October 7, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

At the lunch table today, Grandfather said he had something very important to tell me. He said that I am getting to be a big girl and it is time I learned something about money, and the best way to learn about it, is to earn it. So he is going to give me a job. From now on, I shall get a penny for every flea I catch on Brownie, and every bug I find on Grandfather’s rose bushes. He said it is a fine job because I may work every day in the week and I may choose my own hours.

October 6, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

Today we learned the third commandment: “Thou Shalt Not take the Name of the Lord in Vain.” That means you shouldn’t say, “God Damn It!” when you are mad at someone, the way my Uncle Harold does.

October 5, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

This is Saturday. Grandfather says that school work comes before dancing school, so I must stay home today and write my composition. I started to write about an hour glass. That is a thing made of two glasses with a teeny weeny hole between them. You pour sand in one of the glasses, turn it upside down, and then it runs just a few grains at a time into the other glass. When the other glass is full, you know that it is an hour and you turn that filled one upside down and start it all over again. But then I began to wonder what would happen if you weren’t in the room and you came back and found the glass all filled and didn’t know how much time went by before you discovered it. You would always have to have the hour glass with you, and I don’t think it would be a good way to tell time if you had to catch a train, and you could never take your eyes off of it. So then because I didn’t think it was a good thing to rely on I couldn’t write a composition about it. I couldn’t think of anything to say about the mummies either, because they are just dead Egyptians all wrapped up in strips of cloth. I kept wondering if one of them was Cleopatra, but then Miss Cashen said she didn’t think so. Cleopatra was a beautiful Egyptian queen who was killed by an asp or a wasp. I am not sure what an asp is and I’ll try to remember to ask someone. The suits of armor made me think of the Tin Woodsman in “The Wizard of ‘Oz’” but I think Miss Cashen wouldn’t want me to say that. At last I decided to write about the pens we saw because it said that they were just like the ones that George Washington wrote with. They were made with goose quills. There were no blotters in those days, so people had to dry the ink on their letters with sand and they kept the sand in salt shakers and sprinkled it on the paper. I shall hand in my paper Monday morning and I hope Miss Cashen will like it.

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Hilda’s entry today confirms that she read the Oz books. In her September 6th entry she recalled the story of a yellow hen whose name she thought was Belinda, but was probably Billina.

October 4, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

Miss Cashen didn’t like my composition. She said that when she asked us to write about something in the museum, she meant one of the exhibits. She said the little old man was not an exhibit. So at home, over the weekend I must write another composition about a mummy or a suit of armor or a stone bowl that the Indians used to eat their mush in, or an hour glass. Something important.

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Unfortunately, Hilda’s creativity was not rewarded this time around.

The photos below may be some of what Hilda saw at the museum:

Photo courtesy of SAN FRANCISCO HISTORY CENTER, SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC LIBRARY, possibly from 1894

Photo courtesy of SAN FRANCISCO HISTORY CENTER, SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC LIBRARY, possibly from 1894

October 3, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

Today Miss Cashen made each of us write a composition about the thing we liked best that we saw in the museum. The thing I liked best was the little old man who collected the umbrellas and cameras and canes at the entrance. So I wrote my composition about him. Of course I don’t know anything about him but I pretended that I did. I said that I liked him because he had a sweet smile and he looked like he was gentle. I then thought of the word “gentleman,” and perhaps all gentlemen are not gentle, especially Uncle Felix, but I didn’t write that. Then I said that he lives in a tiny white house with a dog and white cat and a little old wife with white hair, and that all the flowers in the garden were white, and all the dishes, and all the frosting on all the cakes were white, too. And I also said that sometimes a white cow came to visit them and she was always invited into the house to have tea with the white cat and the white dog.

October 2, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

Today instead of going to school, we went to a museum with Miss Cashen. The museum is in Golden Gate Park. Everything outside it was very beautiful. Everything inside was just old.

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Photo courtesy OpenSFHistory

Hilda must have gone to the New Memorial Museum which ultimately became the de Young. Like Hilda, I went there on school field trips, but by then it was a different building. After damage from the 1989 earthquake, the current museum structure was built.

