
unvisited tombs.



May Monday, 5 1873.

Into how d'ye do's! This time Jen and I sit in the back window of the Normal and watch for that train. It comes along an
hour late and no hands move to us from the window! Again I make that kitchen fire. Again I watch by the parlor
window. Again I grow desperate and rush out inot the street. What does my eyes behold but that expected [B...] train
and grandma's old hat and my black veil and sir Dan walking each side of the carriage(?) while mother is lost amid
bundles! All this to reward me for much waiting and relieve me from gravy!



May Tuesday, 6 1873.

Into seeing fish and having faith. My faith in this May is strength [erect] every time I go into the woods. We found
things new and old from Nature's [...] treasures and come home with only one serious regret. We could not search a
pussy willow!

Well,life, so you are. At that moment this is the one thing we would have changed! This spring has brought me an
untold comfort in Jennie Croft! There's something about such girls that take right hold of me, and she's just the one to
take with me into my word [sambles]! "Verses" by H.H. has come!



May Wednesday, 7 1873.

Into the pupa state! Some larvae are more or less inactive in the pupa state and some we are told lose their semblances to
what they're expected to be & finally fly out alive and kicking. If I am not in a pupa state what am I? Behold my
inactivity! My charged visage!

Jennie and I camp out under one big tree and prepare her body to be offered up next Tuesday and Wednesday on the
altar of State Certificates.

We do not find the road to the altar [...] with [flouncy] beds of ease. We get wofully tired before bedtime. Don't suppose
we stayed under the tree all this time?



May Thursday, 8 1873.

Into worries new and old. We try the words again. This time we all go and somewhere up there I lost half my worries. I
couldn't find some of them at all when I sat down and commenced to hunt them up. We went all over that big hill and
came into possession not of saxifrage, anemones and [haustorias] alone but of scavenger beetles!

But I can't help asking in my blind discontented way. What shall be done with me next year? Where shall I go? There's
not an answer anywhere!



May Friday, 9 1873.

Into no next. It just came and went and brought me now word, no sign from out the stillness to which I turn these tired
days. 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 with Jen and school and find a forgetting even in the
life of a first assistant. Poor Jennie gets so tired she has to cry. Do you think I'd let her cry long?

And grandma knits and knits.



May Saturday, 10 1873.

Into finding out that "Saturday is play day". We should not have known, only Mr. Williams told our Jennie so. Play day
for me who have not known one these many weeks? Whose highway into valleys of air and spring and play are hedged
up by a pile no [insane] could number of examination papers to look over, of questions to write, of essay subjects to
find, of Natural History to study and reproduce?? My play days, where are they? When are they. Somehow. Somewhere.

And Susies letter. Susie's letter.



May Sunday, 22 1873.

Into wishing to be [less] miserable! I was [hard] to suit all day and if I'd stayed upstairs and kept Frances there, it would
have been much better. I couldn't write. I couldn't talk, all I could do was to lay on the bed and read Les Miserables.
Poor shivering little Sunday. How much you might have brought me if I'd only let you.

We have not attained unto the Sabbaths that have no end, but let me pray until I feel and know that I am nearer that
time.



May Monday, 12 1873.

Into what do you think of that my cat, and what do you think of that my dog. Hear Miss Jennie before the ominous R.G.
and the Il Penserver Mrs. R.G. "O have decided to go home this morning". Such coolness! No wonder they answer not.
What is there left to say?

I think less and less of girls large and small. Institute or no Institute and they know and don't know and don't know and
do know. I came home disgusted. A School Committee irreproachable and easy to be entreated comes, he comes, he
comes with songs to greet me. Teacher? No, not yet. [Marius] gone for carthage.



May Tuesday, 13 1873.

Into the more I think I will I think I won't. I am just about ready to [tire] and explain and stay at home and back. Such
girls and boys! Examination papers thrill me fill me with fantastic terrors never felt before. I know all the words in the
English language but [seat]. O where shall [3] sing! I rejoice to see the last skeleton of an ex-paper dissected compiled
and sat down.

No wonder I never see sunsets any more.
I hear Miss [Teb...] [...] from the deeps of home.
Work away.........
< >...............



May Wednesday, 14 1873.

Into a peep at other people. Good times came even for Glory McWhink. So I put on my little hat and buy my little [...]
and disappear. I am next seen at the Bardwell House in the deeps of [St. Denis]. I disappear again. Next you see me trip
going off the train at Wallingford as grand as anybody. Find my Jennie girl fearing her examination [...] joyfully. It's
blessed that I can have that Dr. French for one little minute to talk to, and Prof. Higley has us all one little minute to talk
to.



May Thursday, 15 1873.
Into a "white day".



May Friday, 16 1873.

Into finding people to please and nothing to please them with. Such experiences fall abundantly to my [lot], they prove
disciplinary! The worst ones fall to me to please examples. Mr. Williams, Addie Bucklin, Hark, ark, ark, ark, as Jennie
would say.

Getting to that train at 3 P.M. was a work of art. How we did it is evolved in the services of unsought pneumatics.

I find myself ensconced in Danby, making no attempts to be social! Addie is neither Faith nor the folly, but Frances are
you Elizabeth Stuart?



May Saturday, 17 1873.

Into seeing a train go and leave me before my very face and eyes! To sit a whole [forenoon] with nothing to do but to
get to an eleven o'clock train and then sit and let it go and without you is not cheerful, alas, no! Jen and I had it all fixed.
This slight tragedy has all unfixed us both! It ended by my spending the afternoon which was to have been an [...] of
bliss on Addie's bed, with her in tears, my evening on a slow train with that bore of a Wright, or in solitary confinement
at the [Bates] House to be called at a two o'clock train while Jen goes on to be [alone]. How little to our minds!



May Sunday, 18 1873.

Into visions of newly come leaves. This day opened for me twice. Once smoking out of Rutland depot at 2 o'clock, next
rubbing my eyes in my own room between the hours of nine and ten. A mystery engulfs me. Where's my telegram?
Where's Jen? But the day builded it's towers toward heaven and made God glorious in his world and I helped it not.
There seems to be a great distance between myself and a consecrated soul.

So far, so far from thee.

Because so near to Him.



May Monday, 19 1873.

Into sight, chiefly cod! Which refers us to a day where Gail fished and caught only memories of cod. I don't know as I
can improve much. I fish away with imaginary lines in imaginary waters and fish up what might have been. But light
has come to me! I have looked upon Jennie's face once more.

The telegram fell into no bar [...] hands, but a mystery would engulf the whole house had she come. Mrs. W. would not
have laid her down and slept! Jennie would meet my forth coming wrath rather than my [stify] mysterious folks. So she
did!



May Tuesday, 20 1873.

Into one little minute at the door of the [Tent] in the cool of the day.

[Whew]. How my train goes. I just stop to wipe the sweat off and pull away! It's a glorious day to sweat in. Why we
don't have ten such days in a year! There isn't much life about this kind of [dim]. Come Jennie girl lets go off out and
get made over, and we find a place waiting for us in sight of green and resting blue. I feel as if I'd been climbing up
from piles of crimson lately. Out of the crimson we climb into the blue.



May Wednesday, 21 1873.

Into always doing so in Castleton. Which reminds one of annual Normal School Entertainment, and give to me a fore
taste of an approaching one. What do I think about it? said Mr. R.G. What is there left for me to think about it. "Go" and
she goeth. "Come", and she cometh.

My little blue napper is finished. Fresh and new. It suggests things not yet attained!

What did Miss Hewitt go in the school room door for? Sure enough. Poor Miss Moody. Is that a new philosophy and is
Mr. Williams a Horatio?

Questions puzzle me. I'm sleepy.



May Thursday, 22 1873.

Into feeling heart-bare, heart hungry, very poor.

I am glad to come and find rest in Jesus. Glad of anything that takes me near to Him. Glad even to feel how shut up and
far away I have lived, for he sees us a great way off & there is for love [...] return the ring and the kiss.

Seculary, I'll say I've taught school and carried around a many [head]. Expected to ride but, no horse returned, and to
come to the climax I commenced to draw!



May Friday, 23 1873.

Into sweet fulfillments. [More] than one for [our] plan was complicated. In the first place could we have a horse, we
could. Mr. Patterson saved one up for us. Next could no way be thought of to keep [Sol] out of our faces. Only to hurry
and get there. Pony knew, there was no whip. And alas he knew a whip wasn't much in the hands of a woman. "Had
Miss [Grose] come?" we said all the way over there! "Has come" we said the moment we stopped. "Yes she's come".
Are we all sitting around dear Mrs. [Grose] again and is it a year?
And the news Marnie [Grose] brought makes me think and think.



May Saturday, 24 1873.

Into "what is so rare"? Indeed this is a rare day and it finds Jennie and I in Mr. Chatman's upper front chamber. We
dress up, curl up, make beds up, and delight ourselves in sweeping. [Staid] Mrs. Chatman and Bradley have never let so
much fun in their house since they [moved] it as we've made today. All things were in our favor. Flowers grew in the
woods for us, the kitten played and was cunning for us, and Mr. Chatman hitched up the horse for us, and we came
home thoroughly pleased. But we're too tired to laugh and we turn longingly toward the bed with springs.



May Sunday, 25 1873.

Into being led into green pastures.

We come up out of a grim week to the banks of Sunday to get glimpses of the still waters, for next week is a hard one.
We came to the Sunday banks and find the meadow air pleasant, and the breath of upper air heartsome.

I like to talk with Jennie. She can sit down to a real Sunday talk, and make you feel sorry when supper or mother stops
you.

At dusk we go out to take a snuff of air and the night preached and the wind made the choir, and the stars pronounced
the benediction.



May Monday, 26 1873.

Into allusions to Horatio's philosophy. There are several reasons why Horatio's philosophy should be alluded to,
although all the things in heaven and earth are not dreamed of in the philosophy. No its when the undreamed of things
take place that we think of Horatio, poor Horatio, so like us, who cannot dream it all. The philosophy that governs the
Edicts of a Corporation Brand, the philosophy, that appoints their committees. The philosophy that is the motive power
of Sister Thomas, that ordains Normal School entertainments and that pushes them forward, who can understand it!

We complete the arrangements with Mr. [A...] for the new house.



May Tuesday, 27 1873.

Into realizing where the tail end is with prospects. No one can set sail in the same boat with Sister Thomas or be set to
roll the same stone up the hill with her but some finds out where the tail end is and if they stay long enough. The
prospects also. This snubbing sound is so entirely new to first assistant that it affords an unhealthy balance to that
individual.

First assistant is waited on by most worthy members of association of corporated interests in Castleton borough, but the
meeting is rather unsatisfactory, owing to the fact that party [second] knew not what they came for [then] could party
first [...].



May Wednesday, 28 1873.

Into what may be a next for Hope. (See March 20!) And today in my half-decided, sadly tortured state a letter comes
marching up to me from Edward Conant. "Will I go to Randolph next year?" "O, yes" I say in my first impulse at the
thought that anybody wants me, that there's any place for me, but this. "O, no" I say, as I go away by and by and think of
mother and the pretty new house. "O yes" I say when I look at the seminary. "O no" I say when I look at mother.



May Thursday, 29 1873.

Into being "caught up". Having a dialogue to write, a paper to superintend, & all the hateful things to say is not what I
[...] to. Such things tied to the direction that is opposite the adverb up. But those things fall to me and the immortal glory
to Sister Thomas. Never mind. None of these things move me. I am caught up on airy pinnacles. A way to upper air is
open and I am taken up, high up, long enough to be glad that anybody wants me next year, that there's a place, any place
for me but this.



May Friday, 30 1873.

Into how mother and I celebrate! It begins by mother's saying she didn't see how she could go. She always says that.
Then I begin at once to see how she can go and start off and hire a horse. It never takes any time for Dan to see how he
can go! We ride around awhile. Then we wait on the green for the procession to form. Not even Marshal Hyde can feel
any grander than we, as we look down upon the walking multitude.

We make a fine day out of it mother and I and seem to do our duty at the Normal "festival". Mother to be audience. I to
get my last snub from Sister Thomas.



May Saturday, 31 1873.

Into a meadow and under a shade-tree! A dreadful thing has happened . Jennie has tossed her head to Mrs. Williams!
The everlasting condemnation of the house has fallen upon that head that tossed. Not Bizzy's. No. No, dear Bizzy knows
about that tossed! What made the head toss? "Miss Bromley" say they. Do they know when the word gets to her what a
pain it will send to her heart, how she will worry and wonder, and find no cure for the ache and the hurt that have such
sore places?

But there's a meadow and a shade-tree and Jennie and I find it and we get away from them all, and find a jolly time, hid
away for us out in the [lot].



June Sunday, 1 1873.

Into then if ever, and a perfect day!

Mr. Briggs and I have made up. I think he's a nice old man. He thinks I can go to church with him. And this first day of
June is indeed a perfect day. I drink my fill of it over to church and back, and feel as if a kingdom had been given to me.
Elder Grose preached to us his last sermon. What a strange face old things are putting on. So many breakings up not far
away make me almost sad if I could be sad such a day as this. No more of Miss Bissell at the Seminary. No more of
Miss Grose at Hydeville. Mr. Briggs & I ride thoughtfully home.



June Monday, 2 1873.

Into "going way off". I am getting into my old ways, that of going off by mylself to think. No wonder when my head is
in such a whirl and I can't do my [sums].

Jennie was to go but she didn't come so I took my little bucket and went on and on. No one can quite know the good
such walks do me. They calm me, and though I may decide nothing yet I can see things clearer and be more ready to do
my duty when I face my life away off in Gods own meadows. I met Jennie coming back and she looked tired and sad.
Saturdy morning's affairs worries her as well as me.



June Tuesday, 3 1873.

Into "three to make ready and four to go!" So doth Miss Jennie up to the [...]. So do us down in the little brown house.
We don't get any farther than the making ready. Tomorrow we'll go. Jennie girl comes near not saying "four to go". Mrs.
R.G. and Mr. R.G. came near keeping her on porter and ale stratagems. Poor sick girl. We don't let her stay. Her mother
is better than ale of porter. But why didn't they let her satchel go?

At home all is chaotic. Mrs. Foote is glooming but we find no willows for our harps. Mr. Preston gives me enlarged
accounts of Corporation Brands. I meditate on!



June Wednesday, 4 1873.

Into the new home.
We enter it joyfully. Who can know how very good it seems to us, not in the roomy cosy parts, and cheery windows
only, not in its comforts without or within 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, and we have brave hearts to work for it for her.

How good it all seems, and how glad we are.

O, Father, reveal to me my duty, direct my paths for I do acknowledge thee. May I feel us. I have felt in other times of
doubt that thou dost lead me, and out with me.



June Thursday, 5 1873.

Into a deep hard question that I cannot answer. And it grows deeper and harder, and makes a burden of my thought to
weary me.

I am helpless before my life sum. An answer now and here. Its results for all time. I can't stay here next year. How can
I? The thought 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? In my question, which does? I want to know.
If I only could know how ready I am for the greater self-denial.



June Friday, 6 1873.

Into a new way of getting our room trimmed.
We shall not have one question to puzzle us. That old question of "how shall we get more cedar"? No. We have
deliberately gone in force to the place where cedar is, and with ropes and hoops proceed to make festoons and wreaths,
in unheard of abundance. So instead of riding home from Randolph this sunny afternoon as I had it all once planned, I
am sitting on the grass in distant woods cutting cedar. So plans work out. To-night I am all decided to teach next year in
Randolph. Tomorrow evening I shall be just as decided that I will stay here.



June Saturday, 7 1873.

Into taking comfort in the new house with mother. Yes mother we will go from room to room and talk together of all the
cosy things in our little home. Who knows, who can tell how long we shall all be in it. We find some nice new plan
every day that we had not seen before. Surely we are not in Church St. or Rose St. or Philip St. God has brought us up
into a pleasant land and our hearts rejoice in him.

I get Susie's herbarium all done which suggests business.



June Sunday, 8 1873.

Into finishing Les Miserables. I've just sat down and cried over it like a baby. And such a thing cannot be traced
anywhere in the memory of the oldest inhabitant about me before. Why, it's too grand to be told. As I think of it it comes
over me like the strong readings of a great life, hid in Christ, lost and found!

Who could write such a book unless he knew? Getting back to other things after it seems like coming down.
For my sake, for my sake, shall find it!



June Monday, 9 1873.

Into seeing my plans unfold! Ah, a new plan possesses me thought up in a twinkling but many twinklings has it taken to
work it out! Thats one reason why I don't like this world. But where was Dan? Nobody knew. Mother set her foot down
that alone I should not go. But where was Dan? The day grew in [ap...] and to get to Jennie's tonight will take time and
Dan. But where was Dan? O merciful interposition. I meet him and mother takes up her foot and we are off. What could
be nicer than this side through the sunset and in the moonlight. Ah, and that's not all. Jennie will go with us tomorrow!



