om
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 did not have any blessing
because there was no one to ask it. Anna said she could, but I was
afraid she would not say it right, so I told her she needn't. 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.

1853

_Sunday, March 20._--It snowed so, that we could not go to church to-day
and it was the longest day I ever spent. The only excitement was seeing
the snowplow drawn by two horses, go up on this side of the street and
down on the other. Grandfather put on his long cloak with a cape, which
he wears in real cold weather, and went. We wanted to pull some long
stockings over our shoes and go too but Grandmother did not think it was
best. She gave us the "Dairyman's Daughter" and "Jane the Young
Cottager," by Leigh Richmond, to read. I don't see how they happened to
be so awfully good. Anna says they died of "early piety," but she did
not say it very loud. Grandmother said she would give me 10 cents if I
would learn the verses in the New England Primer that John Rogers left
for his wife and nine small children and one at the breast, when he was
burned at the stake, at Smithfield, England, in 1555. One verse is, "I
leave you here a little book for you to look upon that you may see your
father's face when he is dead and gone." It is a very long piece but I
got it. Grandmother says "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the
ch