Part Love Story, Part Travelogue Pt 4
Our
Love – Story
My Grandmother Margaret E. Winslow, 1908
BY SWEETHEART (SHARED BY J. STEWART)
Here are Margaret's friends. I can imagine her making the fourth in the "quartet" for dinner with Clara Eckert (I assume this is her sitting), her guardian, and Mr. Baldwin. We have to guess which man is which, because she didn't write below the picture! I have my ideas... What do you think?
By the way, is that a leaded glass window on the left?
(click here for other installments)
Installment #4:
At Chicago you were met by some friends who separated you from the rest of the party and took you to their home for the few hours that The Special was booked to remain in the city. As a result a tragedy was nearly enacted for they did not return you to the station at the time appointed and you reached the belated train disheveled and flushed. Your guardian and Mr. Baldwin fanned you with their hats, you stumbled aboard and finally managed to revive sufficiently to make up a quartet with them and Clara Eckert for dinner. The new friend at first chose the seat beside you and then abruptly told your guardian that he wished to change seats with him. The incident was amusing and charged to several characteristics of the four diners, but the true reason came to light a little later. Dinner over a beautiful opal sunset drew you all to the rear platform while the full moon rose in the green sky. Finally the sky changed to a Maxfield Parrish blue, Jupiter hung close over the horizon and a few of the greater stars shown, though most of them, as you remarked, were “out of sight.”
My Grandmother Margaret pouring tea... I assume this is after she and my Grandpa Ray were married (after Dec. 1911)...but I decided to include it here to represent them dining in the story.
St. Paul’s gloomy station engulfed the party the following morning, but you remember the beautiful waving grass outside of the city. When Mr. Baldwin found some like it on the prairie he bore in great armfuls to you and made your seat look like a bower of silver. When it bowed and rippled you thought of Tennyson’s, “And waves of shadow went over the wheat.” All that day and the next you reveled in the prairie sparse villages bordering grass-grown streets spun past. Wooly clouds hung low, once the flat prairie gave way to beautiful rolling hills, undulating like folds of green velvet. The little valleys were filled with a growth of little dark green bushes that ran up the hillsides like vines reaching up to cover them. How you were enjoying with an intensity born of novel sights and a new inspiring friendship. You and Mr. Baldwin spoke each other’s language. Your moods dove-tailed, your interests were largely the same and you counted yourself fortunate. Fun was not lacking, for he had a keen blue-eyed sense of humor. You gave comb and tissue-paper duets, and foregathered in the vestibule after dinner to sing the old songs and the new. You played games and told fortunes; viewed the prairie towns together and met frequently in the dining car. You prized the new friend and idealized the new friendship, until the warning came. It came Saturday night as you and he were watching the moon rise behind the foothills of the Rockies. His voice grew wistful, his eyes intent and his talk was of you and what you might be to one who loved you. Your answers were friendly. You even laughed at him a little and when you said goodnight he seemed to understand and thanked you for checking him. You went to bed but you lay for hours watching the night lying white and powdery over the hills.
I found this piece to illustrate Margaret's line, "while the full moon rose in the green sky."
“Finally the sky changed to a Maxfield Parrish blue… “