June Tuesday, 10 1873.

Into a mountain! Was called to breakfast just as I had begun my first nap. That didn't seem quite the way, but an
undertaking stupendous was before me! [D...]. I could not. The nap must be finished in Randolph!

But I find I must put the journey in the Red Bank. Such a day as this is an epoch. It demands space.

We are up our last hill. Mrs. Conant says there is a higher, but will she make us believe that? We are ensconced at
Edward Conant's. Where Oliver is we know not. Night has come and with it a dreary rainstorm! My nap is not taken up.
I can't sleep here.



June Wednesday, 11 1873.

Into what do I think of it! I find myself when my vision rises on Alice Guernsey's bed in Alice Guernsey's room. So
much is apparent. Other things come one by one. The pleasantness after the same, the herbariums, the class in drawing
of forms in mensuration, in the history of the year '62 in the play of Julius Caesar! The seeing Oliver once more. The
farewells, and Randolph behind us! What do I think of it? The school would be Paradise Regained! The village, O,
deliver me. I never want to live up so high. Only the hope of fleeing from Mr. W.s wrath to come could [t...] me!

Our mountain side home is not for today only but for all time. We will keep it to have for our own treasure always.



June Thursday, 12 1873.

Into a bigger puzzle than before and a living vision of Mark Tapley. You may well say a bigger puzzle than before! It
grows a puzzle more and more! I go up to the train pondering it most and Miss Grose will not let me ponder coming
back. When school is out we have a teacher's meeting and I live to greet not Miss Grose and Miss Helen alone but she of
the older time, Annie Reed.

Our visit is marked with all sobriety inclination to be charitable and mild demeanor incumbent.
When the trio hold the house in possession we hear of Dr. Smith.
Hear Helen. "On the contrary we are much amused!"



June Friday, 13 1873.

Into being like folks again. This refers the gentle reader to a settling down process. A gentle getting used to living off of
mountains. The exponent seems to be that I am found in the chair facing the Normal class, that I eat betimes. That I go
up to a train to see Miss G. go off and that I cam back under Bissell's parasol and [succinate] with that lady in the
contiguous shade.



June Saturday, 14 1873.

Into Delaware County by faith. It's a very unsatisfactory kind of faith I'm sorry to say. I want to be there myself her day!
But I send my pretty wild flowers that stand as the exponents of my rosier cheeks and fresher face and I know how glad
she'll be. I can't get slept out. I'm making strides toward the out, but see as yet no sequel.

I make Queen's herbarium and the fussing tires me dreadfully. So I got to sleep! I wake up very thankful that I made that
herbarium! [I'm] so yet.



June Sunday, 15 1873.

Into realizing in the flesh somewhat of Deacon's Quirk's Heaven. I would have make a very good Deacon Quirk angel
today. Seemed floating along betwixt heaven and earth aimless and unemployed. Read Gates Ajar through and than
Isaiah so as to be sure and no be any more like those D.Q. angels than I could help, but I had to wait for the day to die
and the stillness to come before I could feel things.

O if I could only feel good inside once more. I need so that spirit [birth] the blessed fruits of which are love and joy and
peace in the Holy Ghost.



June Monday, 16 1873.

Into deciding on a pair of shoes! This seems a climax of 1873 to me who have stood over shoe boxes and tried on every
[...] standard of leather, [...], cloth, pebble goat and imported. [Rid] for so long, besides being a source of severe
discipline to all the stores of our town.

I'm afraid my melancholy day have come for even if pinching promotes that feeling. My joint acts cross and won't be
good.

Our front step is a box. Anyway it's better to be on a box than in one. Clarence Cook and I are [many] in me on the
subject of oatmeal. When he arises to the [staling] of old jokes in Greek farther back then Moses. I can only make
believe I understand.

Mother prophecies a hurricane. I rise and shake all the windows .

Ella gives me a dear little visit but finds me mystified over the Comedy of Errors.



June Tuesday, 17 1873.

Into a vision of field strawberries. They were not play day beries. O, No! We found them in the way of duty. We had
[...] to make, one to fill out, a wreath or two and cedar to carry home.

[...] not indefinite have come to our ears relative to the graduation of Mr.James Smith. I know him. Then there's other
things to talk about ending with a regiment [...] [...]. New York!. Mother needs but a single glimpse at my berries to
decide at use on a short cake. The first of the season. So be it.



June Wednesday, 18 1873.

Into visions of perch and rock bass. My brother is up and [diving] in that direction. To learn in this world one must
enquire, so whenever a small fish is handed me I begin on my brother. "What do you call this?" Sometimes it's perch,
sometimes it's rock bass. Either way I forget as soon as I have eaten it. It may be just as well. His knowledge is
exceedingly uncertain. I drill and drill any graduating class but tis brittle day to me. Neither does it take effect to scold.
I can only recommend them to mercy.



June Thursday, 19 1873.

Into much that doth not tend to build up!

One thing to begin with, is Susie's not being better. She does not write! Why does she not write? I cannot tell my
friends!

Mother is suffering the discipline of a pie plant short-cake. Alas! She will not heed my [Grahamatic] suggestions! And
the more the pity she is deaf to Clarence Cook's oatmeal!

I hear Ella and Lucie for the last time. As we go over the old lessons together and know that we shall never journey that
way again a lonely lonely feeling comes and will not go.

The sunset light is on the past tonight.



June Friday, 20 1873.

Into "is it?" "Can it be?" "Maybe so!" But I grow no wiser only glad in a hope that may bear white blossoms some day.
The question resolves itself into "Will Mrs. Williams go to Troy and take Mr. Williams?" That is all I know about it.
How dare I hope?

And I sit and ask the questions and look around and work around just as if I should be right here with these dear girl
faces on and on, but it will not be.

Jennie girl has come, flowers and all! I still take to myself some credit for those shoes which so fit. I will still believe if
it wasn't for me somebody else would have been treading on those soles that so delight her. I still believe it.



June Saturday, 21 1873.

Into the old chair before vanishing faces. I call them together once more. I could not quite let them go last night so we
take up the little threads in old Vermonts geography and history and say then over and over. I had to thank them for all
they have been to me this hard year. It seemed so good to feel that from them I have never had cross words or looks,
have never heard cross things they've said to others. They have been loving, cheery and loyal always and my heart
blesses them.

We find herbarium making dry business when there's so much to think of.
Dr. French duly appears and the work begins.



June Sunday, 22 1873.

Into coming pretty near it. That is I was all dressed. Then I went before the chairman of inspection mother. Verdict. Not
guilty. Further verdict. "Seems to me you ought to have something else on. Won't you wear my black shawl?" "[Never]
mother." And that is how the vibrations from Mr. Ayers sermon to the young never sounded in my ear.

I found plenty of sleeping to do. Somehow I am never out of that.

Then I wasn't out of fidgeting to do. [Stock] that way never was better.
9:00 P.M. Who's around our house this time of night?
Dr. French.



June Monday, 23 1873.

Into a Normal day of judgement. This is my fourth. The hardening process is slow in results in my case. I still need
props. The two Dr's are capable of turning the [dust] [...] mind, to say nothing of the townspeople and Thomas!
Grammar thunders around us, replite with peals of Rhetoric. Then the surges of History 40 minutes! By and by milder
Thomson and Milton!

Verdict of townspeople "They done very well!"



June Tuesday, 24 1873.

Into turning my eyes away from Randolph. Don't think I do it ardently. All feeling has left me but passivity to accept the
best that comes to let Dr. F. decide.

He says, stay, and the dispatch grads stay.

The final verdict is sounded and one is left of the twelve! Poor Minnie. Why did they make me tell her? The eleven are
joyful, ay, jubilant.


I take poor Minnie home then Helen & Jennie and I take our last ride. It's the old road to Mark Tapley's.



June Wednesday, 25 1873.

Into the strawberry fields and on Red Hill! One necessary element of a strawberry short cake is a certain quantity of
strawberries. One very necessary element of our happiness is a certain quantity of shortcake. Heres our betaking
ourselves to the woods, jointly! Our [stars] are kind. We ride both ways. First with a boy with jugs. Second with a very
old man and in the most primitive style. Jennie and I could not go to the reception together. There was an excellent
reason which nobody guessed but Bissell. I did the reception in about twenty minutes. It's a heartsome relief to get my
clothes off and hug Jennie.



June Thursday, 26 1873.
Into Commencement Day.



June Friday, 27 1873.

Into the calm that follows. And it ceased and there was a great calm. If you would know how good it is come in mother's
room and see. Helen takes the farside of the bed with Bits of Talk. Jen sits on the floor trying to solve my old problem.
How can I get a bushel of clothes and things into a pint trunk. You'll find me on the foot of the bed with Dombey and
son. Mother is busy picking up a dinner which in the end proves to be codfish and potatoes. A day suns away and night
picks us up just where I told you we were.

Then in the cool we walk over to Weltha's and on over to Langdon's pretty lawn.



June Saturday, 28 1873.

Into the looks that are tenderest! And the last looks are always tender be what it may we look at. All the little reminders
of Helen Bissell are gathered up me by one and put away. I am just beginning to realize the making up as I see Helen
running in and out and Jennie packing. Then the train comes and carries them off and I come back alone. The last face
has gone and Castleton is left into me desolate. I go off up stairs and finish Dombey and Son and then I face the
cannon's mouth but not barrels. Mr. W. is the cannon but today he shoots at me only Carker smiles.



June Sunday, 29 1873.

Into a lonely house which will be lonelier tomorrow. And not tomorrow only. There are little places here and there that
will always look sorry and lovely without the wee birdies. There are little footprints all over the house that will never be
quite effaced. It will be as if these sunbeams had vanished and we miss sunbeams. Ah! yes.

The little trunks are packed and dear patient noble Lottie helps. Then we all go down to supper. The last supper we shall
ever eat together here and it makes me think of old Uncle sol and Walter in the little back parlor.



June Monday, 30 1873.

Into seeing the night fall once more on my river. We leave home on the early morning train and Castleton with all its
troubles is very soon far back of us. Miss Grose gets on at H. with the dog and the bird and a pitcher. She is the veritable
Mark Tapley still and she is moving! When found make a note on!

After many roamings and much sun and no fans, we find ourselves fixed for the night on the Thomas Powell. Down we
sail [...] through the light, now throgh the dark, now thro' the moonlight and lighthouse after lighthouse is passed. The
little girls lie down by me and I sit by the window and watch the waters and think of home without the little girls, of
how all opportunity of love and work for them is gone, and of how I dread and dread next year.



July Tuesday, 1 1873.

Into the old life's fairest wreath. One second is complete, one wreath is done and I turn from it with a dreary pain. I feel
as if some one had died. Lottie and Hattie and Nellie. How sadly sweet the little girls name's sound to me today. And I
take them in my arms for a minute, only a little minute and have the last kisses. The little names sound sweeter and
sweeter as I go back alone.

Mr. [Tomey] is very good to me. Talks over my little business matters, gives us a book and sends one of the clerks all
then the publishing house with me. Uncle Bill was glad I know. Made me glad too and we go and get smashed to death
in the Academy of Music & get ourselves together with ice cream.



July Wednesday, 2 1873.

Into riding up my river and being with ye. Roundout crags and peaks over again. One hope fell dead at my feet to start
with. Rilled by an unjust darkey. He would not let me take the rocking chair on deck. I have alas no means of making
him sorry. The river looks just the same this year, but the years, how different they are, and so short they seem. My once
a year ride gives me an outlook not on the Mountain House and the Storm King only, but on the months between the
summers. Am I or am I not on the higher ground?

My feet press hollowed ground tonight. My eyes rest on the little porch and my heart is there singing "Rock of Ages".



July Thursday, 3 1873.

Into the charms of solitude and a row boat. I constitute myself the presiding genius of the sitting room while Lizzie [...]
it over the lower regions and little Jennie over the yard.

My usefulness as usual is somewhat limited. I tried to serve my day and generation in the form of basting lace in the
neck of two dresses, seeing braid on my wrappers and writing home. Mr. Harper does better. He takes us out on the
river for a sail. Could he serve his day and generation better? I see no better way.

Upstairs in the [...] little room I find my way when we get back and take His yoke upon me.
I find a rest unto my soul.



July Friday, 4 1873.

Into "Delaware County"!!! Not by faith this time! Nor visions. Do you hear the child? Hear her tell you how the cars
carried her on and on over Pine Hill and into the mountains. How the rains descended and kept the glorious Fourth!
How Roxbury was shouted ere she half suspected it and how Roe and Susie were there with the boss Kate! Think out
the rest little book. It is better to think of than to tell of. Far better. Think of susie's sitting room, its every corner. Carried
up badly to Roxbury. Of the big chair that was never in the old sitting room. Of the dear fall that is still patient and thin.
Of the long visit and the let up faces and the hope of her coming and the ride back.

Ah, with her is the far better rest I go to.



July Saturday, 5 1873.

Into taking in the [fratitudes] of a summer day's journey. But summer days are short and the hours fly like railroad
trains. A great deal of beauty can get into one short day. I sit by the car window and see the beautiful lawns, the glories
of water and the sloping banks, the meeting of the hills and the blue above, the lights and the darks of the far away
summits and at every step there is a change. I liked my noonday ride from Rhinebeck up. I liked the sunset ride from
Albany home with moonlight at the end. Indeed blessed are they "that inherit the earth"!

Was glad of even a wee visit with Aunt Mary. Dear old soul.
I'm too tired to know whether home feels good or not.



July Sunday, 6 1873.

Into more fears than hopes. There came quiet breeZes cool and welcome and the sun shone and the church bells rang.
There was an ache, a dread in my heart and it is there still. I have no strength to face next year with Mr. Williams, and
my prayers that he may go seem to come back to me sadly, more sadly than I can tell any one but the tired man at the
well.

I pray for that one word, Resignation, and if God will not grant one prayer, he may grant the other. My heart tells of
nothing else all day.

I was good and went to church at night. Mr. [Sator] preached about proud hearts, stubborn wills and darkened winds!



July Monday, 7 1873.

Into busies many. Grandma is the only early riser in this home. She tries to call me but with little effect. So I do not get
up until nearly seven. Some [meant] must at once be [...] to to get me up in time to get an early start there larklike
mornings. What will it be? Who'll do it?

My lower extremities felt the signs of a frigid climate as far back as I can remember this morning. In this latitude of cool
mornings it is sometimes desirable to have a bedfellow that does not kick. I was patiently back in my [ Le lapeur]
beyond which I have never yet attained, and my Latin today was eleven hours.

Besides I needed and covered books and trotted round and went at cards and cards and cards until my head revolved in
the plane pits ecliptic. Then I stopped.



July Tuesday, 8 1873.

Into a summer rain storm. What a luxury we are treated to in this friendly shower. It began early in the afternoon
sending mother in the house with the hoe, and it is still raining. Jen writes of visions of our strawberry shortcake, the
one we picked of great distress caused by the multiplicity of umbrella straps, pictures, lunch, flower pots, bags and bales
and of a lovely widower who encountered them on the train home. Know my answer will at once please her for it begins
"with sable draped [...] and slow [...] tread". Very good. Physically I don't amount to much today. Certain regions of me
[...] one of trouble in the lava beds, but as Jen says, I guess I'll stand it!



July Wednesday, 9 1873.

Into conversing with my lady, weeding, and taking it easy. The unexpected [honor] found and taken a note on at the
head of this article came about through the necessity of calling for Jen's naptime [...]. I found Mrs. W. in Nellie Hewitt's
[exp...] vernacular "very long-winded". My weeding hasn't [...] to show for itself. Go, weed as I have weeded. Don't
wait to be told why its so slow. I shall charge so much a square foot.

That the bed stand has not come is evident. That David B. Scott will not use my lessons, is evident. that Mr. W. and
Mrs. W. will not go to Troy is evident.



July Thursday, 10 1873.

Into a day when things were out of joint in the kitchen. The wrong key note was struck some where and every thing was
jarred since I haven't been in the jar. I took a nice quiet time up stairs instead where work was blessed and my thoughts,
prayers and so the day went. At night fall a shower came up, which cleared up the atmosphere out and in, and in
marches the bed stand upon the scene.

Won't I live to see the earth open some where and gulp Mr. W. down?
Why don't somebody want him?



July Friday, 11 1873.

Into practicing hygiene. I have lived to see a day when there was nothing else for me to do! There was even the
gratitude of an afternoon nap, and an early bed! I could get in the bath tub by the hour, and not be called by a gong in
the [universe]!

A luxury worthy of mention is the privilege I have of weeding the yard. My particular province seems to be the part,
"seeded down". Not a weed pig or otherwise escapes my vigilance!



July Saturday, 12 1873.

Into putting my fingers in my ears. I can hear her yet. Her voice will send its echoes through the distant years! Her name
is Will and I am dumb with thanks that only two Wd's come at a time. In the call of Mrs. Preston and Mrs. Sanford the
conversation [savored] of the [negatable] world! The weed in our front that I exterminate. What is it? Are there two
kinds of pig weed? How deplorable is ignorance!

