Monthly Poem in Diary

15-year-old Helena wrote a hundred years ago today:

Wednesday, February 1, 1911.

One month come and gone,

And the month of February has dawned.

Though it be the shortest month of the year,

Yet I do not suppose that all would oppose.

From enjoying its good years cheer.

I got a ride to school this morning, though the walking was perfectly fine! I got some candy of Jimmie’s tonight (he had quite a bit too much for a boy of his size so I relieved him of some).

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

The diary was written in a blank lined paper book. Each month of the diary begins with a poem. I wonder if Grandma wrote the poems or if she got them out of a book or magazine.

A hundred years ago poetry was much more popular than it is now. Magazines such as Ladies Home Journal included entire pages of poetry. Students were regularly required to memorize poems and teachers had poetry books that they used as sources for these poems. Pamphlets were printed by various religious denominations that contained poems which Sunday School children could memorize and then present.

This month’s poem doesn’t really work for me—and maybe Grandma wrote it—though I’m guessing that she got these monthly poems from other some source. I’ll probably never know for sure.

—

This is the first time that Jimmie is mentioned in the diary. He was Grandma’s six-year-old brother.

Odd, Unusual, and Strange Math Problems

15-year-old Helena wrote a hundred years ago today:

Tuesday, January 31, 1911. If anything of real importance happened today I would write it down, but as nothing has it will not be here to read. This is the last day of the first month. What do you think of it? Vice versa.

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

No mention of arithmetic problems in today’s diary entry. Maybe it went better today than yesterday.

I’m still fascinated by the problems in the 1911 high school arithmetic textbook that I found. The book contains some really strange problems–including some that deal with topics that probably would be considered unacceptable today.

1. If 44 cannons, firing 30 rounds an hour for 3 hours a day consume 300 barrels of powder in 5 days, how long will 400 barrels last 66 cannons, firing 40 rounds an hour for 5 hours a day?

2. Bought by avoirdupois weight, 20 pounds of opium at 40 cents an ounce, and sold the same by Troy weight at 50 cents an ounce; did I gain or lose, and how much?

3. A wine merchant imported 1000 dekaliters of wine, at a cost of 75 cents a liter, delivered. At what price per gallon must he sell the same to clear $2000 on the shipment?

4. A certain number of men, twice as many women, and three times as many boys, earn $123.80 in 5 days; each man earned $1.20, each woman 66 1/3 cents, and each boy 53 1/3 cents per day. How many were there of each?

Kimball’s Commercial Arithmetic: Prepared for Use in Normal, Commercial and High Schools and the Higher Grades of the Common School (1911)

Remember that a hundred years ago patent medicines containing opium were legal, child labor laws were just being enacted, and it was way before woman had equal rights.

If you want to do the opium problem here are a couple of definitions:

Avoidupois weight (The usual system used in the U.S.): 16 ounces = 1 pound

Troy weight: 12 ounces = 1 pound

Arithmetic Problems in 1911 High School Text Book

15-year-old Helena wrote a hundred years ago today:

Monday, January 30, 1911. My! How the wind did blow today, smashed some panes in the school house windows with a deafening crash and alarmed us all, fortunately we escaped uninjured. Boo hoo I haven’t got all my arithmetic problems for tomorrow. Boo hoo. I’m getting stupid.

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

It was either a damn strong wind–or the windows weren’t very strong. I wonder if the panes blew out when the class was working on the dreaded arithmetic. To get a sense of what the problems were like I found a high school arithmetic book that was published in 1911. Here are the written exercises in the chapter titled The Equation:

1. To four times a certain number I add 16, and obtain as a result 188. What is the number?

2. A man having $100 spent a part of it; he afterwards received five times as much as he had spent, and then his money was double what it was at first. How much did he spend?

3. A farmer had two flocks of sheep, each containing the same number. He sold 21 sheep from one flock and 70 from the other, and then found that he had left in one flock twice as many as in the other. How many had he in each?

4. Divide 100 into two such parts that a fourth of one part diminished by a third of the other part may be equal to 11.

5. Find the area of a square field whose diagonal is 50 rods.

Kimball’s Commercial Arithmetic: Prepared for Use in Normal, Commercial and High Schools and the Higher Grades of the Common School (1911)

Reusing Cloth Calendars

15-year-old Helena wrote a hundred years ago today:

Sunday, January 29, 1911. I wondered around aimlessly today doing this and doing that, just to while the time away.

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

Since not much happened a hundred years ago on this date—let’s fast forward to another January day 52 years later–probably a very routine day from Grandma’s perspective, but a day that I still remember.

In January 1963 Grandma would have been 68 years old. I was 7 and often visited her in her cozy bungalow on a neighboring farm. Cloth dish towels with calendars printed on them were the fad at the time, and Grandma always had a cloth calendar hanging decoratively in her kitchen. The calendar towel had a dowel running through the top hem and a string attached to the ends of the dowels, and it hung from a nail that was pounded into the wall.

