Village Life in America

Tuesday.–I could not keep a journal for two weeks, because Grandfather and Grandmother have been very sick and we were afraid something dreadful was going to happen. We are so glad that they are well again. Grandmother was sick upstairs and Grandfather in the bedroom downstairs, and we carried messages back and forth for them. Dr Carr and Aunt Mary came over twice every day and said they had the influenza and the inflammation of the lungs. It was lonesome for us to sit down to the table and just have Hannah wait on us. We had such lumps in our throats we could not eat much and we cried ourselves to sleep two or three nights. Aunt Ann Field took us home with her one afternoon to stay all night. We liked the idea and Mary and Louisa and Anna and I planned what we would play in the evening, but just as it was dark our hired man, Patrick McCarty, drove over after us. He said Grandfather and Grandmother could not get to sleep till they saw the children and bid them good-night. So we rode home with him. We never stayed anywhere away from home all night that we can remember. When Grandmother came downstairs the first time she was too weak to walk, so she sat on each step till she got down. When Grandfather saw her, he smiled and said to us : “When she will, she will, you may depend on’t; and when she won’t she won’t, and that’s the end on’t.” But we knew all the time that he was very glad to see her.