Mother takes up the burden of life again, and I likewise. She to the machine , I to [Fasquelle]!



July Sunday, 13 1873.

Into the tenderness. How strong is the tenderness that is with the Almightiness!How good it seems when it anoints the
Sabbath rest. I did not hear the bells sing for me, but I know they did somewhere in the old places where my life has
been lived.

Here in the little Methodist I can always find the Lord Jesus Christ and there is a drawing toward it in my heart for in
His presence there is fillness of joy!



July Monday, 14 1873.

Into the low of cattle and the song of birds. What did I go away off up there for, out of civilization and paint? Ah, you
haven't seen my pan of berries! Nor the tan! What I thought up there on that hill all alone, is about all there is of today's
story.

I'm too tired to realize that tomorrow I must start on a memorable journey. Whether am I drifting? Say I mournfully.



July Tuesday, 15 1873.

Into would you like a little of Roman History or a Romance? And we took the romance! Its always romance where
Jennie is! How could I help taking it? I had to be landed at the farm and, persevere through a long afternoon first! Then
"pa Croft" and I went to find her! What was I there for she wondered and how did it happen? and what did I wear
another hat for?

Another storm threatens. Addie will find out in no time that I've been to Danby!



July Wednesday, 16 1873.

Into becoming what I most abominate! I have consulted every available authority, chiefly grandma to find if any blood
in my veins ever flowed in the veins of a [canvasser]! Since I find out, "no" I can respect myself. Notwithstanding thus
natural and required repugnance I appear before you my gentle reader today in the form of a temporary ransacker. I say
this lest canvasser grate too harshly! So let it rest! My success is very like to Gails [parsneps]. No one could know how
good they were until spring!

Dear Miss Clark is one of the Lord's jewels!



July Thursday, 17 1873.

Into memories of dear Miss Clark to carry away. We visit far into the night and the morning rolled sleepy waves around
us! There was so much to think of and to tell! And then came up that question that had been in me all day, and came like
an inspiration! "What do you think of my going to college?" The question is an old, old one to me. I must ask mother.

We did some work for God today, we think. If it be accepted work he will gather it into the garner. I mean our going to
see that widow way up in the hills, and then planning for Jennie Cleveland to go to school next year!



July Friday, 18 1873.

Into visiting with [Mathe]. I have seen a [boy] I wish our Dan was like. I can't help thinking of it as I watch his great
earnest face, and his girl ways. OUr [boy] don't carry up all the things from the cellar, wash the dishes and stay around
to help mother! He may yet!

I like it at Mathe's. I like to hear her mother ask the blessings, and I like to sit by the fire in the pretty kitchen.
It has stormed all day out doors!



July Saturday, 19 1873.

Into being interested in two trains, and up and a down!

This time fortune favored the fair. What was to have come about did come about beneficently, and we whirled away in
the "whirl a gig", to Helen Bissell's! Present recollections present to my view Helen [...] a joyful time, a room upstairs!
(on the roof) string beans, Helen's bread.

Manchester explored. Astride not the "Acropolis" but Burr and Burton Seminary Steeple!



July Sunday, 20 1873.

Into becoming Mrs. Fields of Lansingburgh! You will see that yesterday's record is the condensed edition. Ask for the
new edition revised and enlarged! The devotional period of the day was spent in Mr. Cushman's church. Before that we
were engaged in the vain pursuits of this world, dressing! After church we mocked Mrs. Williams. That is not very bad
for us! We only took the new method of imparting morals and etiquette to Helen's [renighted] family, that is, we
dramatized our instructions and the effect was instantaneous! What has all this to do with Mrs. Fields of Lansingburgh?



July Monday, 21 1873.

Into how we got Jennie's picture and how we stared at Willie [...]. Jane C. Croft is a girl of promise! I may have
intimated the same before I mean by that that she promises a great deal and fulfills in case of an emergency. Helen and I
know her, so we resorted to strategy! We marched her off to Factory Pb. and [...] guard till she was "took", and came
home tearing palms!

The time to go has come and we betake ourselves away. What will that poor girl "Willie", of whom our ears have heard
think of those two girls who gazed and gazed beyond the precincts of all propriety under the broad heaven?



July Tuesday, 22 1873.

Into resting gloriously. Why not? No breakfast bell ever sounds through our slumber. Jennie's poor little sleepy eyeses,
can take all day to open wide, if they want to! Mine can stick together as is their want, and be pulled apart gradually, for
this is a resting place and there are wells of water and palm trees.

There are berries to pick over in the garden and cream in the pantry. There is a front door that opens on the green grass
where we can sit and see the Otter Creek. There is a feather bed in our room, and two rocking chairs in the parlor and a
croquet set in the orchard! and a good time every where.



July Wednesday, 23 1873.

Into "going up to Grandpa's". There are place on this earth of which we have fancied and heard, until when our eyes
feast upon them we seem to see a story book before us. "Grandpa's" has always seemd a carmed place. Perhaps the more
because I never had a grandpa's to go to! We reveled in the clear air [drinked] all the cherry trees, picked all the berries,
ate an unheard of dinner and then took a nap!

The feminine in us woke to talk up how we'll have our black dresses made!
And then the baby came, and Aunt Hattie.



July Thursday, 24 1873.

Into "health and quiet and loving words".
Jennie and I take the day out of easy. We don't talk the pretty things any and when we don't we can rest, and be glad.
How shall I forget our two famous rides to mill on the hay wagon?

My Latin moves slowly, it is hard for me but I creep on! My hopes rise and fall as a distant college looms before before
me and what will mother do, only is the pause!



July Friday, 25 1873.

Into "how do you do Laura!" The sun and we are in igneous conjunction! I've scarcely been summering so reluctantly
this summer! My French is in my satchel. My satchel is in Rutland. It is there [f...] evident that I can express nothing of
it in French! Aggie at last accounts expected a "What Next". Mine keeps coming! Don't you see it coming coming
coming right along? At a stated period Laura meets us in state & we are no longer [statter] good.



July Saturday, 26 1873.

Into how I got in a slow accomodation freight and how I got off! The last effect the fourth turn in this days porportion
stands before me in ruins!My Japanese silk is a bleeding victim. Pour on pour faintly gives you a vision of it. Even
Merritt Clark did not [...] me in my fathered fathers. But mother did and I greeted her with a can of cherries. Picked
were they jointly, canned were they singly, transported were they at imminent peril of the one who picked but did not
can! Jane C. and I have given [...] to a mystery [profound].



July Sunday, 27 1873.

Into being present at an eruption of my eye! I suppose there are reasons for it. Whether any master of the art could put
the subject before me in words smiled to my comprehension I scarcely know! Medical times envelop me in the shades!
My face resembles in a slight manner the crater of Vesuvius. The contents ejected I have got analyzed. Is the thing a
sty? Why must I have it? Why is it that another is coming?



July Monday, 28 1873.

Into "business". When anything [...] business, the very mention of it suggests at our house much and many things. I have
been brought up from my earliest dawnings to know what business meant in the kitchen! Up stairs it means letters to my
dear 500 friends a little Latin, a little French, a brown dust pan. Stops. History work. Shakespeare, [...] Hand Drawing.
[...].

Nellie Hewitt won't play with Mr. Williams any more. [Ba...] have been proclaimed and Jerry and she are no more train!
William P. honores me with a vist of length. Has returned with improved health from Manchester!



July Tuesday, 29 1873.

Into being introduced to Mrs. Knox. I have great respect for people's cousins! My own are few, hence they share my
respect and each one gets [larger] quantities than if my kith were more numerous! Mrs. K is introduced to me as a
cousin and she instantly gets a piece of my respect. It follows that I write to box 1449, and make a grave suggestion!
Will my sparrow fall to the ground? My eyes look toward [...] and Michigan, and I sing my heart to rest with its years
and years before me!



July Wednesday, 20 1873.

Into "a don't want to". The tide that waits for no man has a suggestion in itself that forewarning allows me to be
forearmed! That is, a possible expedition is before me! I'm sure my "dust to dust" can be consigned better! But then my
uniform must not be idle nor my traveling hats!

Unfinished work lies mournfully before me. Dear me, hope I shant be remembered by what I have done!
Another sty sends out its warning to the startled inhabitants!



July Thursday, 31 1873.

Into a phantom which is not a "phantom". It threatened all the morning to be the latter, so our hopes were propelled
upward on slow yeast. At one o'clock our cup ran over. The ride to Benson was suggestive of a pauper's funeral, all but
the jolly round tool! And yet our Oliver has never yet complained. Golden [Junct.], "Can you tell us where Mary Palmer
lives?". One woman of blessed memory could! She lived where Huckleberry pies abunded, and rocking chairs and oats
and hinse plant slips, but that Aggie are taken and I am left!.



August Friday, 1 1873.

Into finding a help [meet] for Frances! It is a fact never yet denied that she needs it. Today it was a limit reached! Mrs.
Brian, on the subject of worth is not fully understood in this world. Her services today in behalf of the C.S.N.S who can
take it upon themselves to compute.? I who am but slow of speech and humorous of heart an astonished before her as
she makes known my advent and my expectations!

Clark [D...] will go, that comforts me!



August Saturday, 2 1873.

Into "drifting". My brat was not a "winged boat", but its [a...] was round the "purlpe peaks, blue inlets and their crystal
creeks". A conjunction came about benignantly. A happen happened, and Martha Alice and I got in the same boat. Very
good! In happen, did not happen, Susie came not with her! How beneficent was the fact that landed me six and one-half
miles from where I wanted to go. That charged a dollar to carry me half way! Ah, never more did sapphire gates beguile
me to her fair estates, but I am there now. What was not, is!



August Sunday, 3 1873.

Into "making a change" not of heart. The story is a painful one involving many actors and a complicated plot but treats
not of the exploits of heroes. Part of me was found on morning's early dawn at Anne Phelps. More of me was at a distant
hotel. Church and linen [...] are in vision only in distant dark ages.

The enlightenment of this age forbids it. So father starts early with us. Father says to the distant hotel. "This lady would
like to make a change". Said lady comes out with wings of a larger growth, a nice exponent of our enlightened age.

The rest is the part the angels will go up to tell. All holy and calm even the quiet nightfall at Addie Royce's.



August Monday, 4 1873.

Into vibrating between Latin translations and cake! We have often been told how vain all things below do prove to be
and yet that fact stamps itself even on summer vacations. For instance the cake that was stirred up and baked with
infinitesimal pains and three kinds for the digestion of Annie Reed, actually tickled the palates of Mr. and Mrs. Kimball.

Annie Reed went off before it was announced! Little does she know how many gnawings at the stomach she has been
deprived of. Mr. & Mrs. K. and I do know!

Latin translations are entered upon but not jubilantly. The Gallie [Gallic] War keeps hand.



August Tuesday, 5 1873.

Into rapidly developing experiences. I am living in dayw when I have indeed no continuing city. All day I've sought one
to come. This business is like the game of Hicory dilory! I look this way and that way, shut my eyes, put my foot down
and there I open my eyes and look for [...]. Something after the proffered advice of our not lies worthy Proff! That's how
I came to Salisbury but I'm in good hands, and two Normal pupils are in prospect.



August Wednesday, 6 1873.

Into a country that knew not me! Put not your confidence in princes. Don't ask the ticket agent at West Charlotte the
way to Martha Smith's! I believed him! "You know how trusting is my Nature!" The place he sent me to was only a mile
and a half too far and 'twas milking time.

But I'm always helped out mercifully some how. [Pension] seems to be made in the great plan for just such occurances
in my peculiar history! The instrument simplified was a [Mach]! I'm singly ensconced at Martha Smith's!



August Thursday, 7 1873.

Into a camp ground neither tenting nor dying. So elated am I at my success in turning myself around the heart of Marth
Smith and Sarah Smith, that I ride to Brandon on wings! I have the self satisfied air of one who firmly believes that that
Postmaster will do as he said and get the letter to Queen. That Queen will be there in state, in hay time to meet me! All
my deeply set faith in that postmaster vanishes! The letter is where I left it. I turn away musingly. My wings, where are
they?

There is another train to Rutland and I seek its protection. I wake to find myself Glory McWhirk in the grid time as the
Soldiers grand Review!



August Friday, 8 1873.

Into being picked but keep all my feathers! It came about that it fell to me to be again in a puzzle. As to Chester Whither
my face was turned, that was attainable, but the Marshes "all the one there was", lived 3 1/2 miles away! I had no [steed]
to save the day! A Clay Model came to my assistance for fifty cents! Alas! twas "brittle clay"!

I go thro" a process on the way of having my life insured . That is a go through the form, is joy with great rejoicing at
the sight of the [brown] house where lives "all the Marsh there is".



August Saturday, 9 1873.

Into "that river ride". Allow me to announce that I appear in a suit more [becoming] my position than the one that has
graced my figure thro' several stages of journeys. Renovation acts well on the suit and clean robes even in this world the
creature waiteth in earnest expectation for! Mr. Morse and Georgie sing out cheery notes to me, and their home lies
down the river. How it seems to me riding along in the late afternoon and thro' the sunset on that river road when a new
beauty lies at every turn. I cannot write. I am thankful to lay it away to keep.



August Sunday, 10 1873.

Into smacks of Steamboat Rock and Boston! "Sister Fan" is home from Steamboat Rock. "Beulah" is there from Boston!
These are very significant facts in the day's journal! Beulah made ready for church a la Boston. Fan a la Beulah. When
all were off I went up alone out the orchard and it was like a page of Hitherto. That song Beulah sang, "O, fair dove. O
fond dove", sings in my head. I like to see the happy time the two girls are having, like to see how much they seem to
enjoy in each other after the months apart. And in the night, far into the night the Sunday blessing does not go.



August Monday, 11 1873.

Into the company of "Real Folks". Another river ride on top of the stage, an hour in a book store with "Back-log
studies", "Yesterday with Authors" and "deer Girls". A lame eye, a dreary wait and the train comes. The afternoon
sweeps on while we do Normal work. "Gather them in. Gather them in. Gather the children in!". [...] await us, and we
shake hand over it and pony drags his slow length along.

What a steed to save the day! Chester and not Winchester!



August Tuesday, 12 1873.

Into my mother's house. I have always cultivated patience as a cardinal virtue. Have had wonderful facilities always for
constant practice in it! Somehow it still happens to me that I am given new opportunities to practice it. The training
school I am in does not recognize any advanced standing! To be within 11 miles of home and be expected to wait from
2.30 to 3.50 requires Spartanic endurance! The Gallic war is no compensation for such disasters!

Home never seemed better, even without the second coat of paint!



August Wednesday, 13 1873.

Into the company of an uncomforting friend sticking closer than a brother! He has found a tender place to stick-in my
eye! Is it a sty? If not what is it? Whenever he be he doth make one ceaseless circuit around my defenceless lids!

Trouble is brewing in mother's cabbages. A vile [worm]! Family councils find ashes a failure. The traveler and
antiquarian of the family suggests hellebore! Hope revives! But Kellogg has no hellebore! Fair Haven has and so my
story has told itself. Thats why we went to Fair Haven. That's why Mr. Maynard and I came to have a little dailogue!



August Thursday, 14 1873.

Into successes and failures. Perhaps you never have constructed it, my reader, but it is an indisputable fact that I am
known at sunday times and in drivers [manners] to be mad! I am aware that my madness hath degrees, according to the
provocation thereof. Today I'm some mad, but not too mad to ask the world a question. Are Mrs. Hoodby and Miss
Underwood the public sentiment of Castleton? Am I resolved them into committee for the enlightenment of those when
Miss Underwood "cannot take in her society?" and for the civilization of the "indigent"? Never mind.

The sun goes not down in my wrath! Things are not as they seem! but I know!



August Friday, 15 1873.

Into a dreaming that carries me off body and soul! You will soon know all about me if I keep on. Indeed I have not
knowingly touched terra firma today! I have sat in one most joyous dream of Michigan University until the year I have
so much dreaded seems only a hall-door. Greek and Scientific say I over and over!

I am being gradually mentioned from the heart of Marth smith and Sarah smith. They are turned Randolphorand! So be
it! Why be it? Smith's move in a mysterious way!

I copy on.
And muse!



August Saturday, 16 1873.

Into the sty business. Is there no help, no comfort, none? A letter from Sue informs me in the most melancholoy manner
that she has one. We are parallels! As salt water is a failing specific she has concluded to let it sty! In a manner pitiful to
behold I do so too! My brother is about to be wafted to another clime, one redolent of books and sages! It seemeth best
and we [mild] hopes on what the grid influencers will be to Damne when the evil are lessoned! O eyes of watchman
everywhere! Look still to that place far away, "where the watch-[fiers] [home], and the sunset lingers, and the sunrise
breaks"!



