ENPages That Mention Wilde's
Mary Emma Jocelyn diary, 1851-1852.
p. 118
Friday, May 7th.. Clear and sultry. Sarah Wilde spent the greater part of the afternoon here, and her incessant chattering afforded Carrie and I considerable amusement. As Carrie says, we love to hear her talk just to see what a goose she will make of herself. But [Sarah] has some good qualities notwithstanding; she is good-hearted, generous and affectionate, yet a child she will always be, for what is necessary to make a [lady, scratched out] woman or a lady she has no idea. Her life is all outside; of the inward she has but a dim perception looking merely at externals her childish fancy is gratified or displeased accordingly, and her smiles and tears follow each other in as quick succession as those of any baby five or six years old. She has just beauty enough to make her vain, and by hearing the conversation of other young ladies she has gathered some notions of the beaux and getting married, on which engrossing topics she discourses with the most innocent, and original fluency. To the no small edification of her amazed and diverted hearers. But in fact in this wordly wise age, when a maiden of ten knows more than the grandmother did at twenty it is refreshing to meeting occaisionally with such an artless specimen of young ladyhood and were not her simplicity so apt to degenerate into nonsense, she would really be an interesting girl.
[written sideways along margin] Attending prayer meeting with Father of the Wilde's in the evening