From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
The commandment we learned in Sunday school today was the sixth one. “Thou Shalt Not Kill.” That wasn’t very interesting. We had all heard it before.
October 26, 1912
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
Why does everyone like people better when they are dead? They do. I know Grandmother hated Aunt Etta, but now she cries all day long and says her heart will break. Uncle Milton doesn’t cry. I know he is very sad but of course he still has his two Airedales. I can’t go to dancing school today because of Aunt Etta. They all say it wouldn’t look nice. I asked Alma if she didn’t think she should go for me to see if the class would learn a new dance and then teach it to me at home tonight but she said no that she didn’t think that would be necessary. It was really sad in the house today and I wish I could have gone somewhere even if I couldn’t go to dancing school. I thought about Aunt Etta and I was so glad that she had dinner with us and I saw her and she was happy. I still don’t know what happened.
October 25, 1912
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
We were just having lunch today when the phone rang. Grandmother always jumps to the phone because she thinks that someone is inviting her to a party, but this wasn’t an invitation to a party. This was someone who told her that Etta had died. I don’t know what happened to her, only that in the middle of the night Uncle Milton had to call an ambulance and Aunt Etta had a lot of pain and she went to the hospital and now she is dead. Grandmother cried and cried and cried. She said it should have been her, and why did that sweet young woman have to die and hadn’t she always loved her like a daughter? I said right out loud, “Why Grandmother! You said last night you hoped you would never have to see her again and now you won’t.” Then Grandmother screeched all sorts of things and Alma rushed me up the stairs to my room.
October 24, 1912
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
Uncle Milton and Aunt Etta were here for dinner last night. Every time they come, the minute they leave Grandmother says mean things about Aunt Etta. She says she spends too much time looking in the mirror and too much time powdering her nose and why can’t she come a few minutes before dinner. Must she come just in time to sit down to the table and Uncle David shouldn’t buy her so many clothes did Grandfather notice the plumes in her hat which is no hat for a wife whose husband has to work so hard and no one sees her running around in plumes and she wishes she never had to see Aunt Etta again. I didn’t put any commas in the sentence because Grandmother doesn’t use commas when she talks about Aunt Etta.
October 23, 1912
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
After school today, Grandmother wanted to see my sampler. She said the cross stitch was very good but the back of it looked as if a hen walked through all the threads and messed them up. I said no one would see the back if it was going to be framed. She said that it is a dreadful thing to think that no one looks behind your ears either but don’t I have to scrub back there too? She said the back sides are always more important than the front sides and our underwear should be cleaner than our dresses and kitchens and bathrooms should be cleaner than the parlors. She said that she will wait and examine my sampler again next week and she hopes it will be neater and if it isn’t she won’t frame it and she should teach me to think about the back sides.
October 22, 1912
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
Sometimes our school teachers are so silly. Today Miss Cashen taught us a new song and it is called “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.” While we sang it, she made us point to the sky. I could understand doing it at night but it was a bright, sunny morning. How could there be a star?
October 21, 1912
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
I keep thinking of England and of “Little Lord Fauntleroy” and of how nice the English people must be. In England, you are a lady even if you are poor, so long as you speak softly and have pretty manners but if you yell and shout and scold, you are not a lady no matter what beautiful clothes you have. That is how the servants in Dorincourt Castle knew right away that Little Lord Fauntleroy’s mother was a lady.
October 20, 1912
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
The fifth commandment says that, “Thou Shalt Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother.” Well, my father is very nice and everyone says that my mother was too, so I guess I can do that. It is easy to honor someone who is nice, but it is hard to honor a mother like Margaret Tadich has. Margaret’s face is always dirty and her dress is always dirty and Miss Cashen is always giving her a handkerchief to wipe her nose. They say that her mother gets drunk and so does her father, and when she comes home from school in the afternoon no one is home, and most of the time she has to go to bed with a piece of bread and butter because her mother doesn’t come home to cook dinner for her. I don’t think God wants you to honor a mother like that. He can’t want you to be stupid.
October 19, 1912
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
I asked Alma if I might stay in bed this morning because it was the Sabbath and God wanted everyone to rest. She said that she didn’t think I worked quite so hard all week that I needed a rest but that if I wanted to do it just to please God she supposed she would let me. So I woke up very early just like I always do but instead of taking a book to bed, I went down the back staircase to the yard and brought Brownie and Sherry up to my room. I put Brownie on the bed and Sherry on the soft chair next to it. Then we all went to sleep again. When Alma came in later and saw Brownie and Sherry she quickly pulled the drapes apart and curtains up and told me to get up and dress myself. She said that I know better than to have the animals up in my room. I told her that I was only obeying the fourth commandment. Didn’t God command that on the Sabbath everyone should rest, even the animals? Everyone in the house should rest and they can rest much better in my bed than they can in the yard. Then she said that Brownie and Sherry and I had rested enough and that we should get up, so we did.
October 18, 1912
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
Yesterday it rained so I couldn’t go to school. Aunt Tillie and Grandmother fuss so much about my getting rained on and I really love being out in the rain. They say that I must still keep my feet dry because of my tonsils. In the afternoon Alma went to school to find out what my lessons were so that she could help me at home over the weekend. She brought them all home written on a little piece of paper and I didn’t feel like doing them but Alma made me finish them.
