Jan. 13, 1881


Friday, September 22," 1876

Such a sleep! How did I come to wake up out of it? It was the solid rocky kind, irresistible and utterly regardless of the
foot of twenty-fourth street and 8:30 boats. But a mercy was over me and my eyes rose to the occasion at seven.
Scampering to a degree followed and hair didn't go up elegantly. The tearful ? good-byes we omitted and caught a car!
Operation two hurried into another. Pure insight, train on demand. "Where's my baggage?" He thinks it's gone to
Albany. This is interesting. Fully persuaded in my mind that I shall never set eyes on that trunk. I seat myself and have
three quarters of an hour to tell myself that I might have waited for breakfast. Vassar you do look good!

Polly and Hildah as of old and the new Letty.

Saturday, 23. Last night my first in "number 12" will keep it's own memory green. This is exceedingly meant! We had
been having a regular quad erat demonstration. Spirits well aloff. Then I came to bed. To stay? No, not to stay.
Made a great many gettings up. Scoured the inner walls to such an extent that each several member of "No.


12" appeared in night habitinents [sic] wanting to know "what could they do?" Nothing as I could see, Not anything. I
was doing it all! Could they "hold my hand?" Permitted at intervals.

Day amidst the virtues of Vassar blank.It's with a fierce cold holding on to me. Nothing to do but lie still and get better
of the "woes of life" that had mistaken me. From home, my dear little text of Herodotus.

Sunday 24: - O Polly the time when you were to order my breakfast and "poke" it to bits into my mouth has come early
in the year. This which you promised to yourself in memory of that last Thursday when I fed you strawberries? The
route upward from gastric regions was so well traveled on a preceding evening that a general lameness has lodged there.
The President's first sermon, well fitted this first of things. "Let us press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling
of God which is our Christ Jesus."

There was the after church part when it seemed as if I must sit down in the little home a few minutes.

Monday 25. - Not a day to play in and lay by in as we had a sort of way of thinking it was going to be. The powers that
work out and declare in this institution worked out and declared ahead of the weather like meteoroligical reports. Lo:
class lists at 8:15. I get properly introduced to


"Room I" and "Room K" and then I hunt up Professor Backus and without a shiver or a thrill tell him that I want to be
examined in English Literature.

"Come to 'Room J' tomorrow at half-past one"

We all sit ourselves to the preparation of lessons. The first of our engagement. O for a brave patience!

Tuesday 26". - Feelings and things go on from yesterday. This subject is not fruitful in ringing in the new. As nearly as I
can make out, I begin Trigonometry with a sort of desperate courage. I take a front seat in "Room J" in full array and
prepare for a hardening process.

Bless the home letter. Its springs bubble up today where no water is.

We are leading a sort of floating life. We've no place, no being "put" yet and so we huddle. This is not a desirable phase
of it. There will be a great coming round of things by and by.

It is the time to "be strong".

Lecture on the National Park.

Wednesday 27". It's rather a pugnacious life I lead! I lend myself weekly to all the various uses I'm "put" to here and the
marked out race gets sun. If I could go home and stay a week I'd feel better. This is one of very mental exercises. I get
myself into "Helen's Babies" - and find it's "lots" of fun. What an era "Budge and Teddie" would be mother and Pet.
They must have one. Not a Budge or Teddie. O dear, when an infliction! ... the book.


The little Greek man deluges us with information. Every day he gives us Chapter 1. for a lesson, but we make no
approaches to the aforesaid. We sit and look in.

The examination in English Literature comes off in Miss Hiscock's room.

Thursday, 28." - Let me refresh you. The first Commendatory sentence that ever fell upon my ears from Vassar lips has
happened. From more less among the high and mighty, than our Miss Hiscock. An inside rising hereupon. The pipes in
my room crack and pop and things of like nature. Very uncongenial room-mate. And the others say "Ay, Ay."

Letty keeps a diary too, a bond between us. She doth bear witness with me that all diary-keeping seems not for the
present joyous, but grievous. It is afterwards "it yields". We hear strange things of the Mitchell woman. The ways
here are not plain to her!

Friday, 29" We don't arrive at Chapter 1. in Herodotus yet. We are still entertaining learned discussions on that
gentleman's varied career. The Professor's gestures are the principal thing! I know what our week of Trig. is. Fifteen
more come up from the statistical corner of me. Don't say grimly. You can't afford to be grim fifteen weeks.

It is Friday. A breathing space let down. It's like prairie-land, between Friday 11:50 and Monday 8:15, a smooth green
stretch all level. Hildah keeps up on winter mittent dig. This is her measure of prairie-land and hill regions. Polly's digs
lie in the last five minutes before she goes to something.

I'll not be sorry when I get my trunk unpacked and get to living. O, dear no!


Saturday, 30" Details hinge on a trunk to be unpacked and household goods to be set up, also books to cover. This
canon of Parlor 12 is not to be trifled with. Effect marked. Room "d" is no longer existing as a name merely. It's solitary
places are glad! The window is big where the sun comes in. And of our thing I am sure I shall near get in such a low
down state that the big window will not live as a joy for me. 'Twill be a place for outside help. September began and
ended. Old saw. Thirty days hath September."

Sunday, October 1." Sunday the second October comes in with a beaming graciousness, a veritable promising of good
days. Number 12 is five strong now, lately reinforced by a Bond. Four from her borders go to town to church and listen
they walk! There's nothing in the realm of powers physical or mental that I do homage to more readily these days!

President's sermon was on faithfulness in little things. Text, "He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in
much". The President has great words for those who devote themselves to great acts in hidden places; who, moved by a
strong principle choose the right when they know that none shall praise. Miss Goodsell's meeting was very nice. Her
talks always have something in them that take hold of one.


Monday, 2" The heroic element comes out Monday morning when we creep back to things. I suppose it pays to have
our heroic thrill. Not necessary even to be conscious of possessing it.

I sit at table and nibble. Wonder if it's in the heroic element that one feels called upon to mention that it was "Saratogas"
I nibbled. The only thing. Tomorrow I'll get a letter. When I say this I come upon a warm and rested place!

I find small consolations in a larger hole to breathe through, more time to lie down in, a new way to kill ants, a ... the
holding out of my watch cord, a gazing upon my new wash-bag. A getting my appointed seat at table.

Tuesday, 3"
Miss [Lord]. O friends, on whom shall her mantle fall? Not Miss Mitchell! Oh, ye dwellers in Olympus, no! Took the
fearful risk upon me of bring late to Trig. Any such disaster to be balanced by my word from home. If lived in my
pocket along side of one from [Maurice] through the forty minutes that sails us up to trigonometrical functions. Minutes
of quaking to me. Prof. Braislin is so deliberate in the awful minutes between things, so sweeping in her sudden
comings down! Oh, Fannie, I wish you knew a lot. Why will you not beseech a little more grit? Ants, red ants! I wish
one of my afflictions didn't take this form.


Wednesday, 4" A stalking in upon me of and unprecedented surprise, in fact nothing less than a document from Sir
Charles Hughes. It comes of it's "bring a credit to be related to the late Capt. D.H. Bromley! Letter the second. This to
me means a big house and a lovely evening in days when such things were [Poultery]. Emily, Yes, I know.

To come back to more alarming things. Let us devoutly wish for an appetite. It is hard to struggle on here without me.
Our [mild] [well] got up little Greek man throws at us his energies. As for us we act the part of receptacles.
Bugology, hear the child. These things do move me. The skins of them cover every available inch.

Thursday, 5". If it will be interesting to future generations to know that on this day Parlor No. 12 came near,
terrifyingly near missing it's dinner here shall the monument stand. We all bury ourselves in business and become
stalactites and stalagmites. Letty shouts from the bedroom, "Girls, it's truly minutes past one!" We all make it known
that we hear by an instantaneous rise. Polly alone braves the living-hall. The rest of us supplicate. Miss Terry afterwards
and life is infused in our starving crew. Friends, a sumptuous repast! A letter from Rhoda. It soars into blessed
possibilities and my own status moves up. Our Miss Bond knows my Mr. Johnson. She


couldn't know a better and I place it with strong tendencies toward her credit. My room mate that I keep shut up in my
closet make a constant protest. Stirs me up.

Friday, 6". Well, it's Friday even if all creation doesn't turn into heralds to proclaim it. "Miss Bromley to the board".
"Cosecant 8". This sound has lost somewhat of it's mysteriousness. "Give each function its appropriate sign". A point
for terror to rush in! It is the wicked generations that seek after signs. Afternoon. Girls scattered over my bed, girls in
my chairs. Greek not achieved. Plainly seen why. Miss Hayes falls upon our lives in the evening. Grows vivacious
over the new Miss Mitchell.