August Sunday, 17 1873.
Into retrospecting!
Sometimes it is pleasant to sit down in one of the by gones afternoons. And be haunted by the moving shadowy figures
of that old time. More often it gives an unrest that stays and stays. In the light of the new days we can see so plainly the
mistakes of the old! It's a sorry pleasure to us to stand and gaze upon our mistakes! Many would go back into the past
and to her it is a gloom. Does she forget our better days together? O, everywhere, in every thing there is a better. We do
know and find! Always we are seeking a better portion which is a heavenly!



August Monday, 18 1873.

Into following Ella [Leborde's] advice! The motto of this girl is not Why. It is work away! If you read it right you will
find it posesses a peculiar force, but then in order to get the intonation it is out of the question to do it until you have
heard Ella read it once! I worked away today. I wrought away until copying is a grand reality and all other things a
myth!

Our prospects are colored by a rain storm, in length and depth and blackness it promises us a blasted hope, but even
thick storms have been known to break away!



August Tuesday, 19 1873.

Into a start for my second mountain ride! A five o'clock start in this house means quarter before seven! I never knew
before how long it took a horse to eat his oats! So did ours! There isn't a beauty of sky, a bleeding of water and the green
of its banks, a comfort in cosy open doors, and overlook of the hills, a dreaminess in the distant far off fields that was
not ours today. It has been like the Christians stepping stones and night kept us from a further vision!

[Amsdenville] and no map records thee! Rest, pony, rest!



August Wednesday, 20 1873.

Into a cloud bigger than a man's hand! In the early morning [fresh] and elated we cross the [Conn] and enter the New
Hampshire country! Windsor greets us, then Cornish Flat and now Meriden is before us! Too tired to realize ought save
this we go up the hill and Mr. Austins is a resting place.

But a cloud has come and we are in it. [Dannie] will not stay! We have made a pilgrimage for nothing! Have we? I [...]
nothing the newness of life that has come with the ride? The pictures laid away to keep, the glimpses into things we
have never before seen.

But there is a pain that won't go, and a sorry question! What shall we do with Dannie?



August Thursday, 21 1873.

Into finding my heart, and I very tired. And we come down out of the mountains with something like the feeling of the
disciples long ago coming down from the Indian mountain!

Pony trots on and stays his spirits with the comforting assurance that we've brought oats with us! He see [man]!
Home is reached and we rejoice greatly to be there.
I keep thinking how dark last night was, and how long we were in those deep woods when only pony could see the road!
The light ahead and the place to stay, weren't they some of Maine's Providences?



August Friday, 22 1873.

Into what's to be done next? That is just what we don't know. The family stand voiceless. I who represent one fourth of
the number cast thoughts around for other schools.

The present state of things being so entirely new and on thought of [me] seem transfixed for if we get another room for
him will he go, will he stay! Alas, for our logic!

Jennie keeps very [nill] these days, and the worm in the cabbage does not. Eternal vigilance is the price of cabbage!
Mother has found a worm in her cauliflowers! Another family council!

Copying awaits me. I do it!



August Saturday, 23 1873.

Into "one taken".
Again the voice of the trunk is heard in our land. Closets are dug into, shelves upturned, and ransacking generally is
around about us.

Aggie is glad to go, but we are all so sorry. Her poor, little, pale face haunts us as the cars come and take her off. I come
back from the train and find it lovely enough. Then I go off alone up in the meadow where stands our tree, and over on
the hill by the sugar house, and I am strangely not alone.



August Sunday, 24 1873.

Into ay! There's the sub. Some of my Sundays have to be spent on the bed and I am afraid this isn't quite as I would have
planned it, but I take it as a means of discipline, and try to say, "All right".

Discipline chains one only for the forenoon. I am released and fed on nectar, which means in modern times new corn
and beans! After a dear little afternoon with mother and Grandma I go to church. My same old man is there again. He
sounds his sermon in our ears! "In heaven we shall know many things that are dark now. I've often wondered how
Daniel felt going to the lions! How did Daniel feel? We shall know!"



August Monday, 25 1873.

Into a gift of God.
I shall not soon forget today. It has seemed as if the heavens were opened and this day let down, so good it has seemed
and I, so free from care and so wonderfully glad. It seemed to come in so, just as I want to have it, to go out and see the
folks. To hear them talk and shake hands with them. To have Miss Willard bring me that pretty bouquet and Mrs. Buell
come and take the new girl off our hands, thus opening the way for some other poorer one.

O, gift of God.
O, perfect day!



August Tuesday, 16 1873.

Into Miss Willard's presence and what of it. It has seemed best today to return Miss Willards call, possessing as I do
unusual courage, and some disposition to talk, besides there's a golden banded lily to see.

Getting more and more equal to it I keep on. In my travels I find a shield, but instead of seeking its protection it seeks
mine. It wants a boarding house and I have a supply on hand!

Annie McDonald arrives and begins at once to be homesick. Poor child!
I copy on.



August Wednesday, 27 1873.

Into unfoldings which are gradual! Today has in it the [Julia]. A [moore] experience which calls upon me to [heard] the
lion in his den! How did Daniel feel? How did we feel?

We have a dreadful time of it, adn come home thinking we almost know how Danile felt.
We are glad to take relief in supper and a walk.
Jennie has written to me and that makes me feel good. And then I have a new overskirt. How do I feel? We shall know!



August Thursday, 28 1873.
Into original Greek.
Its all Greek to me as it never could possibly so emphatically be before .It's not so easy gettin on alone in Greek, as one
might imagine. Greek has to be pronounced. Greek rolls on accents! I have nothing to say in Greek.

Dinner smells of sweet potatoes and they're the first ones! Early rising makes me shaky in the afternoon. Nothing makes
a balance for me but the bed. R.G. comes down to talk to Julia Moore but Julia Moore has moved her [bunk] to a distant
shore.



August Friday, 29 1873.

Into how the dress business was settled! You see it came to pass that a plain fold in cassimere wasn't pretty. It didn't
look pretty the least any that ever was and what should I do was the question. It's wicked to want mother to take it off
and make a ruffle and I can never wear it so. Matters have grown serious! Very. My dresses are serious things for they
come so seldom! [Well] I got into a sleep worry, and at the final moment. I thought of fringe. That puts that trouble
away, If I only could fringe some other troubles how aisy I might be! Greek for instance.

It seemed nice to have Lora come so soon. Somehow I enjoyed it unusually well.



August Saturday, 30 1873.

Into "playing cards". I cannot say that my felicity has been exceedingly augmented over the business. I know it makes
my back ache as backs were never made to ache.

I feel restless and stirred up. What makes me? Nothing rests me or brings me visions of that all enfolding peace and so I
[chafe] on.

Perhaps I am farther from the shadow of the great Rock than I think. It seems so easy to let the Normal school and its
troubles swallow me up body and soul! And I lend myself to reality to be swallowed. O, my girl how far or how near are
you to the feet of His Christ and your Lord?



August Sunday, 31 1873.

Into standing before myself. Its well to bring myself before that tribunal. I am apt to bring other people there! When I
stand there myself, it is at a sorry disadvantage. I need greatly these days the strength that comes from the Cross. The
look from the Master that humbles.

A little soothing comes to me as I tell Susie things. A laugh almost comes into my heart as I have a Sunday talk with
Sue. But after the rain has ceased to fall and a night with a moon comes. I go out in the street and toss and toss! O Jesus.
Other refuge have I none!



Sept. Monday, 1 1873.

Into a boy inquisition. This means Modern Spanish. Shakespeare's Horation was a boy, since his time few things are
there unknown in the Philosophy of Torture! Dannie vents his excuses in the very doubtful consolation that he won't be
here to do it any more! He asks us questions many, we answer eagerly and only hear, "I want to know".

I feel most happy in the being able to attain unto one Greek exercise. It comes slow and gets to the surface very like to
that young man when Mark Twain delighted to honor with the little of poet!



Sept. Tuesday, 2 1873.
Into catching that train!
Prince Patterson is a valiant charger! He has brought us all the way from Castleton down to save the day. That train did
not whistle its whistle on the ears of us until we stood on that depot platform! Which was to be done! Good bye,
Dannie!

Whom did Jennie see coming up through the long road? A thumb of which it takes three to be equal in magnitude to one
strawberry! Our last play day we keep saying. It is appointed unto Diane and I to ride back together.



Sept. Wednesday, 3 1873.

Into being born and begun. And all I have to do in Gail's oracular having it is to be born and follow. How I do it, how
R.G. Norm "do" it, how they all do it is too melancholy to portray. See pa and the chalk, how little it reminds one of the
royal days of Webber and French. See the fair old men walk in. See me bestow here and there a smile. Out doors then
are no calls to bells, there are green pastures and still water, Fir trees coming up instead of thorns myrtle trees instead of
briers, and there are every where everlasting signs!



Sept. Thursday, 4 1873.

Into thus it becometh us! And so we do. We go up and begin! and what I said I'd never do I've done! Such is us! We sit
up on our little seats and hear about the State Board and recreation! Then we go home and its pleasant and homesick
people have a whole afternoon to fill! The Normal School is not dead nor does it sleep. Not few come to its solemn
feasts!



Sept. Friday, 5 1873.

Into the sniffles, snuffles! I have them. A great many! It is not a convenient season for them! I wipe my weeping nose
but still like a wild deluge does it come!

There are meetings and greetings! School is inaugurated and I am constituted sole proprietor of the upper regimes!

A cheerful day. Rain is merciless and the new students are drooping, woful wan like and forlorn! or crazed with care, or
crossed in 3 sing!



Sept. Saturday, 6 1873.

Into gifts, not of the world's giving! Which calls up to us a day in early fall. A day fragrant with the near, dear heart
things that lie so close to these September afternoons. I took all the morning to show what I know about trotting! Did.

[It] twas nice to sit and think of going off with somebody's house. What must it be to go? But we don't go. Jennie and I
just get to the front door, but the day smiles for us it pours its givings into our laps and we are glad.



Sept. Sunday, 7 1873.

Into stories that tell themselves by halves. Our side of the lives we make shows poor work sometimes! The stories that
we tell & the stories that we live are two, not one. How many little pieces of days it takes to make one real nice one!

[Dearie] is sick today and I must go to church alone! There wasn't much to take home from the sermon, but God has not
left himself without a witness on these Sabbaths, and He is a revealer of Himself!



Sept. Monday, 8 1873.

Into finding the stuff that R.G.'s made of. The scene changes! A new theme engrosses our attention! Mary Conley
versus R.G. Williams. I take refuge in the enfolding arms of the Corporation! What can they do? What can he do? A
dead pause! I call upon the Judge and he makes his arms go? We concoct dark plans! Michigan or no Michigan! Greek
or no Greek! Do I dispair? Hope that is seen is not hope! It never was, was it Paul?



Sept. Tuesday, 9 1873.

Into where we have chapel now. The Dark Ages have passed away! Many are running to and fro and knowledge is
increased! Prayers offered from the Normal Hall have not so far to go as when sent up from the lower regions & are
therefore effectual the sooner! Besides its easier for we of the Normalite faith and practice! My work increases and
multiplies! Does it replenish the earth? Wait and see.

Poor Jennie girl is sick yet. Afflicted me. Who shall say ye are not, when ye have a boil, a [...], a cold?



Sept. Wednesday, 10 1873.

Into stepping onward in Greek. A man has been raised up to teach me Greek. Like every one else raised up for me he
wasn't made to order, but I'll make him do. Am thankful enough to get even a teacher at all, more than thankful that he
can pronounce. But bless my soul, he don't know what a perispomenon is, no more than I.

Jennie is getting a little more comfortable. She's well enough to be out with me a little while. The Man versus, Woman
affair is still before the people. How will it end? Triumphant man? Triumphant Woman? I look at John. John looks at
me. We neither one of us, know!



Sept. Thursday, 11 1873.

Into how I was smiled on and more! My story has almost reached a mirabile dictu! Mr. Williams now knows so
benevolently upon me. Asks me to dine, says, I must eat dinner with him rainy days. O hear it!

Mary conley still says, "Open unto me" and the principal still exclaims, Depart ye worker of inequity!

The Corporation stood aghast and can't help it, but still they will have a meeting! Neither can I help it. Come here
Greek! [greek writing] !



Sept. Friday, 12 1873.

Into a didn't do it! And we shant this night, therefore we are cross. We wouldn't be if we could have a horse. Our only
hope lay in Mr. Burnett's hind man! Where is he? We won't play with any of [...] any more.

However shoes and feet are left to us and we betake ourselves to use them. I don't Greek any. I'm too tired. Neither do I
French. I seek a pillow and my having it does not depend any on Mr. Burnett's hind man, so I find it and sleep pays me a
visit!



Sept. Saturday, 13 1873.

Into wishing for some of the divine afflatus. As is usual with me I wish and obtain not. I need much courage to attempt
what seems so fruitless a labor as getting out a new History, but courage is born and I write on. Hope that is seen is not
hope, more and more. It rains too and that makes me feel good for I can stay home and see it rain. We discuss Mr. W. A
hollow satisfaction and some trouble it is! But the question is before us gentlemen!



Sept. Sunday, 14 1873.

Into the Romans of it. One great temptation of us is to oversleep. Who shall preserve us from that sin? We revel in a
breakfast of warmed up potatoes, but ge to church thro' much tribulation. Mr. Hines does he appreciate the fact? We do.

We are made uncomfortable by eating too much dinner. It's a sorry story, but the sin lies at my mother's door. She
brings the things on, and we eat and eat. Our read up stairs was Romans, and we talked and talked. There is so much
suggested by that eighth chapter.



Sept. Monday, 15 1873.

Into ruffles. I lay it all to the clock, but soon the bliss of laying the sin on a neighbor does not iron out my ruffles. From
the breakfast table to the school door without doing a single thing! No Greek tonight. I'm too tired & my head refuses to
take in Third [Inclusions]!

Jennie and I wander wander. Over in Slab City there's a retreat and we find not only a pond around loose, (both notice)
but we find a boy lying around loose. We come home bearing gifts of gold, frankincense and marlbe! "We have sacked
a castle" says Miss Jen!



Sept. Tuesday, 16 1873.

Into a triumphal entry by Mary Conley. R.G. is still principal but he said he wouldn't be. The Normal doors are still
open but he said they shouldn't be! And Mary "is a member!" An entry not an exit. According to mother Ireland has
whipped Wales! Work makes me crazy. O, if it only please not make me cross. Geometry is a [sore] evil. Nobody can
see through it! Not a bit. What shall we do? "Work away"!

Grandma isn't very well. She fails so lately. And she's so patient always. I am too tired even to dream of Michigan. Too
tired to think Greek any thing but a bore.



Sept. Wednesday, 17 1873.

Into new threads. One comes up from Ralston and it treats of celery pits and tomatoes versus chickens and potatoes
versus bugs. No, Sue, your pen and ink [re...] do no as yet need dosing. No. No. You need not clear the blood with blue
vervain root. Lizzie [A...] thread brought up ever so much. I go to sleep thinking of the big pantry long ago and the pie
and milk.

To come back to things close by I will mention that Jennie's box did not come, that we may take a ride Saturday, that
Greek is in progress and so is school.



Sept. Thursday, 18 1873.

Into what got mother up so early. You see these days my gentle reader mother gets up to fire, but not to stay up. This
A.M. the gong rang furiously. I went to the door beaming. I am always smiling at that hour in the day. There was my
mother's fruit, that I had secretly ordered, right before me, and a day sooner than was dreamed. We proceed to can. I
came so I do. I haste, haste, haste at the merry merry bugle call not to study Greek, or hear Jennies [pause], but to peel
pears. So it be.

School is crowned & glorified with a gymnastic class and I am at it!



Sept. Friday, 19 1873.

Into how I managed Prof. I never did like to read reports. I think I won't any more so I make the reverend Mr. Williams,
Sir, believe that its better to take my book and keep it from Friday to Monday. My success is wonderful. He does just as
I say! It is remarkable how easy I am to get along with! It's so very easy when I have my way!

I am non-plussed, very much! Dannie writes [unto] get ready to see Miss Bissell married. In [stalks] a missive from
Ballston demanding any presence there. It's wonderful again how much I am in demand! As appearances are now we
can't tell which way the wind bloweth. Whether a clean up is on the way or more storm!



Sept. Saturday, 20 1873.

Into hunting somewhat [mainly] for expected blessedness. We planned it all a week ago up by the stove-pipe! Boils and
the dysentery were not reckoned in, but here they are! A clear up following we duly start armed with a box mother sat
up through the night preparing and a ball club. The morning, could there have been a fairer! The road, does any road
more delight the eyes?

But Jennie couldn't talk and she didn't. I wanted to but it is painful to carry on a single tongued conversation. I betake
myself on alone over the south road facing our boy! I see him and I capture Helen! Then came for us a good old talk,
some the less good and dear because it is the last.

We crawl along after a tired horse and call up people at late hours. Naughty girls!!



