[Manchester—Sunday, 23 August 1874]
Sunday August 23. Drove to the Townes to take up Robert Darrah & carry him to Magnolia to hear Mr. Frothingham but he had not yet arrived—then took up Miss Bartlett, Mr. Gilbert’s niece, who was glad to go. A beautiful discourse closing with Goethe’s words in Wilhelm Meister about the three forms of worship—“for what is above us, for what is around us, for what is beneath us, & the last is the highest.”
It is hard when life is so full of sweetness and truth in man to man to have our neighbours The Townes nourish a reserve of feeling against us as they do—it is hard to bear—but poor Mr. Beecher!! Here is a man who on a large scale endures what everybody may suffer from in small ways. Let us look at his trouble and be silent regarding our own.
Finished Goethe’s Autobiography this week—we also past one day in town partly at the dentist’s where my darling had a bad job done & I a very little one and partly in getting old furniture for our house which we found in such quantity that we think we shall get everything we have to buy within one thousand dollars.
Our avenue will be begun this week.
