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 Sly 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.
(December 15, 1852)