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1905-08-07: ​tour stops---images---audio---~TRANSCRIPT~---notes---links---site navigation
5811 Madison Ave Chicago

Aug 7, 1905

My dear Will;
​
I am taking an enforced vacation day today and it gives me leisure to write.  I am nursing a case of poison - I don’t know whether it is ivy, sumac or some dreadful unknown - I can’t imagine where I got it.  It feels bad enough but it looks even worse.  The afflicted parts are one wrist, one eye and one ear.

The Army and Navy Journal announced that you were to report to the Supt of the Academy at West Point [wrote July and changed it to August] August 22nd so I naturally concluded that you would go through Chicago.  You possibly see what I am gradually leading up to.  I am wildly anxious for you to stop here a day or even an hour if you can’t get more.  I am on the South Side about a mile from the Station at Englewood - the Cottage Grove Ave cars bring you over.  I am going to expect you and plan for you until I hear you are coming.  A girl here told me that her brother telegraphed to Washington and got permission to stay a day to visit her.  Telegraph when you are coming if you can.  I’ll give you a schedule of my hours so you will know where to find me if you can’t telegraph.

8AM to 12:30 at the Botany Building 3rd Floor
12:30 to 1:30 at lunch at the Women’s Commons
1:30 to 4:30 Botany Building
4:30 to 6:00 Tue + Thu Gym, or rowing in the logon Wed + Fri or swimming Mon at Men’s Gym
6:00 to 7:00 Dinner at Men’s Commons
7:00 at our rooms 5811 Madison Ave

If you can’t stop I’ll meet any train day or night.  I’ll even go into Chicago and right out to Englewood with you if you let me know what train you are coming on.  I consumed with curiosity to see how fat you are and how much hair you have.

I am having a splendid time up here.  I am getting concentrated Botany.  The first five week I had very heavy work and it almost did me up.  I took Histology which treats of the preparation of slides.  It is very hard sometimes and always very nervous work.  Dr. Cowles said that Histology is the thing that makes one believe in a personal devil.  I exercised my cussing vocabulary then as I never did before and hope I never shall again.  The room was saturated with “darns” of every degree of intensity.  That work can’t be done with the windows open as the slightest draught will blow the paraffin ribbon.  The room is a S.W. room where the sun heats in merrily all day.  We have had very nice weather most of the summer but there have been occasional hot waves.  It was up to 95° F. for three days in succession and during the four hours a day I was in the Histology room I felt as if I were possessed with seven times seven devils.  That course is over Gott sei dank and now I have only Special Morphology of the Gymnosperm and a course of lectures on General Morphology of the Angiosperms.  They are both fascinating.  I did not do very well when I first came up but I am getting down to work and I think I can do pretty well the rest of the term.

The Botany department here is wonderful.  It is generally regarded as the best organized department of the University and is said to be the best Botany department in the U.S.  Professor Grover who is a Harvard man says there isn’t another that can compare with it.  I did not come with the expectation of being enthusiastic over the University but the whole thing is gigantic enough to take my breath away.

In my leisure moments I am doing athletics.  Anne + I (by the way she is my room-mate) take swimming, rowing, and gym.  It’s lots of fun.  I have been doing the high jumps and I can make 3 ft 4 in.  That is not bad for my size and configuration.  We row in the lagoons [???] in Jackson Park.  We were out a few days ago when it was very windy so we put up our umbrellas and sailed the length of the lagones.  [???]  I am not doing much at swimming.  The best I have done is to swim oun [???] the tank - 25 ft.

I have had the luxury of seeing several Shakespeare plays.  The Ben Greet company has been giving out of door performances at various colleges.  I saw “Midsummer Night’s Dream” in Oberlin + “As You Like It” “Twelfth Night” + “Much Ado About Nothing” here.  I am ashamed of my extravagance but it was very cheap - Anne + I got a season ticket together - and it was too good to miss.  It is the best all around company I have ever seen and it is perfectly beautiful to see things out of door.  “As You Like It” is the prettiest thing I ever hope to see.

I am puffed up with pride because I have dined with the Dean of the Women - Sophonisba Breckenridge.  She is infinitely more charming than her name would suggest.  She knows some friends of Anne’s so she invited us both to Greene Hall for dinner.  We had a good dinner and a nice time.

If you happen to be in or near New York Steenie and Lil want you to go to see them.  They are at Park Inn Rockaway Park Long Island.  Steenie is at work on a $300 contract for some Spanish Building.  She is making a reputation.  Lil said there was an article about her in the August Craftsman but I have not seen it.

I came up here with Anne Starr who is going to be one of the Assistants [illegible] Botany in the College next year.  She is very nice and we have had splendid times.  We have a suite of two rooms which we sublet for a very modest sum from a student who was going away for the summer.  They are very pleasant and in a good location - halfway between the University + Jackson Park and half way from the Midway which is now a grand Boulevard.  We get our own breakfasts + lunches + take our dinners at the Men’s Commons - a pleasant as well as cheap arrangement.

