Eliza Woolsey Howland to Joseph Howland at Albany.
May 27. This morning I deposited Mother with the papers at the old chestnut tree seat and helped Thomson and Mechie get a good line for the turf on the carriage road. It is not right yet, but shall be made so. Thomson says: “We’ll na gie it up, ma’am, till you say it’s right.” The sodding round the door and kitchen end[1] is a great improvement and gives quite a finished look. We all took a turn in the wagon after dinner, stopping for me to get some cut-out work from the Women’s Army Association, which is fairly under way now, with Mrs. David Davis as President, Mrs. James Kent Secretary and Miss Rankin Treasurer. Five or six dozen shirts were given out today. . . . I have a note this morning from L. H. H. asking me to make them a visit at Newport and saying Mr. H. would come on for me and bring me back. It is very kind, but I shall stand by my post here this summer. . . .
Mr. Masters told us an anecdote of old R_______ who was in a tavern barroom the other day with a party of rough fellows discussing the war, when one of them declared that “any man who would refuse to go now that Mr. Howland had gone ought to be drummed out of the community.”
[1] Where the rhododendrons are now twelve to fifteen feet high.