[Manchester—Sunday, 24 July 1870]
Sunday 23 [sic]. Another very hot day. This place is cool by night and I awoke early refreshed and took a long walk to the shore. Others could not sleep so well, finding less air.
We talk together about Mr. Bartol! What is so terrible to us as a brain tired, and a tired but unworn frame.
The people go & come from church while we sit in our rooms. I hear the quiet sounds of their feet on the gravel and an occasional carriage arrives with people from a distance. I lie upon the bed reading Swedenborg’s Heaven & Hell & hear the congregation sing. It is far better than going to church.
Mrs Bartol amused me the other day by telling me of a poor colored woman who was scrubbing for her once when it occurred to Mrs B. to tell the woman of the death of a colored friend of their congregation. You don’t say she’s dead, the scrubber rejoined, I’d have gone to the funeral if I’d have known it—“Yes she’s gone, and she was a very good woman,” said Mrs. B. “Nancy was queer though” said the other, “now, she thought that if you love your neighbor as yourself, that was enough, and you’d go to heaven.” Well, said Mrs Bartol, “what more would you have!” “Why, Nancy didn’t have no change o’heart. I dare say she was good woman enough but it ain’t no use without change o’ heart.”
The week has passed again quietly & swiftly but not quite so satisfactorily as the first. I suppose the extreme heat is less conducive to hours of work, if I ever do anything worthy of that word but at least, trying to work may be called so sometimes.
Cards from Gad’s Hill. Soon the place will have passed into other hands and we shall have no more to do on earth with it sacred name.