October 1, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

Today Alma made me write one hundred times…

I shall never comb my hair with Brownie’s comb
I shall never comb my hair with Brownie’s comb
I shall never comb my hair with Brownie’s comb

So now I am tired of writing.

September 30, 1912

Note: Today’s post includes racist language. Click on the links to read posts about racism in children’s literature which discuss the poem Hilda quotes below:

• Live Your Poem…Racism in Children’s Literature

• But I wouldn’t Want My Son To Read It:” Adapting A Child’s Garden of Verses for a New Millennium

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

Aunt Tillie is very good to me. Besides the embroidered collars and cuffs, she also buys me nice presents and today she bought me a beautiful book of poems. They are by Robert Louis Stevenson. He was a great Scotch poet and he loved children and wrote these verses for them. They are called a “Child’s Garden of Verses.” My favorite one is:

Little Indian, Sioux or Crow,
Little frosty Eskimo,
Little Turk or Japanee,
How I wish that I were thee.

I love the word “frosty” in front of Eskimo. It makes you feel so cold as the Eskimo is.

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In every version I found of this 1902 poem by Robert Louis Stevenson from A Child’s Garden of Verses, the last line of the first stanza is “O! don't you wish that you were me?” Hilda’s version changes the tone and meaning completely: rather than exhibiting a sense of superiority or racism, she shows interest in others, and in fact envies the lives they live. 

September 29, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

“Thou Shalt Not Make Unto Thyself Any Graven Image.” And if that wasn’t enough, it goes on to say no pictures of anything, not only of God, but of anything on the earth or in the sky and on or in the water. That is the Second Commandment of Moses. It also says that God is jealous, and if He is mad at you, He punishes not only you, but all your children and grandchildren and their children and grandchildren, all the way down to the ninth generation. I said to Grandfather that if he just one day got impatient and did not want to play pinochle with Uncle Felix, why should I be punished? Grandfather said that God did not command that he play cards with Uncle Felix so if he didn’t want to, he didn’t think that either of us would be punished.

September 28, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

At vacation time I am allowed to come to the dinner table. At the table, Grandfather always talks about all the things he read in the newspaper that day. Last night he said he had read about a man who was out hunting and shot himself by mistake instead of the deer. I said that I was so glad. Then everyone at the table began to scream at me, even Grandfather was mad. He said that it was a wicked thing to say, and I must think of the poor man’s family, how his wife and children feel. I said that maybe the poor deer had a wife and children too, and didn’t we learn in Sunday School that God loved everyone and everything the same? Though I really don’t understand how He can. Then Grandmother yelled to Alma to take me away, that I was driving her crazy, so Alma did and I didn’t have dessert and Grandfather didn’t bring me any either.

September 27, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

Last night in bed, I kept feeling happy that no one had thought of naming me after my father. His name is Solomon and I’d hate to be Solomonine.

September 26, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

This is a school holiday because some of the teachers have to go to school themselves, though until I found this out, I thought that they knew everything. So Aunt Tillie said that she would take me to Idora Park in Oakland, and that a friend of hers who had a little girl would come with us. All the way across the bay, I kept thinking of the Titanic and what would happen if we hit an iceberg. Aunt Tillie told me not to be so stupid as there certainly aren’t any icebergs in the middle of San Francisco Bay. It was a clear sunny day, and I could see lots of islands and we could have bumped into them. I don’t like Idora Park. We went on the Scenic Railway and I hate it. I am so afraid of those dreadful hills that it rushes up and down, but I was afraid to say I was afraid. I didn’t like their little girl either. Her name is Maxine, and she was named after her father Max.

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Today Hilda introduces us to a forgotten gem — Idora Park, an amusement park in the Lake Temescal area of Oakland. For more information about it, you can watch a brief video and see a collection of vintage postcards.

