January 9, 1894 — Ethel the Peculiar School Girl

Jan 9, 1894

Dearest Morris,

I had no sooner decided that I must not expect a letter from you till Friday, when the postman brought the wished for letter. Two letters a week is not “too often,” is it? I found a rather large mail waiting for me today, four letters and the “Sunday Sentinal.” Nala told of such a funny time at Gina’s party. How she opened four doors before finding the ladies dressing room, and in fact explored the whole second story. How there was a large number of dancers and very little room to dance. After all you and I had a better time in Somerville. Mabel has come back at last – and everything is just the same as it was last September. I do not like to think of my mind but hope it is lighter than it was when I came here. There is no doubt about it. I have a great deal of luck. Mabel is the nicest girl at the Hall and the girl with whom I sit at school you would like better than Mabel. Since I have stopped expecting the girls to be as nice as you they suit me better. It was mean of me to expect to much of them, you know.

Gina and Bess have arranged a circulating library by which each of the ▲ write one letter for the others and pass it around. It is a great plan but we shall see how it works. Absentmindedness is a hard thing to cure. At least that has been my experience. Miss Downing still wakes me up at the table but everyone seems to be getting accustomed to the “wandering.” I try to be a “little woman” as Papa always says but I only succeed in being a “peculiar school girl.” If only there could be more accomplished with less trying. But is not life the trying – and the hereafter accomplishment? It has just occurred to me that I always am saying what I think about things – and you say you once thought the same but what you think now you never say. I do not mean to be “school girlish.” When will I outgrow the decease? [sic] It is worse than measles.

Mabel has just come downstairs and found me writing with the gas turned very low. I did not know it. Pretty bad was it not? Must study,

Ethel.

What changes in this letter is not what Ethel sees when she looks at herself, but how she sees it.

The peculiarities are the same ones 1893 catalogued. She still wanders off mid-meal; Miss Downing still has to “wake” her at the table; she is still, by her own account, a “peculiar school girl” rather than the “little woman” her father hoped for. A year ago, these were failings she berated herself for. Here, she finds them almost funny. The whole Hall, she notes, “seems to be getting accustomed to the ‘wandering.’” She ponders when she will outgrow it: “It is worse than measles.”

This is new. Something in the correspondence has opened a space where Ethel can examine herself without the old severity — where the daydreaming becomes a quirk to be wry about rather than a sin to confess. She does not say what has changed. Perhaps she does not have to say it to this particular fond correspondent.

And yet the letter opens on a darker note, in a single sentence that holds the whole of where she is: “I do not like to think of my mind but hope it is lighter than it was when I came here.” The wish not to look inward, and the hope that there is less there to fear — both at once. She has begun, quietly, to try not to dwell. It is the first sign of something that will continue to absorb her: Ethel learning to manage her own weather.

For now, the lightness wins. The day’s mail brings four letters and the Sunday Sentinel from Milwaukee — a piece of home on her desk, likely sent by parents who knew it would comfort her, and a quiet reminder that the speed and independence the Hall means to smooth away are her hometown’s, and hers. She writes with the gas turned low, gets caught at it by Mabel, and signs off to study. The peculiar school girl, at least tonight, is at ease with herself.

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Image: Regulation mail wagon, Boston, circa 1895. © United States Postal Service. All rights reserved.

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