All letters – Page 7 – BERTHA BALLOU LETTERS

I have been very much interested in your letters to Papa

To Bertha from Cora Hendricks – September 24, 1920

[Note: Bertha has left art school to work as a teacher in Elks, Nevada]

Miss Bertha Ballou 
Elks, Nevada

Fort Logan, Colorado 

Dear Bertha,

I am missing you very much in my efforts to get this place in order.

I have been very much interested in your letters to Papa, and am so very glad that the place is not altogether lacking in attraction. Are you getting accustomed to your school work? I really do feel sorry for you, if you have to keep such a lot of bags in order every afternoon. Don’t they all have anything to do? Or is it supposed to be a study hour?

I am beginning to find myself to some extent. Have the parlor really quite settled, although I dare say we will do a lot of rearranging from time to time. Just now the only thing I do not like in it is the big Philippine table which Papa had installed in the center of the room and is unwilling to change. It is not bad, only too big.

The weather has been perfectly fine, only very windy yesterday and today. Hess is very good, wants to work more than I want him to, really. The Stories left this morning for Omaha, and the Herrens are looking.

I spent a great part of yesterday unpacking some clothing and pressing some few thing. Of course, everything needs pressing, and I will have to take another turn very soon. I do not think there is any news to tell you, Papa will have written you of conditions in town. I am so glad he was able to come back to the post for most of the time. This is Aunt Bertha’s birthday and I must write a little to her. I have not written at all since I left there.

Don’t fret about not earning your pay. I’ll guarantee you are doing it better than four fifths of the wage earners.

With love,

Mother

My deep disgust at being ordered to Spokane

To Bertha from C.C. Ballou – October 14, 1920

War Department
Headquarters Recruit Depot 
Fort Logan, Colorado

My dear Specks,

I have neglected you as of late – partly owing to “much trabajo” and partly to my deep disgust at being ordered to Spokane. We are in the throes of packing up. I received your check, and bought you a Victory bond, and owe you a balance of $3.55. The bond costing $96.45. It pays 4 ¾ percent, and matures on May 15, 1923, or about two and a half years from now. The interest you will draw, plus the $3.55, makes you about seven per cent on the investment, should you keep it till it matures. At any rate you get 4 ¾% at any time you want the money at what it cost you.

I make my last speech here Sunday night, Central Christian church, “Our duties to The Government.” Mamma is busy and – also disgusted – we will be about as near you as we are now, but farther from the others. I also regret leaving my many friends here. The worst is the packing up after getting things looking so nicely – my regiment is the 21st – scattered over five posts on Alaska and there in Washington, Montana and Utah.

Sorry we don’t go via Elks.

Your loving old dad.

Also I wanted you to feel assured of my entire willingness to assist financially

To Bertha from C.C. Ballou – January 12, 1921

Fort George Wright, Spokane, Washington

My dear Speksie,

Quite a snow storm visited us early this morning, but it has suspended operations. The pines are covered, of course. The weather has been “right sharp” for two or three days – mercury twelve about Monday night.

Mamma as adopted two small cats, of various colors, and I dare say will desire much satisfaction from their antics. On Monday, I built the box for four of your pictures – as forecast in my last letter – worked hard for four and a half hours at it. The extra work was caused by the arrangements for separating paintings by slats. Yesterday, I made one for The _____. Today I will not work, as I intend to go to the library for more books.

I can quite understand your desire to work, and your enjoyment of it. It is life. If I appeared too urgent in my expressed hope that you would not put in a second year at Elks, it was because I feared the loss you would sustain in being so long and out of touch with real painting. Also I wanted you to feel assured of my entire willingness to assist financially. I don’t like to urge you one way or the other, for I always feel so afraid lest some development might prove that a different course would have felt better. So, I will leave it with the assurance that I want you to do as you wish, relying on my entire willingness and ability to help you financially – if I live. In other words, money considerations should not at all constrain your action or influence your decision. It was very nice of your landlady to change your only half for _____ and very different from the profiteer at Ann Arbor, who charges ten dollars a week for an unoccupied room [Note: Where Senn is living].

