poor driver, and it rained so dreadfully. M. follows me round like a
little dog; if I go down cellar she goes down; if I pick a strawberry
she picks one; if I stop picking she stops. She is the sweetest lamb
that ever was, and I am the Mary that's got her. I don't believe anybody
else in the world loves me so well, unless it possibly is papa, and he
doesn't follow me down cellar, and goes off and picks strawberries all
by himself, and that on Sunday, too, when I had forbidden berrypicking!
We are rioting in strawberries, just as we did last summer. We live a
good deal at sixes and sevens, but nobody cares. This afternoon I have
been arranging a basket for the hall table, with mosses, ferns, shells
and white coral; ever so pretty.

_Wednesday._--It is a splendid day and I expect papa. The children have
not said a word about their food, though partly owing to no butcher and
partly to the heat, I have had for two days next to nothing; picked fish
one day and fish picked the next. We regarded to-day's dinner as a most
sumptuous one, and I am sure Victoria's won't taste so good to her.
Letters keep pouring in, urging papa to accept the Professorship at
Chicago, and declaring the vote of the Assembly to be the voice of God.
Of course, if he must accept, we should have to give up our dear little
home here. But to me his leaving the ministry would be the worst
thing about it. After dinner the boys carried me off bodily to see
strawberries and other plants; then they made me go to the mill, and by
that time I had no hair-pins on my head, to say nothing of hair. The
boys are working away like all possessed. A little bird, probably one
of those hatched here, has just come and perched himself on the
piazza, railing in front of me, and is making me an address which,
unfortunately, I do not understand.... You have inherited from me a want
of reverence for relics and the like. I wouldn't go as far as our barn
to see the fig-leaves Adam and Eve wore, or all the hair of all the
apostles; and when people are not born hero-worshippers, they can't
even worship themselves as heroes. Fancy Dr. Schaff sending me back the
MS. of a hymn I gave him, from a London printing-office! What could I do
with it? cover jelly with it? He sent me a beautiful copy of his book,
"Christ in Song."

_Thursday, June 30th._--Papa, with J. and M., came late last night, and
we all made as great a time as if the Great Mogul had come. They give
a most terrific acc