Sept. Sunday, 21 1873.

Into finding a light in the window for me! It comes to pass that I must go back alone. The boil is obstinate and ma and
pa anxious so pony and I are left to each other.

I shall remember this as my last Sunday with Helen but it has been a tired, almost sick one. Helen knows it isn't the first
one, Dear child. I can't help thinking as I go on and on how many rough places Helen's loving fingers have smoothed for
me, and how bright a sunbeam she has been for me in a dark place. The light from mothers kitchen was good to me. The
last seven miles was so long, and the fire and the food cheer all more, more than good!



Sept. Monday, 22 1873.

Into a warring of elements within me! I go to school in spite of it, but my pains are not for a moment. I sit up there
straight when I want to be curled up in bed. I suppose its discipline! Mother proposes chocolate to cure me. I welcome
such dosing. I prefer diseases that need to be so dosed. I can't get along good without my Jennie girl. All the little places
up stairs don't seem good today.

Mrs. Maynard seasons my Greek with grapes. [Hody], [Hads], Toddy goes better with grapes than without. How nice of
her!



Sept. Tuesday, 23 1873.

Into dashing away with my utmost speed. Whether I am really more or less like Sheridans horse remains to be seen. I
feel like him. There is this difference. His Winchester was 20 miles away. Mine. Some power of 20.

Hear it rain. Mother calls up from below that [equinotial] is the matter. Mr. Williams makes me think of a word I've
been trying to think of all summer by giving me two nouns, a nutmeg and a cantelope. The nearest I ever got to it was
chamomile. This was before I [st...] Greek!



Sept. Wednesday, 24 1873.

Into new achievements. I follow my Miss Campbell around like a shadow. I hang like a gathering storm on her life.
What a mission is mine! First to get Normal scholars! Then to keep them.

My algebra class are on the third week, and I teach them involution! An achievement worthy of Lycurgus! I am using
all the Greek I know, And still my girl don't come, and I roam around alone at my sweet wild will, missing my Red Lips
wherever ye go! Must she have another boil? Why must she?



Sept. Thursday, 25 1873.

Into finding an uncomfortable afternoon. Don't get excited. Frances. Then you will manage to keep a dead level, if you
can't keep an elevation! I could have felt pretty comfortable even after a miserable Geometry lesson, if Mr. Tuttle hadn't
called out cash, and if Jennie had come or written or something! Present prospects seem to foretell no present for Helen,
no see her married. I comfort my self looking at amethyst rings and thinking how wise one would be for Aggie girl! To
cheer me more a ruin pours forth. It sends the heavens and comes down, while mother is blessed with a new stiff neck!



Sept. Friday, 26 1873.

Into being in a strait betwixt two! The experiences of the writer have not been much in the line of weddings. Never
having enjoyed the felicities of one myself, and my friends as a rule setting up and having weddings without me. I seem
not to have been in the habit of recording such things! How strange I feel holding invitations to two! And two things on
the matter, the friends, and the Normal School. I see also a faint sparkle of an amethyst ring! Today has its pleasant
cheery things a few.

Little words dropped by the girls perhalps, mother's feeling pretty good. Belle's nice Caesar lesson [my] own hopes and
lookings forward to!



Sept. Saturday, 27 1873.

Into being lifted up by appearances! Before breakfast my "essays & sketches" appraised. That's the way it commenced,
then appeared my Jennie girl! About that time I was in the condition of a forlorn hope and added to my woes was a
back-ache of such magnitude that a family council was called to consider the next step. Upon the scene appears the
beaming face of Judge Cook with all the enthusiasm of a smooth faced ruddy youth. He bears in his hands a [...] [...], in
proportions. Positively the last appearance.



Sept. Sunday, 28 1873.

Into pains increasing by a common ratio. I don't like to think of Sundays. When I laid around all day, but my experience
encounters such not infrequently. First my head ached and my back. O, deliver us. Then I napped, and it didn't, aches
and I took little dabs of Holy Grail, and Ward Beecher, and St. Paul and Jennie took little dabs of me.

Pretty soon the day is gone, pretty soon it will only be a little piece of many days, and what is there about it that will
keep, unless it be what I try to do for my girlie, and the little prayer meeting up to school.



Sept. Monday, 29 1873.
Into the realities.
All there is left of me is a dizzy head, a broken back and eyes that refuse to stay open all along of History [cards]. O
rejoice with me who do rejoice. There are no more. Allow me to mention that timely assistance from the girls has been
the sole means of retaining to me my reason. Else, I should have been hopelessly insane!

A rain comes up in the evening, [...] properly down. We have no lack of showers now. The lack seems to be in [...] and
water [proofs]!



Sept. Tuesday, 30 1873.

Into a new way of disposing of dumplings.
It comes to pass that I go not down to dinner. Such a circumstance comes great [perturbation] in the winds of mother
and the rest down home. It is a severe thought , a severe experience that in an event of dumplings made from three
apples that dropped from a neighbors tree, with great care. I came not home to partake. It won't do. Jennie is summoned
around and sent up to Normal regimes with full orders! She proceeds after allowing me into the cloak room to insist a
spoon into my mouth filled with dumpling. This she repeats again and again.



October Wednesday, 1 1873.

Into how it came out. Monday we weren't giving. O. No. Tuesday we almost thought we would. Today we go over the
leading prints and say, we will. A smiling Providence sends to my relief a man from Michigan. Happy coincidence.
How I smile to see him.

"Pancakes and pears" muses Miss Jennie. I can only answer "pears and pancakes". A hidden meaning is involved.
Which to us was weighty! We are whewed up from the depot and Helen and Henry has made me in a twinkling. The
congratulations were given after the most approved "sewing hour"!

A comment or two on Henry would not be out of place but where's the place?



October Thursday, 2 1873.

Into how the next came out! Also the after part of the first one! After parts are usually uncomfortable. Ours was. It
consisted in toating little packages of cake a Greek Grammar and a whip-up countless stairs, then in seeking a chamber
to lie awake in, for two old convention men would not let us sleep, then creeping our weary lengths along to a train, and
with losses and crosses at last to find the stove-pipe. To proceed, the next came out that I didn't see Dr. Smith, nor eat
cake at Marnie's wedding. None the less did I want to.

Egad, see how triumphantly I [tear] to our friend and neighbor that lost whip. Not lost only gone before.



October Friday, 3 1873.

Into finding that things work together. Things to me means much and abundantly. It takes in Geography, to be definite
Asia, also a stupid class in Grammar Authentic, several kids, Thomson, Legender, Hart and Greenleafs, not to say
Drawing, Gymnastics, and ad infinitism, and [...] et cetera [iz]! I find the working together for good and my heart rises.

Celery has a noble [...] to perform. To us it comes like a home missionary and we chant its praises.



October Saturday, 4 1873.
Into taking steps.
This was the day when I was giving to do so much. Dear me. Why didn't I? What makes things always take long so then
you think they will. Why do we persist in assuming that we can do things faster than we can. All these reflections come.
You see as I sit and see my work half-done. Poor child. An amethyst rings is duly ordered for Sis. I donte on it. Who can
better afford to be extravagant than I?

Little Mrs. Ainsworth and Mrs. Riss call. The former is lika a shadow of Casper's wife thrown across our floor. We
glory in a coal stove set up and a bright fire.



October Sunday, 5 1873.

Into a sunset of amethyst. It is before us all the way over to the cemetery. It reflects on all the clouds before us on the
way back. It is like entering into the morning and the evening joy. Mr. Tater's right hand of fellowship partakes less of
solemnity than make believe. "Answer I do. Answer I trust. I have answer I will.". Well. Well. I wish I could come to
my Sundays more refreshed and not being a tired overworked mind to the holy feasting and beautiful commencing of
Sabbath time. "Wait on the Lord and he shall string then thine heart".



October Monday, 6 1873.

Into "doing so" in Castleton. This implies that the State Board looked in upon us! That I went to the Seminary to dinner .
Great epochs, both. Did the State Bd. even visit us in peace before! I recall no such time. Every one is redolent with
messes and messes. So O must [unlable] day there is peace! The dinner how like it was to some any a multitude of
dinners past. The silence is only broken by Dr. Webber and me. The fountains of the great deep are broken up and the
floods come down.

Teacher Maynard says as I draw [nigh], "Well you're a tough one".



October Tuesday, 7 1873.

Into greeting Miss Amethyst. My conscience went so far as to let me want it, examine it, write about it, buy it and now
it lets me greet it! Mr. Cole says this is a line storm. [...] raison [...]? It somewhat amuses me to hear Jennie tell in
Philosophy of the little atom in the middle of a stone looking at the next nearest atom with a telescope!

The rain has driven us all in the house. The ways of Normal [mourn]. Few come to her solemn feasts. And now the
night has fallen and over it there is the steady moon.



October Wednesday, 8 1873.

Into seeing the face of the sun once move. It is like a looked vision and a transformation fall things follows.

[...] familiars holds a consultation with Mr. Armstrong having to do with [bursted] [...] windowless cellars and still
further with school and school [...]. I am at that time airing my Latin love and things are workin!

At school gymnastics swell and surge but I go not home at four. The latter is a vexed question we do no agree, nor will
we. It is my present intuition to stay each night without regard to times or reasons if I, dream best. Ah, to Latin lesson.
No. 1, 2. Mrs. H & [...]



October Thursday, 9 1873.

Into sundry advice on the subject of nothing. At this season of the year say early in the day that you will go. Keep it in
mind. You will probably be ready after having forgotten your gloves something over a hour after the time you had set.
Then be seen and start aimless, if you have any idea where to go it will be contrary to all these rules. Then go on until
you happen to think of a tree that [...] bore mark and trace your weary way toward that tree, no matter if it be walnut and
you are looking for butternut. Never mind. Susie at last, at last, at last writes. It was Fannie that was the matter.
Roxbury, Delaware Co. versus, Smart child.



October Friday, 10 1873.

Into what nerves do. Do you wish to gaze upon a victim of nerves? See me! Here "beauty bleeds a hapless
undistinguished prey!" Mr. Thomson says so. School gets out and at last there is hope of [etched] nerves before it swells
and singes around me again! There's a breathing space ere Monday. Greek is a present comfort, where unto I flee and
am safe. Aggies writes for [...]. Dannie for a new coat.

I build hopes in a big sweet apple. Jennie is to see to it and has gone. I meet her in the [lane] and [to] the apple!



October Saturday, 11 1873.

Into coming into happy possession of a pair of pantoufles. It came about through mother's powers of reconstruction.
You could not guess what they were made of. The original would make an excellent design for plaster busts.

My Greek lessons partake on many singular features. I hold them in readiness to edify the family with. They are chiefly
aphorisms. "A missionary in Wisconsin writes to Mr. M's daughter that a sore has been born unto him". "Mr. Gilbert
had five dang [...] born to him in Chili and no son!" Mr. Sir walter Tennent's had snapped and all he ever knew came to
him!

Space fails me.



October Sunday, 12 1873.

Into the return of blessing. The day had so many things in its dear self that were restful and benedicite! It was pleasant
to sit down with myself and think. Then were thoughts in my heart from I know of God's Spirit for I have not felt his
presence for weeks like today.

I like so to read the close of Arthur Bennicastle! "Tomorrow! ah! Golden tomorrow! Thank God for the hope of its
coming with all its duty and care and work and ministry and all its appeals to manliness and manly endeavor. Life has
no significance to me save as the theater in which my powers are developed and disciplined by use and made fruitful in
recurring my own indipendence and the [grid] of those around me or as the ruins in which I am fisted for the work &
worship of the world beyond!"



October Monday, 13 1873.

"Life is so grand, so beautiful, so full of meaning, so splendid in it's opportunities for action, so hopeful in it's high
results that despite all it's sorrows I would willingly live it over again".

Into being almost as smart as Mr. Maynard's son! So [...] the tradition proclaimed from the lips of my venerable
instructor through the never venerable oracle Mrs. Briggs! More I cannot attain! "I have now reached that limit".

I am most happy to record that I have presided today calmly with much and many things [p...] to reverse a calm. I have
brought to my dear old grandmother a new dress a purple groundwork with a little [...], and it pleases her.



October Tuesday, 14 1873.

Into one of October's rarest most glorious days. I can't think of anything else. Such a soft intense light covers all things
that a new meaning is given to them. All the outloooks from the windows have something in them that is beautiful and
the rough covers and real places in work are hidden by the fairy touches that make us "ever to seem falling asleep in a
half dream!"

I hate so to see Grandma go. It is so soon that she must go further and come not back. I want her here. Greek comes on
and I go to it, not swiftly. My feet make not haste.



October Wednesday, 15 1873.

Into seeing May 5 reversed! That train I was so glad to see goes back and takes grandma off and mother. Mr. Briggs
officiates pontifically by bearing grandma in the new carriage to the train. So be it. How cheerful everything always is at
home when mother's gone. I return to this cheer with out anything to bring me up.

This is a day of brides. And such a day!

I must needs go up to have me more look at Getty Sherman and to assure myself that she picked out for a husband the
one I should have decided upon. Did she, no, no, no.



October Thursday, 16 1873.

Into a was to be that is! I am afraid the stroke is not equal to Bismarck's for I came back to a sleepless night which is,
but hadn't ought to be!

In short the main thought is the proposed ride of the [2cond] course class came off, but auspices were furious, a black
cloud hovered and a bright train conflicted, and Jennie's nerves arrayed themselves and to tell the worst, we lost her
blanket shawl! Where was it? Not even the combined knowledge of the second course can tell.

Prince comes home on a trot, things don't prove quite so bad as they look, and home is reached.



October Friday, 17 1873.

Into being called upon to judge of new arrangements. My friends, we have taken new rooms! The difference being being
a ruddy five and no five, a place to set the wash-bowl on, for one where the wash-bowl had no continuing [...], a bed
with springs, for springless slats, and a block walnut [bed...] for [rak]! As a matter of genuine interest I depose and say
that Ella Marsh and Queen lay aside all earthly scenes, toils & sufferings, and are en route for that lost shawl! They [...]
it home joyfully and I breathe free once today!

I look longingly toward the land of Greek. Lexicons will it do if I have built in Halicarnassus .



October Saturday, 18 1873.

Into meeting and greeting besides, a coal-fire to see to! The first measures my ups, the second has more new, my
downs! to plan a campaign or lay siege to a [city] is a small undertaking comparied with making a fire in my morning
Light! O, much abused name! for such a creature! To keep a fire when [once] there! with what shall we liken it!

Ida goes deliberately and with celerity to tubs, clothes pins, bluing, mops, and like appliances of house-wifely matrons.
I revolve between here and the strict. Who is raised up to attend to the growing wants of our numerous family but me?
Who questions that my time is too precious but me? Well, and again well?



October Sunday, 19 1873.

Into beds of dying leaves. How they rustle as we walk among them! How lovely the trees begin to look in the places
where there are no leaves! And I in among the rustling leaves, and lovely places, can only think how near I am to being
twenty-five. The leaves wouldn't rustle so to me, nor the desolate places look so bare to me if mother too wasn't growing
old. I find in today from the dear, old book things that help me.

There is a cheery fire all day in the sitting room, there is a large arm chair, and there are things that eye both not seen,
nor ear heard, nor heart conceived around and near me.



October Monday, 20 1873.

Into news from Burr and Burton! It rained and who should go to the office! Who did? Ida. What did she bring? A white
flag for I. It treats of a fall of 45 feet and no limbs broken, of a boy who will study hard next term, of money to pay for a
slate, a [...] chimney, and four window lights broken, and of subduing kingdoms, wroughting rightiousness, and time
fails me to tell!

O, today how little art thou like last Wednesday. How unlike the place from whence we fell. Cold, foggy, dreary. Work
is no respecter of weather! We must "work away".

Mary Miller comes to me to talk. I go to sleep calling I to the tribunal of myself.



October Tuesday, 21 1873.

Into marking "my various, full accomplished mind!" I ask no leave. I mark it, feeling as if I were in my vernal prime!
The first adjective is emphatically proper, the second, misapplied!

What I feel like tonight is better conceived by the members of my profession, than developed and recorded. When one
can't do my move, think of trudging to the other and of turn to talk Normal School to Miss Rich, and then go home my
Greek to [wean] for there's a Greek for me!

I hear bad news of Mary Palmer. She is fading even as do the leaves, and my heart pities them all.



October Wednesday, 22 1873.

Into a Rhetoric dispensation! By this we are to understand that all chastening is not for the present joyous but grievous!
To sit propped up over a lesson to be which was not, when one is tired, and every body else is out doors, is painfully
suggestive of a long time ago, that dismal age, on the girls hall.

Things are rolling round at the Seminary. The girls are whispering loud enough for me to hear that they would rather
pay three dollars a week and rest Sunday than to pay varying prices from 4.00 to 5 and work Sunday! A revolution
ensues, resulting in the change of place of Mary Miller.