Anne’s brother-in-law is a Paymaster in the Army and he + her sister have just returned from the Phillippines.  They landed July 19th.  I hope your boat will be quicker.  Mr. and Mrs. Mallory are at Denver so Anne hasn’t seen them yet.

This is a very cosmopolitan place.  There are people here from all parts of the country and from all countries.  I never in all my life have seen so many Southerners.  It seems as though half the people I meet are from Texas.  There are eight or ten nuns and several Mormons.  There were two Mormons in our Histology class - one is a teacher in the Brigham Young College.  I should as soon have expected to see a cannibal chief as a Mormon.  There is a Jew and a Japanese in the Faculty.

I hope you can manage to stop both here and in Oberlin.  We are on the direct way.  If you take the Lake Shore and N.Y. Central and go over the Southern division you will hit Oberlin.  I shall look for a telegram telling me that you will stop here.  

With much love,

Alma

​We have a telephone in the flat “Hyde Park 879”
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1905-08-07​: ​​​tour stops---images---audio---transcript---~NOTES~---links---site navigation
​1.
Alas, it looks as though this letter didn’t reach Will until he was at West Point.  All that effort from Alma for naught!  But I think he did see her in Chicago, judging from what she said in We have been out to dinner six times since you were here and have entertained at dinner five times.

2.
The Army and Navy Journal announced that you were to report to the Supt of the Academy at West Point [wrote July and changed it to August] August 22nd
I've got the announcement that was in the Baltimore Sun, which was probably copied from the Army and Navy Journal - see:
3.
8AM to 12:30 at the Botany Building 3rd Floor
University of Chicago website says:
In 1896, botanical research at the University of Chicago was further enhanced with the erection of the Hull Biological Laboratories. This complex of four buildings included the Botany Building, which housed classrooms, labs, and a rooftop greenhouse, and Botany Pond, an adjacent outdoor plant study facility.

4.
4:30 to 6:00 Tue + Thu Gym, or rowing in the logon Wed + Fri or swimming Mon at Men’s Gym
Rowing in the logon - Is this rowing in the lagoon?  If so, would it be Alma not knowing the spelling or Alma being careless or would it be some older variant?  I don’t know.

5.
Dr. Cowles said that Histology is the thing that makes one believe in a personal devil.
Dr. Cowles - Wikipedia says:
​Henry Chandler Cowles (February 27, 1869 – September 12, 1939) was an American botanist and ecological pioneer (see History of ecology). A professor at the University of Chicago, he studied ecological succession in the Indiana Dunes of Northwest Indiana. This led to efforts to preserve the Indiana Dunes.

6.
That course is over Gott sei dank
“Gott sei dank” means "Thanks be to God".  Where did that come from?  Alma had been studying German, but I’m sure I heard that somebody further back in the Stokey family went to a German-speaking school, so conceivably she picked it up from someone in the family, and was using a phrase that would resonate with Will?
Later note: I think I've seen it in a couple of other letters of Alma's, so I think it came from her childhood.

7.
Anne + I (by the way she is my room-mate)
Anne Starr - see: I guess Alma forgot that she had already mentioned Anne to Will:
8.
The Ben Greet company has been giving out of door performances at various colleges.
Ben Greet Company: Wikipedia says:
Sir Philip Barling Greet (24 September 1857 – 17 May 1936), known professionally as Ben Greet, was a Shakespearean actor, director, impresario and actor-manager.
And
In 1883 Greet launched his career by first creating The Ben Greet Players, his own company. They would perform open-air productions of the classic English stage repertory. They first produced tours throughout England, performing in college gardens, the parks of great houses, and village greens. Popularity rose for The Ben Greet Players, and after twenty years of touring with outdoor productions of Shakespeare in England, Ben Greet was traveling with his troupe to tour in America.

9.
I am puffed up with pride because I have dined with the Dean of the Women - Sophonisba Breckenridge.
Wikipedia says:
Sophonisba Preston Breckinridge (April 1, 1866 – July 30, 1948) was an American activist, Progressive Era social reformer, social scientist and innovator in higher education. She was the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in political science and economics then the J.D. at the University of Chicago, and she was the first woman to pass the Kentucky bar. In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent her as a delegate to the 7th Pan-American Conference in Uruguay, making her the first woman to represent the U.S. government at an international conference. She led the process of creating the academic professional discipline and degree for social work.

10.
If you happen to be in or near New York Steenie and Lil want you to go to see them.
Steenie and Lil: Abastenia St. Leger Eberle and Lily Love.  See:
11.
Lil said there was an article about her in the August Craftsman but I have not seen it.
Wikipedia says:
The Craftsman was a magazine founded by the American furniture designer Gustav Stickley that championed the American Arts and Crafts movement.
From 1901 to 1916.
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