Tag: diary

Exams Are Over!!!

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

Friday, May 3, 1912:  Well examinations are over. I can say that I am glad. But I’m not glad the we only have one more day of school. Besse was out this evening. I sort of miss my lessons tonight.

Recent view of the building that once housed the McEwensville Schools. The high school was on the 2nd floor. Grandma’s 6-year-old brother Jimmie attended the primary school on the first floor.

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

Yeah! I’m glad that Grandma’s exams are finished. She sure worried about them in the diary entries for the last week or so—

April 25—Worried that she’d fail

April 29—Thinking about the exams

May 1—Overcome with gloom, but had a glimmer of hope because had passed in the past

May 2—Doubtful about how well did on algebra exam

And, now –finally– it sounds like everything went okay (thank goodness!) —and that she’s already sad about the impending end of the school year.

Maybe Grandma was sort of like me. Sometimes I think that I worry about things to motivate myself to quit procrastinating and properly prepare for an upcoming event.  It probably was the same with Grandma and her studies.

Besse

Besse was Grandma’s older married sister. This mention of Besse is so matter of fact. I wish that it conveyed a little more about Besse’s emotional state. This is the first time that Besse has been mentioned in the diary since the death of her newborn child in early April.  Hopefully she was doing all right.

Old Womens’ Clothing Store Advertisement

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

Tuesday, April 30, 1912:  Took my dress uptown to get made. Wonder when it will be done. Hope it will be satisfactory. I have a sore fore-finger, but can’t account for the cause.

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

Hmm. . . I’m not sure what Grandma meant when she said that she took her dress uptown to get it made.

Three days earlier, she’d written that she and her mother went shopping in Milton and purchased a hat, several other items, and a white dress:

. . . I got a white dress . . .

Diary entry, April 27, 1912

Advertisement in Milton Evening Standard

Sometime a diary entry raises more questions than it answers.

— Had they really purchased cloth and a pattern, instead of a dress?

— Or did they buy a dress, but it needed alternations?

–Where was uptown?  . . . somewhere in McEwensville?  . . . in Watsontown? . . . (Uptown sounds like such a classy word to describe any section of the little towns near Grandma’s home.)

–And a lingering question—Do I worry too much about the details? In the bigger picture of Grandma’s story, does it really matter whether she bought a dress or had someone make it for her?

The Psychology of Success

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

Monday, April 29, 1912:It rained nearly all day. I wish it would get warm and stay so.  Am beginning to think about final.

A recent rainy day in McEwensville

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

I hope that Grandma was thinking positive thoughts about her upcoming finals.  I found some surprisingly modern advice about positive thinking in a hundred year old book:

The Psychology of Success

There is nothing which tends so much to the success of volitional effort as the confident expectation of its success, while nothing is so likely to induce failure as the apprehension of it.  . .

Lack of success may also be caused by indulgence or lack of courage, the individual preferring to sail along the chartered course of mediocrity rather than to strike out a new path for herself, involving risk, anxiety, and endless work . . . .

There are four mental requisites necessary to the achievement of success, namely: a clear view of the end; a judicious indifference to the sentiment around by the sweeping away of obstacles; an indomitable energy; and the power to resist the temptation to rest on the soporific plane of mediocrity.

Personal Hygiene and Physical Training for Women (Anna Galbraith, 1911)

If I could get in a time machine, I’d say, “Grandma—I hope you started to study.  Then think confident thoughts. I’m rooting for your success.”

A Mystery Partially Solved

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

Saturday, April 27, 1912:  Yessir, I really went to Milton this morning. Nor did I forget to take my Ma along.  After a trying time I got a hat that I thought would do. It is trimmed in light brown ribbon and red roses. I got a white dress, a pair of tans and some other gigger-mer-rows.

Amazingly, one of the drawings featured in an article on hats in the June, 1911 issue of Ladies Home Journal was a hat with roses and a brown ribbon. Maybe that was just a popular style a hundred years ago.

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

We finally have at least a partial answer to what Grandma was talking about in several recent diary entries—Grandma needed to go hat shopping.

The past Sunday Grandma wrote that she wished she had her new hat; and, the previous day she’d written that she hoped it won’t be raining the next day because “the hat question had become a serious problem.”

My guess is that “a pair of tans” refers to stockings. I think that gigger-mer-rows is archaic slang for small items.

Many things that seem important a hundred years later are only mentioned in passing in the diary (or not mentioned at all). Yet something that seems very minor—buying a hat—was discussed day after day.

Maybe teens haven’t changed–then and now they want to have nice outfits and look good.

The Hat Question

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

Friday, April 26, 1912:I am so anxious about the morrow. It is drizzling tonight and I’m so afraid it will be raining in the morning when I get up. You see the hat question has become a serious problem to me.

Source: Ladies Home Journal (June, 1911)

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

What exactly is the hat problem?  This is the second time in less than a week that Grandma mentioned a hat.  On April 21, 1912 she wrote:

Went to Sunday School this afternoon. Wish I had my new hat, I’d wear it if I had.

For more pictures of women’s hats a hundred years ago, see  previous post:

Women’s Hats a Hundred Years Ago  

Wind Rattled the Windows

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

Wednesday, April 24, 1912: This afternoon was one of the howling kind. The wind certainly did rattle the windows of that old school house.

Recent photo of the building the once housed McEwensville Schools. The high school was on the second floor. I can almost picture Grandma huddled over her desk in a drafty classroom while the wind howled outside.

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

I thought about calling this post—April Showers Bring May Flowers—but wanted to be sure that there had been showers.

Well—it didn’t rain on April 24, 1912 (so I had to come up with another post title). It was just a blustery, raw, spring day.  A hundred years ago in nearby Williamsport, the low temperature was 28.9 degrees, the high was 66.9 degrees, and there was no precipitation.

Click on data table to enlarge.

(The forecast for today for Williamsport is–rain; low: 34 degrees, high: 54 degrees.)

An Aside–

I found the temperature information on the National Climatic Data Center website.  Last January I explained how to find similar data for other towns and cities across the US.  When I went back to the site to get materials for this post, I found that the process had changed, but that I could still find the data I wanted.  I added a note to the end of that post which provides an update on the process.

How to Find the Temperature on Any Date in Any City in the US

Little Brother Recovered from Whooping Cough

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

Sunday, April 22, 1912: I now have that wonderful oration the way it suits me. I finished copying it this morning. Jimmie started back to school today. So far I don’t have any symptoms of the whooping cough. Don’t want it for two weeks yet.

Jimmie Muffly, 1912

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

Grandma was working on a speech that she needed to present on the last day of school. On April 16, she wrote that she was trying to find a topic; and, of the 17th she wrote that she’d found an interesting topic.

I’m surprised that Grandma’s 6-year-old brother Jimmie had apparently been out of school for almost a month with whooping cough. On March 24 she’d written:

Jimmie threatened with the whooping cough. I don’t want him to get it, nor do I want to get it myself. I would have to stop school if I do, and that I shouldn’t like to.

But, Grandma never again mentioned whooping cough, so until this entry I’d assumed that Jimmie hadn’t gotten it.

Whooping cough was a bad illness a hundred years ago. According to Wikipedia:

Symptoms are initially mild, and then develop into severe coughing fits, which produce the namesake high-pitched ‘whoop’ sound in infected babies and children when they inhale air after coughing. The coughing stage lasts for approximately six weeks before subsiding.

So even though Jimmie was out of school for a month—it’s sounds as if he recuperated more quickly than the typical person.