October 17, 1912
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
Grandmother had company this afternoon. All her friends must be very stupid because they always ask me the same questions. Am I a good little girl? Do I like school? What do I want to be when I grow up? I always say yes, I am a good little girl and yes I like school and when I grow up I want to be a writer. Today I was tired of telling them that so I said that when I grow up I want to be married. They all laughed and said that was very smart of me and I said I thought so too, because all the married women I know can do just as they please. They don’t have to ask anyone. They go downtown and buy their own dresses and go into the kitchen and order their own dinners and the maids have to do everything they tell them to do. Their husbands also have to do everything they tell them, too.
October 16, 1912
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
I wish I could see England. Alma tells me that the grass is greener there than it is here and all the houses have hollyhocks around them and everyone has beautiful manners like she tries to teach me. She says that the English people speak a prettier English than the American ones do. That is why she is always reminding me to say “A” like “Ah-h-h” not like “A” in “cat” but then when I ask her why we don’t pronounce “cat” like “cot”, she told me not to be silly. But why don’t we?
October 15, 1912
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
Alma is not American. She is English. England is a beautiful country. Peter Rabbit comes from England. Also Mother Goose. Mother Goose wrote all those beautiful poems that Alma reads to me when she wants me to go to sleep. Like “Hi Diddle Diddle the Cat and the Fiddle.” I love that one. I always think of one of Grandmother’s special blue and white soup plates running away with one of those silver spoons with ugly mermaids on them. Alma says that England had other people besides Mother Goose and Beatrix Potter, that’s the lady who wrote “Peter Rabbit” and who wrote other wonderful poems. There is the man who wrote that lovely poem that says the people who pray best are the ones that love best every single thing that God made, even tiny things like ants and maybe even fleas. Of course I suppose it must be hard to love a flea while it is biting you but then it can’t help being a flea. Grandfather says that nothing can help being what it is, that if our parents are fleas or mice or snakes we must also be fleas or mice or snakes and that your parents couldn’t help it either because of what their parents were.
The poem Hilda recalls is Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The following stanza is at the end of Part VII:
He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.
October 14, 1912
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
Every Sunday night Uncle Milton and Aunt Etta come for supper and afterwards Aunt Etta’s sister Rose comes with her husband and their little daughter Claire and they have dessert and coffee with us. Claire is younger than I am and she loves to play with all Grandmother’s ornaments. She just picks them out of the cabinet and loves to look at them one by one. She never breaks anything but Grandmother always thinks she is going to and so all the time Claire is here, Grandmother sits on the edge of her chair and gets her crochet cotton into knots. Of course she can’t tell Claire not to play with the things. That is because there is a wonderful American rule that Alma taught me. A house belongs to its guests. I guess someone told Claire that too.
October 13, 1912
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
The fourth commandment is a nice sensible one. God says that, “We Must Always Remember the Sabbath Day and Keep It Holy,” but that doesn’t mean that we have to go to church or synagogue or anywhere. We may do anything we want except work. Also no one in our homes must work and even the animals shouldn’t work. Some people make the Sabbath day on Saturday and some on Sunday and this is sensible too because some work really has to be done every day.
October 12, 1912
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
I think if I had been Columbus I wouldn’t tell anyone about America. I’d have stayed here and had it all for myself. Maybe I’d have made myself King. That’s what I would have done if I were Columbus.
October 11, 1912
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
Tomorrow is Columbus Day, but it is a Saturday. We had to hear all about him today. He was a very bright man. He knew that the world was round and in those days everyone thought it was flat. He discovered America.
It was a long time ago, it was before they had big ships like they have now and so he had a hard time finding it. They almost didn’t get here at all and they weren’t quite sure where they were and there were lots of fights between him and all the sailors. Everyone was hungry and all the sailors had to eat were biscuits, something like dog biscuits and they had no fresh water. They were all sick, homesick, and scared. But Columbus wouldn’t let them go home and he sailed on and then one morning the man who sat in a basket high up on a sail saw land. Then a sea gull came. Then Columbus and all the sailors got down on their knees and thanked God for bringing them to the New World. Columbus said that it would belong to Spain because that is where they came from even though he was born in Italy. It was Queen Isabella of Spain who paid for their tickets and even bought the ships for them. I forgot to say that Columbus sailed in three ships. He was just in one of the ships of course. The other two followed him. His was called the Santa Maria. At first Queen Isabella was so happy about Columbus discovering America, she honored him but later she put him in prison…I forgot why.
October 10, 1912
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
Tante Esther came this afternoon and she told us about her new maid. She is always coming and telling us about a new maid. All her maids have something the matter with them, like cross eyes or dandruff or big hairs growing out of their faces; and they are not very bright. Grandmother says she has to take these ugly ones because she doesn’t pay enough money to get pretty ones, and besides she is not very nice to them. Grandmother says that she is crazy clean, and every single minute she has the maid doing something. She is either shaking out Tante Esther’s clothes from the back window, or polishing silver, or sweeping. Tante Esther can’t see these homely girls but everyone else can.
October 9, 1912
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
Business was good today. I found eighteen fleas on Brownie. I caught them by combing him with a fine metal comb and then I put the fleas in a glass of water. Grandfather can count them if he wants to, but I didn’t find any bugs on the roses.
October 8, 1912
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
I handed in my composition yesterday and got it back today. Miss Cashen didn’t like this one either, although she marked it “Fair.” I guess it was too short. I just said…
A long time ago people had no pens and pencils to write with, so they used feathers from their geese. I hope they waited until their geese died before they pulled them out. They dried their letters by sprinkling sand on them, which they kept in salt shakers, because they didn’t have blotters.