Elitharp is thoughtful. [Morre] progressive! [Ea...] pondering.



October Thursday, 23 1873.

Into a George Vasburg day! What was is not. What was is. I am no more a Normal teacher. I am as from from it as those
green pines standing up there with the brown & scarlet and gold! I am not. I have never been! I am in the old carriage
and George is there and we are off and away into the never, old beauty of October! It is not to Eva Howell's that we go,
but to Erma Thornton's! They are sick and we visit them. I am glad to know more of my boy Harrison. And so the ride
worked for good!

Dreams of Michigan are like cold water to parched lips like rest to the heavy loden. My head feels so tired tonight and
teaching makes me too tired to think!

Nine years ago I found the tired man at the well.



October Friday, 24 1873.

Into this is the way the mill goes round! One can go around a great many times in this world. One caught very tired!
Besides one's head can ache. These are ultimate facts!

As evening weans on apace I embark to hunt up rooms. If you want to know nerve of men and things, also women, just
go around to look up rooms! I did.

The clouds alas stagger with dizzy poise, they doubt which master to obey. We are under them and at their mercy. What
will they do?

And Addie. I am more hurt and grieved than I ever believed I should have reason to be from Addie. The name is full of
my sweet very good minglings, but the new Addie. What is there for me to think?



October Saturday, 25 1873.

Into hearing from Halicarnassus! A helper has been found in Israel. A friendly, Halicarnassus in time of my Greek
Prose! This is unexpected. It's almost like being in College.

Today is know and to be known in all coming time as a card campaign! I have lived to see the surrender of Quebec!
Miss Campbell has no equal under the sun. This year seems to be notable in my history. The deaf ones and Miss
Campbell are upon me at once!

Be it known that she will commence Latin on Wednesday. Look out for the cars when the bell rings.
Am I not [greek writing]!



October Sunday, 26 1873.

Into the Sunday after the twenty-third! It has just come over me what I have missed in forgetting on the dear twenty-
third what belongs to its nobility sacredly. I have turned back to it and added a single line. Now it all comes over me and
another thought makes the day even more dear. Aggie is twenty-one today.

I would feign sit down tonight by the tired man at the well. I would feign hear him say , "My meat is to do the will of
Him that suit me". Could I then ever turn away and not be about the Father's business?



October Monday, 27 1873.

Into being nout of one trouble and not getting into another! This clause additional is comforting. It invigorates me! That
there is a way out of the sorry gloom into which Addie has taken herself and which must cast long shadows over to me
is more than good to know. We have come up out the gloom and entered into the day-light!

Aggie reports the same arrival of that much thought upon amethyst. When of we are glad. (F.) "Jennie where's your
amethyst ring?" (J.) "I gave it to Aggie".

At greek I behold a chosen a peculiar people. Mr. Hradley, Mrs. Hradley, Nettie Hradley. A search is instituted for
Kakious! I search. I hold it up at last before the astonished vision of my teacher!



October Tuesday, 28 1873.

Into greeting a new face from a well known land. Things happen when you don't expect them to and they decidedly
don't happen when you expect they will! These are ultimate facts. A face from Hoosick Falls is announced and the
threads gather and are taken up fast. It's so nice to hear about it all.

I am subject nowadays to being violently blowed. The cause of this cruelty is my wicked little girl. She has no respect
for my superior age or my Greek acquirements. After coming up out of great tribulation I have succeeded in getting a
wood-box up stairs and still further, I have succeeded in getting Matthew to make daily journeys to fill it.
[Well].



October Wednesday, 29 1873.

Into a diagnosis on coal stoves morning lights base burners! The melancholy days have come. Our coal stove [lords] it
wide! Our godlike faces avail us not. [E'ren] beauty bleeds a hapless undistinguished prey.

All the calamities possible are upon us at this critical hour when the coal fire is out. The wind makes a great time of it.
[...] sinks to the depth of our celery bed. Ida goes away to be gone all night. My patience has left me and I go to bed
shivering.

I see a chestnut. I buy it. I wait upon Ersie. Do you know Ersie? to see if she would like to take Belle Thatcher. Don't
speak.



October Thursday, 30 1873.

Into patching up today to make it do. I suppose patchy days like all the rest have something to work out in us, but this
being worked upon is not always pleasing to the flesh. The wrong end of things seemed presented to me and I seem to
see that end a good deal of the time. Yet the coal fire does get started. I am patient in school, the mutten stew was a
great success and we had a hot fire to go to bed on. All this to cheer us amid the scene of crude disjointed visions
present!

Jennie does her hair up in cunning little wee braids and I ache to pull one. She sits up by the hot fire after the light is out
to read [Hrige]. The last I hear of her she is calling ["pinny, pinny, pinny"].



october Friday, 31 1873.

Into getting to the Greek Testament. I come home from Greek exultant bearing in my hands that oft seen [greek
writing]! I am to read it. What an achiever! It seems indeed like the beginning of the word to me!

There are unknown sunny banks between here and Monday and I hold my hands to them. I rush to them as thought I
would embrace them.

I make ready the drawing lesson. I write the lessons on the down stairs blackboard and then I turn from the summer isles
of Eden and look away from the dark, purple spheres of sea!



November Saturday, 1 1873.

Into the way Emma Thornton looks at it. I know all about it. You see Emma and I have been roaming off together and
that is how. One girl with a great honest heart. How much good the afternoon has brought me up in the woods with her.
It is a hilly woody road to Ella Wards and the wind blows in our faces, but it's all the same to Emma and I. We have a
great deal of visiting to do. And now I know that Ella will not come back. I have seen her and I can lay the thought of it
away.

At home the evening is long and cheery but I want mother to come home. That isn't all I want. I chafe so under the
year's cross, it grows hard to carry and spring looks like a far off speck.



November Sunday, 2 1873.

Into asking how I can come close to know! I do get out of the current just for awhile. I get almost to the door of the tent.
The chafing restlessness is exchanged for a brief space to a calmer, loftier looking out upon things. I have wanted to
come close to know. I have held out groping hands for the wounded but where only I can ever come close to know.
What I do know chief of all as I come close today is that my life has not been hid with Christ sitting where heavy sat,
learning what Mary learned I could not have grown bitter and hard. O, girlie ye know not what manner of spirit ye are
of. I do is up to Emma Thornton's, so the house is in my hands, but all goes well.

I have just put dearie to bed & now for Littell.



November Monday, 3 1873.

Into a dark day for Normaldom. I can't bear to shut things up and put them away for ten weeks. I do not want to. It's
hard for me to see the girls begin to go and scarcely any one begin to come. This feature of Normal teaching keeps me
down, in heart and courage. And Abbie Mills is a strong tower. When she make ready to go it shakes me to the solid
vase! A little package before me tells me that I'm near a milestone. It's Susie's writing on the wrapper. "My Mignonette's
birthday" it says.

There are still silent silver lights, there are still darks undreamed of for me and I can find in them a hush. I can bless
myself with silence.



November Tuesday, 4 1873.

Into the birthday strays. It is what goes out of us from a gathered richness within, more than what comes to us as
happenings that makes us think we live. Birthdays make us think. We think not alone of the miles we have gone over
but of the miles yet to come as well. In their grave prophetic eyes do I read a golden promise? Nothing in today has
made it hard to be in little things and my own courage have made it bright. My Sunday made me ready for it and the
sunshine helped. All through the long evening it was nice around the fire and the full moon lit up the face of the whole
earth. Why may I not send a golden promise in the grave prophetic eyes?



November Wednesday, 5 1873.

Into a little more Greek now 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 into my face every tired minute of respite. But I don't die. I am quite
alive. I shall sit up there and feel my way through 157 more days, just as tired as this, and then come home to 150 more
Greek lessons increasingly hard.

Where shall I find a little bit of something good and almost sunny. In my new garters, possibly. In Mr. pettingill. Who
can tell? In the original Greek of St. John. Always.

O, for the power to become one of the sons of [Gordon]. To "them" he gives it!



November Thursday, 6 1873.

Into facts hinted at hitherto & Yes, I've told you of course that Dr. S. and lady are on hospitable thoughts intent, that one
could celebrate a birthday week no where [better] than in their easy chairs and now I will hint at no longer. I will
develop that to those chairs we went and the nice of music was not heard in our land and Greek was not!

I plan a huge plan. It relates to a distant village and Mrs. Livermond. A problem. How can eight of us go in one team? Is
it unattempted yet in prose or rhyme? What of it?

Another sheep dead. O, dear me. Wool gathering is like all the uses of this world, [slate], flat, unprofitable.



Into "the like of that". The new girl fills me with fantastic horror never felt before, "and the like of that!" She is gifted at
the same time with expression. What will my future be, with, from, in or by Miss Hunt?

The day is full. There was news from Gertie and my heart bounded.

There's another glad that almost brings the tears. I had just called the first number this afternoon at dismissing time,
when little Johnny Smart stepped forward and after a nice little speech placed on my desk "Hollands Illustrated Library
of Favorite Song". This thought of me and my birthday has taken hold of me at the very bottom.



November Saturday, 8 1873.

Into hearing about the little dog. unheard of proceedings have just been concluded and the dignitaries of our house were
participants! Very true. Now you must hear about the little dog.

There was a little dog, Hm, hm
And he had a lttle tail, Hm, hm
And he wagged his little tail, Hm, hm
And why did he wag his little tail, Hm, hm
Because he had a little tail to wag! Hm hm, hm!

Think of a great many funny things and call it all today. Think of our Quaker meeting, our Shaker dance, and remember
that we are all ladies of an advanced age and connected with a lofty literary institution. Well, I am not any comforted as
I disrobe and think that she for when it was keep and came not.



November Sunday, 9 1873.

Into being back a good ways and finding my self as I used to be. It would happen in spite of things contrary. How could
I help sitting down among the old letters, old records, old thinkings. How could I help writing to Dr. Lincoln? And yet it
has made a strange day for me. If I had some farther back into three quiet years in Asia Minor my heart might have
found more to fill it. But I am left to creep off to bed and warm my toes by Jennie's too tired to go back to the book.
[K...], yet longing for an hour with the lonely man who went there to pray.



November Monday, 10 1873.

Into some of it. I am in a strait betwixt two to know whether the above introduction means the quarterly day of judgment
or my lame stomach. I had some of both. Alas, it may forever remain my threat. I sinned against my stomach tonight.
Ida made some piping hot biscuits and I went about seeking what I might devour, but I won't again for I'll find out if I
can't deny myself. I see before me an endless morass of Greek verbs and I am to pick my way along.

I have untold reverence for Greek scholars. What before was reverence is [...].
It has tried to snow today, but only the mountains are white.



November Tuesday, 11 1873.

Into the best of times! A blessed good time even for a purple diary, even with Castleton, but not of it or in it.

It began a long time ago planning it, it takes its date from the big wagon's going round. There were lots of us to get in!
The Globe has done the lecture and the Herald too. Can I expect to have a hearing? Yes. Globe, six. Mrs. Livermore was
majestic! She was grand. No. Herald sir! Two hours was not too long. We come home from dizzy heights. We have
been aloft. It is a day of days. What a bright light from two windows. What a glow from the morning Light!



November Wednesday, 12 1873.

Into the change that turns another leaf. The longest quarter of the year has fled. Where and how it came to go is a
mystery to me. Who can unfold?

If mother should come upon us [...]. If mother should, what would her eyes behold? Her strict orders on the management
of two gone girls! May she tarry till this room gets picked up!

Mr. Frank Adams is a slow man, a branded one. My money comes not. I do not stew unlike me, nice child. Sleepy child,
she steals away to bed early, eight, no Greek, when nerves, gee out & eyes gee in!



November Thursday, 13 1873.

Into coming to know things that were never told. A strange young man comes [bid] for me. O, no. When pray did one
come for me? But my Jennie girl. Did it. I guess all to myself. That is Mr. McGort. Didn't I when introduced walk up to
him perfectly at ease as if I knew whom he was? Was that all I read? Think not.

One o'clock finds me sitting over the kitchen fire with the toothache. I love to recount pleasant pictures like this.
Laura Brown is here. Did that new girl come? Why ask me such questions, do you suppose?



November Friday, 14 1873.

Into hearing more about the little dog. All my energies are now employed in building a kitchen fire. This world can
never give. The fires for which we sigh! Then the molasses must be cooked which is a work of much skill. When it
looks forward to be candy.

We are all in quick time tonight and we hear about the little dog, play muggins and bob [amid] all but me. I stay in one
place and cook candy. Then I stay in one place and [burn] a thumb. But its jolly even to [burn] a thumb when there are
such happy times.

I've gone into the deeps of examination with Jennie and the new girl!



November Saturday, 15 1873.

Into my sphere. Yes, at home in the kitchen I've put sorry thing to rights but me and I am all to wrongs. That kitchen
once more is at peace. The pantry once more is blessed with Heaven's first law and I wait the coming of mother's
fingers. She will scatter plenty o'er a land that has not [suited] for weeks. We give up all claims on culinary arts and
attainments and after denouncing them as fleeting shows conclude we'll board out, which we proceed to do. We speak
and it is done!

Mrs. Foote makes her Saturday night appearance. Even us of yore, but her countenances do not fall. We know there is
another house.



November Sunday, 16 1873.

Into writing once more to dear Miss Macham. JG seems as if no days ran away like Sundays. What does become of
them? This one was a busy one, but how [...] and cheerless the house is without mother. The kitchen looks like St.
Helena. Our days are spent in mortal terror. We tremble lest by some outward event the greatest of calamities should
sweep over us lest our fire should go out. We are wearing the style every day, now we take our meals out. We are so
tired of Ida cook and no cook and its nice to see somebody once more. I never did believe the following.

There was an old hermit who lived alone in a [grot] and the way to be happy He said he had got. I beieve not at all [...]
shall now!



November Monday, 17 1873.

Into that great calamity! It has come up on us with celerity. Our fire has indeed gone out! Jennie gives [vent] only in su,
su, su, su. I open not my mouth, I am a tower of silence! We go with "sable draped [banners] and slow measured tread",
not as the conqueror comes over to our breakfast. The next is a [mournful] duty, to resurrect a dead world, and recreate a
new.

I go like a quarry slave [...] to [...] dungeon up to school. I can't be in two places at once and school is inevitable. I send
down and hear excellent reports of how things go.

I have a Greek lesson at the end and that is for the present joyous!



Nobember Tuesday, 18 1873.

Into a crisis reached. Things can't go on this way always. There is a limit and things have now reached that! The kitchen
behold it. The snow, [...] deep. The chickens to feed. Who'll bring the coal? And school, who has time, give such a
matter outside of it. Well, all my hopes that took hold, the clouds are low, Very! That I should get a letter notifying me
of my mother's speedy arrival was not a matter of doubt in my mind but a surety. Make not sure defences on such
fleeting frailties! A letter came not.

There's a big snow bank in front of the door. I feel all shut up. Well, why not be?



November Wednesday, 19 1873.

Into a change of base. Not a letter but a mother, a real, live one. I saw it the moment I entered the house. "And we'll all
be gay" sings Jennie and I! Great revolutionizing begins forthwith. Pretty soon our boy comes. We get into a right down
visiting time after school gets out and we stay there until its time to go to the "old Folks".

And paths get made and warm biscuits and home begins once more to pilgrims! Up to school I fill every minute, crowd
it full, heap it over cause next week is a scanty week, and there won't be much got in!



November Thursday, 20 1873.

Into drawing on my reservoir of strength with tremblings. With me that has been going on too long, it ought to be that
additions be made to that reservoir and there be no drains [builded]! Today I come home too tired to know much. Where
fore?

We think the boy has improved. It is a good staff to us. I, God would only give some of us strength, wisdom, influence,
to hold him back from the pit that is digged from the snare that lyeth in wait!

My chrome is before me. Mother gives it the not fanciful name of Nancy Barebottom!



November Friday, 21 1873.

Into and existence to flop! This is very suggestive of school in many aspects of coming home uneasy and having a great
time getting campos mentos in a state of being balanced. I'm not going to develop, why I flop. I do not care to record for
future perusal any such falls of zero or the causes affecting thereof!

There is a picture that I would willingly let live. It is a glow in the Morning Light. There is a rocking chair and mother
and I talk with our faces radiant with the blaze.

We look forward tonight, not backward!



November Saturday, 22 1873.

Into what I was to do and how I did it.

Did ever a Saturday dawn in these regions that every hour was not disposed of before it comes? I had arms full, [...] full,
every available spot full when I saw a girl with a red cloud drawing nigh. She cometh for me the vision said and it came
to pass. You hear no more this day, my friend, the reader of examination papers or Physical Geography questions. Latin
is not recited and Greek's foolishness, for I'm in a sleigh and the bells ring. This is bliss attainable.

Farm houses possess not a few attractions, & it's fun to be snow bound up among such hills!



November Sunday, 23 1873.

