Dec. 10, 1893
My dear Edith,—
I have no idea whether or not you are still at Uncle Charles'. But if you are, I know you would like to get a letter, so I will risk addressing it there. You may imagine I was rather astonished to hear of your going off so suddenly, I am very glad you could go there and have a visit, though it is too bad that it was pain that compelled you to go. You do have such a hard time with your teeth, as well as with a good many things. It is too bad. I hope my teeth will last until I get home, without needing any filling.
Friday afternoon the daughter of Mr. Gardner, Uncle Edgar's cousin, came out to see me, together with a lady who is her mother's cousin. I think she is a real nice little girl. I don't know, though, as I ought to call her little, since she is coming out here to college next year, but she is very young, and wears her hair down her back. (By the way, there are a good many girls here who wear their hair down their backs). The lady with her is ever so nice and reminds me very much of Mrs. Handerson. I think she is just visiting them. They invited me, together with two other college girls and two Poughkeepsie girls, to spend the afternoon yesterday and stay to supper. We had a very pleasant time. Her father is very pleasant & something like Uncle Edgar. I did not especially fancy her mother, because she is Woman's Suffrage. She talked quite long and seriously on the subject at the table and I believe she was really trying to convert us to believe ^in it, because none of us did. I wanted to laugh so badly. But still she is rather nice otherwise- Mr. Gardner is Secretary of a business college in Poughkeepsie, and also, as I learned, preaches at the Friends' church, not the Evangelical one, but the Unitarian one. They have ever and ever so many books in their house. When we came home, we took the last car, which leaves Poughkeepsie at eight oclock, in the evening,—that is, it leaves if there is anybody to ride in it, otherwise it doesn't- The driver is always mad when there is anybody to ride in it, because if there wasn't, his day's work would be over. So last night he was mad enough to whip up his horses very energetically, so that they actually ran, and ran fast, and the car went bumping along at a terrific rate---for it.
Those cars are the funniest little things, bobtails, with the door, in the back, so low that you have to bob your head if you have a hat on. It looks so queer to see no platform at the back end, nothing but one step- They charge ten cents car fare if you ride way to the college, so we almost always walk between the college and Arlington, a little place about half way to town, and from there the fare is only five cents. But still we walk all the way to town unless the weather is very bad, or we haven't time. The cars run every twenty four minutes; that is, they go. I never knew them to run until last night. Ordinarily you can walk about as fast as the car goes.
That "Vassar Tea" must have been very pleasant. I am glad you met all those teachers. I have met Cornelia Ranney and Irene Lawrence. Cornelia Ranney is very pretty, and pleasant, but I think she is a a dreamy, unpractical sort of a girl. I used to meet Irene Lawrence every day on the way to High School, but when she was calling on me the other evening she expressed surprise when she found I was from Cleveland. The are both very pleasant when we meet them, but as they are over In the old building, and not in any of our classes, we don't see much of them. We have met all of the Cleveland girls, I think, except one. There are thirteen or fourteen altogether.
Later. I have just come back from an address to the Y.W.C.A. by Miss Price, who is connected with the international Y.W.C.A. She told of the work and aims of the Y.W.C. Associations in cities and colleges, in this country and Canada.
Last week there was such an interesting lecture by the chaplain of Hampton Institute, who told us all about Hampton, in a very interesting way. He had stereopticon views, which, of course, added a good deal to the interest, and made it much more real. There were pictures, not only of the buildings and grounds, but of homes from which some of the students came, little tumbledown cabins of the colored people, and mud huts of Indians, pictures of some of the children as they were when they came, and of the same ones when they went away. There was a quartet, too, of colored young men, who sang darky hymns. We got a splendid idea of Hampton.
It is already after nine oclock, and I must still write to mamma a few lines, and I have to get up early tomorrow morning, too, as I generally have to Monday morning any way.
I hope you haven't been killed with your teeth, and that you will get them fixed up nicely so that you won't have to bother with them for a while- Give my love to Uncle Charles and Aunt Effie, and keep lots for your own dear self.
Your loving sister
Adelaide Claflin.
Dear Mamma My tooth is not yet finished, but I hope will be today. I will come home as soon as I can. I did not expect to have to stay so long. A Miss Brown is here, a very sweet girl- and musical. We enjoy her playing very much.
Lovingly, E[?]
(This is written across the top of Adelaide Claflin's letter to her sister Edith, Dec. 10, 1893.)