Journal of Richard Austin Rice, 1878 - 1887

1878

January 10. Professor and Mrs. Torrey are at home again after more than six months absences in Europe and their house is ready with its welcome. It heartens Marion much to know that Mrs. Torrey is nearby and to see her frequently.

January 29. My classroom work today was done under much distraction of mind. Both morning and afternoon I hurried home impelled by the thought that the great event of fatherhood and motherhood might have come to pass in my absence. Dr. Thayer came out of the house this afternoon as I reached the gate and told me all was going well but that I had still some hours longer of anxious suspense. Sister Sallie came at five and Mrs. Torrey after supper. The baby was born at five minutes before eleven this evening, a boy with dark hair and eyes, weighing seven and one half pounds. Mrs. Torrey stayed until about midnight and was a bulwark of comfort. Dr. Thayer's steady and kindly cheerfulness helped us all through the anxiety. Smyth was most considerate and helpful. He insisted on doing all the errands and brought a new supply of ether just as the last drop of the doctor's store was used up.

January 31. Both Marion and the baby are doing well.

February 2. Mrs. Hill refuses to let us have the extra room for which I bargained in September. This gives us a valid reason for moving out before the end of the college year. Meantime with Sallie, nurse, and baby Dick our quarters are overcrowded. My study is turned into a nursery and I am turned out.

February 10. Sallie received the news of the death of one of her most intimate friends, but she hides not only the fact but her grief from Marion lest it should excite her too much.

February 15. Sallie has gone home as Marion is now progressing favorably and the crowded quarters were not at all fair comfortable for her. Now I am able to use the nursery as a study during the evening and as Smyth has no use for his room in the daytime, being in the college laboratory, I get on fairly well.

March 25. Marion is now able to go out again and we are looking for a house to move into on the first of May, the regular moving day in this city. The only one we can find on the hill within convenient distance from the college is a small one on Pearl Street, but it is decidedly out of repair and the owner wishes to sell rather than rent it. As we do not care to buy property in that location we have decided not to enter into any negotiations for it.

April 1. Smyth has been much interested in our search for a house suitable to our wants and needs and now that we are unable to find it he suggests that we take a somewhat larger house together in which he would have a study and bedroom, paying one quarter of the rent and one third of the household expenses, except in the summer vacation when he would not be in town.

April 15. Marion has agreed to this arrangement and we have hired the Francis house on College Street quite near the college park. It has large elm trees at the street front, there is a fine garden west of the house with fruit trees and grape arbors, an asparagus bed and raspberry patch. South of the house are a barn, wood-house, ice house, and dog kennel. A gate opens into Madame Wheeler's grounds. Mrs. Engleby's cottage is on the western corner of the square. Bishop Hall's house occupies the remaining corner, there being only four residences on the entire square. There are several open fireplaces in the house, but it has no suitable toilet conveniences. It stands on high ground several feet above the sea level, the western windows and veranda afford unimpeded views of the lake and the Adirondack Mountains. The rent is four hundred dollars, and we have engaged two servants. The Rev. Mr. Safford has recommended a Frenchman as a gardener: we shall accordingly start out quite fully equipped for housekeeping.

April 30. We moved from Mrs. Hill's to our new home today. My mother came from New Haven at five to help us get into "runing order", her experience and energy will do the trick, so quickly that Marion will hardly be conscious of the process. Baby Dick is thriving, and grows apace. A baby carriage must now be acquired, and a dog for the kennel. No cat will be allowed on the premises for we prefer birds.

May 12. It took a couple of days to get Smyth's rooms ready and then he moved in almost immediately. Mother and I are busy buying furniture, crockery, and various household utensils. She enjoys it all immensely and has worked like a beaver. Now we can celebrate M's birthday in peace and quietness. Madame Wheeler and Mrs. Torrey have been very kind, and Ware is greatly pleased that we are to live so near to him, not more than five minutes walk from door to door. Mrs. Torrey is even nearer and Mrs. Spencer Marsh only a couple of blocks farther away.

May 20. Mother says her work is done and she must go home to Father. We tell her she ought to sit down now and enjoy the result of her labors, for the asparagus bed is ready for the knife, but I must put her on the morning train. I am sure we shall not soon forget her devotion nor will Marion forget what a relief it was to her mind to see her enter the house.

June 12. Jim and Sallie arrived ten days ago for a visit. Jim is so pleased with the place, the drives, and our friends that he wishes to come every year for a month or more and has agreed to assume the quarter-rent for the time when Smyth is absent in the summer. Today Ware, Smyth, and I went to Ticonderoga by boat to try out the effect of the lake air on the hay fever which torments both Ware and me. So far as this purpose went it was not a success, but we had a wonderful variety of cloud and mountain view. As I had been there before I was able to act as guide to the ruins of the old fort.