Saturday, 7". Silent time and then Laura Skinner. Bless her! She is ay "a shining in a lighted place."

Our enterprise agitated with so much vigor last evening can stand up and say, "I am begun." We do not as yet express
ourselves highly satisfied with No. One. I proceed to invest in time at a most heedless rate. It was benevolent of me to
begin on Mother's tidy but reckless will I cannot but condemn. She has taken it all out. Antecedent of "it's" labor,
stitches, details. Invested in Cicero d: Orator, two pages. Not yet taken out. A camp-chair and my own. Just come. Five
ghosts in the moon-light. Last bell some time ago.


Sunday, 8". A being treated to an unruffled dozing until approaching eight. A finding merits in steak and bread and
butter. To get into a hungry condition is still a novelty to [Greek writing] Bible class Room J. Professor Braislin treats
us to a talk not a quiz. Happy for me.

The Presidents sermon had for its basic Romans II. 14,15. Parlor 12 girls, as it's opinion, that is was worth while. It was
a mental philosophy exercise provided. Amidst the direct abstract the president stopped and put this little reassurance.
"You all know what I'm talking about."

I precipitately throw my energies into a journey to the glen. Under taken with my feet. Some of me insists upon it that
my outdoor airings be short. I come back from most of my attempts downcast.

Monday, 9". March out of bed with strenuous pullings toward sines and cosines and presently I find myself where they
abounded. As my head gets so profound that it forgets that cotangents have not always hinged to its cerebrum's topmost
labs, the bell give forth and lo! I am in Room J. "Miss Bromley [sin] (270 = x)". That lady by a foolish process recently
acquired evolves out of these dire symbols a (- cosine x). Whether the value of this evolution will stand on


the books as 1 7/8 or 2, she will never know. A statistic. My darling ivy gets potted. Another walk and too much for me.
She shall keep still.

Old Greek days with Laura come back. They are over, and we are glad.

Tuesday, 10". Will you hear it? Miss Martin has asked me to walk! I am so surprised!. More astonishing still I could
walk up valiantly to that board and prove that "sin 45 [degrees]" is equal to "1/2 [square root]2". This quite takes down
any ante ... achievements.

Professor in an antique little dialogue with Miss Harlow lets out what Laura calls "some swell things to know." These to
be brought out and aired tomorrow. I got up this morning wishing that it wasn't weak if not downright wicked to wish I
didn't have to. The day has been not a singing day. More cold, more strain, move some thing to make me + an exact
misery.

Laura gives me pieces of herself from sweet hidden places somewhere.
Let's me lie still and says funny little poems to me.
Laura's new word is "whack."

Wednesday, 11. More to get up for. So it sort of some how seemed. This is quite striking in form. Goes back to Prof.
Hinkel's "[greek writing]" "and also especially those". Executed another drama in Room I. "Miss Bromley 180 = x.
Obviously [misuaded] by her. Greek. We


have actually left Chapter 1. There is every indication of our making a continuing [city] of Chaplin second. "Fannie,
come up stairs and gaze upon the felicities of cat-beds."

Fannie goes. "This was the out croppings or our brains", Laura says in answer to my eager.
"Who first thought of it?" ........ Mrs. Johns drops in on "12" "To see who lives here" she says. The upshot is that we are
to bring up our rooms in the way they should go - drawers, too, and top shelf of closet. We are glad, [now] [in] [dire]
and proper trial that Miss Bond fell to us.
Another good thing to happen to four [mentals] blessed above others.

A ... Reunion at Castleton the day after Thanksgiving. Authority. "Middletown". Will I come? Mother's tidy. Will
you hear it. She's done some of it and it may not have to be taken out!

Thursday, 12". It's so long way back to the first of things that I can't think of the strong points that hover around the
beginning. I see a vision of a man tearing my room up to change the bedstead. This brings to pass a further revolution of
bureau and wash-stand. Chambermaid severely squelchy.
Polly is not meed before her. ..... I do exceedingly fear and quake in Room I but I needn't Greek. A great wings to a
letter that is to go to Dr. J.M. and spend three periods on Greek. The New Testament part is since read with Laura.

There follows an unmitigated (sic) season over the square root of 1/2 into 1 - cos x and [acres] more, handing over to us
at the


end natural functions, not to me!
This from Fraulein Kapp. "Is it not beautiful to know German? The more languages you know, the more lives you live."
Friday 13".
The Professor getting to a realizing sense of the magnitude of the square root gives us another day. I needn't have
"strained" quite "every nerve of the charger". The little Greek Man says, "I will explain the last chapters and then we
will go on", so we sit and are poured into. Hildah gets a letter and goes around saying, "poor Aunt Mag." "Poor Aunt
Mag is dead". Somebody is always dead in the letters Hildah gets. Polly's letter makes her laugh. It comes pealing forth
from the bedroom and I feel as if I could take a new lease of life. Blessed Polly. Laura has been reading up. She
rehearses to me not quite all of the mythology of the nations of the North, brought about by the probable coming of our
word sin from Somme, wife of a Loke. Miss Hiscock comes to our room after chapel and brings me a letter from
[Crecy]. (Chapel seating assigned.)

Saturday, 14". Our day was "uppish". It started out to be a glory and the first of it was such a brightness that I said right
off, "Now if this was the day for my sister to come" , but there came a cold grey part ending at last in a slow rain.
Polly's curtains, these exercised that vigilant spirit, taking her from "Muscles", she ejaculating, "I don't see how I can
spend the time." Hildah puts her soul into Trig. and from her comes "darkly and wild", "Oh, I'm so sick of it". As for me
I give the day to Cicero de Oratore and mother's tidy and the evening to sines and cosines. Polly comes out with the
journal


of "the infants" kept at Madison while they were summering. She sets her foot down that it shall be read to us!.


Sunday, 15". It was cold. Rumors are rampant of snow in the night. No visible appearance anywhere, but feelings
everywhere. The President's sermon went on from last Sunday, giving us "the true function of conscience." He said it
was three-fold - "To show even that they were amenable to a higher law", "To show them that this law was whatsoever
things are lovely, whatsoever things are pure & c" "To impress them with the need of repentance". The service seemed
very sweet to me. My attempts at making calls do not bring me back soothed, [nerved] up or fed. Gertie Bascom's
coming to see me had more of each of these in it.

Monday, 16". A sort of "clear grit" morning. It is not brilliancy I astonish people with in Trig. I never take a cross lots
method for instance, (cos (v + x + Y + z.) It only covers one wing of the college. The little Greek man takes this day for
his rounds. Sequel, no class. According to the head of Polly's table, (Miss Whitney) this "ought to prove a source of
serious regret". I am summoned to room H to hunt up missing hose. No Bromley hose there. "Come again next Monday
wothout being notified. Keep coming."

Tuesday, 17". Nothing very individual in days like this one and yesterday. Parlor 12 gives us little to help them along. A
smart speech or two would invigorate us. I droop some at the first of the rush to the onset but I have merciful additions
which take a propping up from in the shape of a prodigious home letter and a comfortable


state of things in Room J. I try to get it through the little Greek man's too much gorged cerebrum that I'd like
permission to make up De Oratore. By appearing very much enlightened and taking for largely for granted I close the
interview. Then I sit forty minutes to see Miss Morse. This is one of the ways of doing here. It comes out that Miss
MOrse is away from college and Miss Dame don't know.

Wednesday, 18". I am not utterly forsaken of things to tell this day. This comforts me. I can't say friends, that my first
Trig. examination was anthing of a staff. Pass on. I want to tell you about that ride I had. My coach and four was the
baker's cart wrought up to a proper constituency with pillows, shawls and water-proofs. Abbott A. W. and Abbott W. W.
take this thing in charge with spirit. My bones are rattled but not over stories. Not over one!. I am taken to the lake to
see it once as I have never seen it in October embraces. What a perfect delight to me. This is bring ministered into. My
faithful watch cord can hold out no longer. Reinforcements must be resorted to.

Thursday, 19". Another edition of yesterday. "Through the thinning brances of the trees came down the last most tender
kisses of the sun. This is in our thought every day now as the kisses grow tenderer and tenderer. The little Greek mand
scared me half to death at a moment when my forces were scattered. "Bad pop", as Laura would say. A letter and from
Susie. "That is good".


Letters from her are stages in my career. Our goes out from room "d" to the poor stricken home that I think of so these
days.