Into feeling unfeignedly comfortable. How dare I? I take to myself almost reproaches for daring to venture upon such a
state of feeling, but it is smooth gliding and I can stop and think and almost play. We cuddle up in a miniature sleigh
and ride four miles to church. And it was so like Schenectady that I seemed for a little time in the same joyous current
that I found myself in of yore. I could make believe so much.

Hugging myself in among woolen blankets I find it nice to keep awake a long time. And a long, long time it was but I
see visions and I dream dreams!



November MOnday, 24 1873.

Into "running well". You did run well and while I have no reason whatever for supposing that Paul, the Apostle meant
me, I have every reason for supposing that I deserve to be meant. Old Father Time has for reasons of his own walked me
around quicker than he himself went today. First through a programme which knew no mercy. Then into Littell, then
into Greek prose, and then with a ceaseless march forever repeated in my head. I lie down a scene of crude disjointed
visions!

But not of broken slumbers. Rarely, this! I feel impressed fully that our days are growing shorter. How fast somehow I
have jumped from last November into this!



November Tuesday, 25 1873.

Into realizing that for entrance eager howls the savage blast! This doth not suggest to you or me a Schenectady school
room or a Williamsport school room for in those sportive days blasts howled in rain. Not so, in these latter times. Blasts
are my comrades.

O, how nice it is to teach and feel the cold come all around me. It is [...] and blessed to freeze for me Normal school.

At home the Morning Light [lords] it over us no longer. Our baby stove sends out a cheerful light and we bask in its
smiles!

Hereafter I shall take my station when I [...] in the rocking chair he the parlor. Why not?



November Wednesday, 26 1873.

Into many things that Susie's letter says! I am so glad to carry her letter up to school with me, to let it sing itself through
and through me. Its so long since I've been going to, or long since she has said I was her dear little girl!

I think I'll have a read at Scribner before Greek, but Miss Rich deprives me of that hope and the Greek lesson is hard!

My head gets tired after the long Greek which was nothing short of an inquisition and I came home nervous and find no
oil in any of the lamps which fast does not make my nerves strong!



November Thursday, 27 1873.

Into what comes with Thanksgiving! What ought to come is quite another thing! So what we can't help we'll not think of
but we'll kill the bear Becky and have a nice time someway. We'll try and have even in a humble home some of the
hearty glad times that Dickens is forever unfolding. Home is so full of cheer today. There is so much in it that I want to
keep. Snow has fallen all day long and I love to watch it coming, coming even though it dims the day with a continual
flow! I find comfort in writing to my Jennie girl. There is comfort in reading God's letters to me!



November Friday, 28 1873.

Into finding a whole day in my hands with one behind and one before it! And so while I am making plans on a large
scale to fill the day, the day slips away and instead of a day on my hands I am left with the plans!

Dans clothes are [...] over friends and form matter for mighty discussion! A boy set down in our family seems to have
been an unprepared for event. It is almost sufficient to furnish matter for the [Tragis] [Nurse]. My hopes look forward to
a [career]. But O, thou Friend of sinners! I am in the dark & bewildered and sick at heart!



November Saturday, 29 1873.

Inot a cheery Saturday night! I revel in the cosy evenings by the fire with mother. They seem like answers to my oft
repeated prayer. "Vouchsafe us but a half hours hush with thee. In compensation for the stormy years!"

I find [unlimited] rates faction in recording that a coat has been fixed upon for my brother! and the pig cut up. Not
trifling family incidents [...]!

A dreary bitter feeling had come over me but it did not last and in its place there was a tenderness which held
possession! O, if I could but be building better than I know.

Another dissappointment, Gertie has not come.



November Sunday, 30 1873.

Into the Sunday strays. I felt so good this morning. So well, so strong in every limb. I know the long day at home wuld
be full for me and it was. Mr. Hines sermon was a stray among the Sunday strays.

My center table is ful of reading for me and I take a long revel in it. New thoughts and old thoughts wait for me and
again my Sunday has strays.

Mother and I walk in among the Sunday strays. Our [leadings] have been in plant for Dannie and next year looks at us
wistfully! Yes mother and I build on together. On and on!



December Monday, 1 1873.

Into melancholy days which have come. It comes to pass that the big black stove in Normal Hall does not afford the heat
for which we sigh.

We all couch down together like chickens in a rain. And the day falls all around us in [2 no's] ultimation. How long does
it take to freeze for one's country? I sort of open my eyes on coming from s. to see if anybody's girl has been along
here. Don't see her.

The house is one large anteroom for coats, for vests, for pants, for Florence collars, Czar collars. A mistake has been
made, setting a boy down in this family.



December Tuesday, 2 1873.

Into feeling in my heart a kind of sink. So would you if you had such a coal stove in Normal Hall. I do not grow any
more etherial or come into possession of any more of the essentials of spirits as my flesh wastes from day to day. And
so I can get cold. I can scold about it.

Who do I see walking up to meet me with a brown muff. Somebody or something has been to our house and dropped a
girl!

My first Greek exercises come home from Middlebury and down goes my heart with a jump. There is some Greek yet
Mr. Maynard and I don't know. We aint found it out.



December Wednesday, 3 1873.

Into being robbed of the last of comforts, sleep. I have in my heart Fannie a sorry for you thought, your course is not
always satisfactory to me. A kind of sorry will steal in as I think of the tired eyes that lay awake all night long. Mother
sat up until three to make pants and that worried me wide awake, and I thought and thought and thought if I could give
up going to Michigan next year and let Dannie stay in school.

[Stairs] in Normal Hall are arranged with an eye to taste and effect. Pant and pant. It makes me pant.



December Thursday, 4 1873.

Into thawing out. Littell has a great deal to say about things being "objective" and "subjective". So I can not help asking,
is the thaw "objective" or "subjective"? That involves me. It will be different to proceed much farther in this direction. I
will trace my way back while I can do so horrorably and say that a thaw has come and carried off all our much built on
snow.

4 of December, memorable for commencing the Anabasis, memorable ah!, for a certain tempest in Normaldom which
blew upon Miss Thomas' ears, all along of a Christmas present for Mrs. Williams.
Well.



December Friday, 5 1873.

Into "being handy". Thats what Maggie Ryan said to me today and in her Irish soul, handy is an expressive word. I'm
glad I've been better to her lately.

The Second course girls have been in glee today. Very!. Then Julia Miller said hyperbowl and something very aken to
deep-shaking every nerve passed around. We never shall recover from the effect produced upon us by the present
arrangement of the stoves in Normal Hall. It keeps our spirits up and we do not pine in cheerless gloom.

Our kitchen is scarcely less deserving of being maintained. O, let me grace thee with my [song], see to the shades again
I [humbly] [aly].



December Saturday, 6 1873.

Into "Bits of Work" by F.B. Don't look at me or talk to me. I don't dare look at myself. There's so many things to do,
besides there's attention of folks that don't have many things to do.

Out doors its a blue day, no snow, a cold wind, a few struggle into town on wheels. At home its a Broad fields day and
mother is Mrs. Hathaway. What a nice long row of pumpkin pies! What a dear nice little ma.

Gertie neither writes nor comes. I am getting in a hurry for her to be here. I keep trying to think just how she looks and
all the little things that need to please me so, but I can't see them as I want to.



December Sunday, 7 1873.

Into a rest spot. Days at home lately are so nice all of them! I play dodging from one coal fire to the other. Its the sort of
way one feels when they are having such a nice time they can't go to sleep.

Did a boy with new clothes and a new scarf bear me company to church. O, dear me. How I flatter myself on possessing
a truly devoted spirit leaving such a chair, such a fire, to go off to church alone and afterward to Normaldom to build a
fire and what not.

I live in a generation that appreciates me not. Else why go I around alone? Why do Normal doors remain unlocked?
Why a great many things.



December Monday, 8 1873.

Into a faint attempt to rise early. I am not very much encouraged to go on sister. My eyes stick and its cold. Our fire, the
one so inappropriately called the Morning Light, as if conscious of my intentions to rise [...]. went out [...]!! I shivered
some time. The boy, Dannie gets started back. We all settle back into old woman propensities.

Up to school I have a series of blind staggers, first lessons. When I tell mother she says its Greek. Jennie deposes and
says its going without dinner! It is a hard saying! Who is sufficient?



December Tuesday, 9 1873.

Into wondering what makes December cut up so. I think it would be just as well not to have so much variety in mother.
From a fearful snap of cold we have come out into a fearful thaw of snap and the walking reminds me of the sea of
glass. I hear nothing from Gertie and that makes mad, Osgood and Leo to make up for it send me a drawing book. I look
like the picture in Scribner's Monthly of the girl opposite the monkey. One tear on one cheek and a countenance
indicator of sorrow.



December Wednesday, 10 1873.

Into the cars of this world. A great many. They multiply.

They are of me and I of them from [denying] butter for other people, and drawing books to seeing that my shoes are
mended.

Miss Miller is not a bright and shining light. She lacks considerable of it the flickerings forth she does emit, have a great
[furs] made about them. It strikes me that she puts more in her little bag than in her little head.

Mr. Pattinson appears again upon the scene. We are among his calling acquaintances. The last vision of the day is Mr.
Maynard coming for a plate of head cheese.



December Thursday, 11 1873.

Into whatever is the opposite of outing. I suppose Patience Strong would call it an inting. It consisted in the presence of
Dr. Sanford and Ettey and the usual number of jokes consequent upon such an occasion. A few big apples were present
and a feeble appearnce of pop-corn was put in!

I go into bay on the subject of Greek. I see no Greek for me near by a little way off, but a vacation from Greek. Mother
and Jennie rejoice as those who have hope.

Dear Jesus, come to me as you did nine years ago today. Let me come close to know.



December Friday, 12 1873.

Into the best of times. It took its beginning right off, even while I was yet sleepy. A drizzly rain forebode and repeated
disappointment. I went on as though it was the most pleasant of summer mornings, which is a source of great
gratification to the friends of Miss B.

I cheated the state out of 40 minutes of History work and appeared serenely before that often uncompromising half past
three train. Today it brought my girl Gertie whose face the sunlight has not shown me these four years.



December Saturday, 13 1873.

Into threads brought up. It is a short day and it does not end with a back-ache or a fidget simply and solely because I
took a play and did not take a work. The little wee threads taken up from the old life and brought into the new show a
dear wearing for us today.

There's a little strange miss in the breaking off and beginning again together. It can't be taken up quite where we left it in
Gertie's room in white and Franklin, but will find it pretty soon.

It seems some like coming up from death and sitting down in the kingdom.



December Sunday, 14. 1873.

Into the quiet meadow where misty shadows lay. It came like a hope of heaven in a field of graves. Plenty of sun and a
clear sky.

One of my troubles is my brown hat. Its mechanism is faultless but the season is late. Methinks I would no more appear
before the Congregational Sisterhood in that hat than in Emma Mills' nose. (a nineteenth century would not.) which may
account for our going to the Advent. There are many proofs that the interior of the Advent is intensely heated!



December Monday, 15 1873.

Into hearing it, not less but more. It's one absorbing topic, it throbs & urges, falls and rises, "in fifty different sharps and
flats" in and out of reason and I am inconsolable. Of course its "compositions" , what else can he talk about. Did that
much lamented man stand as guard to the Eternal City he would not ask no one by one as we came up. "Have you a
hope", but "Have you a composition?".

Gertie thinks a half a day up there will answer this day and the cohorts of my class do not gleam in purple and gold.
But I stand it.



December Tuesday, 16 1873.

Into a sleigh, not for me, with bells not for me, with white robes not for me. I shall have to begin where I left off
yesterday. "But I stand it". I haven't any recollections to stand on my experiences of this nature partook of top buggies,
not tiny cutters and things.

Lately I have stopped having experiences. We don't amount to much when we're twenty-five!

Tutor Maynard is an invincible armada. He can't "stand it", any longer. He must come and see where this young lady is
and why not Greek?



December Wednesday, 17 1873.

Into distinguished company. I shan't play with mother and Gertie any more while I am waited upon in the body by
Professor Higby in bonds of Greek those individuals referred to sit in the sitting room and laugh. They do not stop, even
yet.

I hereby offer to raise an Ebenezer, if I can find one, and a flag staff for my darkness in Greek accents, oxytones
perispomenons enclitics and proclitics has been illumined.



December Thursday, 18 1873.

Into finding my flesh is heir to an ill! Heir apparent! I have not studied my complicated mechanism to such an extent
that I can classify the ill or give to it a cause but its perched itself on my back bone!

I am dressed at five o'clock and I feel as if a trip was in progress. Poor child, no trip, who knows when I can promise
you one! We go to prayer meeting and we meet Christ the Lord. He says tonight "Fear not, for I am with thee. I have
called thee by my name, though art mine."



December Friday, 19 1873.

Into a proposal to Gertie and a conference with Mrs. Williams. Both mean business and so does Olney's Geometry
which arrived yesterday. Mother and I ask Gertie to stay with us this winter. I speak of it while we walk up and back
Seminary St. Still back and forth, up and down.

It may be a little seed that shall spring up and yield. It may be a little seed that will vanish and be no more known.

The conference with the Lady of Peculiarities reminds me mournfully of Seminary days and years, but yet I come home
feeling better.

Why, and again why?



December Saturday, 20 1873.

Into a little done or thought or dreamed. The last is much missed out of a day of mine. It so lifts me up and sends a
radiance to things. But I can't dream unless after a busy day and today sort of poked. I was up and doing at half past
three. A strange record. I made a [roll] book and wrote a little Greek and when you've added that I called on Mrs.
Atwood you have told it all.

I ought to be glad that Christmas is so near. It ought to send glad thrills through and through me, and it may yet as time
draws on. I can but think of the pitiful little note from my Dannie boy and be sick.



December Sunday, 21 1873.

Into days that still go on! There is absolutely nothing for me to do today but to rest, but I feel restless. In my mind I am
like the dead one in. Since I Died "I was restless and I ran". There was a firelight picture in the dying of the day that I
cannot spare from today. It is set like a germ in the surrounding waste.

I gave dearie her little cross for Merry Christmas. She seems so happy with it and I am glad to be in the reach of the glad
that touches her.

The Bible lesson is near my heart tonight. "Sinners, I have somewhat to say unto thee".



December Monday, 22 1873.

Into pushing plans for Gertie. It is a keen, clear, frosty day. A day when the blood flows rapidly making every part feel
fresh and new. I was mercifully spared from a dragging on existence. My status [run] high and R.G. was benevolent!
And the boy Dannie is better.

Mrs. Burton and I hold a consultation and Gertie is planned for. We are so wise Mrs. Burton and I.
Greek is again to be lived, moved and had a being in!
Dr. Webber finds his answer which is an incommensurable relief.



December Tuesday, 23 1873.

Into how many things can come to pass in a day. I do not know whether I am following the order of the subject or the
order of the nature when I begin at the last one but I begin where my hopes and fears start up alarmed for a some thing
has come which I am afraid will carry off mother.

There is to be a Merrie Christmas for Mary Conley and Julia Procter. We've all been deep today in planning and getting
the things which are to give the joy to each.

We had the pleasure of hearing of the Pilgrims of the May Flow! (Mr. Ayers) as developed by Mr. Tuxbury. I go to
sleep hearing that John Dooley he knew that his mother was dead.



December Wednesday, 24 1873.

Into seeing them home come marching! Just a perfect day with a [beam] in every body's face. A day of sun and a night
of stars! Jennie looks for a pa that does not come and Gertie gets a wee shade in her heart, but they have a good time,
they must have a good time these holidays. The boy arrives with a sickness at his stomach which is not entirely relieved
by a [semi-squash] pie.

Aggie brings piles of gladness with her. Home feels so good. Must we let Ad Spicer have mother tomorrow? All of us
rise up and it is no, no, no! But to night we are all, all here.



December Thursday, 25 1873.

Into not being obliged to wonder if it was "Merry". There came little merry things along, they had been wished in. As
soon as it becomes necessary to ask, if we're having a good time it becomes a matter of metaphysics and is ruled out.
Was there ever a whole Merry day, a day in which no sorrow , or its thought fell? And so today in the midst of it mother
had to go, which means how much who better knows than I? Irving's Sketch Book and my little new diary bless me
from sister's hands. A muff fresh from Gerties beautiful fingers and a silver napkin ring from dearie add their blessings.



December Friday, 26 1873.

Into pitying myself. Yes, and on a day in which there was no school. Think of it. What that same unhappy fate that
shaked not boils at most uneven rate on Howard Grose of blessed memory has shaken me today and here I lie!

I am intensely sorry that my shadow, even the least of it should have fallen on another but I cannot live to myself even if
I would and so the shadows reached across whatever gulf there may be between Gertie's soul and mine and she is in the
cloud.

[...] of sinners was I ever more truly sorry for such days, than tonight?



December Saturday, 27 1873.

Into better days, for us there is always and for aye a better day, and we are glad for a chance to retrieve the mistakes of
the wrong days in the calms of the better ones.

