: The Shield of Love by Farjeon B L Benjamin Leopold - English fiction 19th century

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PAGE Introduction, by Mrs. Margaret E. Sangster ix The Villages xiii The Villagers xiv 1852.--Family Notes--Famous School--Girls--Hoop Skirts 1 1853.--Runaways--Bible Study--Essays--Catechism 10 1854.--Lake Picnic--Pyramid of Beauty--Governor Clark 20 1855.--Preachers--James and John--Votes for Women 43 1856.--the Fire--Sleighing and Prayer--Father's Advice 52 1857.--Truants and Pickles--Candle Stories--the Snuffers 77 1858.--Tableaux and Charades--Spiritual Seance 95 1859.--E. M. Morse--Letter from the North Pole 106 1860.--Gymnastics--Troublesome Comforts 118 1861.--President Lincoln's Inauguration--Civil War--School Enthusiasm 130 1862.--Gough Lectures--President's Call for Three Hundred Thousand Men--Mission Zeal 138 1863.--A Soldier's Death--General M'Clellan's Letter--President Lincoln's Address at Gettysburg 148 1864.--Grandfather Beals' Death--Anna Graduates 162 1865.--President Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address--Fall of Richmond--Murder of Lincoln 176 1866.--Freedman's Fair--General Grant and Admiral Farragut Visit Canandaigua 200 1867.--Brother John and Wife Go to London--Lecture by Charles Dickens 208 1871.--Hon. George H. Stuart Speaks in Canandaigua--A Large Collection 210 1872.--Grandmother Beals' Death--Biography 211 1880.--Anna's Marriage 225

Caroline Cowles Richards Frontispiece FACING PAGE Grandfather Beals 8 Grandmother Beals 8 Mr. Noah T. Clarke 30 Miss Upham 30 First Congregational Church 38 Rev. Oliver E. Daggett, D.D. 54 Judge Henry W. Taylor 54 Miss Zilpha Clark 54 "Frankie Richardson" 54 Horace Finley 54 Tom Eddy and Eugene Stone 66 "Uncle David Dudley Field" 66 Grandmother's Rocking Chair 88 The Grandfather Clock 88 Hon. Francis Granger 100 Mr. Gideon Granger 100 The Old Canandaicua Academy 124 The Ontario Female Seminary 132 "Old Friend Burling" 138 Madame Anna Bishop 138 "Abbie Clark and I Had Our Ambrotypes Taken To-day" 152 "Mr. Noah T. Clarke's Brother and I" 152

PUBLISHERS' NOTE

After this book was in type, on March 29, 1913, the author, Mrs. Caroline Richards Clarke, died at Naples, New York.

INTRODUCTION

The Diary of Caroline Cowles Richards fell into my hands, so to speak, out of space. I had no previous acquaintance with the author, and I sat down to read the book one evening in no especial mood of anticipation. From the first page to the last my attention was riveted. To call it fascinating barely expresses the quality of the charm. Caroline Richards and her sister Anna, having early lost their mother, were sent to the home of her parents in Canandaigua, New York, where they were brought up in the simplicity and sweetness of a refined household, amid Puritan traditions. The children were allowed to grow as plants do, absorbing vitality from the atmosphere around them. Whatever there was of gracious formality in the manners of aristocratic people of the period, came to them as their birthright, while the spirit of the truest democracy pervaded their home. Of this Diary it is not too much to say that it is a revelation of childhood in ideal conditions.

The Diary begins in 1852, and is continued until 1872. Those of us who lived in the latter half of the nineteenth century recall the swift transitions, the rapid march of science and various changes in social customs, and as we meet allusions to these in the leaves of the girl's Diary we live our past over again with peculiar pleasure.

Far more has been told us concerning the South during the Civil War than concerning the North. Fiction has found the North a less romantic field, and the South has been chosen as the background of many a stirring novel, while only here and there has an author been found who has known the deep-hearted loyalty of the Northern States and woven the story into narrative form. The girl who grew up in Canandaigua was intensely patriotic, and from day to day vividly chronicled what she saw, felt, and heard. Her Diary is a faithful record of impressions of that stormy time in which the nation underwent a baptism of fire. The realism of her paragraphs is unsurpassed.

Beyond the personal claim of the Diary and the certainty to give pleasure to a host of readers, the author appeals to Americans in general because of her family and her friends. Her father and grandfather were Presbyterian ministers. Her Grandfather Richards was for twenty years President of Auburn Theological Seminary. Her brother, John Morgan Richards of London, has recently given to the world the Life and Letters of his gifted and lamented daughter, Pearl Mary-Ter?se Craigie, known best as John Oliver Hobbes. The famous Field brothers and their father, Rev. David Dudley Field, and their nephew, Justice David J. Brewer, of the United States Supreme Court, were her kinsmen. Miss Hannah Upham, a distinguished teacher mentioned in the Diary, belongs to the group of American women to whom we owe the initiative of what we now choose to call the higher education of the sex. She, in common with Mary Lyon, Emma Willard, and Eliza Bayliss Wheaton, gave a forward impulse to the liberal education of women, and our privilege is to keep their memory green. They are to be remembered by what they have done and by the tender reminiscences found here and there like pressed flowers in a herbarium, in such pages as these.

Miss Richards' marriage to Mr. Edmund C. Clarke occurred in 1866. Mr. Clarke is a veteran of the Civil War and a Commander in the Grand Army of the Republic. His brother, Noah T. Clarke, was the Principal of Canandaigua Academy for the long term of forty years. The dignified, amusing and remarkable personages who were Mrs. Clarke's contemporaries, teachers, or friends are pictured in her Diary just as they were, so that we meet them on the street, in the drawing-room, in church, at prayer-meeting, anywhere and everywhere, and grasp their hands as if we, too, were in their presence.

Wherever this little book shall go it will carry good cheer. Fun and humor sparkle through the story of this childhood and girlhood so that the reader will be cheated of ennui, and the sallies of the little sister will provoke mirth and laughter to brighten dull days. I have read thousands of books. I have never read one which has given me more delight than this.

Margaret E. Sangster.

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