Friday, 20". I am tired out trying to make my girl attend to things today. I had to make her get up in the first place,
tendencies all against me. Then I had to make her stay up. She stayed up in a very "poking" way, hunching her up to this
and stirring her up to that and now I've comforted her with the staying prop of an assurance that this day is a kind of an
exception and tomorrow she won't ache in so many places. I left her in bed reading "Shiloh" which was followed by
Polly's coming in to rub her back and Ida Street's coming to call.

Saturday, 21". Came to dawn and consciousness with a kind of dismay that the night hadn't done more for me. But
there's something in being up. My strength was good Bible strength. As my day it was! The order was, De Oratore, two
chapters, mother's tidy, large additions, Trig., a burnishing of my armor for Monday. Parlor 12 with holiday spirits on; a
flow of cheery talk and two hours of reading. This takes in Lowell's essay on Pope. A lovely call in the evening from
Miss Healy. She is so bright and chatty. It's nice to have easy ways. Highly comfortable it is to other people.

Sunday, 22". We are approaching the fall rains. Feels like it. The day fails to brace or invigorate. A proper amount


For "January 13".

To be opened when you like. It isn't anything worth waiting for.


of blowing would do it. Spiritual bracing and invigoration als fail but not from want of blowing. Mr. Evans does it. It is
never edifying to have a man take pitch and preach in tones that would lead us to question his sanity were he to salute us
in that way. [No'me.] God's gospel was given us in dreadful grammar with sort of throw and catch correction. Miss Dale
said it would take a good old fashioned Christian to appreciate such a sermon. Gertie Bascom mourns the dearth of good
old fashioned Christians.

Monday, 23". Large Miss Ives sits at the table behind me and our collisions are marked in their nature: for instance
when both attempt to sit down in their chairs at dinner at one and the same time. Operations began vigorously. Led off
Trig. recitation and was not inglorious in Greek. Laura Ada Skinner couldn't "come down", "could I come up?" She did
not mount up in wings like eagles; This, reserved for elevator days that have not come. We had before us the fourteenth
chapter of Herodotus. Filed through him Ionics and all!

Tuesday, 24". The bright has come back again, so have the pretty colors to what was gray and ... above. I had no idea of
getting up at half past six so when Hildah put her head in at my door to call me, mark her vigilance. I thought she had
come with a confidrutial communication, a fire or a flood perhaps. Home letter tells of a


new bird. This promises. I begin sturdily on a letter that is sometime to go to Gracy in [Chelouse].

Miss Terry told us at dinner we were going to hear Mrs. Edna D. Cheney talk to us this evening. Some stirring around in
Vassar's interior in consequence - attempts at concentration - a great many.
We listen to a charming talk on Albert Durer.

We return to explore our rooms for something in the way of a "spread." Seven chestnuts contributed by Letty. Hear her,
"Why don't somebody get a box?"

Wednesday, 25". Wasn't I alarmed in Trig? It was rather of an attack in my rear. Prof. Braislin was "on a tear". (Miss
Skinner.) No approaches to "Number 6." It is so disagreeable to be attacked when you feel morally sure that your
trumpet will give an uncertain sound.

Greek, comments not forthcoming. I compiled a treatise on all subjects and sent it home. "Is that the kind of letters you
write?" say my little Freshman, as she waits for me to fold and seal preparatory to our entering together with bold
strokes upon chapters twenty-nine and thirty. I promise her one and pull my chair up to the window. Mother's tidy gets
the last stitches put in. Are the taking out days really over? I cannot astonish myself to that extent.

Thursday, 26". You perceive I am out of bed, whether by hopping, [poking]


considerably or otherwise. This I forget, but anyway, the first thing was: "Why it's a birthday for "Pet." Then came a
consoling edition. "She has that fat letter to read." Prof. B. still has a strong persistency to whopping triangles into
shapes beyond us and calling on us promiscuously to recite several pages in advance of the lesson to her. This is a
peculiar gift of hers. It begins to occur to me faintly, "what's the first thing I'll do". Feebly I trust myself to see sines and
cosines that "ain't there!" Some of the day is bright. The clouds that rested on Sunset Hill in deep purple are beautiful
with rose and garnet in the dying sun.

Late. Wash-bags! This generally comes over us as we are about to put the gas out. It's such a grasp on one's nerves to
find at the last minute that the marks washed out!

Friday, 27". Started out with forces in stock to fall back upon. Prof. Hinkel starts out with, "Now I call on all of you." A
few quiverings in my neighborhood as he says, "Miss Bascom, we have [greek writing] . What is the first [greek
writing]. As the Professor proceeds we get fully settled in the fact that Greek as a study is exceedingly prolific in things
to know. A letter from Satie stirs up Reunion. Well, there's things to take into consideration, pocket-books and [sore]
places in front. I have an uplifting as I get into that library, and can't get out. O, what ever came to me like this?


"Sometimes the work and the gift are nigh!"

Saturday, 28". Advance sheets of a snow storm that is coming along in a month or two. Just the kind of a day with it's
mists and it's gray clouds to make you thing of cosy goings on you've had sometime, to make it nice to sit still by the
window and read De Oratore.

"Rape of the Locke". This was to be our set apart portion at 11.15. Applause from the audience. Also two chapters of
"Essay on Man". "How wise we are. In our crockery jar!" Latin out of the way I try another reading circle, one of the
attempts of the class of '79. The getting with folks was what came of it to me. Good to have.

I try an early bed and Alton Locke. Amusement is afforded me outside of this my Miss Littlefield's encounter with
Polly, Our unselfish glorious Polly! Think of her holding back anything from the hungry starving poor!

Sunday, 29". Two dear full sermons today by Dr. Weston of Crozier Theological Seminary. They have helped me to
places further up the journey. The morning sermon was the story of the temptation of our Lord. I was so glad to have
made plain for me some things that have been "dark sayings" always. For instance, the peculiar appropriateness of
Christ's answer to the first appeal, "Command that these stones be made bread". The evening text was that ringing
watchword of Dr. Bridgman's. "If any man will come after me, let him deny


himself and take up his cross and follow me!" Who can come away from such things and live for himself? Why do we!

Monday, 30". Well, the day meant to be glorious and it was. There's that to tell. Right into the heart of the blessed
October we were taken and I had a beautiful share. Not from d's window but out where the world was in my royal cart.
Laura and her Polly doing it. Of course she'd take a ride if they'd get the cart. Why shouldn't she. Did she wait to study
the manual? To get into the quiet places out where the evergreens make them. How good it was!

What if a diving into Greek irregular verbs followed? We say in calmest serenity, "never mind". That letter set apart to
... C.H.W. is gone. My soul beats its wings.

Tuesday, 31". What is really worth telling in days that are marked off and divided up before they come? When one
knows the thing they'll be doing up to the fraction of a minute. Can calculate on anything except the way the wind will
blow to the sixth decimal place! Tuesday, this brings Cohoes mail of a desirable size and "write us when you are coming
home, if you know. " Know? I know it up to the second, but I won't tell 'em. It is not very refreshing to go down into the
generations but I didn't get my problem right in Trig. I repair to Prof B's room and get a smile which takes magnetic
hold. We go letter by letter in Greek.

My ivy has put forth, bless it.

Dr. Webster gives us her first talk.


Wednesday, November 1".

Here into the November of it. That's where we start. A good time to begin things, the benevolent things for instance
we've been going to do so long. It began Indian Summer fashion, a warm, bright day followed by a night with the full
moon.

Sometimes when Prof. Hinkel begins the word for us and waits while we finish we hit on the same word he begins.
There are times when we don't! Today he began; " it is an af. af. af. Several of us came out with "affection". "No, no,
not affection at all Effect!"Imagine our feelings.

Every day Laura comes down. Every day we say "What shall we study?". Every day the Professor says, "I will go on
explaining". An unexpected meteor flashes across my sky, a fine chance for me to enter upon that benevolence I was
talking about. Miss [Dendney] of ancient [faur] sends: Would I, Could I, do this, that, ever so much?

Thursday, 2".

(The people.) "How fat you are. Why how full your face is!" (A mental wonder). "How anybody can have such
delightful impressions and you ache so! Prof. Hinkel is still on the twenty fourth. Some of his energies were given today
in describing the [greek writing].(long robe.) There was a great deal to it, (the robe) ending up with "ankles". My head
had grown restless and "it ran". It heard "ankles". How much it did not hear it does not know, but with one bounce the
Professor went back to have it reviewed and shrieked, "Miss Bromley." She looked wise and waited


a minute. She knew he'd begin it. He did. In the proper place she shrieked "ankles". Professor charmed. Half of anything
in his class is all you need, ever. It is sometimes a little dubious which half.

