* Evangeline, Postmark Jan. 23, 1900

Postmark Jan 23 1900 North Wilbraham 11 AM

Mr. J. Walter Bassett

Southern Pines

North Carolina

My dear Walter,

The record of current events from my diary for the past week will not prove very interesting reading, but it has been the most satisfactory work in some respects that I have had in a long time, for I have had a few evenings to myself. Last Monday night we [l]isenssed [?]the Stocks and everything connected with the Stock Exchange nearly the entire evening and to my surprise , I found it very interesting. Tomorrow night we review it and have the effect of the Norman Conquest on the language, manners, customs etc. of the English beside the events of the past week. I have to look up and tell about Lanframe [?]. Last night I played duplicate whist at Mr. Willis Cutler’s and my partner and I were beaten three points on six hands. . Do you play duplicate? The other seems very tame and uninteresting after it. I was much interested in your trip to Carthage and am glad it resulted so satisfactorily for you. I am surprised that you, presumably a good Yankee, should have allowed [the] hostess to burn those geese or goose feathers when they could have been utilized in filling a sofa pillow. Carthage was one of the places to which I never got but never mind. I did go to Roseland. Of all the misnomers that name is the most. This past week we have had elegant sleighing and moonlight nights, a most delightful combination. The cresting [crusting?] and skating was fine too but I have not tried the latter. Yesterday we had a warm rain and the snow and ice have entirely disappeared.  If the storms will only wait three weeks longer I don’t care how severe they are then. I shall be glad of a vacation, as the past week has fretted me more than any previous one. I am getting a class of five ready to take exams at the end of this term, when they are not due until June, and it is hard on us all, and I do not approve, but that is the decree. I have come to have quite a little respect for the Jones boy. He gives me very little trouble and works very well. He is very large for his age and I think has grown so fast that his mind has suffered and I know from his manner that he has been scolded  and nagged until he expects it. How grateful your family will be to know that your avoirdupois has increased to such an extent that your weight is disastrous to a bench holding only four others. It was a very good one, but hard on you. I have not read Pembroke, but enjoy Mary Wilkin’s [?] stories. I  have enjoyed the Outlook very much and find it a great help in preparing myself  for Monday nights. I should miss it very much, but am willing to subscribe for it myself. I wrote to Mrs. Gregory yesterday and felt so ashamed to have neglected her so long. Are the[illegible]  read in the paper the first of the week of the death of that Colonel  at Pinehurst.  He was from Worcester and his picture was with a long article in the Springfield paper. Last week Viola Allen was in Springfield in The Christian, and how I did want to see it, but as usual it was not convenient. Our drama was very well received in Ludlow [Sudlow?] but it did not go as well at home, but no one in the audience would have noticed the breaks. We had half of the receipts which was nearly forty dollars, so both performances have given the Ladies’ Society  about seventy dollars. The enclosed program (/) will give you an idea of the play and sometime you may read it. But what is your reference to ‘the leaders of the choir”? I don’t understand, am I dense? My letter to Steve last Sunday was entirely one of congratulation. I was glad and told her so, and then told her why. And she knows my reasons were correct. It was always a mystery to me how she could care for him, and she did feel hurt at his lack [?] of attention, but apologized for it, and called him undemonstrative, but I called him rude, to say the least. He visited her from Wednesday to Sunday and he spent nearly all his time out-of-doors with her brother or driving with her cousin who spent two weeks there. Steve was not well enough to go out and I devoted myself to her but he spent almost no time with her and she had anticipated his visit so much that she was perfectly miserable when it proved so disappointing.  Her health is poor enough and I am glad that what little strength she has is not going to be used up worrying over a careless husband. “Them’s my sentiments.” Most sincerely, Evangeline, North Wilbraham, January the twenty-first.