Monday, July 4th.—M. is so absorbed in the study of Vick's floral catalogue that she speaks of seeing such a thing in the Bible or Dictionary, when she means that she saw it in Vick. I did the same thing last night. She and I get down on our knees and look solemnly at the bare ground and point out up-springing weeds as better than nothing. I had a long call this morning from Mrs. F. Field, of East Dorset. They had a dear little bright-eyed baby baptized yesterday, which sat through all the morning service and behaved even better than I did, for it had no wandering thoughts. Mrs. F. said some friends of hers in Brooklyn received letters from France and from Japan simultaneously, urging them to read Stepping Heavenward, which was the first they heard of it. We have celebrated the glorious Fourth by making and eating ice-cream. Papa brought a new-fashioned freezer, that professed to freeze in two minutes. We screwed it to the wood-house floor—or rather H. did—put in the cream, and the whole family stood and watched papa while he turned the handle. At the end of two minutes we unscrewed the cover and gazed inside, but there were no signs of freezing, and to make a long story short, instead of writing a book as I said I should, there we all were from half-past twelve to nearly two o'clock, when we decided to have dinner and leave the servants to finish it. It came on to the table at last, was very rich and rather good. The boys spent the afternoon in the woods firing off crackers. M. went visiting and papa took me to drive, it being a delightful afternoon. The boys have a few Roman candles which they are going to send off as soon as it gets dark enough.
July 13th.—This is a real Dorset day, after a most refreshing rain, and M. and I have kept out of doors the whole morning, gardening and in the woods. Dr. and Mrs. Humphrey came down and spent last evening. She is bright and wide awake, and admired everything from the scenery out of doors to the matting and chintzes within. I told her there was nothing in the house to be compared with those who lived in it. Here comes a woman with four quarts of black raspberries and a fuss to make change. Papa and the boys are getting in the last hay with Albert. M. has just brought in your letter. We are glad you have seen those remarkable scenes [at Ober-Ammergau].One would fancy it would become an old story. I should not like to see the crucifixion; it must be enough to turn one's hair white in a single night.
Saturday.—Yesterday I went with the children to walk round Rupert. We turned off the road to please the boys, to a brook with a sandy beach, where all three fell to digging wells, and I fell to collecting wild grape-vine and roots for my rustic work, and fell into the brook besides. We all enjoyed ourselves so much that we wished we had our dinners and could stay all day. On the way home, just as we got near Col. Sykes', we spied papa with the phaeton, and all got in. We must have cut a pretty figure, driving through the village; M. in my lap, G. in papa's, and H. everywhere in general.
July 14th.—Miss Vance was in last evening after tea, and says our lawn is getting on extremely well and that our seeds are coming up beautifully. This greatly soothed M.'s and my own uneasy heart, as we had rather supposed the lawn ought to be a thick velvet, and the seeds we sowed two weeks ago up and blooming. If vegetable corresponded to animal life, this would be the case. Fancy that what were eggs long after we came here, and then naked birds, are now full-fledged creatures on the wing, all off getting to housekeeping, each on his own hook!
July 18th.—M. and I went on a tramp this forenoon and while we were gone Mrs. M. O. R. and Mary and Mrs. Van W. called. They brought news of the coming war. Papa showed them all over the house, not excepting your room, which I think a perfect shame—for the room looks forlorn. I think men ought to be suppressed, or something done to them. Maria told me she thought papa's sermon Sunday was "ilegant." 21st.—I feel greatly troubled lest this dreadful war should cut us off from each other. Mr. Butler writes that he does not see how people are to get home, and we do not see either. Papa says it will probably be impossible to have the Evangelical Alliance. And how prices of finery will go up!
July 27th.—M.'s and my own perseverance at our flower-bed is beginning, at last, to be rewarded. We have portulaccas, mignonette, white candy-tuft, nasturtiums, eutocas, etc.; and the morning-glories, which are all behindhand, are just beginning to bloom. Never were flowers so fought for. It is the lion and the unicorn over again. I have nearly finished "Soll und Haben," and feel more like talking German than English. The Riverside Magazine has just come and completed my downfall, as it has a syllable left out of one of my verses, as has been the case with a hymn in the hymn-book at Cincinnati and one in the Association Monthly. I am now fairly entitled to the reputation of being a jolty rhymster. It has been a trifle cooler to-day and we are all refreshed by the change.
Friday.—Papa read me last evening a nice thing about Stepping Heavenward from Dr. Robinson in Paris and a lady in Zurich, and I went to bed and slept the sleep of the just—till daylight, when five hundred flies began to flap into my ears, up my nose, take nips off my face and hands, and drove me distracted. They woke papa, too, but he goes to sleep between the pecks.
August 4th.—Tuesday I went on a tramp with M. and brought home a gigantic bracket. We met papa as we neared the house, and he had had his first bath in his new tank at the mill, and was wild with joy, as were also the boys. After dinner I made a picture frame of mosses, lichens, and red and yellow toadstools, ever so pretty; then proofs came, then we had tea, and then went and made calls. Yesterday on a tramp with M., who wanted mosses, then home with about a bushel of ground-pine. Every minute of the afternoon I spent in trimming the grey room with the pine and getting up my bracket, and now the room looks like a bower of bliss. I was to go with M. on another tramp to-day, but it rains, and rain is greatly needed. The heat in New York is said to exceed anything in the memory of man, something absolutely appalling.
Friday.—Here I am on the piazza with Miss K. by my side, reading the Life of Faber. She got here last night in a beautiful moonlight, and as I had not told her about the scenery, she was so enchanted with it on opening her blinds this morning, that she burst into tears. I drove her round Rupert and took her into Cheney's woods, and the boys invited us down to their workshop; so we went, and I was astonished to find that the bath-house is really a perfect affair, with two dressing-rooms and everything as neat as a pink. Miss K. is charmed with everything, the cornucopias, natural brackets, crosses, etc., and her delusion as to all of us, whom she fancies saints and angels, is quite charming, only it won't last.
13th.—There is a good deal of sickness about the village. I made wine-jelly for four different people yesterday, and the rest of the morning Miss K., Mrs. Humphrey, and myself sat on a shawl in our woods, talking. We have had a tremendous rain, to our great delight, and the air is cooler, but the grasshoppers, which are like the frogs of Egypt, are not diminished, and are devouring everything. I got a letter from cousin Mary yesterday, who says she has no doubt we shall get the ocean up here, somehow, and raise our own oysters and clams.