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

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POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y., Monday—Saturday morning I came up to the country, and we were fortunate enough to have a most beautiful snowstorm during the day. We walked through the woods with the snow falling gently all around us. It always seems to me that there is nothing as quiet as freshly falling snow in the woods. You make no sound as you walk, and the snow flakes seems to deaden all the other sound.

The only reminder that spring was not very for away was the brook. Although bits of ice clung along the banks, it went gurgling over its gravel bottom and running swiftly under the little bridge. We are fortunate in having many hemlock trees, and I think they make the lovliest picture with their deep green branches powdered by fresh show.

I stopped to see one woman who has a son overseas. She said, "Yes, I hear from him often and his letters come fast though he is far away in the Southwest Pacific." She is worried because he said he had been where heavy fighting was going on and she could guess where that might be.

The boy's wife came in while I was there and she showed me, with great pride, the valentines her husband had sent her, which were made out of glass from wrecked Japanese planes. He had cut out hearts and pasted them on pieces of paper with appropriate sentiments written around them. Love will have its say even under difficulties.

As I look at the service flags hanging in so many windows now, I think of the many anxious hearts and the many prayers which must be floating up to Heaven above us.

My little cottage looks rather lonely. I think houses like to be lived in. Something happens to them when they are left empty too long. An old house will have a very distinct atmosphere, and houses which are loved and lived in by people who express themselves in their surroundings, grow to have a real personality.

I had a quiet day yesterday with a few friends at lunch. This morning I went down to Poughkeepsie to speak at the opening of the Red Cross drive at Vassar College. Miss Morena Brown had invited me to come, and as I arrived the girls were all trooping into the chapel. Evidently I should have gone to the main building instead of falling in with the procession, but those who were waiting for me saw the car top, so they came dashing over to rescue me and the exercises began at ten-fifteen as scheduled.

I think the Red Cross Drive is getting off to a very good start. I like all the stories I have seen in the papers about the Red Cross work as it stretches across the various battlefronts, and I think people are very much alive to the need of keeping this work going and expanding it as much as is necessary.

E. R.

(COPYRIGHT 1944 BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC.)


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  • Poughkeepsie (N.Y., United States) [ index ]


About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, February 29, 1944

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

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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.

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Transcription created from a photocopy of a UFS wire copy of a My Day column instance archived at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library.
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