akohomban
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Edited Text
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October 27, 1921
Dear Mother, Father, and Pete:
I feel like a child with a new toy--the address-stamps came today and delighted me. Somehow I always rebel when I have to take time off to address a bunch of envelopes--it seems such a waste of time.
I hope you will still claim me as your daughter and sister respectively--I lost my match today. It was a very sad affair. We started out in this manner:--I wond[sic] the first, lost the second, halved the third, lost the fourth, and then came the fatal happening. The fifth is a short hole down hill, 130 yards. Right in front of the green is a nasty, deep ditch, and all around it on the far side is an equally nasty sand trap. I hit in the ditch, bounced back on the slope of the ditch, while Lucille's ball went into the sand-trap. I took my niblick and went within a yard and a half of the cup. She got out of the trap on her second, but rolled way off the green into the rough. She played her third out, and was going at a very fast rate, so that she would have rolled to the far side of the green into the trap again, but the caddy, awkward creature, was in the road and ball hit the pin hard and literally went shooting up the pin for about two yards, came down, hit the green and stopped dead a foot from the cup. He said he was sorry, but she acted as though she had not even noticed it; I missed my putt and she holed in, so that we both had four. It didn't occur to me for a while that anyone in tournament would let a thing like that go by without at least an apology. I know that I would have done something about it if I had been in her place. She must have felt funny, because walking over to the tea she said, "We both had four, didn't we?" She knew perfectly well, it is not so hard to keep score on a hundred and thirty yard hole. Well, I never knew I had such a temper. It wasn't that she won the hole, because two down at the end of five, is not hopeless by any such mean, but it was the fact that anyone could be such a poor sport and be so petty about a thing like a college golf tournament. I was boiling within, but thank goodness I said nothing about it and acted as you would say, Mother, "like a lady" throughout the game, which is certainly more than she did. She walked on the green half the time while I was putting, and always walked ahead on the fairway. And she knew that she had no business to, because she is a much more experienced player than I am and has tournament rules down pat. It was my first experience with poor sportsmanship, and it got on my nerves terribly. I didn't play badly, in fact, I played rather well, but she played better. Only when she gets a rotten shot, she is anything but agreeable. I was driving my best, which as you know, if good, but she outdrove me slightly most of the time. But that experience on the fifth hole was my ruination for the afternoon.
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She beat me five down and four to go. Such is life!--how very philosophical. But I am very disappointed. I feel tonight as though I had flunked ten exams. It is maddening, because I feel that I was defeated not on my golf, but on me "feelings". I never knew I could be so indignant--in fact, i never knew that I was at all an emotional crittur. The exasperating thing is that I know I could have beaten the winner of the other match, neither Jean May nor Miss Thallon plays much of a game. I wanted to win this tournament even more than make debate.
I saw friend Phyllis in the libe yesterday and had a lengthy confab. She told me among other things that the trouble with both Fran Kellogg and me is that we are both good the day we come out to tryout for the first time, but neither one of us improves noticeably from that day on. I was strongly tempted to tell her that is she and the rest of the valuable committee would once in their lives give some constructive criticism, there might be some chance of our improving, but I exerted that self-control which has been tried a good deal of late, and refrained. But when she told me, that when she sits there and listens to how poorly people meet their opponents' arguments, she feels like getting up and debating herself, I did not use it. She is such a punk debater, but she doesn't know it! So I mentioned decently that sitting and listening is very different from getting up and speaking, and that I knew because I had done a lot of both in intercollegiate last year. She agreed that I was probably right.
Then she told me that she had heard an interesting thing the other day. Miss Palmer told someone the other day, and this someone told her, that there are two hundred Jewish girls in the college, that is, girls who are born Jewish, but of the two hundred only sixtyane registered as being Jewish by religion. That refers to the cards filled out Freshman year, I guess. I told her that I would very much like to have the figures straight, because I knew there were a great many Jewish girls in college, but I could not believe that there were two hundred. Thereupon we had quite a discussion on the subject, which of course, as always, led to a re-hash of Peabody days. Her statement is a pretty sad statement of fact, I am afraid.
