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

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NEW YORK, Wednesday—Anyone reading the papers today must wonder a little at the inconsistency of people in high places. Apparently one generation is entirely willing to undo what a previous one has done. Perhaps the only thing we can learn from this is the fact that trying to project ourselves too far into the future is a rather unprofitable business. We might better deal as fairly and as carefully as we can with situations as they are at the moment and leave the future to look after itself.

Some many people whom I know are always worrying about what they will leave to their children. I feel quite convinced that it is more important to give your children all the advantages you can so that they may be useful in the world and may meet any conditions which might arise in their lives, than it is to worry about what you may leave them in dollars and cents. When you pass on, you will leave behind you a generation of well-equipped and useful citizens able to manage their own lives and cope with the world as their forefathers did.

I am always proud and to a certain extent relieved when any of my own children prove that they are entirely able to cope with life by themselves, for, after all, their own characters are the only absolutely sure thing we can count on in the future. As far as I myself am concerned, I am going to try to do what I can about today and let the next generation deal with tomorrow.

Around 7:00 o'clock last evening, at my apartment in New York City, I felt as though I was living in a kaleidoscope. My brother said that he and one other person would join us at dinner. Then his younger generation behaved a little the way my younger generation does occasionally, and he found himself giving a party for twelve people.

This was a little beyond the capacity of my apartment and some of them drifted in for a minute and then drifted out again. Finally, four of us reached our dessert in perfect quiet and calm. The party had left! We four probably should have felt depressed that we were not going to join in the gay evening, but I am getting old and I heaved a sigh of relief that I was staying by my own fireside with no excitement going on.

It rained all night and this day, so Miss Thompson and I dovetailed our engagements this morning in order that my brother's car and chauffeur could look after both of us. Each time we emerged from a building it was raining a little harder than before. Nevertheless, I have ordered some winter clothes, been to the dentist, bought some Christmas presents, and lunched with an old friend.

E.R.

(Copyright, 1938, by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.)


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, September 22, 1938

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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