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Eva is taking her music seriously, and the people around her are taking her music seriously as well.
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Canton Ohio, March 22
Dear Will:-
I just told mama I was going to write and blow you up for not writing. And she thought I had better not for fear you are sick but surely you have not been sick for three months or it would have been in the Army and Navy Journal. Really I can’t see any reason for you writing so seldom Steenie receives letters from the Philippine Islands every two weeks so it is not because the mail service is poor that we don’t hear from you. Besides we see in the Journal the schedule for the Army Transports and there is one sailing every month. So we ought to get a letter at least once a month. But there is no excuse for you writing just once in three months.
If you knew how it worries mama I think you would be a little more thoughtful. Even if you haven’t time to write a long letter write as much as you can to show that you at least think of us occasionally.
Mama said she supposed your pay has been stopped and you won’t write until you can send some money. I certainly hope you would not put off writing on that account for it is letters we want and not just money. Now please do write oftener or we will all quit writing to you. Perhaps, though, you would rather not get any letter from me like this but you deserve all this scolding.
Haven’t you sent that jusi to Alma yet? I do hope you will feel moved to send me some before I want to get married.
Did you receive your fruitcake I think you ought to have it by this time if you are ever going to get it.
Mr. Kirk and Aunt Lydia have moved to Omaha Nebraska to take charge of a dining room in a Rescue home there. Helen has entered the Deaconess House in Cleveland.
I have finished a term of piano with Miss Brown. I have taken fourteen selected Heller Exercises and Rubenstein’s Melody in F. I have had a term and a half from Mrs. Smith in voice culture. The choir is going to give a cantata in our church Easter morning and I am to sing the soprano solos in it and I am going to sing a solo in the evening. I am becoming famous but not wealthy. I earned a dollar singing at a funeral. But I sang at three others for nothing.
Mrs. Smith is talking of having a ladies quartet composed of Mrs. Ralph O. Stroop, Eva Pfendler, Kate Baerhens and myself. Mrs. Stroop was Grace Ringle before she was married. I hope she will for I would enjoy it. It would be hard for me to sing second soprano though for I have never done much of it.
Alfred Baerhens is coming home this summer on a two month leave. By the way I might tell you what he finds time to do besides all his practising, teaching and directing. He writes home two or three times a week. Anna and he always wrote regularly once a week and now since he has begun to think of coming home he often writes three times a week. Doesn’t that make you feel just a little bit guilty?
Mama just noticed that blot and said we would be so glad to get a letter from you that even if it were covered with blots we would be willing to spend a day deciphering it through the blots.
Well to continue my story -
Anna Baehrens is organist of our church now so she will have Alfred play our organ when he comes home. I only wish you were here to hear him.
Mrs. Smith thinks it is the proper thing for me to go to Oberlin next year for she said I would be beyond her by that time and there isn’t anyone here that could take me any further. I only hope we will get to go. I think it would be lovely to live there.
Well if that poem and this severe letter don’t have any effect on you I will give up in despair. Take good care of yourself.
With much love,
Eva
Dear Will:-
I just told mama I was going to write and blow you up for not writing. And she thought I had better not for fear you are sick but surely you have not been sick for three months or it would have been in the Army and Navy Journal. Really I can’t see any reason for you writing so seldom Steenie receives letters from the Philippine Islands every two weeks so it is not because the mail service is poor that we don’t hear from you. Besides we see in the Journal the schedule for the Army Transports and there is one sailing every month. So we ought to get a letter at least once a month. But there is no excuse for you writing just once in three months.
If you knew how it worries mama I think you would be a little more thoughtful. Even if you haven’t time to write a long letter write as much as you can to show that you at least think of us occasionally.
Mama said she supposed your pay has been stopped and you won’t write until you can send some money. I certainly hope you would not put off writing on that account for it is letters we want and not just money. Now please do write oftener or we will all quit writing to you. Perhaps, though, you would rather not get any letter from me like this but you deserve all this scolding.
Haven’t you sent that jusi to Alma yet? I do hope you will feel moved to send me some before I want to get married.
