Editor's Notes
Marion writes her mother a scorching retort to what must have been a withering rebuke of Marion neglecting her religious obligations. I love how she lectures her mother at length and then casually moves on to Thanksgiving and Convention plans. I think this shows how strong their relationship is.
Also, please read the New York Time Headline of the Day. It is an interesting juxtaposition to the events of OUR day.
Administrative day off from 10:45
Sunday p.m.
Dear Mother,
Poor lady. You certainly are a complete failure-such bad, bad girls as you've got. Thank heavens we've got a good brother anyhow. For goodness sakes, Mother hasn't a person the right to be blue once in a lifetime. I'll never write a letter again if I get blue, if it's going to have such an effect on you. I haven't yet made a practice of doing my weeks cleaning etc. etc. on Sunday, have I? So please wait till I do to get so upset over the way you've brought girls up. I guess if you didn't have a book to read or a soul to talk to and weren't inclined to go walking by yourself, you wouldn't sit down in a 2 by 4 room and look at yourself? You know you’d do anything under the sun to make yourself stop thinking about how you hate South Jersey. So please don't be so unreasonable. Having never said much about it, I suppose Sunday in college was somewhat of a shock to you. After you had lived around college about a month, you would cease to be shocked and decide that if you're to accept college, you'll have to accept lack of Sunday Observance on the part of the majority. I most emphatically object when you mention the atmosphere of Alpha Chi being bad. You've not peeped in at any of the other houses, so you can't just leave bring down any such criticism of Alpha Chi. I take it none of them in Winchell brought out their knitting or swept out their room in front of you in Winchell, but it's done just the same. What's more, Syracuse is quite a Puritan side of other colleges when it comes to Sunday Observance-at least card playing isn't the general and accepted thing to do there on Sunday, as it is in most girl colleges and it's not the night for chapter meeting and social gatherings as in Cornell and they don't dance until 4:00 o'clock Sunday AM, as they do in Cornell. Now, don't mistake me and think I'm justifying these things, because I'm not. Maybe Earlville hasn't been particularly affected, but certainly you didn't have to go to Syracuse to be aware of the fact that there are all kinds of forces at work in the present day to encourage a lack of Sunday Observance. It's a wave that swept across the whole country and something that simply has to be accepted as a fact or a problem. I'm justified in thinking you're unreasonable to pick on Alpha Chi Omega alone. Now I've gone through college and I've never done all those things that everybody else did on Sunday because I've never cared to. In fact, I've always done just as I would have at home. However, I've never condemned anybody else who felt all right about doing differently.
Now will you please see how unreasonable you were in thinking, how in vain all home influences had been? Not stopping to discuss whether or not it's “bad” to knit on Sunday are you justified in saying home influence never had any effect on me when I never cared to join the Sunday knitting, etc. parties.
Now, as for the Sunday School class, the Lord deliver me from teaching every day in the week. I wouldn't do it for worlds. Move over. Even if I were so crazy to teach on Sunday after doing it all the week, I can't give up my whole Sunday after doing it all week and that's what I'd have to do. I have no other time for letters. Went to church, this AM and this PM. Someone asked me to go to Sunday school with them for the first time and as I didn't have so many letters to write, I went. Nearly had my nerves completely shattered, however, when an electric bell rang to the end class. It sounded so much like school.
It's all right to talk about shining forth and doing something. I've always contended that your college education is of no value if you can't make better conditions around you and I suppose I'd talk to somebody else in that same way you did. But you can't do much reforming or bettering or shining on just Sunday, and that's the only time I'm not doing plain,
hard schoolwork with the heavy schedule we have.
I think it will be very sweet of you to give me the mattress for my birthday. Thanks muchly. All such contributions, you know, are most heartily welcomed.
I'm going home with Hilda for Thanksgiving. I guess I kept forgetting to tell you. She invited me a long time ago and seemed to take it for granted that I was to come home with her. It was so good to have her over the weekend for Thursday night till this morning and we've arranged definitely for Thanksgiving. I’m to meet her at Broad Street Station in Philly Wednesday night. I had such a marvelous time there Easter that I'm looking forward to it most joyfully. The cute Chi sister who was in college in the South last year is home now and the much talked of bride sister-in-law from the South is there, the cute little Mrs. Moore is there and the two nice girls (Wheaton College friends) whom I told you about meeting last year are to be there for Thanksgiving dinner etc., etc.
I told Betty I should have a new dress, but can't afford one to have just for this town, so I begged her to please send me her new brown dress if she can get along without it.
I'm plain disgusted about the convention-Newark, of all places.
Please don't be so unreasonable again. I merely told you what I was doing to show you how at my wits end I was from hating this South Jersey (as everybody else does, who's been in a decent place.) I'm still your “Lily White daughter.”
Marion
P.S.
I haven't written half that I might and was going to, so maybe you still won't understand me. I see very plainly you still don't see what South Jersey is like, so that will be a good point to continue the discussion-when we don't have anything else to do at Christmas vacation time.
There's this one thing. Please don't lay down one rule for actions, but consider the conditions which force the action.
M.L.B.
Does Frank like Popular Science Monthly well enough to have a subscription for Christmas? All of them here get worn threadbare by the boys. What does Louise and Bes want for Christmas?
POLICE VETO HALTS BIRTH CONTROL TALK A mass meeting to discuss "Birth Control: Is It Moral?" was broken up by the police at the Town Hall last night. Hundreds of men and women, many socially prominent, derided the police and urged the speakers to defy the order not to speak.
If you're new to this project, please consider going to our site and catching up with a few letters from the 1900-1910 era. The letters only take 3-5 minutes to read and you'll find the characters more fully develop if you read the letters chronologically.
John has excellent handwriting. However, in some instances, I cant decipher it. If I can't, I simply mark the spot with "xxx"s to signify thank the word isn't decipherable.
Check out our article in the New York Times!
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