Vassar College Digital Library

Mansfield, Adelaide (Claflin) | to mother, Nov. 26, 1893:

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Date
November 26, 1893
Abstract
VC 1897
Transcript file(s)
Details
Identifier
vassar:24548,,Box 20,VCL_Letters_Mansfield_Adelaide_1897_008
Extent
1 item
Type
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: VCLLettersMansfieldAdelaide1897008001
Vassar College.
Nov. 26, 1893.

Dear mamma, -

The package of flannels came all right, on Thursday. I am much obliged for them, especially the mittens. They are just what I wanted. This is a very economical place for some things, especially gloves. But girls can easily find things to spend money on, if they want to. Last night I was talking with some girls, and one of them was telling about her finances. She gets an allowance of $15 a month and at present she is $18.50 in debt. She had borrowed some from Mr. Deane, the Treasurer. That is the way some girls do, when they get out of money. There are some girls here who dont know any thing at all about money; at home whenever they wanted anything,

 


: VCLLettersMansfieldAdelaide1897008002
they simply went and bought it, and charged it to their fathers, without even inquiring the price. Of course there is the opposite extreme here, too,-girls, and plenty of them, who haven't a cent to spare.

We have to have some shoes for gymnasium, like tennis shoes. I am going to buy a pair from Alice Raymond, that are just new and cost 80 cents. Then I will have about $ 2 left. I dont know yet what I shall do about Christmas presents. I suppose that if I expect to make any, I shall have to have some more money then.

The gymnasium opened this week. I have been just once. The girls look so funny in their suits. Mine is not full enough in the waist to be pretty. They look better on small thin girls, if I had only known about them, I could have had mine made at home, and it would have been ever so much cheaper. But when I asked the people at home about them, they said the girls had to have them made here so as to have them all made alike.

Wednesday night there was a Seidl concert in town, and about a

 


: VCLLettersMansfieldAdelaide1897008003
hundred and seventy five people from the college went, and they said it was very fine Seats were from 75 cents to $1.50, so I take in only the things at the college, which are always free. Friday night Prof. Herbert E. Smyth of Bryn Mawr, lectured on Greek Romanticism, but most people did not think it was very interesting, and while I was listening, I had come to the conclusion that I did not know enough to appreciate it.

There was a reception for him, afterwards, to the teachers, and they said he was much more interesting there than in the lecture.

Mrs. Dwight's mother is visiting her now, a very nice old lady. She was for a good while, a missionary in Turkey. She spoke of being at Marsovan, and I found that she knew Mr. Tracy very well indeed. She said he always called her "Mother Snyder". Mrs. Snyder is her name. At first, when we went to see her, she addressed all her conversation to Ray, and talked about Ray's grandfather, and all her missionary relations, but after I mentioned Mr. Tracy, she seemed to think that

 


: VCLLettersMansfieldAdelaide1897008004
I was quite intimately acquainted and connected with missionaries. So then she talked a long while to me. Mr. and Mrs. Tracy, she said, went back to Turkey last June or July.

Tonight the Y.W.C.A. are going to have Mrs. Ballington Booth speak, on the Salvation Army. Once a month, instead of the Sunday evening prayer-meeting, they have some sort of a missionary address. I believe Mrs. Booth is considered to be a very interesting speaker.

Everybody is crazy now about Thanksgiving. Ray is going to Brooklyn, after all. She had quite an "embarrassment of riches" in the way of invitations. Her cousin Mrs. Ellison, invited her first to Brooklyn. Then she had an invitation from her grandmother in Springfield, and an aunt near New York. A great many girls are going down to New York. Vacation begins Wednesday noon, and everybody has to be back by Saturday night, unless they come on the Sunday evening train from New York, as some do. Trains do not run in Connecticut on Sunday - and very few of them do around

 


: VCLLettersMansfieldAdelaide1897008005
here. A great many girls are going to stay here. They say we shall probably have to
have our meals over in the other building though, which will not be nearly so pleasant as having them here. The dining room here is so pleasant, and it is much smaller than the old building one.

I have to have my examination in American History on Dec. 9, so that I shall have to study it during the Thanksgiving vacation.

Then Nan McClelland, whose home is in Poughkeepsie, has invited me to spend whatever leisure time I may have, in vacation, in helping her dress two dolls for the Y.W.C.A. The Y.W.C.A. invites the girls to dress dolls for Christmas presents for poor children, in the College Settlements, I think. A while ago they were making scrap books for the children's Hospitals.

What became of the letter from Aunt Allie that you said you were going to send me? I have been waiting to get it before I write to her. I wrote to May Holmes last week and got an answer from her right away. She said her mother was very

 


: VCLLettersMansfieldAdelaide1897008006
well, and of course, very busy. May is going to Normal School, taking two studies, and teaching half a day. She has D primary children, and thinks they are so cute. She seems to enjoy teaching them, very much. She was eighteen, two weeks ago. She said that you need not wait for them to write. Her father wrote to that Prof. Gardner and asked him to call on me. Uncle Edgar put a few lines in May's letter, and told me that Prof. Gardner was a "very nice gentleman". They did not say anything about the "Signal".

9:30 P.M. I have just come from hearing Mrs. Ballington Booth. She was perfectly splendid. She is very young looking, and wore a plain black costume. She has a very sweet face, and is what you would call fascinating, in speaking. She told of the work of the Salvation Army in all its departments, its aims and the reasons for its methods of work, and answered the objections made by people who are prejudiced against it. She told about the slum work etc. too. She is intelligent and educated and refined, herself and awfully in earnest. The chapel was crowded, all the college and a good many from town. The bell has rung and so goodnight.

Lovingly Adelaide,