April.–Grandfather gave us 10 cents each this morning for learning the 46th Psalm and has promised us $1 each for reading the Bible through in a year. We were going to any way. Some of the girls say they should think we would be afraid of Grandfather, he is so sober, but we are not the least bit. He let us count $1,000 to-night which a Mr Taylor, a cattle buyer, brought to him in the evening after banking hours. Anybody must be very rich who has all that money of their own.
Friday.–Our old horse is dead and we will have to buy another. He was very steady and faithful. One day Grandfather left him at the front gate and he started along and turned the corner all right, down the Methodist lane and went way down to our barn doors and stood there until Mr. Piser came and took him into the barn. People said they set their clocks by him because it was always quarter past 12 when he was driven down to the bank after Grandfather and quarter of 1 when he came back. I don’t think the clocks would ever be too fast if they were set by him. We asked Grandfather what he died of and he said he had run his race but I think he meant he had walked it, for I never saw him go off a jog in my life. Anna used to say he was taking a nap when we were out driving with Grandfather. I have written some lines in his memory and if I knew where he was buried, I would print it on his head board.
Old Dobbin’s dead, that good old horse,
We ne’er shall see him more,
He always used to lag behind
But now he’s gone before.
It is a parody on old Grimes is dead, which is in our reader, only that is a very long poem. I am not going to show mine to Grandfather till he gets over feeling bad about the horse.
Sunday.–Grandmother gave Anna, Doddridge’s “Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul” to read to-day. Anna says she thinks she will have to rise and progress a good deal before she will be able to appreciate it. Baxter’s “Saints Rest” would probably suit her better.
Sunday, April 5. – An agent for the American Board of Foreign Missions preached this morning in our church from Romans 10: 15 : “How shall they hear without a preacher and how shall they preach except they be sent.” An agent from every society presents the cause, whatever it is, once a year and some people think the anniversary comes around very often. I always think of Mrs George Wilson’s poem on “A apele for air, pewer air, certin proper for the pews, which, she sez, is scarce as piety, or bank bills when ajents beg for mischuns, wich sum say is purty often, (taint nothin’ to me, wat I give aint nothin’ to nobody).” I think that is about the best poem of its kind I ever read.
Miss Lizzie Bull told us in Sunday School to-day that she cannot be our Sunday School teacher any more, as she and her sister Mary are going to join the Episcopal Church. We hate to have her go, but what can’t be cured must be endured. Part of our class are going into Miss Mary Howell’s class and part into Miss Annie Pierce’s. They are both splendid teachers and Miss Lizzie Bull is another. We had preaching in our church this afternoon, too. Rev. Samuel Hansom Cox, of Le Roy Female Seminary, preached. He is a great man, very large, long white hair combed back. I think if a person once saw him they would never forget him. He preached about Melchisedek, who had neither “beginning of days or end of life.” Some people thought that was like his sermon, for it was more than one hour long. Dr Cox and Mrs Taylor came to call and asked Grandfather to let me go to Le Roy Female Seminary, but Grandfather likes Ontario Female Seminary better than any other in the world. We wanted Grandmother to have her picture taken, but she did not feel able to go to Mr Finley’s, so he came up Tuesday and took it in our dining-room. She had her best cap on and her black silk dress and sat in her high back rocking chair in her usual corner near the window. He brought one up to show us and we like it so much. Anna looked at it and kissed it and said, “Grandmother, I think you are perfectly beautiful.” She smiled and very modestly put her handkerchief up to her face and said, “You foolish child,” but I am sure she was pleased, for how could she help it? A man came up to the open window one day where she was sitting, with something to sell, and while she was talking to him he said, “You must have been handsome, lady, when you were young.” Grandmother said it was because he wanted to sell his wares, but we thought he knew it was so. We told her she couldn’t get around it that way and we asked Grandfather and he said it was true. Our Sunday School class went to Mr Finley’s to-day and had a group ambrotype taken for our teacher, Miss Annie Pierce; Susie Daggett, Clara Willson, Sarah Whitney, Mary Field and myself. Mary Wheeler ought to have been in it, too, but we couldn’t get her to come. We had very good success.
Thursday.–We gave the ambrotype to Miss Pierce and she liked it very much and so does her mother and Fannie. Her mother is lame and cannot go anywhere so we often go to see her and she is always glad to see us and so pleasant.