Vassar College Digital Library

Mansfield, Adelaide (Claflin) | to mother, Dec. 23, 1894:

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Date
December 23, 1894
Abstract
VC 1897
Transcript file(s)
Details
Identifier
vassar:24543,,Box 20,VCL_Letters_Mansfield_Adelaide_1897_038
Extent
1 item
Type
Rights
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: VCLLettersMansfieldAdelaide1897038001
Vassar College.
Dec. 23. 1894.

My dear Mother, —

Vacation is really here, and I am enjoying it ever so much. It is so quiet and restful. Almost all of the girls who went, did so by Friday noon. The girls take their vacations from the very minute^ Recitations ended at 11:20 on Friday, and inside of five minutes one or two hundred girls were off for the 11:52 train. Most of the girls who went north or west managed to get off on the 11:16 train. Some girls went as far as Louisville, others to Kansas, and one girl even went to Colorado Springs. This is a day of fast traveling- I suppose you have seen

 


: VCLLettersMansfieldAdelaide1897038002
Katharine already- I sent by her some photographs of the college buildings, which I thought you might like to see.

It was all I had time to get, and I am sorry I could not make something for each of you. But I hope you will have a good Christmas anyway. Of course I would like awfully to be with you-but I will see you all in June.

I sent your picture as you asked me to, so that you can send me another one.

Ray said she would probably be over to see you Wednesday- she can ride on the crosstown railway, can't she? That will make it very convenient to go from our house to hers. Tell Katharine Dunham that I remembered her leaving her palm in her room, so I got one of the girls over at Strong to take it to her own room

 


: VCLLettersMansfieldAdelaide1897038003
and take care of it. I have four plants to take care of for girls - two of them geraniums.

I am enthusiastic now about going to New York. When I found ^out how little it would cost I thought it would be all right, but I did not want to spend fifteen dollars. Ellen and I have talked about going and staying three days and two nights, at the same time that the other girls go, who are going to stay a week. What makes me want to go the most is that if we do, we will go to hear "the Messiah". We will probably have trip tickets to New York, which will cost a dollar each way, then I understand that it costs only forty cents for us [crossed out] to stay over night in the Margaret Louisa Home, two in a room. There is a restaur

 


: VCLLettersMansfieldAdelaide1897038004
ant in connection with it, breakfasts and suppers or luncheons 20¢. dinners 30¢. Then counting in carfare and extras would not make the whole very large after all. Tickets to the "Messiah" are a dollar. If I should find I was spending too much I could come back sooner. The other girls applied at the Home for next Thursday, so Ellen and I wrote for application blanks for that time, as of course we need not use them if we decide, before the time, not to go. So now, unless I hear to the contrary from you before Thursday, I think I shall go then. If I don't get any money before Thursday I can use the five dollars that papa sent me though I did lay that aside for the expenses at the beginning of next semester- But after all if money is very scarce I want you to telegraph me not to go- in time so that I can send word to N.Y. Wednesday.

 


: VCLLettersMansfieldAdelaide1897038005
This has been a perfectly beautiful day - cold and still. We walked into town to church.- just the weather for walking- This afternoon, too, I rode in to the vesper service at half past four. I go down town oftener since the electric cars are running- It takes just about the same time now that it does to go down town at home. It is too bad that the cars go down Main Street, for we see the worst of the city. Or rather it is too bad that Main Street is such a bad street, for though it has all the stores where we have to do our shopping, it has all the saloons, and this afternoon I saw a drunken man fall across the street from me, and taken away by two policemen.

We have to go over to Strong Hall for all our meals, as they are putting a new floor in the dining-room here. All the chairs and tables are

 


: VCLLettersMansfieldAdelaide1897038006
piled in a row along the corridor. It is rather nice to go over there, even if it is more trouble, because the dining room is much prettier, and some things are cooked better over there. The coffee is so much better that I am afraid I shall take it too often.

There is a poor little Freshman here this vacation, who has gotten homesick and melancholy this year, more than any girl I ever saw. Her name is Edith Jones, and she sits at our table. Friday afternoon she went down town and back three times, just to keep herself occupied- She doesn't know at all how to make herself happy or contented with any circumstances, poor little thing! She has been a great friend all her life with "Little Lord Fauntleroy"— Vivian Burnett, Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett's son. If they were not aged eighteen and nineteen respectively, and

 


: VCLLettersMansfieldAdelaide1897038007
young for their ages, people would say they were engaged. Vivian spent Thanksgiving vacation here, and is going to be here for the last week of Christmas vacation. He is a Freshman at Harvard. During the Thanksgiving vacation he sat at the guest table and of course all the college had a good look at him. He is rather good looking, and they say not at all conceited. Edith has been working all day today on a Vassar pillow for a Christmas present for him. She studies every Sunday.

Gertrude Smith and Marion Schibsby (don't be afraid of that name! Marion is a Dane by birth) are going to have a Christmas tree in Marion's room, and invite Ellen and two other girls and me to come to it tomorrow evening. I will write about it afterwards. They are going to trim it up.

 


: VCLLettersMansfieldAdelaide1897038008
I must say that "pride goeth before destruction" for the very day after I wrote to you that I had not had a cold, I caught one, sleeping in a girl's room (to keep her company because her room mate was gone) and she had too much ventilation for me, because I woke up In the morning to find myself freezing and with a cold started. I have used up some of my cough-pills for that, so when Ray comes back she had better bring some more.

Merry Christmas to All.
Family
Neighbors
and
Friends,
and God bless you every one.
Lovingly
Adelaide. [Claflin]