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

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SEATTLE, Monday—The weather continued glorious yesterday. we visited a most interesting garden, the heart of which is a running stream which operates all kinds of entertaining gadgets as it runs along. A little house on the edge of the brook is divided into living quarters and a sawmill. You see the tugboat hauling the logs up for use, and the various ways of cutting wood are shown. On the other side of the house the family sit, and as the mill wheel turns, the fisherman by the side of the stream pulls out his fish, the child on the rocking horse rocks, the cradle rocks, the old man reading his paper nods his head, and little musical tunes accompany the general activity. Everywhere you turn you see some new and ingenious device for making this garden entertaining, and I can quite believe that it has furnished its owner with many hours of pleasant exercise.

The children joined us for a scrambly walk through the woods. Just across the hill, however, there was target practice going on, as the land is part of the Fort Lawton reservation, and we wondered, once or twice, whether we were getting a little too near the shooting. We had some glorious views of the Bay, and returned to an early lunch and two hours of sitting in the sun. The first time this year that I have enjoyed this particular form of pleasant inactivity! It had the effect of making me very sleepy, and though the interest of meeting a number of friends who came in the afternoon kept us all very wide awake, we found that in the early evening, even the work we were trying to do faded from sight!

Today is my daughter's birthday, and the first thing this morning the children had to present their gifts. Little Eleanor was in bed with a slight cold, but she had her gift all ready beside her bed, and could hardly wait for her mother to come upstairs. I went up first, and was quite conscious of the fact that I would be more popular when I produced her mother. Curtis refused to get off to school until his presentation was made, and we had all admired their choice of both presents and birthday cards. The birthday cards had evidently given them a great deal of pleasure beforehand, so they waited anxiously while they were being read. My daughter said "We will have a cake at suppertime," and Curtis' eyes shone, and he said "A real party, Mummy?" which was promised, and he went off cheerfully.

Anna and I are in her office now, and I feel quite overwhelmed by the many kind letters and messages which have come to me from people living here. There are also many people who were kind enough to want us to do or to see a variety of things. I only wish that time would allow us to do them all. As it is, this is really a vacation primarily to see the children, and my time is so short that I have to say "No" to everything, because it would be so difficult to choose between the many interesting and pleasant things which have been suggested.

E.R.


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  • Seattle (Wash., United States) [ index ]


About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, May 4, 1937

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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  • Regenhardt, Christy (Associate 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 May 3, 1937, FDR Library, Hyde Park, NY
TMsd, 3 May 1937, AERP, FDRL