From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
At dancing school today Mrs. Hinman chose who will dance in the Christmas Pageant. I am just going to stand up next to the manger.
November 8, 1912
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
Today Miss Cashen asked us if we would like to go back to Europe and we all raised our hands and yelled yes. So she said fine, where were we? Margaret remembered that we were in Norway, so then Miss Cashen said well, let’s go to Sweden next. Sweden is famous for very clean people. Also for fine carpenters and weavers and for a Mr. Nobel who invented dynamite. He said that when he invented it, he thought people would blow up ugly things, like the statue that we have at the top of our stairs, or maybe Tante Esther’s ugly parlor. He didn’t think that they would use it for wicked things like blowing up each other in a war. And then when they did, he was very sad and tried to think of what he could do to make up for it. So now, every single year he gives wonderful prizes to the people who write the best books or invent the best medicines or discover some new germs and the top prize is a prize for the person who did most to make peace in the world. Then we went on to Denmark. She said that the Danes are the gentlest people in the whole world. I asked if Great Danes came from Denmark and she said yes, and that a friend of hers who lives in Denmark has two of them and they are called Hamlet and Horatio after two good friends who are characters in a famous play. She said that the play was written by England’s most famous poet and that we would talk about it when we got to England. She said that we still had lots to talk about all the things that Denmark is noted for and that there is still a tiny country near Denmark called Finland that we should visit and talk about too. Then she said that Denmark has beautiful dishes called Royal Copenhagen after their city and beautiful silver. And Denmark is the birthplace of Hans Christian Andersen who wrote such wonderful fairy tales like the “Ugly Duckling.” Robert asked if Denmark is also famous for Danish pastry and Miss Cashen said that she supposed so.
November 6, 1912
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
Today I got a lovely present from my father’s sister in Germany. She is my Aunt Paula and she is married but she doesn’t have any children. She sent me a beautiful chocolate fish that she made all by herself. It doesn’t taste like plain chocolate, like the Ghirardelli kisses. It’s much, much better. Grandmother calls it marzipan. There is a beautiful card with it. The card is an angel with golden hair and real forget-me-nots embroidered all over her dress. It is a beautiful dress and I wouldn’t mind being an angel if I could wear a dress like that.
I am going to write to Aunt Paula and tell her how much I liked the card and the candy and I want to send her something too, maybe a pen wiper.
Hilda takes the day off tomorrow and will return on November 8.
November 5, 1912
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
Some of my Uncle Milton’s friends were here for dinner tonight and I begged Grandmother to let me be allowed to come to the table because I love to hear all those things they say about dogs. They talked only about dogs. I learned lots of things. It is very important what father and mother a dog has. When a puppy is born they always describe it as being born by someone out of someone else. “By someone” means the father and “out of someone” means the mother. I asked them if my baby cousin Helen Violet was by my Uncle Albert and out of my Aunt Hazel and they all laughed.
November 4, 1912
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
This afternoon I went shopping with Grandmother. I always get tired going to the stores so today, just to reward me for not whining, Grandmother let me select a book in the Book Department while she was buying curtains. The lady in the book department said that I was a little too young to read it but that it is a book I’ll enjoy my whole life. It is “Little Women” by Louisa May Alcott. I love having a book on my shelf waiting for me but I think I will try to read it soon because I know a lot about Louisa May Alcott from my book of famous women. Right now it looks very beautiful on my book shelf.
Hilda told us about the book on famous women in her September 1st entry.
November 3, 1912
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
The commandment we learned this morning is a really new one. No one in the class heard of it before. It is the seventh one. “Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery.” But Miss Meadows says that it is a commandment we don’t have to think much about right now because we will not do it until we are grown up. Only grown-ups do it, when they are adults, and that’s why they call it adultery.
November 2, 1912
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
The dreadful Mr. Kirby and Mrs. Kirby, well I don’t like either of them, came again this afternoon. Mr. Kirby is always trying to sit me on his lap and he smells like cigars and he is fat and has no lap to sit on so I can easily slide off.