Friday, 3". A sort of uplifting all thro? I pray for days like it. Ready for anything, glad in what is. Even outside of things
there's promise of sunshine tomorrow. This, too, God [metes] out. He will not let us have too much even of this
helpfulness. An afternoon Frances versus Latin. I want little places left open tomorrow, hence this is, thus. My birthday
eve, en rapport. How well 'twas thought of says my secret self. No one else guesses, friends! Getting ready, bobbings
back and forth in Room 12 is as if something had come. Something has, Delta sociable, chatter toasts, games,
sandiwches and in room K. We came back full of the good time Polly, Letty, Ella Frances. Dear me, isn't that half of it
to talk it over when you get back?

There never were lovelier lights over the sky of Sunset Hill, never a brighter earth under the full moon!

Saturday, 4". Her day and O how bright it was! The last and sweetest kisses for us dear and glad. I had to be glad. There
must be no dark guesses, no restless chafings, no forgetting to read the signs. Never a better day to be "patient in the
[rims] He finds us in." There was help to get to the place where my eyes were looking, that calm strong hold, where
nothing ever looks as it does here in the narrow round, but there are the meanings of things and we see so well "the real
whole [best]".

Polly came in with her hands full of chrysanthemums for me before breakfast,


beautiful ones, yellow and brown. They made my room look my birthdayish, the darlings, but Polly don't know what
she's doing, not at all.

Laura brought gifts well worth having on a set apart day, pieces of talk and some of her own earnest living.

There were Dr Quincey and Pope taken together, with stockings to mend and there was dinner, and Latin, and reading
club, and the Greek of the Sunday School lesson. Not many free minutes to think in till bedtime. Yes; but I tucked in
the thinking all the way through.

"God is known in her palaces for a refuge."

Sunday, 5". The President discussed in his sermon the question to what extent fear should be used as a motive for right
doing. He thinks there is danger of forgetting to be as reverent as we might before God. "In these days there is too much
familiar talk about Jesus and to Jesus. We do not keep close enough to the fact that we are [worms]". Read Greek
Testament with Laura an hour, she in a sweet close Sunday mood. After evening prayer meeting, read a criticism on
"Daniel Derouda" in the "London Quarterly Review."

Monday, 6". Talk about getting over Sunday inspirations, and coming down from table-lands, having to wonder how
people feel when they're not horrified, or martyrs without the palm. You get singular combinations of them all when it
comes over you at ducky half-past six that it is Monday morning. You [hunt] around for severall (sic) consolations, such
as watching the calendar, hoping there'll be Saratogas for breakfast. Seeing that [my] buttons have taken it upon


themselves to evolve off your Then as likely as not you button up your dress and go to breakfast to find those
potatoes that you hate so, fixed like slippery-Elm for [poultices]. Miss Banks, the presiding genius of our end of the
table more of a stick than is usual. Ye nurses of good fellowship take pity, and Hildah, she won't say a word, and you
get back in that chair and sort of want to know if when you've been "jolly" under all this it counts you nothing up there
where the eternal records stand. By now you get somewhat raised. You even read the newspaper, and widen your
perspective.

Tuesday, 7". Rain and a steady rain. Cosy places of comfort inside to sit and watch the outdoors part. I made a pun at
breakfast, "Hazy enough", Miss Carver will probably have me expelled from college. She can live through almost
anything but "a pun." But there are extenuating circumstances. You see it is election morning, Vassar girls voted last
night. Results as given today: Hayes 250. Tilden 57. Liberals 3. Did not vote 15. "How is it going on in the high places
outside? All of us ask this question eagerly and many times.

Laura brought me George Herbert to read.
Ivy has another new little leaf.
Wednesday, 8". Which came. The three-hundred and twenty-five appeared at breakfast. An hour after the two-hundred
and fifty went thro' the halls their garments trailing in the dust. First reports bore down upon them, they having mailed.
(A Greek idiom).

A ray of hope at 11:10. In the midst


of one of Professor's most startling discourses one of the irrepressibles writes and hands round. "I can think of nothing
but Florida." Dinner solemn. Miss Martin sacred to democracy and a remarkable city on a [bill]. At two, Florida heard
from, "Hayes". At every sound we rush forth into the corridor. It comes thicker and faster, "Hayes one fote ahead". We
file in crowds to the telegraph office. Tea-time. The voices of the two-hundred and fifty are heard in our land. Bed-time.
"Hayes still one ahead."

Thursday, 9". Could she get up? Could she stay up? Rather singular interrogatives from a girl who has Senior Greek
and first semester of Sophomore Latin on her hands, not to mention the higher mathematics! There was a great
marshaling of forces, every available one surrounded every solid bit of ground contested for, inch by inch. She got the
day through without anything worse happening than missing her bath-hour.

One can not have all things move on pivots of his or her placing, not exactly. A little "Nemesiac theory" drawn from my
afternoon. To sleep she thought. There came some wandering minstrel tribes "with comet,flute, hasp, sack but, dulciver,
[psaltery]" and all the rest. She turned over. Something took the old man with the white horse to go banging in
chromatic scale fashion under her window. This she couldn't stand. She got up.

5:30 P.M. I have seen Dr. Webster through it and feel better.


Friday, 10". Hers not to make reply. Hers not to reason why. Hers but to do and sigh. Noble six-hundred! A Trig.
"wrestle" just ended. She kept saying, "On ye brave", but the brave got on with many wrenches and twists. Idiotically
she goes searching for tangents among the logarithms of integers and adding tabular differences that one would mistake
for logarithms. Hildah "sticky" to the last groans every few minutes. Ella, energetically, "What's the tangent of half the
sum." Frances, her spirit unquenched by logarithms, "Why, I don't get that." At or within the range of the ten o'clock
bell she knows by actual computation how far it is to the moon.

Delta sociable. Essay by Grace Darling. Recitation. Grace Learned. Reading from "Martin Chugglewit." Miss Stevens.
Illustrated song, "Three Fishers went sailing out into the west."

(Note. Prof. Braislin, "If Vassar stands on a meridian where is it? We ought to see it." Laura to Grace, "Maybe we're
sitting on it.")

Saturday, 11". A party for the Freshmen engages the souls of '79. They went into the council chamber to talk it up
involving minutes out of our precious Saturday morning. With a spirit of self-sacrifice worthy of "Felix Holt". I let De
Oratore wait and read. Greek with Laura. I approve of this, anyway only so that you get some wholesome discipline. We
had a jolly reading hour. Letty in the character of Sally Blake, "I won't pronounce it right, I will have a pillow for my
back." "I am so mad." We are all Fourth of


July,ish in No. 12. Polly's Emma is her. "How very festive", says Laura coming in after her oil of cloves.

Sunday, 12". A dear Sunday has gone, one that I shall love to keep in my heart. What lovely things do come to us,
watching not, knowing not how closely they are drawing near. I could not believe my eyes when I saw my Dr.
Bridgman walking up the college aisle. His sermon has roused all that is within me as they always do. "When saw we
thee a hungered and fed thee" "They did not ask this to show in any way that they had not recognized the Jesus they
were working for but in their absorption in the work for Him had forgotten what deeds they had done." "Self-
consciousness is the deadly foe to all true working for Christ." "Love, indeed, 'feels no burden', talks not of what it
does, does on, dares on, but courts praise no more than the stars that shine all night over a world where eyes are closed."

Monday, 13". Which is the beginning of a strain not in any degree soaring. Letty calls out, "It shall be Monday
morning", "I won't have one of my lessons". "I will go to class and fail up."

The lawn is bright, the day laughs. I look out. I even play and think it's nice. It's well I did. There came another way of
doing, a darker. "I will give you two examples. You may take them down "says Prof. Braislin. Down they are, down
for this planet and Mars when we get to it."
A little sociality to Polly's company,


ordinary decency to friends and neighbors, attention to the things the doctor told you to do. You'd think she'd tend to
these. But no, She's in deep water and she cannot swim. This is what it amounts to. The last thing of the last minute
when distraction has reached its highest and the gas is wrenched out with a groan, "Done one."

Tuesday, 14". "Twenty-two is to twenty-five as sin A is to sin B." No wonder I arose before six and dressed for
breakfast shockingly. A better [craziness] would have answered every purpose, but seeing that there's no other way
except to abide by the one I started with I'll keep at the pulleys hoping to evolve something. Lost. Professor, "You may
take the same two for tomorrow". I dare hope, Nothing has as yet happened. Not until the eleventh period and Laura
comes and reads me her letter from Miss , do I regain the status I fell from yester morn. I even get back enough to
things of time and sense to ask how the election returns read and if Hayes is to be chief among us. What I hear: "Hayes
is unquestionably elected." U.Y.World.

