"_June 17._ Up at five and to get a boat. Maud and the Lieutenant [Zalinski] rowed me to Fort Independence and back, a most refreshing excursion. Dear Dr. Hedge came out to make a morning visit. I kept him as long as I could. We talked of Bartol, Rubinstein, Father Taylor, and Margaret Fuller, whom he knew when she was fourteen years old. He urged me to labor for dress reform, which he considered much needed. Had preached two sermons on the subject which his dressy parishioners resented, telling him that their husbands approved of their fine clothes. I begged him to unearth these sermons and give them to us at the club. We spoke of marriage, and I unfolded rapidly my military and moral theory of human relations. Thought of a text for a sermon on this subject: 'Arise, take up thy bed and walk.' This because the ills of marriage which are deemed incurable are not. We must meet them with the energetic will which converts evil into good, and without which all good degenerates into evil." * * * * * July finds her at Oak Glen. She is full of texts and sermons, but makes time to write to Fanny Perkins,[75] proposing "_Picnics with a Purpose_, sketching, seaside lectures, astronomical evenings." This thought may have been the germ from which grew the Town and Country Club, of which more hereafter. [75] Mrs. Charles C. Perkins. The writing of sermons seems to have crowded serious poetry out of sight in these days, but the Comic Muse was always at hand with tambourine and flageolet, ready to strike up at a moment's notice. There was much coming and going of young men and maidens at Oak Glen in those days, and much singing of popular songs of a melancholy or desperate cast. The maiden was requested to take back the heart she had given; what was its anguish to her? There were handfuls of earth in a coffin hid, a coffin under the daisies, the beautiful, beautiful daisies; and so on, and so on, _ad lachrymam_. She bore all this patiently; but one day she said to Maud, "Come! You and these young persons know nothing whatever of real trouble. I will make you a song about a real trouble!" And she produced, words and tune, the following ditty:-- COOKERY BOOKERY, OH! My Irish cook has gone away Upon my dinner-party day; I don't know what to do or say-- Cookery bookery, oh! _Chorus_: Sing, saucepan, range, and kitchen fire! Sing, coals are high and always higher! Sing, crossed and vexed, till you expire! Cookery bookery, oh! She could cook every kind of dish, "Wittles" of meat and "wittles" of fish, And soup as fancy as you wish-- And she is gone away! She weighed two hundred pounds of cheek, She had a voice that made me meek, I had to listen when she did speak-- Cookery bookery, oh! My husband comes, a saucy elf, And eyes the saucepan on the shelf; Says he, "Why don't you cook yourself?" Cookery bookery, oh! _Chorus_: