Saturday.—­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 Association Monthly.  I am now fairly entitled 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.