* (No year) Alice / Coal / Mt. Tom

No Envelope: No Year :October 24

(Evangeline)

My dearest,

   I will write a little tonight, for tomorrow night I shall be busy getting my room ready to receive Alice and doing my mending and other Friday night work. I have just received a letter from Alice and she is coming Friday night at 5:31, so you can think of us at that hour. She seems as pleased as I at the prospect of a visit and she will be here over two Sundays. The week of her departure will be the week before our school closes and the week at home will pass very quickly. So here I am at Mount Carmel.

This week has been uneventful, Sunday evening I read The Congregationalist, Monday evening I marked [masked?] a towel, Tuesday evening Mrs. Emma Cutler was here and I was tired, so I just talked and let my hands rest. Now I have just come from the Drumond’s and it is nearly nine o’clock, and my eyes have sticks in them, but if my boy was here I would wake up. The new time table went into effect on the street railroad yesterday. And now, we have the cars every half hour, but the first car in the city in the

Morning now is not until 6:45, so I don’t see as we are any better off than before we had them. Isn’t that discouraging?  I expect to have only one more day in school this week for on Friday is Hampden County Convention.  I haven’t received official permission yet, but expect to do so tomorrow. I enjoyed your letter tonight, as far as it went, for I was afraid that in all the festivities you wouldn’t get time to write. It was cloudy when I came home this evening and the wind blows very hard and it seems as if it might rain tomorrow. I hope not for the sake of the plans in New Haven, and it would spoil the remaining foliage so we would not enjoy Mount Tom. I wanted to take Alice there Saturday if the day is good but many of the trees are bare, and the foliage is not pretty this year anyway. I was disappointed that you did not say more about the furniture that I wrote you about. Tell me what you think of the various article. It was lots of fun looking at them and I felt quite important. I wanted you so much and sometime I will take you there. I am sorry that Ella has been sick again, and hope she is getting better and your father, too. It seems never to rain but it pours. I had a long letter from Steve a day or two ago, which you must hear. She may be married this winter and will know in a few weeks. I want to get time to reply to your father’s two letter but don’t write to anyone but you. Tempus does fugit so fast and I have so many things to do, all in the eving. Some happy day when I do not have to write to you I will treat my other friends better. I must stop for tonight and will finish tomorrow. I wish I might kiss my boy, for I love him with all my heart and soul.

Thursday –I wish I had you here tonight to smooth me down, for everything has gone wrong and I am very cross and horrid. I love you and you love me so I will try to think about that.  Our house is as cold as Greenland and we eat and sleep in the dining room and shut up the other rooms. I am mortified to give Alice such a cold reception, but our enterprising coal dealer has none of any kind and we are nearly out of stove coal. [my emphasis] He promises to have some by Saturday sure. I have not received permission to go to the Convention tomorrow , but I am going all the same, and will have to cut the last period short to get home to meet Alice. I have my Friday night mending to do and I must wash my hair and take a bath, so cannot make this much longer. Steve wants to come for a few days soon if she is married this winter and I think I will write for her to come the week after my school closes. When does Blandie have her vacation? [she must be a teacher too] And is she looking forward to it yet?  Miss Phillips has returned, so we are all together again. Have you written to Mr. Gregory in reply to his last letter? You may get an abbreviated letter Monday night. But if you do it will only be because I am visiting so hard with Alice as we will not have many entire days but it will not be for lack of my love which is all yours always,

Yours,

Evangeline

October the twenty-fourth.