r Arithmetic
examples, and read her Sunday School book. The name of it is "Watch and
Pray." My book is the second volume of "Stories on the Shorter
Catechism."

_Tuesday._--I decided to copy a lot of choice stories and have them
printed and say they were "compiled by Caroline Cowles Richards," it is
so much easier than making them up. I spent three hours to-day copying
one and am so tired I think I shall give it up. When I told Grandmother
she looked disappointed and said my ambition was like "the morning cloud
and the early dew," for it soon vanished away. Anna said it might spring
up again and bear fruit a hundredfold. Grandfather wants us to amount to
something and he buys us good books whenever he has a chance. He bought
me Miss Caroline Chesebro's book, "The Children of Light," and Alice and
Phoebe Cary's _Poems_. He is always reading Channing's memoirs and
sermons and Grandmother keeps "Lady Huntington and Her Friends," next to
"Jay's Morning and Evening Exercises" and her Testament. Anna told
Grandmother that she saw Mrs. George Willson looking very steadily at us
in prayer meeting the other night and she thought she might be planning
to "write us up." Grandmother said she did not think Mrs. Willson was so
short of material as that would imply, and she feared she had some other
reason for looking at us. I think dear Grandmother has a little grain of
sarcasm in her nature, but she only uses it on extra occasions. Anna
said, "Oh, no; she wrote the lives of the three Mrs. Judsons and I
thought she might like for a change to write the biographies of the 'two
Miss Richards.'" Anna has what might be called a vivid imagination.

1856

_January_ 23.--This is the third morning that I have come down stairs at
exactly twenty minutes to seven. I went to school all day. Mary Paul and
Fannie Palmer read "_The Snow Bird_" to-day. There were some funny
things in it. One was: "Why is a lady's hair like the latest news?
Because in the morning we always find it in the papers." Another was:
"One rod makes an acher, as the boy said when the schoolmaster flogged
him."

This is Allie Field's birthday. He got a pair of slippers from Mary with
the soles all on; a pair of mittens from Miss Eliza Chapin, and Miss
Rebecca Gorham is going to give him a pair of stockings when she gets
them done.

_January_ 30.--I came home from school at eleven o'clock this morning
and learned a piece to speak this afternoon, but when I got up t