July 1st. The trustees have raised my salary to fifteen hundred dollars with the stipulation that I shall teach the freshmen in Latin. To this I have agreed as they are willing to restrict it to the historical writers, Livy and Tacitus, which will avoid ill-feeling on the part of the classics professor. It has long been the tradition here that half a page, say twenty to twenty-five lines, of Livy and Tacitus is the maximum assignment for a lesson during freshman year. The instructor who tried to break the tradition by imposing longer lessons, simply as lessons, found himself outmatched by the students and is seeking a job somewhere else. I shall attack the problem of control in a different way. If I can interest them in the subject as history they will then see that syntax, though subordinate, is vital to the correct interpretation of the text and it may lose some of its dryness. The lessons or daily text-assignments will have no fixed length. The instruction in Latin will add four hours a week to my week during the autumn term, but in the winter and spring terms the instruction in French will be given by a new man. As it is so short a course and necessarily so elementary, I am quite content to give it up for the Latin which includes one exercise a week in Roman history, and this will I think enable me to put the main stress in reading Livy and Tacitus on the use as material of history.

July 2. Mother's birthday. She will come with Father and Anna for a visit very soon. Smyth has gone away for the vacation. The arrangement we entered into has proved very satisfactory to both of us, and his absence during the summer allows us to have our relatives and friends with us more freely than when college is in session, as his rooms become available.

July 3. The garden is a delight. It is so large that it affords sufficient range for the baby's outings; the apple trees give shade for the enjoyment of a book. Louis is an excellent gardener and we are already reaping the benefits of his labors in fresh salads.

July 10. Father, Mother, and Anna did not make a long visit; they were of course much interested in the place, and in the sights the town affords, but the weather was so hot even driving was little satisfaction. The south wind when it reaches Burlington has upon everyone a strangely depressing effect, like malaria. A Burlingtonian can tell without looking if the south wind is blowing, and a person who is somewhat rundown often feels it acutely. On Anna's account it seemed best to Mother and Father to move on to mountain air for the remainder of their holiday, and they have found a suitable place in New Hampshire at Sunset Hill. Now Ned Rawson is with us, but without his trunk which generally remains behind. He plans to go from here to a lake in the Adirondacks where some Brooklyn acquaintances are passing the summer.

July 14. In talking over this plan with me it seemed to involve a contingency that he is not yet ready to face and accordingly I advised him not to go.

July 18. He now proposes that I go with him to Bethlehem, N. H., and as the hay fever season seems to be over I shall do so.

July 20th. We took the morning train yesterday but I had no sooner landed in Bethlehem when the enemy attacked me, and I returned today.

July 24th. Dr. Thayer came in this morning to ask me to drive with him out into the country to Burke's Corners, near which he has a patient. On the way he told me that the husband of his patient is a farmer who makes the best butter in this region. He sends it all to Boston, where he gets double the highest market price. He will not sell a pound in Burlington, not even to the Doctor, who has tried to persuade him to let him have butter in lieu of cash for medical attendance. "He owes me quite a lot of money," said the doctor, "but he will not furnish me with butter." The farmer was at home and while Dr. Thayer was looking after the wife, he showed me his dairy. I was charmed by the wholesome freshness and the scientific method of butter making, entering into his explanations with an interest that he appreciated. As the Doctor and I were driving away, his foot struck something under the dust-cloth that covered his knees. "What's that?" he said. "Only a small firkin of unsalted butter and when I need more I am to let him know." "Well, well, are you a magician?" I had seen the farmer hand to the doctor the five dollars I had paid him, but he evidently had not told him how he got it. When we were in town again the Doctor had a share of the plunder for once at all events.

July 27th. The intense heat is broken by a violent thunderstorm. A swallow fell down the chimney into the nursery. I am at work on Roman history and Livy's syntax.

July 28th. A glorious day, not a cloud in the sky, a September freshness in the air. Such a day makes us forget the previous bad weather and the weariness of the heat. Past existence even drops out of the mind in the perfect delight of the present.

July 29th. Little Dick is six months old. He lies motionless on my knees so long as I pat his cheek with anything cool and smooth like an ivory paper cutter. So many strange features appear in the development of a child; he surprises us often with some unlooked for, apparently freakish trait. He already shows a decided antipathy to certain persons. How to account for it. If I stop the paper cutter, almost instantly his fingers, arms, and feet are set in motion and this does not seem to tire him.

