18-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today: 

Saturday, July 19, 1913:  Had company again, but I didn’t make my appearance, since I did not consider myself presentable.

Picture of a bedroom in the April, 1912 issue of Ladies Home Journal.  Did Grandma go to her bedroom to avoid the company?

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

Wow, it’s amazing that the Muffly’s had company two days in a row. Visitors are seldom mentioned in the diary, but the previous day, Grandma  wrote, “We had company this evening.”

Who were the visitors? Was it the same people as the preceding day or different people?

And, why was Grandma worried about whether she looked presentable? If the guests were friends of her parents, I won’t think that she would care how she looked.

Grandma was having a difficult July, and often felt down. For example, on July 14 she wrote that she was “sick at heart”. Maybe the guests were older people whose conversation didn’t interest her so she didn’t want to see them—but it also seems like the company might have included someone about her age (and maybe male), and but that her unhappiness unfortunately kept her from joining the group.

18-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today: 

Wednesday, July 16, 1913: Nothing doing.

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

Two days prior to this entry Grandma wrote that she was sick at heart over something.  Other readers and I speculated about what she may have been sick at heart over–and we thought that maybe she liked a guy and he didn’t return her interest.

Another possibility—

Grandma’s two older sisters both got teaching jobs in nearby one-room school houses after they graduated from high school.

Grandma graduated the previous spring, She has never mentioned in the diary that she hoped to become a teacher—yet it seems logical that she may have wanted to become a teacher. Could Grandma have been sick at heart because she heard that she didn’t get a teaching position that she really wanted?

18-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today: 

Monday, July 14, 1913:  Didn’t feel very good today and did feel very miserable. I’m not really sick, but sick at heart over something else.

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

Why was Grandma sick at heart?  What could have possibly happened?

Previous entries provided no clue that Grandma might be stressing over something—the preceding day she just wrote about the rainy weather and going to Sunday School. . . and two days before this entry she wrote about helping with the wheat harvest.

18-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today: 

Saturday, July 12, 1913:  I had to help load wheat today. That is something I never did before. Not any too good at it either.

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

The day prior to this entry Grandma wrote about how the boy her father hired to help with the farm work had suddenly quit and run away only four days after his arrival.

Grandma’s father probably was short-handed –and needed extra help. I bet that Grandma was ticked that she needed to help with a hot, dusty, tiring chore that she’d never done before.

Note about the drawing used to illustrate this post: This picture of harvesting wheat was part of an advertisement for flour in Ladies Home Journal. To see the entire advertisement, go to this previous post:

Helping in the Fields