I have to debate tomorrow afternoon. Phyll told me that I was sure of making the team--not that I was so good, but that there were none better. She surely has developed an amount of tact and happy mode of expression that is amazing!
I have not heard from Margaret yet. Perhaps she changed her mind.
A letter to Helen from Marian brought the interesting information from Marian that she is going to the Princeton-Harvard game with Junior Weil and Ruth Gallinger is going down with her to go with her Byron. The next sentence
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at this juncture told me to give my love to the two hats if I saw them at Princeton. When I remarked that she could hardly be wearing both, Helen said she would probably be carrying the other one! The letter just oozed with her catty worldliness! Really, i feel very cynical tonight--but I seem particularly impressed with the mean traits in some people's characters. In my "Jewtopia" people aren't going to be like that.
Pete, a J topic is a topic for J, which is Nineteenth Century Poetry. The course got that name in prehistoric times when all courses were lettered instead of numbered and it has preserved that appellation in all but catalogue[sic] terminology.
I am sorry you were distressed by receiving the books. It seems to me that a twenty-first birthday, even though you boo on a distinction between twenty-first and eighteenth, is worthy of some "lasting token". Of course Harold is guilty. I told him to pump you and let me know what books you considered worth owning, that I had been very stupid in not pumping you before we left home, and that unfortunately I had not followed closely enough the recent historical publications to know just what was worth buying. When I received the letter with the information and the willing offer to buy them, I first tried with no success at Lindmark's, then asked him to attend to it. Siehst du? However, I'm sorry I "distressed" you. Life is too short for that. As to your remark, "you hope I won't be foolish enough to do that again"--do you think I am cracked? One birthday present in one year is quite enough. I hadn't proposed making it a weekly affair--my funds don't reach indefinitely!--Enough of this foolishness. I must back to my J reading.
I don't know why you had an intermission in my letters, Mother. I mail them every day in the eight o'clock morning mail. You know Sundays the letters don't go till seven P. M. Perhaps that was the difficulty. I had no letter from you today, Mother.
I hope the railroad strike doesn't come to interfere with my week-end. I just had a blow tonight. I missed town Sunday when I went to Philadelphia with you, Mother, and I'll miss it in November again. The provoking thing is that when one goes on a week-end, chapel cuts don't count.
It may be interest you to know that I was called upon by a Poughkeepsie-ite just after Yom Kippur and begged to teach Sunday school. i refused at first, because it takes too much time, but on considering the situation, decided that after seeing the pitiable behavior that night, that I could at least try to teach them manners and as to knowledge, i know that I haven't much, but still I have more
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doing it because Pete was. As a matter of fact, i felt a duty--this sounds strange coming from me--to do what I could to ameliorate that awful situation down there. She promised me the oldest kids and promised also to realease[sic] if it was too much of a tax on my time. The pay is two dollars a Sunday, and this was to go to the endowment fund. I must admit I felt very righteous but also unenthusiastic at the prospect. I would have preferred a guarantee of a bath for all of them before school meets! You see what a fine social worker I would make. Well, yesterday she informed me that school will have to meet Sunday mornings, and there I cannot do it, because I know I could not be excused from chapel. Every Christian girl could ask to be excused on the same grounds, and honorable boring ministers would yell at empty pews. So the "ungezonene Juden" know as much now as they would at the end of a year of my valuable instruction.
I would like to write about ten more pages as Miss Salmon says, "on the state of the Union" but I haven't the time.
Hope you are still improving so rapidly, Papsy.
I was wondering today about Thanksgiving. Will you be about ready then for a Nach-Kur in Atlantic or will I be coming home to visit you?
Love,
Fannie
We had a debate Council Meeting last night to vote on the three subjects which we send in to the central council as our suggestions. The three decided were "Federal Supervision of Education", "Freedom of the Philippines", and "The League of Nations". The first is the easiest, the last the right one to have. It is a subject that has been hashed and rehashed, but in reality, when it comes down to facts, people as a whole are very vague about concrete information. I was all for some Japanese and Chinese question myself, but the others were not.
