Amid the changing scenes of life If any storm should rise, May you ever have a handkerchief To wipe your weeping eyes.

Here is Mr. Morse’s letter:

“North Pole, 10 January 1869.

“Miss Carrie Richards,

“My Dear Young Friend.—It is very cold here and the pole is covered with ice. I climbed it yesterday to take an observation and arrange our flag, the Stars and Stripes, which I hoisted immediately on my arrival here, ten years ago. I thought I should freeze and the pole was so slippery that I was in great danger of coming down faster than was comfortable. Although this pole has been used for more than 6,000 years it is still as good as new. The works of the Great Architect do not wear out. It is now ten years since I have seen you and my other two Christian Graces and I have no doubt of your present position among the most brilliant, noble and excellent women in all America. I always knew and recognized your great abilities. Nature was very generous to you all and you were enjoying fine advantages at the time I last knew you. I thought your residence with your Grandparents an admirable school for you, and you and your sister were most evidently the best joy of their old age. You certainly owe much to them. At the time that I left my three Christian Graces, Mrs. Grundy was sometimes malicious enough to say that they were injuring themselves by flirting. I always told the old lady that I had the utmost confidence in the judgment and discretion of my pupils and that they would be very careful and prudent in all their conduct. I confessed that flirting was wrong and very injurious to any one who was guilty of it, but I was very sure that you were not. I could not believe that you would disappoint us all and become only ordinary women, but that you would become the most exalted characters, scorning all things unworthy of ladies and Christians and I was right and Mrs. Grundy was wrong. When the ice around the pole thaws out I shall make a flying visit to Canandaigua. I send you a tame polar bear for a playfellow. This letter will be conveyed to you by Esquimaux express.—Most truly yours,

E. M. Morse.”

I think some one must have shown some verses that we girls wrote, to Mrs. Grundy and made her think that our minds were more upon the young men than they were upon our studies, but if people knew how much time we spent on Paley’s “Evidences of Christianity” and Butler’s Analogy and Kames’ Elements of Criticism and Tytler’s Ancient History and Olmstead’s Mathematical Astronomy and our French and Latin and arithmetic and algebra and geometry and trigonometry and bookkeeping, they would know we had very little time to think of the masculine gender.

1860

New Year’s Day.—We felt quite grown up to-day and not a little scared when we saw Mr. Morse and Mr. Wells and Mr. Mason and Mr. Chubbuck all coming in together to make a New Year’s call. They made a tour of the town. We did not feel so flustrated when Will Schley and Horace Finley came in later. Mr. Oliver Phelps, Jr., came to call upon Grandmother. Grandfather made a few calls, too.

January 5.—Abbie Clark and I went up to see Miss Emma Morse because it is her birthday. We call her sweet Miss Emma and we think Mr. Manning Wells does, too. We went to William Wirt Howe’s lecture in Bemis Hall this evening. He is a very smart young man.

Anna wanted to walk down a little ways with the girls after school so she crouched down between Helen Coy and Hattie Paddock and walked past the house. Grandmother always sits in the front window, so when Anna came in she asked her if she had to stay after school and Anna gave her an evasive answer. It reminds me of a story I read, of a lady who told the servant girl if any one called to give an evasive answer as she did not wish to receive calls that day. By and by the door bell rang and the servant went to the door. When she came back the lady asked her how she dismissed the visitor. She said, “Shure ye towld me to give an evasive answer, so when the man asked if the lady of the house was at home I said, ‘Faith! is your grandmother a monkey!’” We never say anything like that to our “dear little lady,” but we just change the subject and divert the conversation into a more agreeable channel. To-day some one came to see Grandmother when we were gone and told her that Anna and some others ran away from school. Grandmother told Anna she hoped she would never let any one bring her such a report again. Anna said she would not, if she could possibly help it! I wonder who it was. Some one who believes in the text, “Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.” Grandfather told us to-night that we ought to be very careful what we do as we are making history every day. Anna says she shall try not to have hers as dry as some that she had to learn at school to-day.

February 9.—Dear Miss Mary Howell was married to-day to Mr. Worthington, of Cincinnati.