April 27th. To the fiftieth anniversary of the Church of the Disciples. Very long and tiresome remarks from the early speakers. When Mama got up to speak, the audience woke up. An electric current ran through the house. It was quite wonderful. She spoke beautifully of Theodore Parker and dear James Freeman Clarke, and drew a fine parallel between them.
June 5th. My dear brother-in-law, Edward Elliott, was drowned this day at Prospect Hill Lake, Colorado Springs.
June 10th. At half past ten Phillips Brooks came to the house. I had arranged the back parlor like a little chapel with many flowers. He read the service in memory of dear Ned, prayed with us and left my dear J. a little lifted up from his black grief. Ned had been with us to the New Year’s Eve service and had been much impressed with the sermon and the personality of the great preacher. This was a gracious and a loving act.
Ned Elliott was my husband’s brother, a gallant young sailor, to whom we were all much attached. He had gone to Colorado Springs to recover from an attack of pneumonia. He entirely regained his health and was on the point of coming to join us in Boston when this strange accident took place. Prospect Hill Lake is a small artificial sheet made by damming the mountain streams of ice-cold water. It was constructed to serve as a plaything for strangers who come to Colorado Springs in search of health. Having created the lake, the next thing was to provide a boat to sail upon it. My brother-in-law was the only sailor in the place and he, with two other young men, launched the sailboat for its first trip. She proved to be a crank affair and turned bottom upward, throwing them all into the icy lake. The other two were saved by clinging to the keel, but Ned, who had sailed the high seas for years, been twice shipwrecked, and had many hairbreadth escapes, was drowned in nine feet of water of a toy lake. It is believed that his death was due to a cramp. It seemed like an old pagan sacrifice to the darker gods!
July 17th. Mama said this morning;
“You owe me two dollars.” I replied that I owed her two dollars and thirty-five cents. Then she cried out:
“You owe me for all sorts of things.”
“I owe you my life.”
“On the whole,” with a twinkle, “that has been of so much advantage to me that I won’t charge you for it.”
January 3rd, 1892. Went with Mama to church, she preaching, as Mr. Ames is ill with grippe. Her prayer was very moving. She asked for faith, inspiration, and love. Also spoke of the church and the noble souls who had built it up. The sermon was on the text, “Thou Art Peter.” One of her best efforts. Have heard it before and went largely with the idea of studying her methods of delivery. Daisy Chanler advised me to study with her rather than any one else, said she thought Mama’s was the most beautiful manner and speech she had ever heard. Soon, however, the matter and the manner overcame me, and I forgot to mark the intonations save to be moved by them. The thought in the sermon was the strength of simple humanity. Sinful, deceitful sometimes, but capable of heroism and self-sacrifice. On this rock of the common sense and the right feeling of the simple human being, Christ’s church was builded. The congregation was much moved, I thought, and I bore her off rather fiercely from “congregationing.” She had been very anxious about this service and had hardly slept the night before. She is never so wearied as by prayer; it is the thing she loves best. She was flushed and beautiful at the end of the service.