Did you receive your fruitcake I think you ought to have it by this time if you are ever going to get it.
Mr. Kirk and Aunt Lydia have moved to Omaha Nebraska to take charge of a dining room in a Rescue home there. Helen has entered the Deaconess House in Cleveland.
I have finished a term of piano with Miss Brown. I have taken fourteen selected Heller Exercises and Rubenstein’s Melody in F. I have had a term and a half from Mrs. Smith in voice culture. The choir is going to give a cantata in our church Easter morning and I am to sing the soprano solos in it and I am going to sing a solo in the evening. I am becoming famous but not wealthy. I earned a dollar singing at a funeral. But I sang at three others for nothing.
Mrs. Smith is talking of having a ladies quartet composed of Mrs. Ralph O. Stroop, Eva Pfendler, Kate Baerhens and myself. Mrs. Stroop was Grace Ringle before she was married. I hope she will for I would enjoy it. It would be hard for me to sing second soprano though for I have never done much of it.
Alfred Baerhens is coming home this summer on a two month leave. By the way I might tell you what he finds time to do besides all his practising, teaching and directing. He writes home two or three times a week. Anna and he always wrote regularly once a week and now since he has begun to think of coming home he often writes three times a week. Doesn’t that make you feel just a little bit guilty?
Mama just noticed that blot and said we would be so glad to get a letter from you that even if it were covered with blots we would be willing to spend a day deciphering it through the blots.
Well to continue my story -
Anna Baehrens is organist of our church now so she will have Alfred play our organ when he comes home. I only wish you were here to hear him.
Mrs. Smith thinks it is the proper thing for me to go to Oberlin next year for she said I would be beyond her by that time and there isn’t anyone here that could take me any further. I only hope we will get to go. I think it would be lovely to live there.
Well if that poem and this severe letter don’t have any effect on you I will give up in despair. Take good care of yourself.
With much love,
Eva
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1.
Here is the information from the postmarks, in order of date, as far as I can make them out:
1904-03-22 9pm Canton Ohio
1904-03-27 7am San Francisco CA
1904-04-29 3pm Manila PI
1904-04-30 12 m: Los Banos, Laguna, PI
1904-05-03 4pm Manila PI
1904-05-09 9am Iloilo Panay
1904-05-?? Camp Jossman Iloilo
Camp Jossman - Wikipedia says:
Camp Jossman was a United States Army cantonment constructed near the town of Buenavista on Guimaras Island in the Philippines after the Spanish–American War.
…
The construction of a post on Guimaras Island was authorized by Congress in July, 1902. Subsequent acts of Congress authorized the expansion of the camp.
…
In 1912 the U.S. Army determined that there was no longer a need for bases on Guimaras Island, and Camp Jossman was vacated. The buildings and other infrastructure were subsequently demolished.
…
The site of Camp Jossman is now a reservoir under the jurisdiction of the Water District of Buenavista.
2.
I just told mama I was going to write and blow you up for not writing.
This is Eva's big attempt to get Will to write more. Alma's attempt was exactly five months later:
3.
Really I can’t see any reason for you writing so seldom Steenie receives letters from the Philippine Islands every two weeks so it is not because the mail service is poor that we don’t hear from you.
Steenie is Abastenia St. Leger Eberle. Her family, the Eberles, lived in Canton for a while, and then her parents and her sister (if I have this correctly) went to the Philippines for a while. Steenie is in the Non-Family page for Mabel, Lil, Steenie, and Orestes.
4.
Haven’t you sent that jusi to Alma yet? I do hope you will feel moved to send me some before I want to get married.
This is a reference to what Eva wrote about jusi fabric in a previous letter: I would like to have you get me some of that stuff you got Alma. She hasn’t gotten it yet I guess so I don’t know what it is like but I saw in the Army and Navy Journal that a brides dress was made of it so I want some. I might take a sudden notion to get married and would have to give it up just because I would not have the proper thing to be married in. Wouldn’t that be sad.
5.
Mr. Kirk and Aunt Lydia have moved to Omaha Nebraska to take charge of the dining room in a Rescue home there. Helen has entered the Deaconess House in Cleveland.
