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

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HYDE PARK, Friday —A little after 11 o'clock yesterday morning Miss Thompson and I motored to Bethel, Conn., to lunch with Miss Emma Bugbee of the New York Herald Tribune in her newly acquired home. She has 17 acres of woodland, and I suggested that she start a housing development, picking out the people she would like to have as near neighbors and selling them small parcels of land. She could still remain completely isolated herself and yet play the part of being a pioneer.

She has a lovely view and the pasture below her house is a real New England pasture—rocks and stones and blueberry bushes.

She says she is going to continue to camp out for some time because she hasn't yet acquired all the comforts that she feels she must have when the camping-out stage is over.

I am not sure that camping out isn't often the most delightful way to live. I know very well that when things go wrong in our modern houses—for instance, if the electricity goes off or we forget to stock up on gas for the kitchen range or my water pump ceases to function—then I really feel that to live in the country with so many things that have to be looked after is a nuisance.

I wish, at such times, that I was back in the Adirondack camp I used to stay in many years ago when we cooked on an outside fireplace and fetched our supplies in a canoe when the lake was smooth enough to cross it. We slept under a lean-to with a blanket spread over pine boughs and had a dancing fire to watch as we dropped off to sleep.

The moon has been shining down on me these last few nights out on my sleeping porch.

It is a glorious full moon and if there is any truth in the old wives' tale about people being moonstruck if they sleep in the moonlight, my two little dogs and I certainly should be moonstruck.

The only effect that I have discovered, however, is that the brightness wakes me up and I lie and drink in the beauty of the night. Then I look over and see two pairs of bright little eyes and two pairs of ears cocked up watching me, as if saying, "What are you awake for? Do you notice something we don't? What's going on anyway?"

And then we all go to sleep again.

E. R.

(WORLD COPYRIGHT, 1949, BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC. REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART PROHIBITED.)


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  • Hyde Park (Dutchess County, N.Y., United States) [ index ]
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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, August 13, 1949

Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1884-1962
[ ERPP bio | LC | VIAF | WorldCat | DPLA | Wikidata | SNAC ]

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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  • Binker, Mary Jo (Associate 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.

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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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