I noticed that the calendar said 1957. I was old enough to know that the year was 1963. I asked Grandma why she had an old calendar.

She replied, “Calendars repeat themselves every so often.” She walked over to the closet at the far end of the kitchen, opened the door, and showed me a stack of cloth calendars. On top of the folded stack was a sheet of paper with Grandma’s handwriting on it. It indicated which years were the same. For example, one row on the page may have said 1958, 1969 which indicated that the 1958 calendar could be reused in 1969.

She pulled out calendars and explained how some patterns repeated with regularity—whereas due to the vagaries of leap year–other calendar patterns seldom repeated. It was so complicated that I could barely follow her explanation—but trying to understand calendar quirks consumed my mental energy for the next several days. I looked at calendars, drew calendars, asked questions about leap year. . .

Today it’s easy to find out when calendar years repeat with a quick internet search—it was a much harder task back then. But, looking back, Grandma’s explanation that day partially frames how I think about her. She was smart, and obviously enjoyed the challenge of keeping track of calendars and years.

Grandma was also always very frugal and reusing old calendars seemed to fit her. I wonder if the 15-year-old in the diary would have been as frugal—or if the Great Depression and other events in the intervening years made her thriftier.

Directions for Making an Old-Fashioned Scarf

15-year-old Helena wrote a hundred years ago today:

Saturday, January 28, 1911. I puttered around, and did some work today. Although Ruth says, “I don’t do anything,” but as for earning my salt, I guess I earn as much as she does.

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

I wonder what Grandma was doing while she was puttering around. . . .Maybe she made a scarf.

Scarves—then like now—were a stylish fad. The January 15, 1911 issue of Ladies Home Journal had directions in an article titled How You Can Make the New Scarfs:

In the center of the page above is shown one of the satin scarfs which are worn with tailored suits on days too mild for heavy fur. The right side is of black satin and the underside of white. It usually measures about eighteen inches in width, and two yards to two yards and a half in length. In narrow silk just this quantity would be required. The ends are drawn in and finished with silk tassels formed of stuffed oval shapes of satin, hung from cords.

For evening nothing could be more charming than the scarf shown on the center figure on the right. It is made of dotted gauze in a delicate mauve, lined with pale pink chiffon, the ends finished with hemstitching and caught with a narrow band of mink fur. It may be made of different materials in this way. Two-tone chiffon would be lovely—a cornflower blue, for instance, lined with pale pink with a band of white swansdown or marabou confining the fullness across the lower part of the front about twelve inches from the hem.

Ladies Home Journal (January 15, 1911)

It’s amazing how styles—and terminology—change (or don’t change) over time. In case you care, the definitions of swansdown and marabou are below:

Swansdown—(1) the soft downy feathers of the swan often used as trimming on article of dress; (2) a heavy cotton flannel that has a thick nap on the face and is made with sateen weave.

Marabou—(1) a soft fluffy material prepared from turkey feathers or the coverts of marabous and used especially for trimming women’s hats or clothes. (2) a large dark gray African stork.

Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

Thin Ice!

15-year-old Helena wrote a hundred years ago today:

Friday, January 27, 1911. Went to school this morning and about the first thing I heard was our teacher breaking through the ice, while skating last night. We had visitors at school this afternoon. Guess I’ll stop now.

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

Whew, it’s lucky that her teacher Jakie apparently wasn’t hurt in the skating accident. I guess the creek wasn’t frozen solid enough for safe skating.

It amazed me how informally Grandma referred to her teacher as Jakie in previous diary entries—and this entry also suggests that Jakie may have been a very young teacher who hung out with the students.

Is It Safe for Skating?

15-year-old Helena wrote a hundred years ago today:

Thursday, January 26, 1911. Walked home from school with some girls who were going skating. I staid up later than usual tonight to get my lessons out. Did it because I had to. They weren’t hard, but they took some thinking.

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

Everyone’s life falls into a routine with one day being much like the next. For Grandma there was the repetitive routine of walking the mile and a half of so to and from school each day. Some days the road was snowy–others it was muddy. She’s probably wearing a coat and long skirt. And her shoes are probably encased in the new rubbers (low rubber boots that are pulled on over shoes) that she mentioned on the 19^th.

The walk probably seemed long—and cold. Having other girls accompany her home apparently was a nice change in routine. This post continues to suggest that some of the best skating in the area was on the creek near the Muffly farm.

I’m surprised that the creek was frozen enough to skate on. Rain and mud are mentioned several times in the January diary entries. For example, on January 24—just two days before this entry— Grandma wrote, “It’s getting so terribly muddy.”

Did Grandma join the others and skate?—or did she just continue on home? Maybe she needed to milk the cows or do other farm chores –though she has not mentioned that she does any farm chores so far in the diary.