It was a $16.00 hat and I paid $1.95 for it

To Bertha from Alice (Sally) – January 17, 1921

Miss Bertha Ballou

Elks, Nevada

Box 173 R.M.W.C

Lynchburg, Virginia


Dear Bertha,

I got a nice long letter from you this morning and thought I better answer it while I could. I have two exams next Monday (both in Latin) so I won’t have much time until exams are over.

Please tell me about the select affair of January 13th.

I’m glad Mamma is going to have a pussy. That will certainly give her a great deal of amusement.

Bertha, you say that you and Charles Russell are working hard on the (horizontal line). The (horizontal line) looks like this “Polob” and I can’t make it out. I wish you wouldn’t tell me such interesting tales about everybody. You make me desire to get up and leave immediately and come and teach the queer creature the why’s and wherefor’s of math and physics. Now, Bertha, don’t under any circumstance, think that I mean to do it but wouldn’t it be funny to see Papa’s expression if I told him that I was going to stop college and travel next year. Me, I wouldn’t leave college now if it weren’t for that wretch Herbert Lipscomb PhD, I would be fairly happy. Even he won’t be able to make me uncomfortable a week from now (all _____ will be over by this time in that _____ his exam is a week from today.)

[Note: The Randolph College library would be named after the teacher. “Herbert C. Lipscomb, Ph.D., had been the head of the Latin Department at R–MWC for 45 years at the time of the naming, and was very active in many campus activities, especially those concerning the fine arts. Dr. Lipscomb was one of the most loved and respected teachers our campus has ever seen. It is particularly appropriate that the library honors his name because of his unrelenting love of knowledge, as well as the pursuit of “the life more abundant,” as evidenced by this quote from one of his students.”]

Miss Powell is the biggest nuisance at this moment. The Pill (ess) thinks that I should write a brief. The whole English department has “brief fever” and I don’t see it that way. [Note: The slang term “pill” comes up more than once in these letters. It’s defined as: “an unpleasant person, or a person who is difficult to deal with.”]

I went to town today and bought my next winter’s hat. I’d seen just what I wanted before Christmas but it was gone but I found a pretty navy blue velvet with a bird’s wing on the brim which is quite becoming, and it will do until I find just what I want. It was a $16.00 hat and I paid $1.95 for it. The one I wanted most was $17.50. All the hats in that store were $1.95 today. It is a nice hat and of a type which you don’t tire of easily.

This is a general mix up but you are supposed to get the meaning as best you can. If my sealing wax doesn’t please you, let me say that it is so queer I had to see what it looks like. I haven’t much of it. Please tell me whether or not you like my wax. I’ll send you some back very soon, the store is all out of it right now.

Love from Sally