October 27, 1921
Dear Mother, Father, and Pete:
I feel like a child with a new toy--the address-stamps came today and delighted me. Somehow I always rebel when I have to take time off to address a bunch of envelopes--it seems such a waste of time.
I hope you will still claim me as your daughter and sister respectively--I lost my match today. It was a very sad affair. We started out in this manner:--I wond[sic] the first, lost the second, halved the third, lost the fourth, and then came the fatal happening. The fifth is a short hole down hill, 130 yards. Right in front of the green is a nasty, deep ditch, and all around it on the far side is an equally nasty sand trap. I hit in the ditch, bounced back on the slope of the ditch, while Lucille's ball went into the sand-trap. I took my niblick and went within a yard and a half of the cup. She got out of the trap on her second, but rolled way off the green into the rough. She played her third out, and was going at a very fast rate, so that she would have rolled to the far side of the green into the trap again, but the caddy, awkward creature, was in the road and ball hit the pin hard and literally went shooting up the pin for about two yards, came down, hit the green and stopped dead a foot from the cup. He said he was sorry, but she acted as though she had not even noticed it; I missed my putt and she holed in, so that we both had four. It didn't occur to me for a while that anyone in tournament would let a thing like that go by without at least an apology. I know that I would have done something about it if I had been in her place. She must have felt funny, because walking over to the tea she said, "We both had four, didn't we?" She knew perfectly well, it is not so hard to keep score on a hundred and thirty yard hole. Well, I never knew I had such a temper. It wasn't that she won the hole, because two down at the end of five, is not hopeless by any such mean, but it was the fact that anyone could be such a poor sport and be so petty about a thing like a college golf tournament. I was boiling within, but thank goodness I said nothing about it and acted as you would say, Mother, "like a lady" throughout the game, which is certainly more than she did. She walked on the green half the time while I was putting, and always walked ahead on the fairway. And she knew that she had no business to, because she is a much more experienced player than I am and has tournament rules down pat. It was my first experience with poor sportsmanship, and it got on my nerves terribly. I didn't play badly, in fact, I played rather well, but she played better. Only when she gets a rotten shot, she is anything but agreeable. I was driving my best, which as you know, if good, but she outdrove me slightly most of the time. But that experience on the fifth hole was my ruination for the afternoon.
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She beat me five down and four to go. Such is life!--how very philosophical. But I am very disappointed. I feel tonight as though I had flunked ten exams. It is maddening, because I feel that I was defeated not on my golf, but on me "feelings". I never knew I could be so indignant--in fact, i never knew that I was at all an emotional crittur. The exasperating thing is that I know I could have beaten the winner of the other match, neither Jean May nor Miss Thallon plays much of a game. I wanted to win this tournament even more than make debate.
I saw friend Phyllis in the libe yesterday and had a lengthy confab. She told me among other things that the trouble with both Fran Kellogg and me is that we are both good the day we come out to tryout for the first time, but neither one of us improves noticeably from that day on. I was strongly tempted to tell her that is she and the rest of the valuable committee would once in their lives give some constructive criticism, there might be some chance of our improving, but I exerted that self-control which has been tried a good deal of late, and refrained. But when she told me, that when she sits there and listens to how poorly people meet their opponents' arguments, she feels like getting up and debating herself, I did not use it. She is such a punk debater, but she doesn't know it! So I mentioned decently that sitting and listening is very different from getting up and speaking, and that I knew because I had done a lot of both in intercollegiate last year. She agreed that I was probably right.
Then she told me that she had heard an interesting thing the other day. Miss Palmer told someone the other day, and this someone told her, that there are two hundred Jewish girls in the college, that is, girls who are born Jewish, but of the two hundred only sixtyane registered as being Jewish by religion. That refers to the cards filled out Freshman year, I guess. I told her that I would very much like to have the figures straight, because I knew there were a great many Jewish girls in college, but I could not believe that there were two hundred. Thereupon we had quite a discussion on the subject, which of course, as always, led to a re-hash of Peabody days. Her statement is a pretty sad statement of fact, I am afraid.
