ladies have started a society, too, and we
have great fun and fine suppers. We met at Jennie Howell's to organize.
We are to meet once in two weeks and are to present each member with an
album bed quilt with all our names on when they are married. Susie
Daggett says she is never going to be married, but we must make her a
quilt just the same. Laura Chapin sang, "Mary Lindsey, Dear," and we got
to laughing so that Susie Daggett and I lost our equilibrium entirely,
but I found mine by the time I got home. Yesterday afternoon Grandfather
asked us if we did not want to go to ride with him in the big two seated
covered carriage which he does not get out very often. We said yes, and
he stopped for Miss Hannah Upham and took her with us. She sat on the
back seat with me and we rode clear to Farmington and kept up a brisk
conversation all the way. She told us how she became lady principal of
the Ontario Female Seminary in 1830. She was still telling us about it
when we got back home.

_December_ 23.--We have had a Christmas tree and many other attractions
in Seminary chapel. The day scholars and townspeople were permitted to
participate and we had a post office and received letters from our
friends. Mr. E. M. Morse wrote me a fictitious one, claiming to be
written from the north pole ten years hence. I will copy it in my
journal for I may lose the letter. I had some gifts on the Christmas
tree and gave some. I presented my teacher, Mr. Chubbuck, with two large
hemstitched handkerchiefs with his initials embroidered in a corner of
each. As he is favored with the euphonious name of Frank Emery Robinson
Chubbuck it was a work of art to make his initials look beautiful. I
inclosed a stanza in rhyme:

Amid the changing scenes of life
If any storm should rise,
May you ever have a handkerchief
To wipe your weeping eyes.

Here is Mr. Morse's letter:

North Pole, 10 _January_ 1869.
Miss Carrie Richards,

"My Dear Young Friend.--It is very cold here and the pole is covered
with ice. I climbed it yesterday to take an observation and arrange our
flag, the Stars and Stripes, which I hoisted immediately on my arrival
here, ten years ago. I thought I should freeze and the pole was so
slippery that I was in great danger of coming down faster than was
comfortable. Although this pole has been used for more than 6,000 years
it is still as good as new. The works of the Great Architect