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From: <>
Subject: Aunt Charlotte's book
Date: Mon, 18 Aug 1997 16:17:42 -0400 (EDT)


This is what a little girl thought about being a Lady.

The general meeting place was at Westport and we were there for a
couple of weeks before the hundred and nineteen wagons and over a thousand
people had all arrived and were ready to start. Some of the wagons were from
states quite distant. It was a great picnic for everyone and for us children
especially. Each day there was new excitement. We would gather about newly
arrived wagons and look them over in search of possible playmates. I had
already found Nancy Beagle. The friendship formed there at Westport endured
through the many long years. She is gone now. When I saw her last, there
were still five of us left out of the thousand who gathered there. I am quite
alone now. When new wagons drawn by fat oxen came up everyone talked at once
in the making of new friendships or the renewing of old ones. Everything was
"spick and span" and the wagons were heavily loaded. We children acted as
sort of a reception committee to welcome the new children and make them feel
at home. I remained a bit in the background and tried very hard to
concentrate upon the fact that if one were a lady, one stood very straight
with toes turned slightly out and never under any circumstances did a lady
stare at strangers without first remembering to close her mouth.
Mother had been to a finishing school and she tried to "finish me" after
the same pattern. She almost did, but not in the way that she intended.
She tried very hard to teach me to curtsey (Kirchy, I called it). I could
not see a bit of use in it, but really wanted to please Mother. If she
wanted me to crook my legs when elder people spoke to me, very well, I would
try to do it. But something seemed to be the matter, maybe something was
wrong with my legs. They just simply would not bend in the right place. I can
see now that the defect was temperamental. I must have exasperated Mother to
the limit of her endurance. She boxed my ears frequently and sometimes even
oftener than that. In justice to Mother I will admit that I probably needed
it. I was very dumb and without the power of expressing myself, and the many
injunctions to be remembered by a real lady it just would not stay with me.

Walt Davies
Monmouth, OR

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