According to Barbara's genealogy, Aunt Lydia was a younger sister of Papa Charles, 1854-1929. She and her husband, Samuel Alphonso Kirk, both died in Pittsburth, Pennsylvania, so they didn't stay in Omaha. They were married on November 29, 1894. Maybe that was late enough so that calling Mr. Kirk "Uncle Sam" felt wrong. Helen isn't listed as a daughter, so I don't know who she was.
5.
It would be hard for me to sing second soprano though for I have never done much of it.
Eva was later listed as a contralto.
6.
Well if that poem and this severe letter don’t have any effect on you I will give up in despair.
I think the poem is probably one that Eva started because of some agreement with Will:
Here is the information from the postmarks, in order of date, as far as I can make them out:
1904-03-22 9pm Canton Ohio
1904-03-27 7am San Francisco CA
1904-04-29 3pm Manila PI
1904-04-30 12 m: Los Banos, Laguna, PI
1904-05-03 4pm Manila PI
1904-05-09 9am Iloilo Panay
1904-05-?? Camp Jossman Iloilo
Camp Jossman - Wikipedia says:
Camp Jossman was a United States Army cantonment constructed near the town of Buenavista on Guimaras Island in the Philippines after the Spanish–American War.
…
The construction of a post on Guimaras Island was authorized by Congress in July, 1902. Subsequent acts of Congress authorized the expansion of the camp.
…
In 1912 the U.S. Army determined that there was no longer a need for bases on Guimaras Island, and Camp Jossman was vacated. The buildings and other infrastructure were subsequently demolished.
…
The site of Camp Jossman is now a reservoir under the jurisdiction of the Water District of Buenavista.
2.
I just told mama I was going to write and blow you up for not writing.
This is Eva's big attempt to get Will to write more. Alma's attempt was exactly five months later:
3.
Really I can’t see any reason for you writing so seldom Steenie receives letters from the Philippine Islands every two weeks so it is not because the mail service is poor that we don’t hear from you.
Steenie is Abastenia St. Leger Eberle. Her family, the Eberles, lived in Canton for a while, and then her parents and her sister (if I have this correctly) went to the Philippines for a while. Steenie is in the Non-Family page for Mabel, Lil, Steenie, and Orestes.
4.
Haven’t you sent that jusi to Alma yet? I do hope you will feel moved to send me some before I want to get married.
This is a reference to what Eva wrote about jusi fabric in a previous letter: I would like to have you get me some of that stuff you got Alma. She hasn’t gotten it yet I guess so I don’t know what it is like but I saw in the Army and Navy Journal that a brides dress was made of it so I want some. I might take a sudden notion to get married and would have to give it up just because I would not have the proper thing to be married in. Wouldn’t that be sad.
5.
Mr. Kirk and Aunt Lydia have moved to Omaha Nebraska to take charge of the dining room in a Rescue home there. Helen has entered the Deaconess House in Cleveland.
According to Barbara's genealogy, Aunt Lydia was a younger sister of Papa Charles, 1854-1929. She and her husband, Samuel Alphonso Kirk, both died in Pittsburth, Pennsylvania, so they didn't stay in Omaha. They were married on November 29, 1894. Maybe that was late enough so that calling Mr. Kirk "Uncle Sam" felt wrong. Helen isn't listed as a daughter, so I don't know who she was.
5.
It would be hard for me to sing second soprano though for I have never done much of it.
Eva was later listed as a contralto.
6.
Well if that poem and this severe letter don’t have any effect on you I will give up in despair.
I think the poem is probably one that Eva started because of some agreement with Will:
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LINKS TO OTHER RELEVANT PAGES IN THIS WEBSITE
DOCUMENT LISTS FOR PEOPLE:
- WILL: DOCUMENTS ----- Incoming
- ALMA: DOCUMENTS ----- Related
- EVA: DOCUMENTS ----- Outgoing
- MAMA MARGARET: DOCUMENTS ----- Related
- NON-FAMILY: MABEL, LIL, STEENIE, AND ORESTES ----- Steenie
RELATED DOCUMENTS/PAGES:
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