From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

This afternoon after school I had to stand up for hours and hours and hours while Miss Sarah lengthened all my dresses. I don’t know Miss Sarah’s last name because that is all anyone ever calls her. She is a very little lady who always has her teeth full of pins and it looks as if they are sticking in her tongue. She never laughs or smiles, she just always sews and sews except sometimes when the pins aren’t in her mouth she does talk a little and nearly always about funerals. Sometimes she talks about what she had to eat in other people’s homes but she really loves funerals and tells us what they wore, the dead people, and how they looked and if they looked really dead or if they looked like they did in life and if they received a lot of flowers and if their families cried or looked glad.