Vale of tears - 1772
Cover of the Everyman edition of Anna Green Winslow's diary.
Introduction
Anna Green Winslow was ten years old in 1771 when her parents sent her from Nova Scotia to Boston, Massachusetts, to a finishing school. She wrote an interesting diary both as practice in penmanship and as a record of her doings. It shows a girl who loved clothes, enjoyed fun, worked hard even while sick, constantly read and quoted the Bible, and stayed busy improving herself. Anna is thought to have died of consumption (tuberculosis) in 1779. Here is her entry for this day March 11, 1772.
Quote
“ ‘Boast not thyself of tomorrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.’ Thus king Solomon, inspired by the Holy Ghost, cautions, Pro. xxvii. 1. My aunt says, this is a most necessary lesson to be learn’d & laid up in the heart. I am quite of her mind. I have met with a disappointment to day, & aunt says, I may look for them every day—we live in a changing world—in scripture call’d a vale of tears.”
Winslow, Anna Green. Diary of Anna Green Winslow, a Boston School Girl of 1771. Edited by Alice Morse Earle. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company; Cambridge: The Riverside Press, 1895.