Wednesday, 15". Imagine the consternation that possesses me when I went to class with my one ... The one little
way of doing it left of six hundred, and found it was right!

We snow a lot out doors and get a real gay winter fit on. A real Thanksgiving smell is in the air.


My ivy says, "Look here if you please, and just see what I'm a doing." A new curling leaf in the meantime is just putting
it's head out. Hildah says in Miss "Bates" Mitchell's class they're all revolving around the marks.

Thursday, 16". Was invincible in Trig. Could this be less than a tower to her? Got into no Greek valleys, hence at
11:50 a frame of mind equal to E.B. Culbertson's, so calm, so indisturbed by anything on a planet so small.

A thousand wonders possess her. Why does she feel called upon to take up her weveral sheets to Satie with moral
optionisms, and turn into a certain wise-acres? If I were Satie, I would send the letter back.

Dr. Webster says I must get better, must keep getting better all winter. How well such things sound!

Friday, 17". It is not with agility she goes to breakfast. Am I to wring and twist and control? It seems so. It keeps on
seeming so. Take a stomach and put a bit of neuralgia in it and there aren't many worse things. I wonder if this might to
be a comfort. Professor Hinkel doesn't believe in letting his sun shine on the evil and on the good alike. He says, "That
is good" to Miss Dana and to Helen Brown and dares to ask me something I don't know. Listen. The elevator on it's first
trip Monday.

The quiverings and I go up to Delta.


Saturday, 18". We have a good reading hour, "Tale of a Tub". Girls all in my room. Laura down to sit with us bringing
her work. Whereupon I set half of me to listening to Letty, the other half to watching Laura's fingers in the mysteries of
... and transparencies. A dainty little ... a piece of tonight has gone into my treasure-box. It will keep. How very nice it
was as I sit down and think it over. O Vassar you are very good to us and you have some dear people in you. (The
Freshman party night.)

Sunday, 19". President Raymond meandered fifty-nine minutes through a sermon supposed to be the out growth of
"The just shall live by faith." I went out of chapel feeling as if I had "fizzled" in a lesson in "Hickok's Mental
Philosophy" and the marking left to the "Bates" Mitchell. Well, we were off and away from it before we knew it to the
next thing which was eating celery. An example of what we do all the time. (Not eat celery.) Isn't life a queer blending?

Laura brings herself to me after dinner and we have a long read in Matthew. Then we talk and she don't go and it's nice.
Some people are put together beautifully. A superb plan enters somehow into the construction of their souls.

Parlor 12 in phalanx deep goes to "82" lock-step. This is after prayer-meeting and before the elevator made us ecstatic.


MondaY, 20". Professor, the little Greek man said "That is good" to me. Excellent to begin the week on. He has to be
particularly like the angelic host to be so promiscious in his awards. I feel as if I'd had a medal from the Centennal.

Can I project? Feebly conceived fledglings are they so far. Plainly this spherical bisiness deals with things that are not
as they seem. It is not how can I make flat things look solid, but how can I make solid things look flat? I'm sure I always
had good success in arts of this kind. I'll hope. The great geometrical magnitude, the one, the only, that we consider
greatly worth while projects us! How perfectly blissful to walk up to the creature and say with assurance, "To the third,
please." and then be wafted dreamily to the place you start for. To arrive there well preserved!

Tuesday, 21". Think of waking up to say to yourself "a Trig. examination." Dawn must have given birth to fortitude or I
near would have walked so grimly erect to Room I. Trig. students are [greek writing]. I descend when it is over and tear
off the end of Aggie's letter as if I was turning the corner and the wind blew in my face.

Sophomore prayer meeting small.

Only one class meeting called today. Frances is projecting.

Thursday, 23". The things that woman thinks of to ask is a growing marvel to my intrigonometrical brain. One has such
a sensation of uncomfortableness on the way to Room I when they


know there's deeper soundings to Problem II or III or whatever it is than their plummet lines have got down to. Now
with the dear old German in Room K there's a different lay of the land. We sail up to him in dead calm.

Letty flourishes in a new gymnastic suit trimmed with navy blue bows. We all pronounce on it. The Juniors have a
take on Professor Backus, apropos of "Hints for Leisure Hours."

Friday, 24". It is remarkable what faith I persist in having that Doctor Webster will be in the office on receiving intent
at the hours announced on the bulletin board, even after waiting each successive time some thirty-five minutes. I go to
Beta's hall meeting, Polly at my left. Misses Dana and O'Leary give us "The Happy Pair." Quite a relief in these classic
shades.

Helen Brown and Annie Turner come in in their "dress up dresses" to call.

Saturday, 25". Somebody came so still and opened your door just after silent time. You looked up from the bed where
you were lying and you saw, Oh, Frances, you saw all the plans, all the hope, all the light die out of a face. A
tenderness greater than mine was calling to Lizzie Dale, even out of that great darkness. All the agony of life and death
it cost Him who


was divine in living "to win the power of saying 'come to me.'" And for this now there are no other words.

I take her up stairs by and by and I help Gertie Bascom pack her trunk. For the rest part I do the old things, but it is not
today in the old way. How glad I am though and through that there's a Strong One at the wheel.

Reading club in Miss Wentworth's room. Selections from Irving and Hawthorne. Laura dear girl, comes down to my
room for her rubbers, (she says) and leaves two pictures sweet in my "Thomas a Kempis."

Sunday, 26". I go up and sit with Lizzie Dale while the rest are at the chapel service. We have a long, cheery morning
in Miss Lerow's room. At the big south window, Frances, think of that! And you see, the farm house and the fields, and
the brown slopes and you rock in that big shaker chair. You have no idea you are in Vassar College!

Miss Lerow on her return from chapel reports "an odd sermon by an old-fashioned man". The "Parlor 12" girls report "a
strange mixture".

After prayer-meeting, one of the stiffest, set-up, straight-up kind I have a few more minutes with Lizzie Dale. Why do
you suppose it is that she is "taken and I 'left'"!


Monday, 27". It opened with bright tints in the sky. It was well.

Lizzie Dale goes forth with all our blessings thick about her. We see her car speed off and turn back to me part of the
story, to "a little more sun shine tomorrow perhaps, a little more faith and the dolly". Several severely moral minutes in
Miss Terry's room. Moral. It is not well to stay away from chapel service with impurity. Not even to sit with a sick Miss
Dale. O but of motives ...... Well ..... .

The home paper came, is read, is now to be cut up into lighters, a new achievement of mine.

Trigonometry is portentous. I know something is going to happen to me. A wrong solution stalks to meet me nearer and
nearer. Let's go to bed and be happy.

Tuesday, 28". Things have come to a sort of dragging. Undoubtedly they wouldn't only Trigonometry makes no one
promise and Professor Braislin is in one of her frigid states. "Is that all your're going to say?" "Oh, got through have
you?" "You mean it, do you?"

Scared some I sit there and originate tremors. Had I perished there, this would not have been written. But I did not. I
was spared for a future bewilderment.

Our Polly moves not about among


us today. She has a marvelous dinner which I administer to her benignantly. It's great fun.

We don't talk on the subject of Greek. We think we're stupid, or else it's hard. "Students Association" called. No
quorum. President and Secretary stand at the door. See a girl. Grab her.Set her down. Count again. Go out. Grab
another, deposit her. It is a work of some magnitude.

Wednesday, 29". As near as you can make out it was a blankness but if there's any consolation to be got out of it now it
is the fact that I know every earthly reason why "CDE" is a right angle.

I come down to Parlor 12 and one wee angel of a peacemaker blesses me with the statement that it isn't "my" day in
Greek.

Letty makes out a list of things we're to be thankful for!

Thursday, 30". I shall not begin by telling you that there was sleighing for, felicitous as such a state of things might be
it is reserved for the dwellers in other climes. Vermont, for instance, and Hudson's Bay. However Thanksgiving was in
the air. It was to be felt, breathed, lived in.

About the first from Abbott A.M. was: "I'm just as thankful as I was yesterday and I'm so glad!"
Prayers in the chapel after silent time. The President talked to us as


if we were at least a partially enlightened assembly, liable to a few convictions and guilty of a few ideas. Dear soul! he
does appreciate girls! A lovely payer meeting to come next, then a long, still time with everybody gone. Time to sing in
all by yourself and help Letty on with her tidy. Time, too, to think of a street corner and the top of a long hill. Our Th.
table was an unparalleled success. So was [Crambo] down in Parlor 12. Our spirits rose with the occcasion and we did
the things the people were doing when the flood came.