Mrs. _____, in common with the other nuisances, is to be clad in uniform. Isn’t that idiotic? Colonel Black is now a full Colonel. There is no other news, as far as I know, except that one of the officers from Butte, a West Pointer I am sorry to say, is so lacking in the conceptions of a gentleman that the ____, Lanes and ourselves have left the big table at the mess and sit at the small one. It is not a recent matter, but one that is awaiting the action of a Court of Judging. We don’t care to recognize him socially. The mess has a new cook, a soldier, whose wife waits on tables. I have relieved Major Brown and put Chaplain Lane in charge of the mess, which is somewhat improved.

Your loving old Dad.

I have come to the conclusion that Archy is awfully good to look at

To Bertha from Alice “Sally” – January 13, 1921

[Note: Sally is Bertha’s younger sister]

Box 173 R.M.W.C.
Lynchburg, VA

Dear Bertha,

Please ‘scuse me if I don’t seem to have written for a long time. I’ll try to reform.

I suppose you want to know what happened during the holidays so I will write as detailed an account of it as I can.

I got into Washington a little after four on Wednesday the 23rd. (It is awfully hard to realize that it was only three weeks ago yesterday.) That evening, Eleanor Dunne and I decided that we would like to see Madge and Robert so we called up and suggested that they come over. They weren’t at home. They were at a pageant over at school so we promptly announced to Mrs. Dunne that she should have the pleasure of taking us to Western. We departed forthwith and saw many people. Archy Atkinson and Bob Peary are much improved by officer uniforms (they are captains this year) and clearer complexions. I have come to the conclusion that Archy is awfully good to look at. We also saw Bob Armstrong draped artistically in portiere to represent Savonarola. Well, he looked alright but Eleanor and I couldn’t help laughing at the idea of Bob as a priest. Lady Jane orated at great length. Van Moseley counted money frantically for Miss ______ as she sold tickets. We had a gorgeous time.

…to Mrs. Armstrong by her innocent son who didn’t know that he had done that at least twice before. Next morning, Eleanor and I went back again and went to assembly. Everybody was there (even William) and poor Francis Birch flushed furiously and refused ________ speech and Bernard Spittle and Francis Corey sang and the R.M. member of the faculty welcomed me with open arms and – as usual – William and I scrapped or rather William’s feelings were hurt. He, not being an alumnus, flatly refused to come up on the platform and I being an alumna was taken by the hand and led to see that I got there. Therefore, William saw me (for the first time) and desired a smile so he sat and stared at me to make me look at him and when I did he for some reason looked the other way and didn’t see the smile I gave him. Then I tried to make him look at me and William growing suddenly modest decided that I was looking at the beautiful Captain Archy who sat squarely in front of William and William waxed ruthful and said so later on in the day and William made more kinds of a silliness of himself during the holidays than any one I saw.

Bertha! A member of the ________ staff has just called and asked for my last essay and asked…
…then William and I called on the Peary’s. When we got home, tonight we to play billiards. Monday, I went over to school and stayed to watch drill at the request of Archie, Robert P., Bob A., and Van. We went out to supper again and William took Phoebe and myself to the Knickerbocker and dumped us as he had to study. That evening, he and I had more or less of a rough house and it ended in his returning me my sacred cigar butt (Bob’s) and reclaiming one of the silver chain bracelet that you gave me over in the islands. I don’t know whether I’ve said goodbye to it forever now or not. I’m going to try negotiating to get it back. Tuesday, I came home. (I mean back to school.) Since then, I have been regretting that I ever was born and all the rest of the post-vacation stuff.

Dr. Hamaker’s baby died Christmas Eve.

We have several inches of snow here which fell Sunday and we have had a flurry or two since.

I am causing much excitement by the number of pages which of love written to you as I guess I’d better stop. Please write and give me some good advice. I need a big sister badly. I know that I’m infinitely more discrete than most of the girls here but I don’t know about some of things I have told you of ______ here and it is easier tell you than Mamma. Also you know the boys more intimately than she does. Anyhow, I want some advice. William Wadsworth said that if this letter sounds crazy, a red-headed northern girl has been in the room all the time that I wrote.

Lots of love.

From,
Sally

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