Monday.—I told Grandfather if he would bring me some sheets of foolscap paper I would begin to write a book. So he put a pin on his sleeve to remind him of it and to-night he brought me a whole lot of it. I shall begin it to-morrow. This evening I helped Anna do her Arithmetic examples, and read her Sunday School book. The name of it is “Watch and Pray.” My book is the second volume of “Stories on the Shorter Catechism.”
Tuesday.—I decided to copy a lot of choice stories and have them printed and say they were “compiled by Caroline Cowles Richards,” it is so much easier than making them up. I spent three hours to-day copying one and am so tired I think I shall give it up. When I told Grandmother she looked disappointed and said my ambition was like “the morning cloud and the early dew,” for it soon vanished away. Anna said it might spring up again and bear fruit a hundredfold. Grandfather wants us to amount to something and he buys us good books whenever he has a chance. He bought me Miss Caroline Chesebro’s book, “The Children of Light,” and Alice and Phoebe Cary’s Poems. He is always reading Channing’s memoirs and sermons and Grandmother keeps “Lady Huntington and Her Friends,” next to “Jay’s Morning and Evening Exercises” and her Testament. Anna told Grandmother that she saw Mrs. George Willson looking very steadily at us in prayer meeting the other night and she thought she might be planning to “write us up.” Grandmother said she did not think Mrs. Willson was so short of material as that would imply, and she feared she had some other reason for looking at us. I think dear Grandmother has a little grain of sarcasm in her nature, but she only uses it on extra occasions. Anna said, “Oh, no; she wrote the lives of the three Mrs. Judsons and I thought she might like for a change to write the biographies of the ‘two Miss Richards.’” Anna has what might be called a vivid imagination.
1856
January 23.—This is the third morning that I have come down stairs at exactly twenty minutes to seven. I went to school all day. Mary Paul and Fannie Palmer read “The Snow Bird” to-day. There were some funny things in it. One was: “Why is a lady’s hair like the latest news? Because in the morning we always find it in the papers.” Another was: “One rod makes an acher, as the boy said when the schoolmaster flogged him.”
This is Allie Field’s birthday. He got a pair of slippers from Mary with the soles all on; a pair of mittens from Miss Eliza Chapin, and Miss Rebecca Gorham is going to give him a pair of stockings when she gets them done.
January 30.—I came home from school at eleven o’clock this morning and learned a piece to speak this afternoon, but when I got up to school I forgot it, so I thought of another one. Mr. Richards said that he must give me the praise of being the best speaker that spoke in the afternoon. Ahem!
February 6.—We were awakened very early this morning by the cry of fire and the ringing of bells and could see the sky red with flames and knew it was the stores and we thought they were all burning up. Pretty soon we heard our big brass door knocker being pounded fast and Grandfather said, “Who’s there?” “Melville Arnold for the bank keys,” we heard. Grandfather handed them out and dressed as fast as he could and went down, while Anna and I just lay there and watched the flames and shook. He was gone two or three hours and when he came back he said that Mr. Palmer’s hat store, Mr. Underhill’s book store, Mr. Shafer’s tailor shop, Mrs. Smith’s millinery, Pratt & Smith’s drug store, Mr. Mitchell’s dry goods store, two printing offices and a saloon were burned. It was a very handsome block. The bank escaped fire, but the wall of the next building fell on it and crushed it. After school to-night Grandmother let us go down to see how the fire looked. It looked very sad indeed. Judge Taylor offered Grandfather one of the wings of his house for the bank for the present but he has secured a place in Mr. Buhre’s store in the Franklin Block.
Thursday, February 7.—Dr. and Aunt Mary Carr and Uncle Field and Aunt Ann were over at our house to dinner to-day and we had a fine fish dinner, not one of Gabriel’s (the man who blows such a blast through the street, they call him Gabriel), but one that Mr. Francis Granger sent to us. It was elegant. Such a large one it covered a big platter. This evening General Granger came in and brought a gentleman with him whose name was Mr. Skinner. They asked Grandfather, as one of the trustees of the church, if he had any objection to a deaf and dumb exhibition there to-morrow night. He had no objection, so they will have it and we will go.
Friday.—We went and liked it very much. The man with them could talk and he interpreted it. There were two deaf and dumb women and three children. They performed very prettily, but the smartest boy did the most. He acted out David killing Goliath and the story of the boy stealing apples and how the old man tried to get him down by throwing grass at him, but finding that would not do, he threw stones which brought the boy down pretty quick. Then he acted a boy going fishing and a man being shaved in a barber shop and several other things. I laughed out loud in school to-day and made some pictures on my slate and showed them to Clara Willson and made her laugh, and then we both had to stay after school. Anna was at Aunt Ann’s to supper to-night to meet a little girl named Helen Bristol, of Rochester. Ritie Tyler was there, too, and they had a lovely time.