Afterwards the President read to us and there was ice-cream on the top of that and then conundrums.

Friday, December 1". Cold! Yes'm. Think of the misery of being sleepy and full and cold, not in the sense of an
unbroken line of succession but all cotemporaneous and recitations tomorrow. This last ends all our sentences.

I help things along by reading "Six of One by Half a Dozen of the Others." I cut out patterns and think of devices for
Christmas presents. Tarry a night with Trig. and it's "fantastic visions" of circular parts. Polly has another cold.


Hildah says her ... is [raw]. I'm sorry, though how it departs in this from what it was meant to be, is more than I know.
We follow Miss Hiscock and the engineer about entreating for heat.
Saturday, 2". One or two things out of the usual. Getting a letter. Meeting Kate Stoneman on the stairs, going to see Dr.
Cooley. Why Kate Stoneman had to hurry off on a train before I could get a word or two with her is a hidden fate. I
leave it. I can't help feeling that everybody ought to have a piece of people like Kate Stoneman. I do not blunder today
for the sole and simple reason that I do not get a chance.

My letter was from Addie B., somewhat milder than former missives from that little bundle of nitro-glycerine.
Parlor 12 was cold. That is how the Greek "die" and I went up three floors.
Evening and I still "on loft". Edith Hibbard came in with "Will a brimmage ensue?" We all get a bit of time at last so
that "brimmage" does "ensue."


Sunday, 3". We have not heard the end of conscience, 45 minutes more of it today. The best point made was: "Educate
the conscience, train it, seek the society of the best. Books are much, sermons much, the living pressence of a truly
noble soul is worth all books. all sermons, it is everything. Be sure to have such about you."

Night came in so lovely. Laura and I with time to see it; time to look and feel the outride peace and stillness coming.
Evening. A long call on Abbie Hayes.
Monday, 4". Hildah's birthday. Nearly everything was built up around this, even the things out doors, the glimmers and
the warm places. We all had a finger in Hildah's "pie". Letty walked down to Fricker's in silent time. (without
permission).

Don't ever tell! Polly got the holly leaves, where I know not. Laura brought to us the lovely vase. Ella enticed Hildah out
to walk. Frances fixed the flowers and took them up to Hildah's plate. Flowers! Why the ,loveliest tea roses and english
violets, and bouvardias, and gracious pinks. My hands keep their frangrance yet and Parlor 12 has touches from Araby,
the blest.


Trig. gives presentiments of ill. Determination of species "IT sounds not good. Prof. H. in Tacitus: "Why could they not
see Brittany from France?" Grim silence. "Do you not know?" "Because the distance was not great."

Tuesday, 5". I consider it a piece of rarest good fortune that I was chased not by a nemesis this morning but by a species
of deliverance ("determined")I was sent to the board. Disaster was abroad in the ranks of the people in their seats. A
youth visited our Greek class. He looked at the map chiefly and the fly leaf of Miss "Bunds" book. It is well to have
your turn come on a day when there's company. Professor is so easily pleased. My last mountain is cast into the sea.
Miss Terry's been seen and I have my "dismission paper". I believe that's what she called it.

Wednesday, 6". Well, not quite so much circular parts and Astyages as 'tis time-tables and bundles, though these are
abstractions as yet. Polly's cold is a grief to her. As she tells it, she's "banged, too". This beyond any telling who she is.
It is a dreadful world! Laura's knock. We read Greek some and digress considerable. A good deal of our most frequent


parenthesis. "Pleasant as this is, it is not Greek."

Thursday, 7". How do you feel by this time. You are through, don't you see? She sits propped up with a very
comfortable understanding of the Trig. lesson. At Greek she gazes without any signs of perturbation upon the streets of
ancient Rome, not always gazed at calmly. She trots down at 11:50 to engage her soul on mother's tidy. Fringe will not
do. So much is settled. Laura's brown eyes are in a sorry state by the time it's the eleventh period. "I don't feel like
Greek, do you?" No, we don't and we won't. We talk a little and then I see her to the "depot" and ride up with her.

Friday, 8". I wake up to the felicity of it and find the newness in the very coming of the light to us, in the different
sounds the voices have, and in Polly's paint box. That never comes out unless there's a free breath to the day. This is
"Phil day". Come and be properly introduced. The Earle tells us every few minutes what she thinks about it.

While Polly paints and the Earle works on her tidy, Ella crochets and Hildah mends. I read Jean In-


gelow to them. They open their hearts to the sweet graciousness that will plead for recognition and we go up to dinner a
little helped and a good deal brightened.

Apropos of the discussions by Misses Swift and Ransom there's a spirited pro and con down in our room.

Nearly everybody had a young man to night. Quite young. Quite too young, in short "sprigs", and for authority my
enchanting Homer. "An orphan asylum let out" reports Helen Carver.

Saturday, 9". But you come with a dreadful cargo of snow and wind. You blow and beat and stamp and rage. A rather
peculiar way of celebrating my going forth from one town to another. We "pitched our moving tents" at "the old lady's"
hot stove while we waited for the horse-cars. Found out thus early what kind of a day it was. My four girls, bless them,
wave me off right merrily, they with wind and snow to go home in and lessons for Monday. I watch them go up the hill
over the bridge. There's a little vacant place in the morning, that little good bye from the brown eyes that I did not
get......
The ride has


no end of pictures, but I was glad of the sight of a blue and black plaid dress and a thin, tired little face I knew. How
quick we are there, clear at the top, our toes by a bright blaze and the little mother to watch. O "Bozzy, Bozzy" there's a
heap worse things than this!

Wednesday, January 10", 1877.
You are waiting for your story, you say, and the years are bringing it. Have the chapters so far been so full of dark
surprises that you stand on the home side of the threshold and fear to cross? What have you not gone out to that was
beautiful or a joy to have. "Muzzy" and I went down to Albany in the cars. Then we clambered up a fierce array of steps
and our parcels stood for aches and jars and strings at finger-ends. That man that stands in the door at the depot to
marshal us out will never see these pages but I honor him. He had regard into my look of beseeching and let mother go
to the car-door with me. Her last words were something about seeing Dr. Webster and letting her


know and then I moved on to felicities or infelicities I don't know which. Sitting up straight as if I had lived on beyond
the sorrows of my time and had nothing to dread.

No. "d" smiles up at me. Polly and the girls come in, and well, there's and example in Trig. for tomorrow with two
solutions. Six answers. Ye fatis!

I spend silent time with Laura, bless her!

Thursday, 11". I think it was self-renunciation of a lofty type for me to ask Hildah deliberately last night to spring the
trap that should make my eyes bounce open at 6:30 this morning, and then leaden-hearted and leadent footed to crawl up
and right about to whatever there was of it. In the first place a watch had to be struck which meant 'twas dark out doors.
What if you do know that by and by the world will light up and there'll be help in the hills. It is nevertheless a strangely
real fact that you are standing with your feet cold and your eyes swollen, buttoning up a cotton flannel waist that
pinches you.

Then you are Number 6" presently in Trig and you lift up your voice and say "Not prepared". I don't


believe you looked out once to see how pretty the white snow looked with it's dimples and dots.
How you and Laura did find giants in that old example, 10th: Page 94.
Friday, 12". "Maria", our chambermaid of fare is lost to us. The new one, the girls say, is able to be endured, one
cheerful thing!

Arletta brought some cookies from home. Three-hundred and twenty four. She lays it down to us in this wise: "No one
must ask for a cookie unless she is faint." Then she positively refuses to let us get faint. The moment the bell rings for
meals she drives us to the dining hall with fury in her eye.

I haven't seen a red ant yet. OUr girls assume a great deal of "I know all about it" before me, and say; "It's the man".
"What man?" You see I am not blamed in college news. "Why, the bug man." This is all I can elicit. Is he some
wandering pied piper who exists as a terror to the Formica race?

At half-past seven the Earle sent us all out into the corridor and told us "to knock". We did. Then she said: "You must
join hands and go round and round the table lock-step and if you see a bundle with your name on, grab!"


Saturday, 13". I approve of this. The new blue and white in your room ("grabbed" last night) is a joy in "d". The genii
are the girls who room across in "c".

Sophomore class meeting. You leave it with your usual uplifting of spirit, but you don't mind but a few minutes.
You're in Laura's room when the twelve strokes sound, rooting up the mysteries of Book III, chapter 34.
Mrs. Liverware gives a talk in chapel on "Superfluous Women". Blessed are we among girls to have heard it. It is like
her to stand and push apart the briers and bushes and show us glimpses of the glorious upland winding through. The
way that is the only "royal' way, to be hidden by those who shall be kings and priests unto God when the time shall
come. We need to have such as she push back the thick grown shrubbery now and then.

