April 1. – Grandmother sent me up into the little chamber to-day to straighten things and get the room ready to be cleaned. I found a little book called “Child’s Pilgrim Progress, Illustrated,” that I had never seen before. I got as far as Giant Despair when Anna came up and said Grandmother sent her to see what I was doing, and she went back and told her that I was sitting on the floor in the midst of books and papers and was so absorbed in “Pilgrim’s Progress” that I had made none myself. It must be a good book for Grandmother did not say a word. Father sent us “Gulliver’s Travels” and there is a gilt picture on the green cover, of a giant with legs astride and little Lilliputians standing underneath, who do not come up to his knees. Grandmother did not like the picture, so she pasted a piece of pink calico over it, so we could only see the giant from his waist up. I love the story of Cinderella and the poem, “‘Twas the night before Christmas,” and I am sorry that there are no fairies and no Santa Claus.
We go to school to Miss Zilpha Clark in her own house on Gibson Street. Other girls who go are Laura Chapin, Julia Phelps, Mary Paul, Bessie Seymour, Lucilla and Mary Field, Louisa Benjamin, Nannie Corson, Kittie Marshall, Abbie Clark and several other girls. I like Abbie Clark the best of all the girls in school excepting of course my sister Anna.
Before I go to school every morning I read three chapters in the Bible. I read three every day and five on Sunday and that takes me through the Bible in a year. Those I read this morning were the first, second and third chapters of Job. The first was about Eliphaz reproveth Job; second, Benefit of God’s correction; third, Job justifieth his complaint. I then learned a text to say at school. I went to school at quarter to nine and recited my text and we had prayers and then proceeded with the business of the day. Just before school was out, we recited in “Science of Things Familiar,” and in Dictionary, and then we had calisthenics.
We go through a great many figures and sing “A Life on the Ocean Wave,” “What Fairy Like Music Steals Over the Sea,” “Lightly Row, Lightly Row, O’er the Glassy Waves We Go,” and “O Come, Come Away,” and other songs. Mrs Judge Taylor wrote one song on purpose for us.