I have to debate tomorrow afternoon. Phyll told me that I was sure of making the team--not that I was so good, but that there were none better. She surely has developed an amount of tact and happy mode of expression that is amazing!
I have not heard from Margaret yet. Perhaps she changed her mind.
A letter to Helen from Marian brought the interesting information from Marian that she is going to the Princeton-Harvard game with Junior Weil and Ruth Gallinger is going down with her to go with her Byron. The next sentence
-3-
at this juncture told me to give my love to the two hats if I saw them at Princeton. When I remarked that she could hardly be wearing both, Helen said she would probably be carrying the other one! The letter just oozed with her catty worldliness! Really, i feel very cynical tonight--but I seem particularly impressed with the mean traits in some people's characters. In my "Jewtopia" people aren't going to be like that.
Pete, a J topic is a topic for J, which is Nineteenth Century Poetry. The course got that name in prehistoric times when all courses were lettered instead of numbered and it has preserved that appellation in all but catalogue[sic] terminology.
I am sorry you were distressed by receiving the books. It seems to me that a twenty-first birthday, even though you boo on a distinction between twenty-first and eighteenth, is worthy of some "lasting token". Of course Harold is guilty. I told him to pump you and let me know what books you considered worth owning, that I had been very stupid in not pumping you before we left home, and that unfortunately I had not followed closely enough the recent historical publications to know just what was worth buying. When I received the letter with the information and the willing offer to buy them, I first tried with no success at Lindmark's, then asked him to attend to it. Siehst du? However, I'm sorry I "distressed" you. Life is too short for that. As to your remark, "you hope I won't be foolish enough to do that again"--do you think I am cracked? One birthday present in one year is quite enough. I hadn't proposed making it a weekly affair--my funds don't reach indefinitely!--Enough of this foolishness. I must back to my J reading.
I don't know why you had an intermission in my letters, Mother. I mail them every day in the eight o'clock morning mail. You know Sundays the letters don't go till seven P. M. Perhaps that was the difficulty. I had no letter from you today, Mother.
I hope the railroad strike doesn't come to interfere with my week-end. I just had a blow tonight. I missed town Sunday when I went to Philadelphia with you, Mother, and I'll miss it in November again. The provoking thing is that when one goes on a week-end, chapel cuts don't count.
It may be interest you to know that I was called upon by a Poughkeepsie-ite just after Yom Kippur and begged to teach Sunday school. i refused at first, because it takes too much time, but on considering the situation, decided that after seeing the pitiable behavior that night, that I could at least try to teach them manners and as to knowledge, i know that I haven't much, but still I have more
-4-
doing it because Pete was. As a matter of fact, i felt a duty--this sounds strange coming from me--to do what I could to ameliorate that awful situation down there. She promised me the oldest kids and promised also to realease[sic] if it was too much of a tax on my time. The pay is two dollars a Sunday, and this was to go to the endowment fund. I must admit I felt very righteous but also unenthusiastic at the prospect. I would have preferred a guarantee of a bath for all of them before school meets! You see what a fine social worker I would make. Well, yesterday she informed me that school will have to meet Sunday mornings, and there I cannot do it, because I know I could not be excused from chapel. Every Christian girl could ask to be excused on the same grounds, and honorable boring ministers would yell at empty pews. So the "ungezonene Juden" know as much now as they would at the end of a year of my valuable instruction.
I would like to write about ten more pages as Miss Salmon says, "on the state of the Union" but I haven't the time.
Hope you are still improving so rapidly, Papsy.
I was wondering today about Thanksgiving. Will you be about ready then for a Nach-Kur in Atlantic or will I be coming home to visit you?
Love,
Fannie
We had a debate Council Meeting last night to vote on the three subjects which we send in to the central council as our suggestions. The three decided were "Federal Supervision of Education", "Freedom of the Philippines", and "The League of Nations". The first is the easiest, the last the right one to have. It is a subject that has been hashed and rehashed, but in reality, when it comes down to facts, people as a whole are very vague about concrete information. I was all for some Japanese and Chinese question myself, but the others were not.
