April 17, 1912
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
In School today Miss Hare talked about the “Titanic.” She told us that it was an English ship and she was very much afraid that it bumped into an iceberg because it was going much too fast. It was a brand new ship and the captain wanted it to be faster than any other ship that was sailing on the ocean. An iceberg is a big mountain of ice way down deep in the water and it is so sharp that it can cut a ship right in half, just like we cut apples. She said that the captain waited until everyone drowned and then he jumped from where he was, high up on the ship’s bridge I think and he drowned too. I asked Grandfather about it and he told me that it is polite or did Grandfather say policy? Well anyway, it seems that Captains are supposed to drown if their ship goes down. I think that is a very silly rule and if I were Captain, I would try not to drown. I should think that the captain’s wife would be happy if he didn’t drown but Grandfather said no, she would have been ashamed of him. I still think she would want him to live. Sometimes you love people more when you are ashamed of them because that’s when you need to love them. That is the way I loved Brownie and was ashamed of him at the same time, just the other day when he wet his pants in our parlor.