[From the household ledger of Clara Westbrook, The Crescent, Port Hume, 1899 volume. The 9th of April entries, with the day's other entries intact to show the ordinary context.]

Sunday the Ninth of April, 1899.

Fair weather. E. wind. A light rain in the afternoon.

Household expenditures and receipts, day:

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  ITEM                                            IN         OUT
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  Allowance from D. for the week, received         18.00       —
  Marketing — Peasely's — dry goods                  —        2.40
  Marketing — Henderson's — meats (Sabbath)          —        1.15
  Dairy — Pomeroy's — as arranged                    —         .85
  Cook's household money                             —        3.00
  Sunday offering — First Presbyterian               —        5.00
  To Mrs. Danielson, widow of the late sexton —
    birthday-Sunday gift, per custom                 —        2.00
  Hansom cab from Pomeroy's                          —         .20
  Postage (4 letters abroad @ 5¢)                    —         .20
  Thread & needles, Oberman's                        —         .30
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  Household Account Balance Forward                                $142.86
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Notes of the day:

Attended morning service at First Presbyterian with D. Rev. Tanner preached from Micah 6:8. He is showing his age in the pulpit now. A tenderer sermon than his 1880s sternness. I was glad.

The Crescent is very fine in its April colors today. We walked home from the church by the long way.

D. gave me for my birthday a pair of garnet earrings in a small velvet case. He is, as always, more thoughtful than I give him public credit for. I have written him a note of thanks though he is in the next room.

A package was delivered this afternoon by express from the firm of Reddick & Son — a small wooden box, sealed at its corners with the bronze seal I recognize as my mother's — which the covering letter explains was placed in the firm's keeping by my mother in the year 1893, with the instruction that it was to be delivered to me upon my thirty-fifth birthday, which is today. Mr. Reddick's son, who signed the covering letter, apologizes that I was not earlier informed of its existence; the firm had, he explains, respected the strict terms of my mother's instruction.

I signed for the box in the hallway. I gave the delivery man a dime. I carried the box to the small bedroom upstairs and set it upon the dressing table there. I did not open it at once. I came down and wrote these ledger entries, and took tea with D., and then went up and sat with the box for an hour before I did open it.

I will not record the contents here. I will record only that I have, in the course of opening this box, come into a knowledge I did not have this morning, and which changes in certain particulars the picture of our family I carried to church. I have read my mother's letter to me twice. I have refolded everything and returned it to the box. The box is now in the bottom of my own linen press, behind the summer linens I shall not use again until June.

I will not speak of this to D.

Mrs. Penn, the Humes' housekeeper, passed me this afternoon on her way home from morning devotions at Elm Street Mission, and said to me only, in the way she has, "Miss Clara — thirty-five today. Your mother would have been proud of the woman." She smiled, not with her whole face. She walked on.

I am thirty-five today. I am not a woman of my mother's generation. I will have, for what time I am given, a good marriage and some children and a private knowledge of my own family's story. That will have to do.

C.W.