Ethel M. Kelley “Standing with reluctant feet, Where the brook and river meet.”

“I think it’s a good plan to put a quotation like Kipling at the top of the page whenever I write anything in this diary,” Eleanor began in the smart leather bound book with her initials stamped in black on the red cover—the new private diary that had been Peter’s gift to her on the occasion of her fifteenth birthday some months before. “I think it is a very expressive thing to do. The quotation above is one that expresses me, and I think it is beautiful too. Miss Hadley—that’s my English teacher—the girls call her Haddock because she does look rather like a fish—says that it’s undoubtedly one of the most poignant descriptions of adolescent womanhood ever made. I made a note to look up adolescent, but didn’t. Bertha Stephens has my dictionary, and won’t 159 bring it back because the leaves are all stuck together with fudge, and she thinks she ought to buy me a new one. It is very honorable of her to feel that way, but she never will. Good old Stevie, she’s a great borrower.

“Well, I hardly know where to begin. I thought I would make a resumÉ of some of the events of the last year. I was only fourteen then, but still I did a great many things that might be of interest to me in my declining years when I look back into the annals of this book. To begin with I was only a freshie at Harmon. It is very different to be a sophomore. I can hardly believe that I was once a shivering looking little thing like all the freshmen that came in this year. I was very frightened, but did not think I showed it.

“Robert Burns had twins and a rather bad character, but after he met his bonnie Jean he wrote very beautiful poetry. A poet’s life is usually sad anyhow—full of disappointment and pain—but I digress.

“I had two years with Mademoiselle at the Bollings’ instead of one the way we planned. I haven’t written in my Private Diary since the night of that momentous decision that I was to stay in one place instead of taking turns visiting my cooperative parents. I went to another school one year before I came to Harmon, and that brings me to the threshold of my fourteenth year. If I try to go back any farther, I’ll never catch up. I spent that vacation with Aunt Margaret in a cottage on Long Island with her sister, and her sister’s boy, who has grown up to be the silly kind that wants to kiss you and pull your hair, and those things. Aunt Margaret is so lovely I can’t think of words to express it. ‘Oh! rare pale Margaret,’ as Tennyson says. She wears her hair in a coronet braid around the top of her head, and all her clothes are the color of violets or a soft dovey gray or white, though baby blue looks nice on her especially when she wears a fishyou. 161

“I went down to Cape Cod for a week before I came to Harmon, and while I was there my grandmother died. I can’t write about that in this diary. I loved my grandmother and my grandmother loved me. Uncle Peter came, and took charge of everything. He has great strength that holds you up in trouble.

“The first day I came to Harmon I saw the girl I wanted for my best friend, and so we roomed together, and have done so ever since. Her name is Margaret Louise Hodges, but she is called Maggie Lou by every one. She has dark curly hair, and deep brown eyes, and a very silvery voice. I have found out that she lies some, but she says it is because she had such an unhappy childhood, and has promised to overcome it for my sake.

“That Christmas vacation the ‘We Are Sevens’ went up the Hudson to the Bollings’ again, but that was the last time they ever went there. Uncle David and his mother had a terrible fight over them. I was sorry for Madam Bolling in a way. There was a girl she wanted Uncle David to marry, a rich girl who looked something like Cleopatra, very dark complexioned with burning 162 eyes. She had a sweet little Pekinese something like Zaidee.

“Uncle David said that gold could never buy him, and to take her away, but Madam Bolling was very angry, of course. She accused him of wanting to marry Aunt Margaret, and called her a characterless, faded blonde. Then it was Uncle David’s turn to get angry, and I have never seen any one get any angrier, and he told about the vow of celibacy, and how instead of having designs on him the whole crowd would back him up in his struggle to stay single. It was an awful row. I told Madam Bolling that I would help her to get Uncle David back, and I did, but she never forgave the other aunts and uncles. I suppose the feelings of a mother would prompt her to want Uncle David settled down with a rich and fashionable girl who would soon be the mother of a lot of lovely children. I can’t imagine a Cleopatra looking baby, but she might have boys that looked like Uncle David.

“Vacations are really about all there is to school. Freshman year is mostly grinding and stuffing. Having six parents to send you boxes 163 of ‘grub’ is better than having only two. Some of the girls are rather selfish about the eats, and come in and help themselves boldly when you are out of the room. Maggie Lou puts up signs over the candy box: ‘Closed for Repairs,’ or ‘No Trespassing by Order of the Board of Health,’ but they don’t pay much attention. Well, last summer vacation I spent with Uncle Jimmie. I wouldn’t tell this, but I reformed him. I made him sign the pledge. I don’t know what pledge it was because I didn’t read it, but he said he was addicted to something worse than anything I could think of, and if somebody didn’t pull him up, he wouldn’t answer for the consequences. I asked him why he didn’t choose Aunt Gertrude to do it, and he groaned only. So I said to write out a pledge, and sign it and I would be the witness. We were at a hotel with his brother’s family. It isn’t proper any more for me to go around with my uncles unless I have a chaperon. Mademoiselle says that I oughtn’t even to go down-town alone with them but, of course, that is French etiquette, and not American. Well, there were lots of pretty girls at this hotel, all wearing white 164 and pink dresses, and carrying big bell shaped parasols of bright colors. They looked sweet, like so many flowers, but Uncle Jimmie just about hated the sight of them. He said they were not girls at all, but just pink and white devices of the devil. On the whole he didn’t act much like my merry uncle, but we had good times together playing tennis and golf, and going on parties with his brother’s family, all mere children but the mother and father. Uncle Jimmie was afraid to go and get his mail all summer, although he had a great many letters on blue and lavender note paper scented with Roger et Gallet’s violet, and Hudnut’s carnation. We used to go down to the beach and make bonfires and burn them unread, and then toast marshmallows in their ashes. He said that they were communications from the spirits of the dead. I should have thought that they were from different girls, but he seemed to hate the sight of girls so much. Once I asked him if he had ever had an unhappy love-affair, just to see what he would say, but he replied ‘no, they had all been happy ones,’ and groaned and groaned.

“Aunt Beulah has changed too. She has become 165 a suffragette and thinks only of getting women their rights and their privileges.

“Maggie Lou is an anti, and we have long arguments about the cause. She says that woman’s place is in the home, but I say look at me, who have no home, how can I wash and bake and brew like the women of my grandfather’s day, visiting around the way I do? And she says that it is the principle of the thing that is involved, and I ought to take a stand for or against. Everybody has so many different arguments that I don’t know what I think yet, but some day I shall make up my mind for good.

“Well, that about brings me up to the present. I meant to describe a few things in detail, but I guess I will not begin on the past in that way. I don’t get so awfully much time to write in this diary because of the many interruptions of school life, and the way the monitors snoop in study hours. I don’t know who I am going to spend my Christmas holidays with. I sent Uncle Peter a poem three days ago, but he has not answered it yet. I’m afraid he thought it was very silly. I don’t hardly know what it means myself. It goes as follows: 166

“I don’t know why I like to write love poems, but most of the women poets did. This one made me cry.”