August 10. Katy came to visit us for a few days; she paid the baby so little attention, passing him by when she entered the house on her arrival without a greeting, that I was quite vexed with her. She has always longed to have a child and her disappointment came again to her mind no doubt in the presence of her sister's good fortune. At any rate, her indifference to Dickie was enough to spoil my pleasure in her visit.

August 27. It is superb weather. The sunset last night was the most beautiful one of the summer, masses of color in a luminous sky, with a clearness of outline, rare even here. The mountains seemed to be much nearer than the horizon, so that we looked into a golden sky far, far beyond them. We often see these mountains enveloped in a luminous haze, the lines and masses melting into one another, fading away into the distance; lost in the sky or water the mind relapses into a dreamy revery or is stirred by a gentle longing. Very different is the effect upon it of such definite color, such limpid air, such distinct outline. We look into definite depths of ether, yet almost touch the "sculptured hills." There is no vague longing but clear, unmingled satisfaction in life. We seem to be lifted to some higher, less material plane of existence. We breathe diviner air. The care, the sordidness, the pain of the world are forgotten, we share the exultant mood of nature. What a triumph of creation, the fashioning of such a day. What a joy to meet it and be borne aloft by it.

August 31. The beginning of the college year is near at hand. I have not been away from home for more than a night during the whole vacation, a new experience to me after spending every summer in journeying since I left school. I have enjoyed the quiet and freedom of home life in contrast to boarding house and hotel. It has been a new pleasure to entertain friends in my own house, for such a visit as Ned makes is the best gift a friend can receive, the best he can bestow. Marion stands the cares of housekeeping well, but the summer heat and the south wind were trying for her to bear. My sister May has been with us lately and she has had much attention. Father had hoped she would stay with us this coming winter, taking my courses in the college, but she has other plans in her head and our wishes do not count. She will go home in a day or two. The autumnal sounds have already begun. The evenings are resonant with the chirping of crickets.

September 2. The most enduring friendships betray no curious prying into the strength of the foundation. Two friends almost never love each other equally well, but it is an ill- omen for the endurance of friendship when one becomes conscious of this fact and insists on an equilibrium or a turning of the scale. Such relationships have their origin in nature. Her nice adjustments may not be disturbed with impunity. Analysis of friendship or affection savors of sentimentalism and springs from a morbid condition of the mind.

September 4. Smyth is with us again. The baby takes to him at once.

September 5. The college year began this morning. I have twelve freshmen in Latin. A discussion which began in Faculty meeting last night made me wonder what could be expected of education when those to whom it is entrusted are inhospitable to the ideas and opinions of others, keeping no open door of welcome.

September 10. The lively widow whose recurring phrase, "Life is what we make it," became a household word has captured the military instructor and now resumes the function of bride in the society of the town, or may I say usurps it?
Mrs. Spencer Marsh has copied for me a drawing of a beggar by Rembrandt upon a woolen panel which now stands on my table.

October 16. A drive with Ware to Mallett's Bay, the autumn colors soft and harmonious, yellow elms and birches standing against dark green pines like masses of flame.

October 18th. The first storm of autumn began in the night. The leaves are falling fast. Smyth and I get out for a walk of eight or ten miles every tolerable day.

November 6. Mrs. Spencer Marsh who has been very ill for some time, died today. Oh, the bitter grief of it. The vanishing of her lovely spirit impoverishes all her friends.

November 28. Two years married. We celebrate the day with flowers and a dinner to which Ware will come. Dickie will be ten months old tomorrow. My work keeps me too busy for other writing or putting much into this record. Our servants seem contented thus far, which is the solid basis of domestic happiness.

December 1. The Quarter Century Club shows no sign of life this year. Ware and I are devoting Monday evenings to the reading of Dante's Divine Comedy.

December 10. My plan for the conduct of Freshman Latin has proved successful. I chose the books of Livy that deal with the career of Hannibal, gave at the outset a description of it and also its relation to Carthage and Rome. Illustrating the text so far as possible by diagrams which the boys were eager to copy on a small scale for their notes. They became interested in the material and the method of handling it, and the amount of text we read at each exercise soon extended to four or five pages. It took about ten minutes each day to translate to them rapidly the text for the next day's work so that they knew what was coming and their work on it ceased to be a mysterious grind. I held them very strictly to accuracy on the review and relying on their interest in the main subject it was not difficult to convince them of the importance of a thorough study of the syntax if they were to know the exact meaning the author intended to convey. Even Latin prose composition was brought into this scheme and ceased to be a bugbear. President Buckham has kept an eye on this venture for he was a professor of Greek in the college before he became its president. This department has been in charge of a Harvard graduate who gives Mr. Buckham much anxiety since he has no sense of humor and fails to exercise the tact required in dealing with students. One stormy day he gave them a lecture on the proper dress to be worn in the classroom while he himself had on an old coat and a flannel shirt. The next day everyone who owned or could borrow a [flannel] shirt had it on. The rest had a strip of flannel for a neckpiece. Another day there being deep snow on the ground he came to his classroom in rubber boots, which he left in the corridor outside the door, wearing slippers in the room. When the hour was over and he was ready to put on his boots they had disappeared, but from a window he discovered them reposing on a drift behind the building.