November 1, 1912
On Friday afternoons we have no real work. Miss Cashen reads to us out of books that are not school books or we talk about anything we want to without raising our hands for permission. This afternoon Miss Cashen said, “I think it would be nice if we would all take a trip to Europe. Who knows anything about any European country?” Antoinette said she knew all about Italy because her father was born in Genoa and so was Columbus. Miss Cashen said that was most interesting and would Antoinette tell us what her father remembers best about living there. Antoinette said that what her father likes best about Italy is spaghetti, and he is always telling her mother that hers wasn’t nearly as good as what his mother made. Miss Cashen said of course, Italian spaghetti was very fine but Italy had other fine things: Art Galleries and wonderful old palaces and beautiful churches. I said that I knew about the churches. I described the marble cake that daddy’s friend serves when we have tea at her house. Miss Cashen said that we should go on to another country and we would come back to Italy another time. So she said France and asked us what France was famous for? Wesley said the French language and Margaret said perfume. She said that once her mother had a bottle of French perfume. A nice man brought it to her one afternoon and when her father came home, he was awfully mad and threw it out of the window and her mother was even madder. Then Miss Cashen said we mustn’t forget Germany. And then she said to me, “Hilda! Your family came from Germany and you speak a little German. Were you born there?” I said, “No, I was born in New York but nearly everyone else in my family were born in either Germany or Austria.” I told them that I know that Germany was a very beautiful country, full of forest and castles and cuckoo clocks and there was a man named Beethoven who wrote beautiful music and I had learned to play “Für Elise” which he wrote for a little girl named Elise. And I told them about the Rhine river and about the “Lorelei” who combed their golden hair on a special rock and the sailors who would crash their ships forgetting about the rocks because they had to see her. Miss Cashen thanked me and then we went to Spain. I raised my hand again and I said that I knew that there were bull fights in Spain and beautiful music called “Carmen.” I explained that “Carmen” is an Opera and that there is a song in it that my father sings when he is taking a bath, “The Toreador Song.” (I guess daddy sings in the bath tub because he can’t play his flute there, as it might get wet.) From Spain we jumped way up North to three lovely countries called Norway, Sweden and Denmark. Norway has wonderful forests and beautiful goats and cheese. The cheese is made from goats milk and it looks like the brown soap that Ito uses to scrub the kitchen and it tastes like the soap too. Norway is also famous for fish and for waterfalls and for beautiful lilacs in the springtime and for the Vikings. The Vikings were ugly men with beards and swords and spears who sailed all around the world grabbing other mens’ countries and wives.
Hilda wrote of the Lorelei song in her April 8th entry. My grandmother too referred to it in her writing, although I’m only realizing it now. In a story about her youth, she wrote of telling a man who was flirting with her that even if he had “Lorelei hair” she would refuse to listen. “Die Lorelei” is a famous German folk song from a poem by Heinrich Heine.
October 31, 1912
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
Tonight is Halloween. That is a spooky night. All the dead people get out of their graves and walk around the city in sheets but the live ones are supposed to run around ringing doorbells and running away when people answer them. I am not allowed on the street even though I begged Grandfather to take me, but he wouldn’t. He said that he had no intention of ringing people’s doorbells and then running away. Tonight when he came home, he gave me a lovely chocolate witch sitting on a broomstick with a black cat.
October 30, 1912
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
Alma called for me at school today and took me to Aunt Laura’s house. I love to go there because that’s where Bonnie lives. Tante Esther lives there too, but I don’t hate Tante Esther so much since I turned the hose on her. Today there were other people there too and we had a tea party. Before we left the table, Aunt Laura asked everyone if we had enough to eat and we all said yes, thank you. Of course I remembered but it sounds too silly. It is, “I have had a delightful sufficiency.” I said “No one talks like that, not even in the English story books.” Alma was very angry with me. She said that I couldn’t be excused from the table until I said it, but I didn’t care. I was finished anyhow. I didn’t say it and I don’t think I ever will.
October 29, 1912
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
Something so funny happened last night. Aunt Etta’s sister and her husband were here for dinner and of course Claire too. Afterward we went to the parlor and right away Claire walked over to the cabinet and took Grandmother’s favorite ornament out of it. Such a pretty one. A little girl in a navy blue skirt and a yellow blouse and a pale blue handkerchief on her head and a basket over her arm and no shoes or stockings and she is walking across the grass with a lot of ducks and geese following her. Claire just held it in her hands. She didn’t hurt it at all and she was just going to put it back when Grandmother took it away from her. Then she dropped it. It broke into a million pieces. Then everyone went home. Grandmother sat down and cried but I couldn’t stop laughing even though I knew it was naughty to do so. Besides, I was sorry about the little goose girl. Grandmother was still mad this morning, and the more Grandfather kept telling her that it wasn’t Claire’s fault, the madder she got.
October 28, 1912
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
Next week Uncle Milton is coming back to live with us but he is not bringing Tom or Jerry. The Airedales are going to a farm in the country. He asked me if I’d rather have the Airedales than him and I said I’d rather have him but only why couldn’t he bring them with him and could we visit them in the country sometime? He said that he would try to arrange it. It will be fun having Uncle Milton. All his friends are jolly men who talk about nothing but dogs – oh! – sometimes horses.
October 27, 1912
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.