DIY History | Transcribe | Campus Culture | Adelia M. Hoyt memoir and photographs

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Page 6

6 UNFOLDING YEARS

home-made rag carpet on the floor while the paper on the walls was rich in pattern of autumn leaves. A big sheet iron stove gave out a cozy warmth on that wedding night in November.
I recall only one incident of that evening. My best girl friend and neighbor, Ida Robbins, and I shared a large home-made stool, a box covered with some kind of bright colored cloth. During the evening, our minister who had come out from town to perform the ceremony,came to us in our corner. Laying his hand on my head and looking down at me he said in solemn tones: "Never mind my child, you will have good eyes in heaven." What strange consolation to offer a child of six - and I can still after all these years feel the resentment and antagonism is aroused in me. 
Each spring for several years I had a long spell of fever and after each one my sight failed. To conceal this fact I strained every nerve. I was so frail that I had no desire to go out and play with other children, and also I shrank from their learning that I was not just like them. I spent the winters mostly curled up on the lounge back of the big stove pretending to read, but in reality making up stories of my own or playing with imaginary companions. I had my rag dolls and paper dolls, and one with a china head sent me by my cousin Jessie and named for her; but my imaginary family was much larger and more interesting. In summer I had my swing and playhouse under the trees but my play was never very strenuous, and I liked best to live in a make-believe world. 
My parents were well educated for frontier folk. The summer before my arrival my mother had taught school in our house. After a schoolhouse was built my father taught the winter terms. Some of the farmers were planning to send their sons and daughters to college and the fact that my father knew something of higher mathematics and Latin made him a desirable teacher. My sister Emma taught her first country school when she was fifteen, and from that time on she taught school in the summer and attended school in the winter.

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6 UNFOLDING YEARS home-made rag carpet on the floor while the paper on the walls was rich in pattern of autumn leaves. A big sheet iron stove gave out a cozy warmth on that wedding night in November. I recall only one incident of that evening. My best girl friend and neighbor, Ida Robbins, and I shared a large home-made stool, a box covered with some kind of bright colored cloth. During the evening, our minister who had come out from town to perform the ceremony,came to us in our corner. Laying his hand on my head and looking down at me he said in solemn tones: "Never mind my child, you will have good eyes in heaven." What strange consolation to offer a child of six - and I can still after all these years feel the resentment and antagonism is aroused in me. Each spring for several years I had a long spell of fever and after each one my sight failed. To conceal this fact I strained every nerve. I was so frail that I had no desire to go out and play with other children, and also I shrank from their learning that I was not just like them. I spent the winters mostly curled up on the lounge back of the big stove pretending to read, but in reality making up stories of my own or playing with imaginary companions. I had my rag dolls and paper dolls, and one with a china head sent me by my cousin Jessie and named for her; but my imaginary family was much larger and more interesting. In summer I had my swing and playhouse under the trees but my play was never very strenuous, and I liked best to live in a make-believe world. My parents were well educated for frontier folk. The summer before my arrival my mother had taught school in our house. After a schoolhouse was built my father taught the winter terms. Some of the farmers were planning to send their sons and daughters to college and the fact that my father knew something of higher mathematics and Latin made him a desirable teacher. My sister Emma taught her first country school when she was fifteen, and from that time on she taught school in the summer and attended school in the winter.