The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss Part 33

Now let me give you the history of this busy day. We got up early and Miss F. called with M.'s two dresses. After prayers and breakfast I wrote to papa, went to school with H., and marketed. Came home and found a letter from Cincinnati, urging for two hymns right away for a new hymn-book. They had several of mine already. I said, "Go to, let us make a hymn" (Prof. Smith in his Review) and made and sent them. Then I wrote to Mr. S. and to Mrs. Charles W----. [8] Then Mrs. C. came and stayed till nearly four, when she left and I went down to Twenty-second street to call on a lady at the Water Cure. Then I went to see Mrs. C. (the wife of the Rev. Mr. C.). I think I told you she had lost her little Florence. I do not remember ever seeing a person so broken down by grief; she seemed absolutely heart-broken. I could not get away till five, and then I took two stages and got home as soon as I could, knowing the children would be famis.h.i.+ng. So now count up my various professions, chaplain, marketer, hymnist, consoler of Mr. S., Mrs. W., Mrs. C., and let me add, of Dr. B., who came and made a long call. I am now going to lie down and read till I get rested, for my brain has been on the steady stretch for thirteen hours, one thing stepping on the heels of another. [9]

_May 23d._--If your eyes were bright enough you might have seen me and my cousin George P---- tearing down Broadway this afternoon, as if mad dogs were after us. He wanted me to have a fountain pen, and the only way to accomplish it was to take me down to the place where they are sold, below the Astor House. I wanted to walk, and so did he, but he had got to be on a boat for Norwich at five P.M. and pack up between while; however, he concluded to risk it, hence the way we raced was a caution.

I have just written him a long letter in rhyme with my new pen, and now begin one in prose to you. I have just got a letter from an anonymous admirer of Stepping Heavenward, enclosing ten dollars to give away; I wish it was a thousand! The children are in tribulation about their kitten, who committed suicide by knocking the ironing-board on to herself. H. made a diagram of the position of the board that I might fully comprehend the situation, and then showed me how the corpse lay.

They were not willing to part with the remains, and buried them in the yard.

_Sat.u.r.day._--I went to Yonkers with M. and H. to spend the day with Mrs.

B. Her children are sweet and interesting as ever; but little Maggie, now three years old, is the "queen of the house." She is a perfect specimen of what a child should be--gladsome, well, bright, and engaging. Her cheeks are rosy and s.h.i.+ning, and she keeps up an incessant chatter. They are all wild about her, from papa and mamma down to the youngest child.

II.

Home-Life in Dorset.

DORSET, June 10, 1870.

Here we are again in dear old Dorset. We got here about ten on Wednesday evening, expecting to find the house dark and forlorn, but Mrs. F.

had been down and lighted it up, and put on the dining-table bread, biscuits, b.u.t.ter, cakes, eggs, etc., enough to last for days. Thursday was hotter than any day we had had in New York, and not very good, therefore, for the hard work of unpacking, and the yet harder work of sowing our flower-seeds in a huge bed shaped like a palm-leaf. But, with M.'s help, it was done before one o'clock to-day--a herculean task, as the ground had to be thoroughly dug up with a trowel; stones, sticks, and roots got out, and the earth sifted in our hands. The back of my neck and my ears are nearly blistered. M. is standing behind me now anointing me with cocoa b.u.t.ter. Our place looks beautifully. Some of the trees set out are twelve or fifteen feet high, and when fully leaved will make quite a show. Papa is to be here about ten days, as he greatly needs the rest; he will then go home till July 1st, when he will bring Jane and Martha. I told Martha I thought it very good of Maria to be willing to come with me, and she said she did not think it needed much goodness, and that _anybody_ would go with me _any_where. The boys have a little black and tan dog which Culyer gave them, and M.'s bird is a fine singer. Our family circle now consists of

Pa Prentiss, Ma "

Min."

Geo. "

Hen. "

Maria "

(horse) Coco "

(cow) Sukey "

(dog) Nep "

(bird) Cherry "

We never saw Dorset so early, and when the foliage was in such perfection.

