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Adelia M. Hoyt memoir and photographs
Page 26
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26 UNFOLDING YEARS that I could never compare with Blanche for hers seemed to me the most beautiful I had ever heard. On the evening before I was fifteen I spent an hour alone in my room writing some verses which I called: "Dying Embers of Fourteen." After we had gone to bed I read these verses to Blanche and she praised them. In her I had found a real soul companion and from then on we were inseparable. It was my first real friendship on equal footing and my whole nature responded. Emma and Ena were both dear girls but Blanche and I were kindred spirits, and I shall have much to say of her later in these pages. She was three years my senior and three years ahead of me in school; Emma and Ena were four years beyond me; but they all treated me as an equal, and as everyone in the school looked up to them as leaders I enjoyed something of the same prestige. It was during my second years that our Superintendent, Rev. Robert Caruthers, passed away and this brought about many changes in the school. he was succeeded by Mr. Thomas McCune, the Principal, a single gentleman who married later. A scholarly man himself, he made our school, at least the upper grades, more like a college and treated us all as young ladies and gentlemen. Rev. Caruthers had been a rather strict disciplinarian, though in a fatherly sort of way. The girls and boys were kept entirely apart--the girls occupied the north wing and the boys the south wing. We attended the same classes but we sat on opposite sides of the room. All conversation was strictly forbidden. However, listening to answers to roll call at chapel and hearing each other recite in classes led to acquaintance, and often clandestine meetings among the older students. One of the first bits of gossip I heard on entering school was of two couples who had run away, remaining out all night, and who had been promptly expelled. Mr. McCune had a different theory. He believed that it was more normal for the two sexes to know each other, and that some contact supervised would tend to take away the glamour from the forbidden fruit. We were still not permitted to associate
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26 UNFOLDING YEARS that I could never compare with Blanche for hers seemed to me the most beautiful I had ever heard. On the evening before I was fifteen I spent an hour alone in my room writing some verses which I called: "Dying Embers of Fourteen." After we had gone to bed I read these verses to Blanche and she praised them. In her I had found a real soul companion and from then on we were inseparable. It was my first real friendship on equal footing and my whole nature responded. Emma and Ena were both dear girls but Blanche and I were kindred spirits, and I shall have much to say of her later in these pages. She was three years my senior and three years ahead of me in school; Emma and Ena were four years beyond me; but they all treated me as an equal, and as everyone in the school looked up to them as leaders I enjoyed something of the same prestige. It was during my second years that our Superintendent, Rev. Robert Caruthers, passed away and this brought about many changes in the school. he was succeeded by Mr. Thomas McCune, the Principal, a single gentleman who married later. A scholarly man himself, he made our school, at least the upper grades, more like a college and treated us all as young ladies and gentlemen. Rev. Caruthers had been a rather strict disciplinarian, though in a fatherly sort of way. The girls and boys were kept entirely apart--the girls occupied the north wing and the boys the south wing. We attended the same classes but we sat on opposite sides of the room. All conversation was strictly forbidden. However, listening to answers to roll call at chapel and hearing each other recite in classes led to acquaintance, and often clandestine meetings among the older students. One of the first bits of gossip I heard on entering school was of two couples who had run away, remaining out all night, and who had been promptly expelled. Mr. McCune had a different theory. He believed that it was more normal for the two sexes to know each other, and that some contact supervised would tend to take away the glamour from the forbidden fruit. We were still not permitted to associate
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