[Campton—Sunday, 19 June 1864]
Sunday morn. started soon after breakfast in the freshness of the cool and lovely day to walk about four or five miles. We went down to the Pemigewasset ford gathering Linnea and leaves as we went. Jamie had a severe headache in the afternoon perhaps from taking too deep a draught of the fine beer made of country herbs and evergreen shoots which is in vogue here. In truth our diet becomes wholly vegetarian. There is no meat to be had saving a very tough chicken occasionally but which they boil for a broth with rice in a capital way—but the cream and eggs and butter and bread and strawberries are perfectly delicious and what else can a child of the earth hope for.
Every day has been filled by some new excursion and new discovery of wonder and beauty. The thrushes sing to us every morning and the whippoorwills every night. The moonlights have been radiant, the acacia in full bloom and the peace of our little paradise undisturbed. We are always amused more or less by the simplicity of our host & his family. He sometimes stands leaning on the fence of the little garden nibbling rose leaves in the twilight and talking placidly with us strangely affined to the amiable cows in his lingering browsing way never venturing a proposition and thence, if a sturdy opinion be opposed to his, to any mind of doctrine. But they are kindness itself and full of the tenderest simplicities. Mostly we are left to ourselves except perhaps when we ask to be driven with two horses to Cook’s hill or some other fine point.
Last Monday a clap of thunder burst over us of intense severity. I never heard anything like it. The wind rushed through the trees as if the heavenly rivers were loosed upon the earth—yet we did not get much rain. There is quite a drought.
