From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
Today Alma made me write one hundred times…
I shall never comb my hair with Brownie’s comb
I shall never comb my hair with Brownie’s comb
I shall never comb my hair with Brownie’s combSo now I am tired of writing.
September 30, 1912
Note: Today’s post includes racist language. Click on the links to read posts about racism in children’s literature which discuss the poem Hilda quotes below:
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
Aunt Tillie is very good to me. Besides the embroidered collars and cuffs, she also buys me nice presents and today she bought me a beautiful book of poems. They are by Robert Louis Stevenson. He was a great Scotch poet and he loved children and wrote these verses for them. They are called a “Child’s Garden of Verses.” My favorite one is:
Little Indian, Sioux or Crow,
Little frosty Eskimo,
Little Turk or Japanee,
How I wish that I were thee.I love the word “frosty” in front of Eskimo. It makes you feel so cold as the Eskimo is.
In every version I found of this 1902 poem by Robert Louis Stevenson from A Child’s Garden of Verses, the last line of the first stanza is “O! don't you wish that you were me?” Hilda’s version changes the tone and meaning completely: rather than exhibiting a sense of superiority or racism, she shows interest in others, and in fact envies the lives they live.
September 29, 1912
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
“Thou Shalt Not Make Unto Thyself Any Graven Image.” And if that wasn’t enough, it goes on to say no pictures of anything, not only of God, but of anything on the earth or in the sky and on or in the water. That is the Second Commandment of Moses. It also says that God is jealous, and if He is mad at you, He punishes not only you, but all your children and grandchildren and their children and grandchildren, all the way down to the ninth generation. I said to Grandfather that if he just one day got impatient and did not want to play pinochle with Uncle Felix, why should I be punished? Grandfather said that God did not command that he play cards with Uncle Felix so if he didn’t want to, he didn’t think that either of us would be punished.
September 28, 1912
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
At vacation time I am allowed to come to the dinner table. At the table, Grandfather always talks about all the things he read in the newspaper that day. Last night he said he had read about a man who was out hunting and shot himself by mistake instead of the deer. I said that I was so glad. Then everyone at the table began to scream at me, even Grandfather was mad. He said that it was a wicked thing to say, and I must think of the poor man’s family, how his wife and children feel. I said that maybe the poor deer had a wife and children too, and didn’t we learn in Sunday School that God loved everyone and everything the same? Though I really don’t understand how He can. Then Grandmother yelled to Alma to take me away, that I was driving her crazy, so Alma did and I didn’t have dessert and Grandfather didn’t bring me any either.
September 27, 1912
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
Last night in bed, I kept feeling happy that no one had thought of naming me after my father. His name is Solomon and I’d hate to be Solomonine.
September 26, 1912
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
This is a school holiday because some of the teachers have to go to school themselves, though until I found this out, I thought that they knew everything. So Aunt Tillie said that she would take me to Idora Park in Oakland, and that a friend of hers who had a little girl would come with us. All the way across the bay, I kept thinking of the Titanic and what would happen if we hit an iceberg. Aunt Tillie told me not to be so stupid as there certainly aren’t any icebergs in the middle of San Francisco Bay. It was a clear sunny day, and I could see lots of islands and we could have bumped into them. I don’t like Idora Park. We went on the Scenic Railway and I hate it. I am so afraid of those dreadful hills that it rushes up and down, but I was afraid to say I was afraid. I didn’t like their little girl either. Her name is Maxine, and she was named after her father Max.
Today Hilda introduces us to a forgotten gem — Idora Park, an amusement park in the Lake Temescal area of Oakland. For more information about it, you can watch a brief video and see a collection of vintage postcards.
September 25, 1912
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
I guess in a big family, something is always happening to someone, because there are so many people for things to be happening to. Elinor, one of Tante Berta’s daughters, killed herself last night. Of course, I am not supposed to know anything about it. Grandmother tried to make me believe that she had an accident and fell down the stairs, but I heard everyone talking about it in the kitchen. Elinor was in New York because she wanted to be an opera singer, only it turned out that she couldn’t sing as well as she thought she could, and she couldn’t get a job, so Uncle Herman had to go and bring her home. When she got home, she was so sad that she couldn’t eat or sleep or even talk to anyone. Then last night, while everyone was eating dinner, she went to bed and took her brother’s gun and shot herself. Tante Esther was here all day long and she and Grandmother had such a good time talking about it. I knew it was not nice to listen behind doors, but I couldn’t hear the story any other way. Tomorrow is Elinor’s funeral. The whole family will go, but I know they won’t take me. Tante Esther says that people who kill themselves should not have funerals, and they shouldn’t even be in the same cemetery with good people who don’t kill themselves. She said about a million times how terrible it must have been for Dora to go upstairs and see her sister lying in all that blood. I think that Elinor should have waited until after dinner.
September 24, 1912
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
I asked him. Ito said that he is very sorry that he couldn’t ask his God, as his God only does favors for him and only looks after his family.
