Wednesday.—Mr. Cross had us speak pieces to-day. He calls our names, and we walk on to the platform and toe the mark and make a bow and say what we have got to say. He did not know what our pieces were going to be and some of them said the same ones. Two boys spoke: “The boy stood on the burning deck, whence all but him had fled.” William Schley was one, and he spoke his the best. When he said, “The flames that lit the battle wreck shone round him o’er the dead,” we could almost see the fire, and when he said, “My father, must I stay?” we felt like telling him, no, he needn’t. He is going to make a good speaker. Mr. Cross said so. Albert Murray spoke “Excelsior,” and Horace Finley spoke nice, too. My piece was, “Why, Phoebe, are you come so soon? Where are your berries, child?” Emma Van Arsdale spoke the same one. We find them all in our reader. Sometime I am going to speak, “How does the water come down at Ladore?” Splashing and flashing and dashing and clashing and all that—it rhymes, so it is easy to remember.
We played snap the whip at recess to-day and I was on the end and was snapped off against the fence. It hurt me so, that Anna cried. It is not a very good game for girls, especially for the one on the end.
| Grandfather Beals | Grandmother Beals |
Tuesday.—I could not keep a journal for two weeks, because Grandfather and Grandmother have been very sick and we were afraid something dreadful was going to happen. We are so glad that they are well again. Grandmother was sick upstairs and Grandfather in the bedroom downstairs, and we carried messages back and forth for them. Dr. Carr and Aunt Mary came over twice every day and said they had the influenza and the inflammation of the lungs. It was lonesome for us to sit down to the table and just have Hannah wait on us. We did not have any blessing because there was no one to ask it. Anna said she could, but I was afraid she would not say it right, so I told her she needn’t. We had such lumps in our throats we could not eat much and we cried ourselves to sleep two or three nights. Aunt Ann Field took us home with her one afternoon to stay all night. We liked the idea and Mary and Louisa and Anna and I planned what we would play in the evening, but just as it was dark our hired man, Patrick McCarty, drove over after us. He said Grandfather and Grandmother could not get to sleep till they saw the children and bid them good-night. So we rode home with him. We never stayed anywhere away from home all night that we can remember. When Grandmother came downstairs the first time she was too weak to walk, so she sat on each step till she got down. When Grandfather saw her, he smiled and said to us: “When she will, she will, you may depend on’t; and when she won’t she won’t, and that’s the end on’t.” But we knew all the time that he was very glad to see her.
1853
Sunday, March 20.—It snowed so, that we could not go to church to-day and it was the longest day I ever spent. The only excitement was seeing the snowplow drawn by two horses, go up on this side of the street and down on the other. Grandfather put on his long cloak with a cape, which he wears in real cold weather, and went. We wanted to pull some long stockings over our shoes and go too but Grandmother did not think it was best. She gave us the “Dairyman’s Daughter” and “Jane the Young Cottager,” by Leigh Richmond, to read. I don’t see how they happened to be so awfully good. Anna says they died of “early piety,” but she did not say it very loud. Grandmother said she would give me 10 cents if I would learn the verses in the New England Primer that John Rogers left for his wife and nine small children and one at the breast, when he was burned at the stake, at Smithfield, England, in 1555. One verse is, “I leave you here a little book for you to look upon that you may see your father’s face when he is dead and gone.” It is a very long piece but I got it. Grandmother says “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” Anna learned
| “In Adam’s fall we sinned all. My Book and heart shall never part. The Cat doth play and after slay. The Dog doth bite a thief at night.” |
When she came to the end of it and said,
| “Zaccheus he, did climb a tree, his Lord to see.” |