"O, girls, nail this to your mast-head, to be weak is to be miserable."
Laura's day.


Sunday, 14. Today comes too soon after yesterday for you. You wanted the dear Sunday stillness to take up yesterday's
legacy in and ponder the things in your heart. What you did get, you could have waited for to put into some Sunday
when the President was explorative and talked on conscience.

Professor Backus talked to us from the deep places. There was heart and soul and feeling in his sermon and we felt our
way to the cross with him. His last sentence was those old words of Bacon's, "It is reserved for God and the angels to be
lookers on".

In "12", a sinere talk on the married state, all there. Laura thinks the right ones get muted not often to be sure but "it
does happen". Hildah sets her foot down hard, "None whatever".

Laura gives the woful summing up: "It's a wriggly world". We are sure the projection of the great circle of hopelessness
crosses our celestial equator, both of us, as we turn reverently to Matthew in Greek. No hopelessness there, no dragging
down. "Come to me" it says.

Well, we are tired children and He knows.


Monday, 10". It did have streaks of disaster in it. You were handled a little roughly to be sure by this day, but then how
do you expect you are going to sing, "Increase my courage Lord", if there isn't even anything to happen to make courage
the thing to have?

You were torn up by the roots when you got out of bed and you lay around loose on top for all the good you were to any
subjects necessary to be contemplated. It is only stopping to be so wise for a little. I suppose there's a cold at the bottom
of it.

It's Laura that packs up "82" and brings it down to you.

Just hear that howling. 'Tis the evil genius of the stormy night which it it's fierceness is upon us.


Tuesday, 16". We aren't going to have any mournfulness about this business. You've got it in hand.

You march up to Professor Braisin and you stand there gladiator fashion. What you're to impress her with is that the
circular parts you embraced last night was a jug. You projected aches and not She doesn't act as if you were
confessing incendiarism, and you sit down meekly as is your wout. You persevere through half a chapter of "Thought
wrighted Thucydides" with Laura and then her good angel comes suddenly down. It blesses the world by keeping you
up from tea, causing you to sit at a famous little supper in 82, and letting the blessedness there is hovering in loose
places in this world make and open place before you.


Wednesday, 17".

Notes from Dr. Magoon's talk.
"Too far east is west, too far west is east."
"The Greek is the author of everything beautiful in the world, now as in the days of Pericles." ["Don't believe it." Miss
Skinner]. "Rome gave the cupola, the upper Rhine, the dome, The spire is dominant in England."
"The Egyptian obelisk is a sunbeam in syenite."
"Hic, have, hoc" in the text-book, but gumption is a rare thing."
"Greek Dinc temple is a master-piece of human art, solidified beauty, an outcome and not a put on ornament
constructed."
"Talent is the agent of science, art, the product of genius."
"The Greek created, the Roman constructed."
"Greek temple has its decorations in its moldings, its features. Greek moldings, sections of curves. Roman, sections of
circles."
"What can be done with a tool, talent. By brain and hand, genius."
"Arched architecture, Roman. Lintel, Greek."
"Palaces of glass and iron exact types of modern society."
"Benedictives, the schoomasters of the world."

Thursday, 18". Friday 19". No record.


Saturday, 20".
You thought you would treat yourself to a day on the bed as if there were something to be got out of it. You could just
lie there you know, or you could betake yourself into the "Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood." How fortunate you were to
get it last night.

The girls all come in at twenty minutes to twelve, and properly hoisted up and propped, you read to them Carlyle's
"Hero Poet."

After dinner Hildah come in and brought her sewing. As for things to rejoice over, the jug of hot water was one. It stood
for and emphasized larger givings. Then your shoulders couldn't be cold any more, for why? Polly's comfortable. Things
do work around. Given time enough, everything will.


Sunday, 21". The President preached to us on the unity of the church. Text: "One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God
and Father of all." It was a better sermon for the intellect than for the heart. The dear, great-hearted, tender-hearted man!
Why is it he don't take hold of us further down and stir the deep places?

The sun is shining on us and though we are a good ways from spring and in the midst of a biting air, the very brightness
will make us think of days long and bright when promises of blessedness shall be again fulfilled.

When I said: "You were real good Laura, to come and stay with me so long", she told me very soberly that "it was not
good of her to be good to herself." It may have seemed an hour a little dear to her who has so many here that grow
bright in her shadow. To me, indeed, it was a great deal more than an hour a little dear.

The young sweet life with the hard question: "Did you ever have a year when everything that you had dreaded came all
at once?"


Monday, 22".
The thirty-sixth chapter is hard. Yet, O bliss, for every plunge down the shaft we come up with a chiming grain! This
pays, mum.

We are all down at the end of the table together. I didn't tell you, did I? Life at meals is less nemisiac theory. Hinges are
something even in a world we soon go out of.

Coasting is still in vogue. A great deal gets done.
Moonlight, moonlight, moonlight!
Tuesday, 23". Let me see. The home letter had to be attended to, as I thought on the spot. I began it at the sixth period
but didn't get through. It lays over. The transports of half an hour out door on "Paddy Hillard's" sled I could not forego.
The half hour, the sled, the transport was held out to me. I took them and grew happy.

There was a world of enjoyment lying open to us in that masterpiece of Pericles. Not open in any sense without Liddell
and


Scott and a good deal of Curtins and Hadley, but there to be worked for as most everything else is, if it's worth having.
We were in magnificent trim for it, Laura and I, and the night came up our sky, never with a sweeter blue, or lovelier
gray. Indeed, all these afternoons lately I "climb into the blue."

Wednesday, 24". To be sure you didn't have your Trig. example but as Laura says, "That's nothing." You proceed along
the halls to class wishing you had it, though you are perfectly dumb on the subject. "Same example for Friday", says the
sharp-eyed professor in drab. "You may get it."

There are movings in the other ends of the world, pieces of stories, prayers for light. Rhoda has written me again and her
perplexities knock at my gates and say, May we come in?"

No, little flutterers, I cannot straighten you out. I haven't hold of the end of the thread. You see. That's in better hands
than mine.

Laura came down but she could not read, she said. I shall never quite forget how she looked. She went out-doors and
was gone


a long time. Whe she came back she said it was "a good day for the hills."

Another little supper in Laura's room. You peep into "Sights and Insights" while she lays the cloth and brings out the
cunning little china cups. She buzzes about and you call it "bring out to tea." You forget you are a sophomore with
aspirations.

Thursday, 25". For steady help from outside give me a day of sunshine. It is impossible to feel that you are fighting
single-handed and alone, as long as there is sunlight that will not forsake you.

Well, we have begun and ended "the day of prayer". There's a good sound in the [maure]. Why all our days are not
called this is no fault of God's. Prof. Upon of Albany, a short man with a keen eye and a beard growing grey. Those
awful words, they run about with me, they stamp the day with an old time fearfulness. "And thou, Capermann, who art
exalted to heaven shall be brought down to hell". Culture without Christ. How quiet we are, living,


knowing, believing these awful things. How still we keep!

The exhilaration of my hand sled ride is still fresh upon me. A touch of the pleasantness that lives in the outdoors of
things.

There are so many things you wantd to do that are left over. Left over for when? We will see. Meantime we are glad,
glad for life just as it is this minute.

Friday, 26". As a parlor we are in disgrace. Miss Hiscock saw a light from the double inside "at an hour altogether
unreasonable. Letty, not disrobed, answered her knock. Polly was just holding up a lighter to light it from the gas in the
parlor. Letty says: "She didn't light it. I don't know why. I didn't ask Miss Hiscock in. I don't know why."

Laura, periods one and two busy in my room with Trig. It grows incompromisingly dreadful to the soul of her and she
says, "Himmel!" "What is Himmel?" Frances inquires. "Himmel", says Miss Laura, "is Heavens, in German, a very bad
[swear] whatever."

There's a notice, a new one in masculine handwriting posted in the water-closet to the effect


that each person who enters the closet shall hold the knob up half a minute. Letty comes in, sits her down and counts up.
"Half a minute twice a day, a minute a day, half an hour a month, four and a half hours in a year. Pretty hard on us
really." From Hildah we get the proposition that each of us do it all up at once beginning today. "Come, Letty, we'll
begin with you. You go and hold it up four hours and a half and then call me."

Laura bids me farewell for an indefinite period, anticipatory of water tanks and a Freshman essay.
Abbie Hayes has a cold, dreadful of its kind.
Delta has a hall meeting and we of Parlor 12 are present.