December 25. Little Dick's first Christmas tree was lighted at half-past four this afternoon. His eyes shown with wonder and glee. The many flaming candles and the golden angel at the top held his gaze from the first instant. There were beautiful presents from our friends. Ware and Miss Loomis remained for dinner. We drank Ned Rawson's health in the Mariola he sent.

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Footnotes:

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2. Sallie is Sarah Bancroft (Foster) Leavitt, sister of Marion Ashley (Foster) Rice, Richard's wife. She married her cousin, James Taylor Leavitt. They had no children. She was born in 1842 and died in the 1930's. |  Back
3. I am not sure who Smyth was. He could have been George Adams Smith, who taught chemistry and physics from 1877-80, according to Sylvia Bugbee at the UVM archives. |  Back
4. "baby" Dick is Richard Ashley Rice. He was born 29 Jan 1878 in Burlington, Vt. He was educated in Williamstown, Lawrenceville Academy in Princeton, N.J., Williams College (1896-99), and Harvard (1900-1903), where he received an M.A. He served as an instructor at Lawrenceville Academy, 1899-1900. In 1903 he became an English teacher at the Naval Academy and then at the University of Indiana at Blooming ton. On 22 June 1916 he married Anne Mary Dye of Bloomington, Indiana. He then became a Professor of English at Smith College in Northampton, Mass. He married second Jean Kaplansky from Santa Cruz 21 Sept. 1933 and third Frona Brooks. Richard died in Newton, Mass. 6 Aug. 1955. |  Back
5. Richard's mother is Parnella (Scranton) Rice |  Back
6. Ware is Rev. L. G. Ware, a good friend of Richard's. He is undoubtably Loammi Goodenow Ware, born in 1827 in Boston, Mass. the son of Horatio Gates Ware and Keziah Eames Goodenow. He died 10 April 1891 in Burlington, VT. See Rootsweb's WorldConnect for details. |  Back
7. Richard's father is Richard Elisha Rice. He was born 8 Feb 1816 in Winthrop (Saybrook), Conn. He attended school in Saybrook, at Lee's Academy in Madison, Conn. Feb 1833 - Aug. 1835, and Yale 1835 -1839. On 22 Nov 1839 he left Winthrop to take charge of an academy in Deleware, Ohio (15 students and virtually defunct), staying there through the winter of 1840-1841. From 1841-1844 he was principal of Lee's Academy. In Oct. 1844 he entered the mercantile business with R.A. Scranton in Augusta, Ga. He married Parnella Scranton 1 Sep 1845. In 1847 he again became principal of Lee's. In 1850 he established a boarding school for boys in Stamford, Ct. On 7 Sept. 1864 he became Sect./treasurer of a manufacturing firm in New Haven and resided at 29 College St. From May-Sept. 1873 he and his son Richard engaged in a business venture in Europe that was cut short by the panic of 1873. Parnella died 28 March 1893 and Richard a few years later, 30 May 1897 in New Haven. |  Back
8. Jim is James Taylor Leavitt, husband and cousin of Sarah Bancroft Foster |  Back
9. Anna is Anna Elizabeth Rice, sister of Richard. Married James Knapp |  Back
10. Ned is Edward Kirk Rawson, friend and classmate of Richard's at Yale. He was born in Albany, NY in 1847, the son of Thomas Read Rawson and Louisa W. Dawes. He was a Navy chaplain and an author. See the Rawson Letter on this site and various genealogies on Rootsweb's WorldConnect for more details. The Rawson Family Association had information on him, but their website seems to have been discontinued. |  Back
11. Katy is Katherine Stokes Foster, sister of Marion and Sarah. She was married, but I have no information on her husband. His name seems to have been Stephen Hopkins. |  Back
12. May is Mary Katrine Rice, sister of Richard. She later married William Thompson Sedgewick, the "Father of Public Health". |  Back