uths.... Quilted all day, but sewing seems to be no longer my
calling.... I stained and varnished the library bookcase today, and
superintended the plowing of the orchard.... The last load of hay
is in the barn; all in capital order. Fitted out a fugitive slave
for Canada with the help of Harriet Tubman.... The teachers'
convention was small and dull. The woman's committee failed to
report. I am mortified to death for them.... Washed every window in
the house today. Put a quilted petticoat in the frame. Commenced
Mrs. Browning's Portuguese Sonnets. Have just finished Casa Guidi
Windows, a grand poem and so fitting to our terrible struggle.... I
wish the government would move quickly, proclaim freedom to every
slave and call on every able-bodied negro to enlist in the Union
army. How not to do it seems the whole study at Washington. Good,
stiff-backed Union Democrats would dare to move; they would have
nothing to lose and all to gain for their party. The present
incumbents have all to lose; hence dare not avow any policy, but
only wait. To forever blot out slavery is the only possible
compensation for this merciless war.

All through the chroniclings of the monotonous daily life is the cry:
"The all-alone feeling will creep over me. It is such a fast after the
feast of great presences to which I have been so long accustomed."
During these days she reads Adam Bede, and thus writes Mrs. Stanton:

I finished Adam Bede yesterday noon. I can not throw off the
palsied oppression of its finale to poor, poor Hetty--and Arthur
almost equally commands my sympathy. He no more desired to wrong
her or cause her one hour of sorrow than did Adam, but the impulse
of his nature brooked no restraint. Should public sentiment
tolerate such a consummation of love--or passion, if it were not
love? (But I believe it was, only the impassable barrier of caste
forbade its public avowal.) If such a birth could be left free from
odium and scorn, contempt and pity from the world, it would be a
thousand times more holy, more happy, than many of those in legal
marriage. It will not do for me to read romances; they are too real
to shake off. What is the irresistible power so terrifically
pictured in both Hetty and Arthur, which led them on to the very
ill they most would shun?

To crown the result I went to the colored churc