[From Mrs. Adelaide Penn's personal household account book, Hume House, 1895-1898. Black buckram, pencil-ruled, Penn's careful hand. Kept in a drawer of her sitting room in the third-floor staff wing. Selected entries.]

May 1895. "In the matter of Mrs. H.'s confinement, the household is ordered to the following adjustments."

  — Nursery closed for the present; linens to storage.
  — Mrs. H.'s day-room to be kept shaded; flowers weekly as
    her preference permits.
  — Mr. H. is not to be disturbed in the library between the
    hours of 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. of any night in the next
    fortnight; Mrs. Wen has been instructed.
  — The subscription concert tickets for the 14th of May are
    to be returned to the Society with the Company's regrets.

Special standing charge, entered this month per Mr. H.'s
personal direction, to be continued indefinitely, accounting
separately:

  — "H.P., Buffalo"          monthly                $28.00
    (paid by draft on Mr. H.'s personal account;
    drafts to be signed by him monthly; I am to
    prepare the monthly requisition sheet and
    present with the household statement.)

June 1895.

"H.P., Buffalo — $28.00 — paid 3rd, Mr. H.'s personal draft."

[the same line recurs in every subsequent month, with the draft date and the acknowledgment. Entries reproduced from selected months:]

July 1895:   H.P., Buffalo — $28.00 — paid 2nd, Mr. H.'s personal draft.
Nov 1895:    H.P., Buffalo — $28.00 — paid 1st, Mr. H.'s personal draft.
Apr 1896:    H.P., Buffalo — $28.00 — paid 3rd, Mr. H.'s personal draft.
...
Dec 1897:    H.P., Buffalo — $28.00 — paid 1st, Mr. H.'s personal draft.
                                       *[pencil in margin: "one year
                                         ending. Mr. H. renewed without
                                         request this month. — A.P."]*
...
Oct 1898:    H.P., Buffalo — $28.00 — paid 1st, Mr. H.'s personal draft.
                                       *[smaller pencil in margin: "I
                                         was informed by Mr. H. on the
                                         27th. The line will close with
                                         this month. — A.P."]*

November 1898.

"Standing charge 'H.P., Buffalo' closed as of this month. Mr. H. has instructed that no further draft be drawn. The closing has been accompanied by instructions on a private matter which I have recorded separately in my own journal (not this book), and which I will keep as I have kept the other such matters of this house. — A.P."

November 1898 otherwise a light month. Mrs. H. wore mourning for two weeks beginning the 8th, for "a distant cousin in Philadelphia." There is no such cousin. I know of none. I entered Mrs. H.'s mourning in the household calendar without inquiring. Mr. H. wore the mourning band on his left coat sleeve for the same period."

[A small slip of paper tucked between the pages at this entry, in Penn's older hand, possibly written in the 1910s when she was organizing her own papers:]

"Mrs. H.'s infant daughter was not stillborn in 1895. She was confined at the Hartwell Place Home for Children of Special Constitution, in Buffalo, from May of 1895 until her death of pneumonia in October of 1898, aged three years and some months. Mr. H. visited her twice in those years; Mrs. H. did not. The child is buried, as Mr. H. himself arranged, in the Hartwell Place Children's cemetery in an unmarked grave. Mrs. H. was told only that she had gone, peacefully, at the Home. Mrs. H. has not, in my hearing, ever said the child's name. The child's name was Eleanor."

"I have told this to no person. I have written it here once. I will not write it again. This book goes, at my death, to the fire. — A.P."