Saturday, 27". Undermining forces are at work again and you are not in any sense enjoying the satisfaction of an up
grade.

You and Trig journey to room "D" and hold communion with each other. Two weeks more of such.

Our reading circle which means only Parlors 12 has disposed of considerable of its much needed enthusiasm in the
march of time. We took Swifts "Tale of a Tub" very hard, and now that we are breaking off and taking up Carlyle for a
brief space it takes the hurries of a most dilapidated wardrobe to get us together and even then we insist on
supplementing the author with countless parentheses. Brethren, these things ought not so to be.

It comes to one by a circuitous route that Laura is no longer dangerous. "It" is ready to be copied. I finish "Annals of a
Quiet Neihborhood." This week tho' it ends with a full moon has had its hard places but which one would I have had left
out if I could?

It has been given unto the quiet little story to help me in mine.


Sunday, 28".
It was good to you, so good to feel that whatever might be before or behind today you were in the pause.

It was a day to be remembered out doors. Snow and sunlight make lovely combinations, and such sunlight! Can it be we
are yet two months from April?

The President gave us plenty to think of in his sermon. "Without faith it is impossible to please God".

I ran in after dinner a few minutes to see Myra Reynolds in "13". She has a great many sick days. "If I could go home",
she said, "and stay a year or two years. I could get entirely over this sickness, get perfectly well, but I can't. I mustn't. I
must work or get ready for work". Here's another to add to my calendar of, shall I say saints?

I was in "82" considerable. It happened through "The Gayworthys".


Monday, 29". Not so much fun in getting up as there will be when the sun comes early and sends loving good
mornings, but this was a well-brought up morning and good to promise. So we lived and went up to breakfast pliable.

I threatened to put Laura Skinner in my "memore" so I'll have to. I hoped to see that she got a little sleep, not having
taken any lately, so I put her to bed, did it well, too. Presently she appeared at the door with her cloak and hat on. It was
a hopeless case.

I went determinedly at Trig. review, thirty pages. I felt around for Spartan blood. "Is the old Grecian spirit frozen in
your veins?" I don't know.

Night a quiet, soul-resting sky, the sun going down in no flashes of glory, no crowning of kings, but in soft shade and
tints of peace.

Parlor 12 don't talk much to each other. We are all having a meditation over something for tomorrow.


Tuesday, 30".
"There are passages in my history" remarks Earl at dinner, "When I feel like taking you, Fanny Bromley, and throwing
you over into the lake." We will not say what called this forth but you were mild in your reply. You only suggested
meekly that a Trig. be tied around your neck and you be allowed to drown.

This might have come from your preeminence in stupidity this morning.

Laura, and then there comes up a great big blessing from the soul "to me." (Greek construction.) Pericles grows
enchanting with her to read it with.

We come to a hard place in the thirty-ninth. Laura says she's "a sleepy cat"(!) so she takes to the bed and tells me about
the way of it on Phil. night, gets through, say half of it, and then it's tea-time.

Another lovely little time up in her room.


Wednesday, 31". The way January leaves us is through the deeps. There's some sun and some fog.

I guess 'twas ten minutes before dinner when the girls came in and sat down in my room for a "between time", all but
Hildah, she never has any between times.

Laura proposed a burial of herself in "review". Probably accomplished as nothing has been heard of her.
It was comfortable, the hot bath and getting into my brown dress for tea.
The Earle is on "a philogical research" to wit "the difference between subjective and objective". She comes to the door
"to me" (Greek idiom) in a felt skirt and striped stockings. Wants to know if the slop-bucket, the most prominent object
visible is "subjective" or "objective". We are not profound at ten o'clock, P.M.

Thursday, Feb. 1". Well, how are things? If you've anything comfortable to prop us with how very wrong of you to
withhold it. I have ... , "Farmer Bassett's Romance". With the "ghosts of my young purposes" behind me and calling out
of the deeps before that


story was a pure delight. At least the "chapter one" of it is, which is all that is out as yet. Out door exercise
accomplished today by means of the cart. Was trundled up and down the "gym-path". Its a sloppy day.

It took you the whole precious afternoon to make out your wash-list and to see the doctor. The latter object unattainable.
We live in a world of illusion. There's one reality about it because at present that never fails to impress you, Professor
Braislin's martial spirit!

Friday, 2". The snow storm you want doesn't come yet. There's a smoky look in the sky like the April mornings. If any
body wants to look and particularly don't want to see sloppiness she will have to look off to the tops of the hills. You
feel as if you must look today, as if the way lay out and yonder. It has not been a crowded day. It has been freedom in
one sense, leaving out for one day that pain that has not left you for weeks, that has made all you did so hard. You
almost know for a little breath what the better day will be.

Laura and I read the whole of chapter "39" and talk in between. We feel properly braced up.
Alpha's hall meeting was moonshiny, some. Polly and I enter into it with spirit.
Saturday, 3". You don't propose to look upon this Saturday in any light of pure utility. The Sophomores are wise. For
President Miss [Trel], 25. Miss Blake, 9. Quite as it should be you remark.

You sit at your big window with the blinds all thrown open and Hildah


comes in. With your eye imagined at the end of an axis, the infinity end, you begin. You again don your wrapper for a
dreaded interview with Dr. Webster, which dreading was purely mental wrestling. No doctor, no interview. Senior
essays. Do you suppose that "E.D." could drop her E.D. edness? Don't think it. "The woes of those who live with quiet
people."

Sunday, 4". Titus II. 4. Severely practical. An exposition of the dangers of mirthfulness, in short a sermon from the
President on "giggling". "The animal that is a perpetual grinner is not a man." Other passages with tendencies similar.
Proverbial gigglers in town to church mostly.

"It's a lovely day, Fannie, wish you could go out". Have not attained into any such paradaisical borders, yet might I
dream of walking. It is as if the one blessing that the day denies must not be wholly lost to me. "Edith is going to read
some of Edward Everett Hale's "Christmas Stories", don't you want to come up". Inclination needed props. Supplied by
the maiden who wanted to know, "a very young Freshman".

Then came Greek, four verses mixed up with a good deal of people that ran in and out.
I have finished Ida's letter.
Monday, 5". There are spots of bare ground in sight. A thaw has started. No ride, no cart or to be logical, no cart, no
ride! [Moreover] it was an entreating apres-midi. A review of Herodotus is about to be entered upon. I like this way of
taking it: ... me on the bed pillowed. Laura with dic Curtins and most of it in mind gives me exact meanings and
explains the optatives "with or without an". Then we stop and have crackers and beef tea and jam up in her


room. Evening Corridor meeting. Then Laura comes again and reads Herodotus to me until Freshman prayer-meeting.

Tuesday, 6". You surely haven't lackd for sunlight. It has been about you everywhere. "A beautiful east window" is
yours, where the morning can come in. Laura called my attention the first thing this morning to the tense of the Greek
verb in the verse "I will come to you". It is present in the original. "I come to you". It was sent to me, this. I needed
before the day was over to know it. Not that anything hurt that had not been here to hurt yet it did me good to have the
troubles roll together and let me cry a little while.

Wednesday, 7". The Student's Association send in petitions. "Give, O give us Friday". The shortest speech we ever
heard the President make was on this occasion. "I have received a request from the Student Association which is
granted".

There are so many tired girls lately.

Went to "twenty minute" meeting with Laura and Lizzie Cohn. Had supper on a dear little light stand in Lilla Wheeler's
room. Laura ministering unto me right royally.

Thursday, 8". The Earle is one of the unquenchable lights in our constellation. It is easy to deduce this from the way the
feather stands


room. Evening Corridor meeting. Then Laura comes again and reads Herodotus to me until Freshman prayer-meeting.

Tuesday, 6". You surely haven't lacked for sunlight. It has been about you everywhere. "A beautiful east window" is
yours, where the morning can come in. Laura called my attention the first thing this morning to the tense of the Greek
verb in the verse "I will come to you". It is present in the original. "I come to you". It was sent to me, this. I needed
before the day was over to know it. Not that anything hurt that had not been here to hurt yet it did me good to have the
troubles roll together and let me cry a little while.

Wednesday, 7". The Student's Association send in petitions. "Give, O give us Friday". The shortest speech we ever
heard the President make was on this occasion. "I have received a request from the Student Association which is
granted".

There are so many tired girls lately.

Went to "twenty minute" meeting with Laura and Lizzie Cohn. Had supper on a dear little light stand in Lilla Wheeler's
room. Laura ministering unto me right royally.

Thursday, 8". The Earle is one of the unquenchable lights in our constellation. It is easy to deduce this from the way the
feather stands