The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Digital Edition > My Day
My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt

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WASHINGTON—For the first time in many years I had to give up doing something this morning which I had agreed to do, and I find myself not exactly a willing prisoner to what Stevenson called: "The Land of the Counterpane."

It is just one of those ridiculous things that you have to laugh about even though they annoy you. Everyone who is sent in to make a test, or to try to find out what is the matter with me, goes away saying that as far as his particular branch is concerned I am a perfect specimen! Yet, they won't let me get up nor do I feel really that I want to do so, for whatever the little bug may be he is doing a pretty good job on temperature. If I believed in the old Irish fairy tales I should think that in the intervals of sleep last night, some little Irish gnome came and played chop-sticks on my ribs and up the back of my head.

It is so unusual for me to be in bed that each new person arriving looks at me with a more concerned expression than the last. Even my brother, who is very much the way I am and who thinks things are better downed on foot than abed, comes in to give me a worried once over twice a day.

I am quite sure that if I kept going as I did until Tuesday I could not feel worse than I do now when I feel I deserve little crowns of glory for doing exactly as I am told, though down in my heart I know that I could not very well do anything else!

It is funny how long the nights are even though most of the time one sleeps. It seems they never come to an end! I am happy that I sleep very well usually, and do not even mind lying awake except when there isn't any particular way you can lie and be comfortable.

I can imagine that people who become so worried about not being able to sleep would get themselves into such a fearful state of mind that life would hardly be worth living.

When you are ill in a room you begin to notice many things which the rest of the time you do not think much about—the scratches on the furniture, faded spots in the hangings, the peculiar angle at which some pictures hang. I have many photographs in my bed room of people of whom I am really fond, and I am very apt to think about them and go back over pleasant times together and make plans for the future.

E.R.


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, September 18, 1936

Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1884-1962
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Digital edition created by The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project The George Washington University 312 Academic Building 2100 Foxhall Road, NW Washington, DC 20007

  • Brick, Christopher (Editor)
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  • Black, Allida M. (Editor)
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  • Binker, Mary Jo (Associate Editor)
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  • Alhambra, Christopher C. (Electronic Text Editor)
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Digital edition published 2008, 2017 by
The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project

Available under licence from the Estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.

Published with permission from the Estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.

MEP edition publlished on June 30, 2008.

TEI-P5 edition published on April 28, 2017.

XML master last modified on June 9, 2017.

HTML version generated and published on May 3, 2022.

Transcription created from a photocopy of a draft version of a My Day column instance archived at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library. My Day column draft dated September 17, 1936, FDR Library, Hyde Park, NY
TMsd, 17 September 1936, AERP, FDRL