September 23, 1912
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
Today I asked Grandfather if I could worship Ito’s God besides my own and he said that it was probably a good idea to have two Gods, just in case one was busy when you needed him, the other might be free to help. Like the night I wanted to take the spot out of my dress. But then he got serious and said that, “No! You certainly can’t have another God, not anyone else’s God, and if you are a good girl, God will hear your prayers and answer them in his way.” So I guess I can’t have Ito’s God. I am sorry, as I was going to ask him for curly hair. I just thought he might be one who would do this. Maybe I’ll ask Ito to ask him for me, but if Ito prays for me it is not like me praying, and then neither my God or Grandfather could be angry. I will ask Ito tomorrow.
September 22, 1912
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
Today we learned the first commandment. It is…
I Am The Lord Thy God, and
I Have Brought Thee Out of the Land of Egypt,
Out of the House of Bondage, and
Thou Shalt Have No Other God Before Me.That scared me a little because I loved that fat, jolly little God that I saw in Ito’s garden the day of Tsumi’s birthday. He was in the corner of the garden sitting on a piece of black wood. We ate our ice cream in front of him. Ito said that it is his family’s God and he watches over them. He watches over Ito’s house and everyone in it. Grandfather says that he is probably a lot better than Mr. Flannagan. Mr. Flannagan is a policeman and he is supposed to watch over all the houses on our block at night when we are asleep.
September 21, 1912
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
Grandmother went to Synagogue this morning and wanted to take me with her. She said that I should thank God for taking out my tonsils so nicely. I told her that God didn’t take them out, Dr. Selton did, and she said that God helped him, and I said that God didn’t, but Dr. Otto did, and I saw him and I was there. I went with her anyhow. I really like to go to Temple, but I wish they had more statues and gold like the Church that Alma goes to.
September 20, 1912
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
We had a spelling match in school today and I would have won it, only I didn’t know how to spell “Hippopotamus.” Miss Cashen said that I would have to go back to my seat, but I said that I didn’t mind and I didn’t think it was a word that I would use very much, but even so she made me write it later on, one hundred times because she said that just in case I might need it sometime and she wouldn’t want me to forget it.
September 19, 1912
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
I forgot to write what the prize was and I suppose that when I am eighty years old, I will want to know. It was a book of poems. All the ones I have read so far are very beautiful. Grandmother says that I read too much and when I am a grown-up no one will marry me because men don’t like smart women. They want to be the smart ones.
September 18, 1912
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
I got the prize. Miss Cashen said I got it because I had written about the things I had not seen in the picture, only the things the picture made me think of, and that was what the artist wanted the people who looked at his picture to do. I don’t know if the artist wants me to think of the things I thought of, but Miss Cashen said that it didn’t make any difference. I thought of reading in front of the fireplace, and Thanksgiving dinners and Christmas trees and popping corn, and a little lighted lamp in the window at night.
Hilda’s winning essay corroborates what we have discovered this year – that Hilda was a very good writer and had a wonderful imagination.
September 17, 1912
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
I forgot to say that we went back to school yesterday, and we did something that was a lot of fun. Miss Cashen, our new teacher, showed us a picture of a little house in the snow and then each of us had to write a composition about it, and we were allowed fifteen minutes to do it. Whoever writes the best composition gets a prize. We won’t get the prize until tomorrow because Miss Cashen has to read all the papers first.
September 16, 1912
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
Uncle Harold is still in New York. I never think of him except when a letter arrives. The letters are always for Grandmother, never for Grandfather. When Grandfather sees one, he just says, “Well how is the schaf?” A schaf, is a German sheep but not a very smart one.
It’s good to know that Harold remains far away. Hilda defines “schaf” very well. Google Translate suggests: sheep, dope, and twit.
September 15, 1912
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
We have a new Sunday school teacher and her name is Miss Meadow, just like a real meadow, and I like her. She said that we are old enough to know about the “Ten Commandments,” but first she was going to tell us the story of Moses because he gave them to us. Moses went up to the top of Mt. Sinai and got them from God. God gave them to him on a tablet. In those days a tablet was a piece of stone, not a pill. She said that he was a wonderful man, Moses, not God, and she read to us out of the Bible and told us how he wore a dress with a long skirt embroidered with pomegranates. I don’t know why he wore a dress instead of a suit, I guess it was the style then, but he would look like a sissy if he walked around San Francisco in such an outfit. My father would look funny in a skirt even without the pomegranates. My father is short and fat. Even Grandfather would look funny. And he is tall and thin.
September 14, 1912
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
Grandfather came to my room early this morning and took the gold pieces away from me, and said that when I am a big lady I can have them and buy anything I want with them. He was putting them in a big bank downtown for now. He said I didn’t need the money now, but I said that I did, I needed money to buy candy, and he asked me how much did I need, and I said “Five cents,” so he took out five cents from his pocket and gave it to me.
September 13, 1912
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
I couldn’t go to Grandfather’s party because it was at night and just for grown-ups, but he said that he had a fine time, and he gave me forty dollars he won playing poker. It was all in beautiful gold pieces.
September 12, 1912
From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
Grandfather is going to have a big party tonight but he and I are going to have our own this afternoon, all for ourselves, at my table.
He loved the pen wiper and said it was just what he needed more than anything else in the world, and said that he loved our party and was sure the big one tonight wouldn’t be as much fun.