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name suggested the possibility that Margaret might be part French; the date, I remembered, correlated with the first year of her husband’s tenure as justice in the courts in Stone Harbor and Boston; and she herself must have been in her early twenties at the time. Even as I was digesting this morsel, gooseflesh ran down my spine and arms as I realized that this was the third volume of her journal—was it possible that the others still existed? A whole series? Hold on a second, Emma, don’t go looking for more, when you haven’t even read one page of this one!
    But the epigram dragged me back to the miracle of this book. I had no idea who had written the quote, but it sounded classical to me. The thing that kept my heart racing was that it was the sort of thing you’d see in a man’s journal—it was extremely rare for women to know the classics, even in translation. She was very well read indeed, if she was familiar with the Greek and Latin writers. Margaret Chase’s family was rich, but not aristocratic—I had learned from her husband Matthew’s documents that her father was a merchant. And it wasn’t yet fashionable in Europe for even wellborn women to be so educated. And the tone of the epigram was so strongly religious, that told me a lot about her as well. This was going to be a trip. I could tell it would be an adventure to learn about this woman’s life.
    I closed my eyes and said a little prayer to Saint Helena, the patron saint of archaeologists, before I looked at the first entry:
     
    May 29/This morning took into service Nora, a little blacke Wenche…
     
    That slowed me down a second. The name Nora suggested Irish, while black…of course. It was taking me a minute to acclimate to the idiom of the time. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, black or white generally referred to hair rather than skin color. And her spelling, rather than being condemned for its irregularity, would have been praised for its creativity. I continued to read:
    …a little blacke Wench cursed with as terrible a Mouthe as I have ever had the Misfortune to heer. Tis little Surprize to discover that she is Irish, and as rabblesome as any who hie beyond the Pale, so I fear Correction will come only at great length of Time and much exercise of Discipline. Insofr as Matthew bade me take her up I will do so, but I would too his sense of Mercy and Justice extended as far as his poore Wife! V. gd—I will keep her, but I will also watch the Plate. V. hot still, set Katie to whip’g the Sleeves of the green Linnen; Jenny to Jellie makg. Tomorrow to visit Rev. Blnchd who has been much troubled with his Wind—I will carry my parsley Tonic to him as he says it is the only Thing that brings ease.
    I could barely keep from shrieking with glee! I had hoped that the journal would not be just a chronicle of the weather and the Sunday sermon’s text, but this sort of detail was an unbelievable wealth of information. Servant troubles, household tasks, opinions—and oh, what opinions!—feelings, gassy preachers and their cure! Oooh, what a book this was! What a book mine would be!
    Slow down, Emma! I chided myself. This is only the first paragraph; what will you do if the rest isn’t as detailed as this? I flipped carefully through the pages, and every entry seemed to be at least a paragraph long. Although most people tended to use the words diary and journal interchangeably these days, this was a true journal, filled not only with facts but the thoughts of the writer. In other words, the mother lode.
    I needed to formulate a plan. Do I read the whole thing first, get a feel for what’s in store? Or take each entry apart as I get to it, analyze it without being influenced by what I knew was to come? This was like finding Tut’s tomb as far as I was concerned, a window on another world, and I wanted to make sure that I would get every bit out of it that I could. Perhaps it would be wiser to transcribe it as I went…I set the book