I certainly shall not attend another unless I can have a total abstinence man to accompany me, and not one whose highest delight is to make a fool of himself." She says in this letter: "The town election has just been held and the good people elected a distiller for supervisor and a rumseller for justice of the peace." In 1848 she shows the first signs of growing tired of teaching and wonders if she is to follow it for a lifetime.

She says: "I don't know whether I am weary of well-doing, but oh, if I could only unstring my bow for a few short months, I think I could take up my work with renewed vigor." She is very homesick, after the two years' absence, and so makes a visit to Rochester in August.

For this she gets "a drab silk bonnet shirred inside with pink, and her blue lawn and her brown silk made over, half low-necked." She has "a beautiful green delaine and a black braise [barege] which are very becoming." She wants a fancy hat, a $15 pin and $30 mantilla, every one of which she resolves to deny herself, but afterwards writes: "There is not a mantilla in town like mine." In March, 1849, her beloved cousin Margaret, with whom she has been living for the past two years, gives birth to a child and she remains with her through the ordeal.

In a letter to her mother immediately afterwards, she expresses the opinion that there are some drawbacks to marriage which make a woman quite content to remain single.

She quotes a little bit of domestic life: "Joseph had a headache the other day and Margaret remarked that she had had one for weeks.