Last Tuesday I reached our door perfectly and disgracefully loaded with parcels, and said to myself, "I wonder what Mr. M. would say if he saw me with this load?" when instantly he opened the door to let me in!

Account for this if you can. Why should I have thought of him among all the people I know? Did his mind touch mine through the closed door? It makes me almost shudder to think such things can be. Well, I must love and leave you. I am going to have a small basket on the table in the hall with ferns, mosses, and sh.e.l.ls in it. They all send love from Pa Prentiss down to Sukey. What a pity you could not come home for the summer and go back again! I believe I'll go to your bedroom door and say, "I wonder whether Annie would shriek out if she saw me in this old sacque, instead of her pretty one?" and perhaps you'll open and let me in. Will you or won't you? Now I'm going to ride.

I've been and I've got back, and I'm frozen solid, and am glad I've got back to my den. G. and H. are now in the kitchen making biscuits.

Good-bye, chicken. Mamma PRENTISS.

_June 12th._--Everybody is in bed save Darby and Joan. We slept last night under four blankets and a silk comforter, which will give you a faint idea of the weather. It has been beautiful to-day, and we have sat out of doors a good deal. Papa and the boys went out to our hill after tea last evening and picked two quarts of strawberries, so as to have a short-cake to-day. M. took me yesterday to see a nest in the orchard which was full of birds parted into fours--not a crack between, and one of them so crowded that it filled about no s.p.a.ce at all. The hymn says, "Birds in their little nests agree," and I should think they would, for they have no room to disagree in. They all four stared at us with awful, almost embarra.s.sing solemnity, and each had a little yellow moustache. I had no idea they lived packed in so--no wonder they looked melancholy.

The sight of them, especially of the one who had no room at all, made me quite low-spirited.

_Wednesday._--Your letter reached us on Monday, and we all went out and sat in a row on the upper step, like birds on a telegraph wire, and papa read it aloud. I am lying by to-day--writing, reading, lounging, and enjoying the scenery. You ought to see papa eat strawberries!!! They are very plentiful on our hill. The gra.s.s on the lawn is p.r.i.c.king up like needles; easy to see if you kneel down and stare hard, but absolutely invisible otherwise; yet papa keeps calling me to look out of the window and admire it, and shouts to people driving by to do the same. He has just come in, and I told him what I was saying about him, on which he gave me a good beating, doubled up his fist at me, and then kissed me to make up.... _Don't sew_ Isn't it enough that I have nearly killed myself with doing it? We have just heard of the death of d.i.c.kens and the sensation it is making in England.

_Thursday._--This bird of ours is splendid. I have just framed the two best likenesses of you and hung them up in front of my table. You would laugh at papa's ways about coffee. He complains that he drank too much at Philadelphia, and says that with strawberries we don't need it, and that I may tell Maria so. I tell her, and lo! the next morning there it is. I ask the meaning, and she says he came down saying I did not feel very well and needed it! The next day it appears again. Why? He had been down and ordered it because it was _good_. The next day he orders it because it is his last day here but one, and to-morrow it will be on the table because it is the last! Dreadful man! and yet I hate to have him go.

_Friday._--I drove papa to Manchester, and as usual, this exploit brought on a thunder shower, with a much needed deluge of rain. I had a hard time getting home, and got wet to the skin. I had not only to drive, but keep a roll of matting from slipping out, hold up the boot and the umbrella, and keep stopping to get my hat out of my eyes, which kept knocking over them. Then Coco goes like the wind this summer.

Fortunately I had my waterproof with me and got home safely. The worst of it is that, in my bewilderment, I refused to let a woman get in who was walking to South Dorset. I shall die of remorse.. Well, well, how it is raining, to be sure.

_Monday._--I hear that papa sent a dispatch to somebody to know how I got here from Manchester. I do not wonder he is worried. I am such a poor driver, and it rained so dreadfully. M. follows me round like a little dog; if I go down cellar she goes down; if I pick a strawberry she picks one; if I stop picking she stops. She is the sweetest lamb that ever was, and I am the Mary that's got her. I don't believe anybody else in the world loves me so well, unless it possibly is papa, and he doesn't follow me down cellar, and goes off and picks strawberries all by himself, and that on Sunday, too, when I had forbidden berrypicking!

We are rioting in strawberries, just as we did last summer. We live a good deal at sixes and sevens, but n.o.body cares. This afternoon I have been arranging a basket for the hall table, with mosses, ferns, sh.e.l.ls and white coral; ever so pretty.

_Wednesday._--It is a splendid day and I expect papa. The children have not said a word about their food, though partly owing to no butcher and partly to the heat, I have had for two days next to nothing; picked fish one day and fish picked the next. We regarded to-day's dinner as a most sumptuous one, and I am sure Victoria's won't taste so good to her.

Letters keep pouring in, urging papa to accept the Professors.h.i.+p at Chicago, and declaring the vote of the a.s.sembly to be the voice of G.o.d.

Of course, if he must accept, we should have to give up our dear little home here. But to me his leaving the ministry would be the worst thing about it. After dinner the boys carried me off bodily to see strawberries and other plants; then they made me go to the mill, and by that time I had no hair-pins on my head, to say nothing of hair. The boys are working away like all possessed. A little bird, probably one of those hatched here, has just come and perched himself on the piazza, railing in front of me, and is making me an address which, unfortunately, I do not understand.... You have inherited from me a want of reverence for relics and the like. I wouldn't go as far as our barn to see the fig-leaves Adam and Eve wore, or all the hair of all the apostles; and when people are not born hero-wors.h.i.+ppers, they can't even wors.h.i.+p themselves as heroes. Fancy Dr. Schaff sending me back the MS. of a hymn I gave him, from a London printing-office! What could I do with it? cover jelly with it? He sent me a beautiful copy of his book, "Christ in Song."

_Thursday, June 30th._--Papa, with J. and M., came late last night, and we all made as great a time as if the Great Mogul had come. They give a most terrific account of the heat in the city. You ask how Stepping Heavenward is selling. So far 14,000. Nidworth has been a complete failure, though the publishers write me that it is a "gem." [10]

_Monday, July 4th._--M. is so absorbed in the study of Vick's floral catalogue that she speaks of seeing such a thing in the Bible or Dictionary, when she means that she saw it in Vick. I did the same thing last night. She and I get down on our knees and look solemnly at the bare ground and point out up-springing weeds as better than nothing. I had a long call this morning from Mrs. F. Field, of East Dorset. They had a dear little bright-eyed baby baptized yesterday, which sat through all the morning service and behaved even better than I did, for it had no wandering thoughts. Mrs. F. said some friends of hers in Brooklyn received letters from France and from j.a.pan simultaneously, urging them to read Stepping Heavenward, which was the first they heard of it. We have celebrated the glorious Fourth by making and eating ice-cream.

Papa brought a new-fas.h.i.+oned freezer, that professed to freeze in two minutes. We screwed it to the wood-house floor--or rather H. did--put in the cream, and the whole family stood and watched papa while he turned the handle. At the end of two minutes we unscrewed the cover and gazed inside, but there were no signs of freezing, and to make a long story short, instead of writing a book as I said I should, there we all were from half-past twelve to nearly two o'clock, when we decided to have dinner and leave the servants to finish it. It came on to the table at last, was very rich and rather good. The boys spent the afternoon in the woods firing off crackers. M. went visiting and papa took me to drive, it being a delightful afternoon. The boys have a few Roman candles which they are going to send off as soon as it gets dark enough.

_July 13th._--This is a real Dorset day, after a most refres.h.i.+ng rain, and M. and I have kept out of doors the whole morning, gardening and in the woods. Dr. and Mrs. Humphrey came down and spent last evening. She is bright and wide awake, and admired everything from the scenery out of doors to the matting and chintzes within. I told her there was nothing in the house to be compared with those who lived in it. Here comes a woman with four quarts of black raspberries and a fuss to make change.

Papa and the boys are getting in the last hay with Albert. M. has just brought in your letter. We are glad you have seen those remarkable scenes [at Ober-Ammergau].One would fancy it would become an old story.

