20th August [1854] - 3d Sunday
Mr. Phipps wife & child were in N Prov. Rev. P. preached for Dr. Hall.
Tues. August 22
Susan & Emma Wood & self were in N. Prov. Susan was taken sick next day
28th Mond.
Dr. Okie
came out to see Susan - said she had a fissure in the rectum and abcess out side and that she would be sick a long time. Dr. Wild came up from B. to see her.
Frid. August 25
E.A.W. & Watty & Henry Sullivan took a boat in Providence and sailed off on a long cruise.
Sund. 3d Sept
G.A.W. came in from Phil. to see his wife & child. We rec. a letter from C.W.W. dated San Francisco Cal. July 30th 1854 written at Dr. John Cushings office. Time passed away week after week the routine of nursing being much the same for me except for one week G.A.W. spent his birth day 30 Oct & a week besides here. Mary Cushing was confined with twins on the 3rd of Oct. Susan was still confined to her bed in the great parlor.
Mond. Oct. 9th
G.A.W. went to Phil about the 12th. Susan began to bear her weight & walk a few steps. Dr. Wild visiting her about once in a week upon an average.
Oct. 15th
I ans'd. Charly's last letter & wrote a letter & sent her ^Angelica^ the money.
Oct. 16th
Dr. came by here Frid. Gave Mary advice and found Susan very much better, sitting up etc. He called up to see Roby who had had a fall.
Oct. 22d
Dr. gone back to Brookline this afternoon. Susan kept along -- improving slowly for a week then she appeared to take cold on over do. She had a check & had to keep her bed most of the time for a week. The twins were feeble -- first 4 weeks.
November 1st
E.J.C. & family began to prepare for moving back to Angle Street 2nd week in Nov. We had to delay Susan's departure a week after they moved into the city. But Susan improved & by consent of Drs. G.A.W. came on to Prov. and she was conveyed with great care to Phil. She seemed to recover from the fatigue & excitement, in the course of a week. It took me as long to get over the fatigue of hard work &c. -- after being on my feet so much I suffered great pain in them. I have made me a plaid dress since I have been here, and some shirt work &c. Read some of Miss Austen's work & also "Now & Then" -- interesting on circumstantial evidence". Also "Shirley". I rec. an interesting letter from Walter , Brookline.
Sund, 3d of Dec. 1854
I rec. a nice letter from Dr. C.W. last eve. with[?] advice for Susan addit. for me to walk out every day.
Abraham H. Okie (1819-1882) was a leading homeopathic physician in Providence. He attended to the extended Wild family members in Rhode Island.
Probably John Henry Sullivan (1833-1858), Ellen Sullivan's brother. An 1853 graduate of Harvard, he later settled in Milwaukee. He drowned in a boating accident on Lake Michigan in 1858.
John J. Cushing (1822-1879) was Mary (Wild) Cushing's brother-in-law. As a young man he moved to Illinois where he studied and practiced medicine before moving to California in 1849 or 1850. "He lived for many years in the mountains, where he followed the business of mining," according to his obituary in the San Francisco Bulletin (September 2, 1879), "but he was a better doctor than miner and found his natural field" in San Francisco.
Charles Wild Cushing (1854-1902) and Edward Allen Cushing (1854-1890) were born on October 3rd.
It's not possible to know which of Jane Austen's novels Mary was reading, but it seems likely it was from a set of five novels published by Little Brown in Boston in 1853. They were Sense and Sensibility; Pride and Prejudice; Emma; Mansfield Park; and Northanger Abbey.
Now & Then was an 1847 novel by the British writer Samuel Warren based on a criminal case in England.
This is almos certainly Charlotte Bronte's 1849 novel Shirley, A Tale