September 25, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

I guess in a big family, something is always happening to someone, because there are so many people for things to be happening to. Elinor, one of Tante Berta’s daughters, killed herself last night. Of course, I am not supposed to know anything about it. Grandmother tried to make me believe that she had an accident and fell down the stairs, but I heard everyone talking about it in the kitchen. Elinor was in New York because she wanted to be an opera singer, only it turned out that she couldn’t sing as well as she thought she could, and she couldn’t get a job, so Uncle Herman had to go and bring her home. When she got home, she was so sad that she couldn’t eat or sleep or even talk to anyone. Then last night, while everyone was eating dinner, she went to bed and took her brother’s gun and shot herself. Tante Esther was here all day long and she and Grandmother had such a good time talking about it. I knew it was not nice to listen behind doors, but I couldn’t hear the story any other way. Tomorrow is Elinor’s funeral. The whole family will go, but I know they won’t take me. Tante Esther says that people who kill themselves should not have funerals, and they shouldn’t even be in the same cemetery with good people who don’t kill themselves. She said about a million times how terrible it must have been for Dora to go upstairs and see her sister lying in all that blood. I think that Elinor should have waited until after dinner.

September 24, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

I asked him. Ito said that he is very sorry that he couldn’t ask his God, as his God only does favors for him and only looks after his family.

September 23, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

Today I asked Grandfather if I could worship Ito’s God besides my own and he said that it was probably a good idea to have two Gods, just in case one was busy when you needed him, the other might be free to help. Like the night I wanted to take the spot out of my dress. But then he got serious and said that, “No! You certainly can’t have another God, not anyone else’s God, and if you are a good girl, God will hear your prayers and answer them in his way.” So I guess I can’t have Ito’s God. I am sorry, as I was going to ask him for curly hair. I just thought he might be one who would do this. Maybe I’ll ask Ito to ask him for me, but if Ito prays for me it is not like me praying, and then neither my God or Grandfather could be angry. I will ask Ito tomorrow.

September 22, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

Today we learned the first commandment. It is…

I Am The Lord Thy God, and
I Have Brought Thee Out of the Land of Egypt,
Out of the House of Bondage, and
Thou Shalt Have No Other God Before Me.

That scared me a little because I loved that fat, jolly little God that I saw in Ito’s garden the day of Tsumi’s birthday. He was in the corner of the garden sitting on a piece of black wood. We ate our ice cream in front of him. Ito said that it is his family’s God and he watches over them. He watches over Ito’s house and everyone in it. Grandfather says that he is probably a lot better than Mr. Flannagan. Mr. Flannagan is a policeman and he is supposed to watch over all the houses on our block at night when we are asleep.

September 21, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

Grandmother went to Synagogue this morning and wanted to take me with her. She said that I should thank God for taking out my tonsils so nicely. I told her that God didn’t take them out, Dr. Selton did, and she said that God helped him, and I said that God didn’t, but Dr. Otto did, and I saw him and I was there. I went with her anyhow. I really like to go to Temple, but I wish they had more statues and gold like the Church that Alma goes to.

September 20, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

We had a spelling match in school today and I would have won it, only I didn’t know how to spell “Hippopotamus.” Miss Cashen said that I would have to go back to my seat, but I said that I didn’t mind and I didn’t think it was a word that I would use very much, but even so she made me write it later on, one hundred times because she said that just in case I might need it sometime and she wouldn’t want me to forget it.

September 19, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

I forgot to write what the prize was and I suppose that when I am eighty years old, I will want to know. It was a book of poems. All the ones I have read so far are very beautiful. Grandmother says that I read too much and when I am a grown-up no one will marry me because men don’t like smart women. They want to be the smart ones.

September 18, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

I got the prize. Miss Cashen said I got it because I had written about the things I had not seen in the picture, only the things the picture made me think of, and that was what the artist wanted the people who looked at his picture to do. I don’t know if the artist wants me to think of the things I thought of, but Miss Cashen said that it didn’t make any difference. I thought of reading in front of the fireplace, and Thanksgiving dinners and Christmas trees and popping corn, and a little lighted lamp in the window at night.

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Hilda’s winning essay corroborates what we have discovered this year – that Hilda was a very good writer and had a wonderful imagination.