I should not like to see the crucifixion; it must be enough to turn one's hair white in a single night.

_Sat.u.r.day._--Yesterday I went with the children to walk round Rupert. We turned off the road to please the boys, to a brook with a sandy beach, where all three fell to digging wells, and I fell to collecting wild grape-vine and roots for my rustic work, and fell into the brook besides. We all enjoyed ourselves so much that we wished we had our dinners and could stay all day. On the way home, just as we got near Col. Sykes', we spied papa with the phaeton, and all got in. We must have cut a pretty figure, driving through the village; M. in my lap, G.

in papa's, and H. everywhere in general.

_July 14th._--Miss Vance was in last evening after tea, and says our lawn is getting on extremely well and that our seeds are coming up beautifully. This greatly soothed M.'s and my own uneasy heart, as we had rather supposed the lawn ought to be a thick velvet, and the seeds we sowed two weeks ago up and blooming. If vegetable corresponded to animal life, this would be the case. Fancy that what were eggs long after we came here, and then naked birds, are now full-fledged creatures on the wing, all off getting to housekeeping, each on his own hook!

_July 18th._--M. and I went on a tramp this forenoon and while we were gone Mrs. M. O. R. and Mary and Mrs. Van W. called. They brought news of the coming war. Papa showed them all over the house, not excepting your room, which I think a perfect shame--for the room looks forlorn. I think men ought to be suppressed, or something done to them. Maria told me she thought papa's sermon Sunday was "ilegant." _21st._--I feel greatly troubled lest this dreadful war should cut us off from each other. Mr.

Butler writes that he does not see how people are to get home, and we do not see either. Papa says it will probably be impossible to have the Evangelical Alliance. And how prices of finery will go up!

_July 27th._--M.'s and my own perseverance at our flower-bed is beginning, at last, to be rewarded. We have portulaccas, mignonette, white candy-tuft, nasturtiums, eutocas, etc.; and the morning-glories, which are all behindhand, are just beginning to bloom. Never were flowers so fought for. It is the lion and the unicorn over again. I have nearly finished "Soll und Haben," and feel more like talking German than English. The Riverside Magazine has just come and completed my downfall, as it has a syllable left out of one of my verses, as has been the case with a hymn in the hymn-book at Cincinnati and one in the a.s.sociation Monthly. I am now fairly ent.i.tled to the reputation of being a jolty rhymster. It has been a trifle cooler to-day and we are all refreshed by the change.

_Friday._--Papa read me last evening a nice thing about Stepping Heavenward from Dr. Robinson in Paris and a lady in Zurich, and I went to bed and slept the sleep of the just--till daylight, when five hundred flies began to flap into my ears, up my nose, take nips off my face and hands, and drove me distracted. They woke papa, too, but he goes to sleep between the pecks.

_August 4th._--Tuesday I went on a tramp with M. and brought home a gigantic bracket. We met papa as we neared the house, and he had had his first bath in his new tank at the mill, and was wild with joy, as were also the boys. After dinner I made a picture frame of mosses, lichens, and red and yellow toadstools, ever so pretty; then proofs came, then we had tea, and then went and made calls. Yesterday on a tramp with M., who wanted mosses, then home with about a bushel of ground-pine. Every minute of the afternoon I spent in tr.i.m.m.i.n.g the grey room with the pine and getting up my bracket, and now the room looks like a bower of bliss.

I was to go with M. on another tramp to-day, but it rains, and rain is greatly needed. The heat in New York is said to exceed anything in the memory of man, something absolutely appalling.

_Friday._--Here I am on the piazza with Miss K. by my side, reading the Life of Faber. She got here last night in a beautiful moonlight, and as I had not told her about the scenery, she was so enchanted with it on opening her blinds this morning, that she burst into tears. I drove her round Rupert and took her into Cheney's woods, and the boys invited us down to their workshop; so we went, and I was astonished to find that the bath-house is really a perfect affair, with two dressing-rooms and everything as neat as a pink. Miss K. is charmed with everything, the cornucopias, natural brackets, crosses, etc., and her delusion as to all of us, whom she fancies saints and angels, is quite charming, only it won't last.

