What would I do without Cornelius? My imagination catches fire, but he, dear thing, keeps me close to the nub of reality. While I read aloud, he took notes and could tell me at the end just who made up “the family.” There were, Cornelius thinks, five women in their thirties, able to work on the farm, one old woman, Aunt Tabitha, who helped with the cooking, an old man, crippled in one leg but a good worker, who could teach the women a lot they needed to know. And among these five women, there were fifteen children—nine of them, fortunately, boys. Sophia speaks often of their own, True and Harlie, a boy and a girl, ten and twelve at the start of the war, and of how proud she is to see how like Elisha True is, “an earnest worker like you, who cares to do a good job. I heard him scold one of the little boys the other day because he had not dug a bed deep enough. ‘Not worth doing something badly,’ he said.” She hopes Elisha will understand about a flower bed when there is so much else to keep going, “but it is such a joy to have a posy on the table.”

Little things like that make Sophia so vivid! I could sit and dream about her for hours … how did she look? Tall, I think, big-boned and sturdy.

“Tall?” Cornelius teased me, “because you are tall? Maybe she was short and stout like Napoleon!” I must ask Eben whether he has a photograph.

Cornelius was most interested in a letter where Sophia discusses the question of children’s wages. As usual the matter is phrased as a question, first as to whether Elisha remembers the sad story of a neighbor child who had managed to save $100 to take him to Dartmouth, banked it, and then one day his father simply took it out and used it for some purpose of his own. By law a child’s wages belonged to his father, so there was nothing the boy could do about the money. What he did do was run away. This is Sophia’s introduction to a plea that Elisha go along with her decision to pay each child a small amount for work done, a wage that he may spend as he wishes. Some of the children bought candy, but Harlie saved up for a Bible with illustrations of the Holy Land, and True bought himself a hatchet that he wears proudly in his belt. It sounds so sensible, but apparently the Reverend Ellis did not approve of such radical measures as paying a child for work the Lord intended him to do humbly and for no reward!