The outside was no better than on other days but we all felt good inside and work was lifted up and we sped on wings. I
live to see the last the very last examination paper reviewed and put away and the present is joyous! Mother has been
gone three days. The fires have gone out [...] three times around. We have eaten starch in our pancakes for soda only
twice. We have found the sausage not at all.



December Sunday, 28 1873.

Into what a home is without a mother. If you have tears prepare to shed them now. You all remember how mother's
kitchen used to look. O, how unlike the place from whence we fell!.

In reading of John Stuart Mills in Harper's how can I make you know what a dreary feeling it left me with. I felt as
never before in turning from that to Albert Barnes, "Life at [...] and [...]" how much better it is to throw the whole heart
and soul into work for God than to turn aside and throw life's energies into any other work.

How vain indeed is all architecture save that which is not make with hands!



December Monday, 29 1873.

Into finding things to be glad about. I always find something exhilarating in a ride and when I was proposed today that
Aggie should gaze upon Rutland and Dannie be taken to the train I summoned all my powers to the glorious enterprise.

Gertie gets back in a sad state of shivers, but she feels thawed by the time the oyster stew is ready. Had it not been for
the stupidity of that kitchen fire we would have had hot boiled potatoes all ready for us through Jennie's interposition
but, alas the fires are against us, and yet, Oliver does not complain. No one has yet explained. "Here I raise my
Ebenezer".



December Tuesday, 30 1873.

Into awakening echoes. Do they flow from soul to soul and will they [...] forever and forever? It is not given unto us to
know, but its nice to say "no girls at home". Its nice to hear the piano go and have the little laughs and fold our arms
around each other. We grow tender in the dying of the year.

All the fires burn [which is] a grand feature in our landscape for Winter breathes sharply upon us. Mrs. Barton comes in
and the hours fly. We say more than ever, how nice music is, and Aggie begins at once [her] "Cottage by the Sea".



December Wednesday, 31 1873.

Into thinking "of the days that are no more". Coming down to the last night of the year we sit on the meditative company
of the vanishing days and [hours]. There is such a death to look upon, such a guess in the new name. There is one less of
"us girls at home" for pa has come for Jennie. There is all the cosy cheer in the dear home places and I must make my
thanksgivings long and sweet.

It is perfect out doors. It is perfect in the deeps of the blue above. Can I, may I, climb for a wee while out of the crimson
into the blue?

"O, death in life. The days that are no more."



Drifting.

T. Buchanan Read.
My soul today
I 2 far away
Sailing the Vesuvian Bay!
My winged boat,
O bird afloat
Swims round the purple peaks
remote.

Round purple peaks
It sails, and seeks
Blue inlets and their crystal creeks
Where high rocks throw
Through deeps below,
A duplicated golden glow;

Far, vague and dim,
The mountains swim!



While on Vesuvius misty brim,
With outstretched hands
The gray smoke stands
Overlooking the volcanive lands.

Here I [...] smiles
For liquid miles;
And yonder, bluest of the isles,
Calm Capri waits
Her sapphire gates
Beguiling to her bright estates.

I heed not, if
My rippling skiff
Float swift or slow from cliff to cliff,
With dreamful eyes
My spirit lies
Under the walls of Paradise.



Under the walls
Where swells and falls
The Bay's deep breast of intervals
At peace I lie,
Blown softly by
A cloud upon this liquid sky.

The day so mild,
Is Heaven's own child,
With Earth and Ocean
reconciled;
The airs I feel
Around me [...]
Are murmurring to the murmurring keel

Over the rail
My hadn I trail
Within the shadows of the sail


Cash Account, January.

A joy intense
The fooling sense
Glides down my drowsy indolence

Her children hid
The cliffs amid,
Are gamboling with the
gamboling kid;
Or down the falls
With tipsy calls
Tough on the rocks like waterfalls

The fisher's child,
With tresses wild
Unto the smooth, bright sand beguiled
With glowing lips
Sings as she skips
Or gazes at the far off ships


Cash Account, February

You deep back goes
Where Traffic blows
From lands of sun to lands of snows;
This happier one
It's course has run
From lands of snow to lands
of sun!

O happy ship
To rise and dip
With the blue crystal at your lip!
O happy crew
My heart with you
Sails, and sails and sings
anew!


Cash Account, March.

No more, no more
The worldly shore
Upbraids me with its land
uproar,
With dreamful eyes
My spirit lies
Under the walls of Paradise!


Cash Account, April.

Into Isaiah.
Into the ditches.
Into informal gatherings and
after claps.
Into Visitings.
Into Br. Briggs cutter and
out of it.
Into a prayer meeting.
Into Charlotte's future.
Into red bows and vanities.
Into pentameters & hexameters.
Into the light that is no
divine enough.
Into grinding processes.
Into sick rooms.
Into a Cumulo Stratus.
Into droopings woful man.
Into a lively hope.
Into spunk and [spasm].
Into play-grounds of sentiment.
Into stubborn things.
Into joys "no man taketh".
Into the event.
In farther.


Cash Account, May.

Into the last of it.
Into a picture gallery and an
old satchel.
Into the cars.
Into an old-fashioned
stage coach.
Into Pondville.
Into scraped apples & things.
Into Gotham.
Into the Promised Land.
Into the fun of it.
Into the valley of blessing.
Into Booth's Theatre.
Into Beecher's church.
Into her eyes and down deep.
Into Aunt Mary's big chair.
Into the modern Sanhedrin.
Into mother's room.
Into wonderings many.
Into that which cannot be
again.
Into dish water and
monarchical government.
Into ink and paste.
Into yams with mother.
Into visions of a Spanish inquisition.
Into my chrysalis state.
Into the setting room.
Into the Spanish inquisition.


Cash Account, June.

Into plots, not Conley.
Into many Bibbens' adjectives.
Into a meloncholy day of cain
pressed feet and scrubbed neck.
Into a crow story.
Into the merits of sloths, opos-
sums & kangaroos.
Into seas of it pools of it!
Into a hope not attained.
Into a joke on Dr. Sanford.
Into bliss for which I did not sigh.
Into a back-ache & no help for it.
Into a blue which is the most blue.
Into school management with a
vengeance.
Into a wind that proves to be east.
Into the order of the subject not
the order of nature.
Into losing the name of disciple.
Into memories of the sunny
corner room.
Into "tripping the light fantastic to!"
Into being at ease in Zion.
Into many marvels resulting
in a new clock.
Into what she thinks of it.
Into meadow broadenings.
Into a whisk and Addie and I
set up for kings.
Into how to buy beef and where.
Into indescribable honor.
Into how to teach Philosophy.
Into a perfect success.
Into Colonel Parker's ear.
Into being carried off.
Into much that isn't so nice by half.


Cash Account, July.

Into having all the bark scraped off my inside & barking all the bark off my inside.
Into a great asset which I kept.
Into a little more powder now my boys.
Into a scare and what will come of it.
Into what did come of it.
Into the sad sweet bygones.
Into a visit with E.S.P.
Into losing my breath & catching it.
Into an opening future for the Natural History Class.
Into this way for the Normal School.
Into scientific explorations.
Into a strong pull & a pull a good while.
Into [dura catina inlibera poena desidera ti].
Into the New Testament, part of it.
Into what may be for my darling Sue.
Into this way & that way & all ways.
Into being a water bird.
Into James Smith's segments.
Into what may turn out to be Spring.
Into good tidings and I hold my peace.
Into the sorrows of Jean Valjean.
Into a new regime.
Into finding and securing a valuable specimen of Natural History.
Into welcoming Middlemarch.
Into the turn the wind took.
Into father's chariot.
Into sugaring off.
Into denouncing April, announcing President Buckham and renouncing the world and the flesh.
Into a box and what was in it.


Cash Account, August.

Into the woods.
Into thoughts of the dark valley.
Into being entirely devoted to the interests of mother and Mrs. Branch.
Into becoming sensible of possessing a ride.
Into a love problem.
Into a day that went out in a rain storm.
Into unexpected blessedness.
Into finding hepaticas.
Into an official visit from J.B. [Judge Bromley]
Into a pussy willow romance.
Into "bein & doin & sufferin".
Into growing into disfavor with Mrs. Briggs.
Into matronly perplexities.
Into knowing how sublime it is to suffer & be snapped.
Into biding my time.
Into being a benefactor to Miss Bissell in giving advice that she did not follow.
Into a night more dreaded than the day.
Into welcoming on this very rainy day H.H. & her "Bits of Talk".
Into news from a far country & new attempts at gravy & a scrap-book campaign.
Into holding out.
Into how de do's!
Into seeing fish & having faith.
Into the pupa state.
Into worries new and old.
Into no next.
Into finding out that Sat. is play day.
Into wishing to be less miserable.
Into what do you think of that my cat & what do you think of that my dog?


Cash Account, September.

Into the more I think I will I think I won't.
Into a peep at other people.
Into a white day.
Into finding people to please and nothing to please them with.
Into seeing a train go and leave me before my very face and eyes.
Into visions of newly come leaves.
Into sight, chiefly cod.
Into one little minute at the door of the Tent in the cool of the day.
Into always doing so in Cas.[Castleton]
Into feelin heart-bare, heart-hungry, very poor.
Into sweet fulfillments.
Into "what is so rare".
Into "being led into green pastures".
Into allusions to Horatio's philosophy.
Into realizing where the tail-end is with prospects.
Into what may be a next for Hope.
Into being "caught up".
Into how mother and I celebrate.
Into a meadow and under a tree.
Into then, if ever, and a perfect day.
Into going "way off".
Into 3 to make ready and 4 to go!
Into the new home.
Into a deep hard question that I cannot answer.
Into a new way of getting our room trimmed.
Into taking comfort in the new house with mother.
Into finishing Les Miserables.
Into seeing my plans unfold.
Into a mountain.
Into what do I think of it?


Cash Account, October.

Into a bigger puzzle than before and a living vision of M.[Mark] Tapley.
Into being like folks again.
Into Delaware County by faith.
Into realizing in the flesh somewhat of D.[Deacon] Quirk's heaven.
Into deciding on a pair of shoes.
Into a vision of field strawberries.
Into visions of perch and rock bass.
Into much that doth not tend to build up.
Into "Can it be?" "is it"? "May be so".
Into the old chair before vanishing faces.
Into coming pretty near it.
Into a Normal Day of Judgment.
Into turning my eyes away from Randolph.
Into the strawberry fields and on Red Hill.
Into commencement Day.
Into the calm that follows.
Into the looks that are tenderest.
Into a lonely house that will be lonelier tomorrow.
Into seeing the night fall once more on my river.
Into the old life's fairest wreath.
Into riding up the river and being ye. Rondout crags and peaks once again.
Into the charms of solitude and a row boat.
Into Delaware County!!!!!
Into taking in the [fratitudes] of a summer day's journey.
Into more fear than hopes.
Into busies many.


Cash Account, November.

Into a summer rainstorm.
Into conversing with my lady, weeding and taking it easy.
Into a day when things were out of joint in the kitchen.
Into practicing hygiene.
Into putting my fingers in my ears.
Into the tenderness.
Into low of cattle and song of birds.
Into would you like a little of Roman History or a Romance and we took the romance.
Into becoming what I most abominate.
Into memories of dear Miss Clark to carry away.
Into visiting with Mathe.
Into being interested in two trains and up and a down.
Into becomg Mrs. Fields of Lansingburgh.
Into how we got Jennie's picture and how we stared at Willie [...].
Into resting gloriously.
Into going up to Grandpa's.
Into health and quiet and loving words.
Into "how do you do Laura?"
Into how I got on a slow accomodation freight and how I got off.
Into being present at an eruption of my eye.
Into "business".
Into being introduced to Mrs. Knox.
Into "a don't want to".
Into a phantom which is not a phantom.
Into finding a help meet for Frances.


Cash Account, December

Into "drifting".
Into making changes not of heart.
Into vibrating between Latin translations and cake.
Into rapidly developing experiences.
Into a country that knew not me.
Into a camp-ground with neither tenting nor dying.
Into being picked but keep all my feathers.
Into that river ride.
Into smacks of Steamboat Rock and Boston.
Into the company of Real Rolks.
Into my mother's house.
Into the company of an uncomforting friend sticking closer than a brother.
Into sucesses and failures.
Into a dreaming that carries me off body and soul.
Into the sty business.
Into retrospecting.
Into following Ella [Leborde's] advice.
Into a start for my second mountain ride.
Into a cloud bigger than a man's hand.
Into what's to be done next?
Into one taken.
Into "ay there's the rub".
Into a gift of God.
Into Miss Willard's presence and what of it.
Into unfoldings which are gradual.
Into original Greek.
Into how the dress business was settled.


Cash Account, Summary.

Into playing cards.
Into standing before myself.
Into a boy inquisition.
Into catching that train.
Into being born and begun.
Into thus it becometh us.
Into the sniffles, snuffles.
Into gifts not of the world's giving.
Into stories that tell themselves by halves.
Into finding the stuff that R.G.'s made of.
Into where we have chapel now.
Into stepping onward in Greek.
Into how I was smiled on and more.
Into a didn't do it.
Into wishing for some of the divine afflatus.
Into the Roman's of it.
Into ruffles.
Into a triumphal entry by Mary Conley.
Into new threads.
Into what got mother up so early.
Into how I managed Prof.
Into hunting somewhat [mainly] for expected blessedness.
Into finding a light in the window for me.
Into a warring of elements within me.
Into dashing away with my utmost speed.
Into new achievements.
Into finding an uncompfortable afternoon.
Into being at a strait betwixt two.



Middlemarch George Eliot.
Bits of Talk H.H.
Les Miserables Victor Hugo
Verses H.H.
Julius Ceasar.
Comedy of Errors Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet
The Divine Tragedy Longfellow
Dombey and Son Dickens
Pink and White Tyranny Stowe
Harper's Monthly and Weekly
Littel's Living Age
Scribner's Monthly
Life at Threescore and Ten Barnes



Into being lifted up by appearances.
Into pains increasing by a common ratio.
Into the realities.
Into a new way of disposing of dumplings.
Into how it came out.



William Main
415 West Thirtieth
New York City,
Now 306 West Thirty first.


Poetry is the art of producing pleasure
for the imagination, the reason and the
feeling by means of metrical
language.


The Annual Meeting of the Rutland County Teachers's Institute was held at the Town Hall in this village, commencing
Wednesday, May 20, and continuing until the following Saturday noon. There were about 125 teachers in attendance.
Several very interesting lectures and essays were delivered before the Institute, among which we might mention an
essay by Miss Bromwley, of the Castleton State Normal School; also, a lecture on "leaves" by Prof. Seeley, of
Middlebury College, and a Scientific lecture with experiments, by the same.
Dr. French, Secretary of the State Board of Education had charge of the exercises.
This session of the Institution was said to have been more than usual interesting.


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To find the excess of annual over simple interest.
Find the interest on the principal for the years alone; on this interest find the interest for half of the years less one, and
the months and days.
For example, suppose we have a principal of $375.87 and the time 6 years 9 months and 18 days; find the interest on
$375.87 for six years, which will be $135,31 on this find the interest of half of (6-1) increased by the months and days,
which will be 2 years, 9 months and 18 days, or 3 years, 3 months and 18 days, which is $26.79, - the excess of the
annual over the simple interest for the whole time, the sum will be the whole interest due.


Wedding On Thursday afternoon of Oct 2nd a pleasant company gathered at the residence of Rev. H. L. Grose, of
the Journal, to witness the marriage of his daughter Miss Mary L. Grose, to Rev. Dr. Smith, editor of the Chicago
Standard. The ceremony was performed by the bride's father assisted by Rev. C. P. Sheldon, D. D., of Troy. The
bridesmaids were Mrs. H. Seward Grose, Mrs. Edward F. Grose and Misses Emma and Ella Grose, sisters of the bride.
The four brothers acted as Groomsmen: H. Seward, of the Journal, Edward F. of the Newark Register, Howard B., of the
Chicago Times and Charles H. of this place. Many elegant and valuable presents were received by the bride. The bridal
party left for New York on the evening train, choosing very appropriately, to spend the first week of their honeymoon in
attending the meeting of the Evangelical alliance, in that city. The future residence will be in Chicago.


Vamasutta Muslin, with fine linen to correspond, per doz., $30 to 3300
Ew York Mills, with fine linen
To correspond per doz. -- 35 00
Ill's Musilin with fine linen to
Correspond, per doz. -- 34 00
Onsdale Muslin, with fine linen
To correspond, per doz. 30 00
Atlantic, per doz. 27 00

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All that favor me an order I shall be
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Pamphlets complete.
56 pp. @ 75c. per p. $42.00
100 copies cer. 23.80
$18.20
Cards:
19,800. cards in number. 35.66
53.80
Book Rack, 3.00
Total amount due, $56.80


100 divided into 19,800
[showing division]