_13th._--There is a good deal of sickness about the village. I made wine-jelly for four different people yesterday, and the rest of the morning Miss K., Mrs. Humphrey, and myself sat on a shawl in our woods, talking. We have had a tremendous rain, to our great delight, and the air is cooler, but the gra.s.shoppers, which are like the frogs of Egypt, are not diminished, and are devouring everything. I got a letter from cousin Mary yesterday, who says she has no doubt we shall get the ocean up here, somehow, and raise our own oysters and clams.

_16th._--Papa and I went to Manchester to-day to make up a lot of calls, and among other persons, we saw Mrs. C. of Troy, a bright-eyed old lady who was a schoolmate of my mother's. She could not tell me anything about her except that she was very bright and animated, and that I knew before. Mrs. Wickham asked me to write some letters for a fair to be held for their church to-morrow; so I wrote three in rhyme, not very good.

_August 20th._--After dinner papa went to Manchester, taking both boys, and I went off with M. to Cheney's woods, where we got baskets full of moss, etc., and had a good time. The children are all wild on the subject of flowers and spend the evening studying the catalogues, which they ought to know by heart. I wonder if I have told you how our dog hates to remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy? The moment the church-bell begins to ring, no matter where he is, or how soundly asleep, he runs out and gazes in the direction of the church, and as the last stroke strikes, lifts his nose high in the air and sets up the most awful wails, howls, groans, despairing remonstrances you can imagine. No games with the boys to-day--no romps, no going to Manchester, everybody telling me to get off their Sunday clothes--aow! aow! aow!

Dr. Adams' house has been broken into and robbed, and so has Dr.

Field's. Mrs. H. gave us the history of a conflict in Chicago between her husband and a desperate burglar armed with a dirk, who wanted, but did not get a large sum of money under his pillow; also, of his being garroted and robbed, and having next day sent him a purse of $150, two pistols, a slug, a loaded cane, and a watchman's rattle. Imagine him as going about loaded with all these things! I never knew people who had met with such bewitching adventures, and she has the brightest way of telling them.

Papa has got a telegram from Dr. Schaff asking him to come on to his little Johnny's funeral. This death must have been very sudden, as Dr.

Schaff wrote last Tuesday that his wife was sick, but said nothing of Johnny. He is the youngest boy, about nine years old, I think, and you will remember they lost Philip, a beautiful child, born the same day as our G., the summer we were at Hunter. When the despatch came papa and M.

thought it was bad news about you, and I only thought of Mr. Stearns!

There is no accounting for the way in which the human mind works. And now for bed, you sleepy head.

_Monday._--A splendid day, and we have all been as busy as bees, if not as useful,--H. making a whip to chastise the cow with, M., Nep and myself collecting mosses and toadstools; of the latter I brought home 185! We were out till dinner-time, and after dinner I changed the mosses in my baskets and jardinet, no small job, and M. spread out her treasures. She has at last found her enthusiasm, and I am so glad not only to have found a mate in my tramps, but to see such a source of pleasure opening before her as woods, fields and gardens have always been to me. We lighted this morning on what I supposed to be a horned-headed, ferocious snake, and therefore took great pleasure in killing. It turned out to be a common striped snake that had got a frog partly swallowed, and its legs sticking out so that I took them to be horns. Nep relieved his mind by barking at it. I announced at dinner that I was going to send for Vick's catalogue of bulbs, which news was received with acclamation. The fact is, we all seem to be born farmers or florists; and unless you bring us home something in the agricultural line, I don't know that you can bring us anything we would condescend to look at. It is awful to read of the carnage going on in Europe.

_Aug. 27th._--Papa got home Tuesday night. Johnny Schaff's death was from a fall; he left the house full of life and health, and in a few minutes was brought in insensible, and only lived half an hour.... I take no pleasure in writing you, because we feel that you are not likely to get my letters. Still, I can not make up my mind to stop writing.