part-3

Ethel Shafer and Edwin Snell, courtship and life together

Of the passages of life, marriage demands of the observer the greatest restraint, while offering the greatest temptation to look for hidden meanings. I have risked comment here and evaded a conclusion there, bearing in mind that, in the words of Anthony Powell:

…marriage is…a form of action, of violence almost: an assertion of the will. Its orbit is not to be charted with precision, if misrepresentation and contrivance are to be avoided. Its facts can perhaps only be known by implication.

Father’s and Mother’s reminiscences, which furnish not a little of the material in the preceding sections, hardly touched on their courtship and early married life. But letters and other records are full of detail, though of course there are gaps. Later on, continuing into family life, the account begins drawing on my recollections, sometimes those of Art and Tee. The section falls into several parts—courtship and marriage (1903/04), early married life (1904/13), the young family (1914-25), ﬁrst years at the farm (1926-32), the period after Father’s retirement (1932-43)^{^[1]}.

Courtship and marriage

We can follow the months of courtship as we can no other part of their experience, from letters Mother and Father wrote to each other about what they were doing, how they felt, how love changed their outlook. So these ten months, from October 1903 to July 1904, take up more space in the present account than as many years of early married life.

As a boy I would come upon their letters to each other, tied in two bundles with strips of white rag; read the addresses and noted handwriting and dates. Finding them again at the farm long after, in the summer of 1969 or 1970, while rummaging in the little room by the head of the stairs, where I had ﬁrst noticed them, I left them still unread with Betty and Art, along with Grandpa Shafer’s letters from the Army and from Ann Arbor. Receiving them again after Mother’s death, I put them away for nearly ﬁve years, still held back, I suppose, by absorption in my own affairs, not enough attention and sympathy to spare. That no longer held true in 1977—Tee and I had gone our ways, I ﬁnally stopped spending most of the time at the ofﬁce. As expected, the letters were moving , and enlightening.

Before the Christmas holidays of 1903, they wrote a few times; after that, once or twice a week till April, when they began writing oftener. All told, they sent about 120 letters, of which 39 of his and 18 of hers survive,^{^[2]} the basis of this account of their courtship. One day you may wish to read them for yourselves. (For cover and ﬁrst page of the ﬁrst surviving letter sent by each, see following p. ***).

Father opens the correspondence, writing to “my dear Ethel”—a former student, after all—on Monday evening, 19 October 1903, from his upstairs room at 165 E. Bridge Street. He begins: “Don’t faint with astonishment until you reach the end of this letter and by that time you will have recovered. (I ﬂatter myself that the above is a very fair Irish bull.)”^{^[3]} . He goes on “without further apology” though speaking later of his “nerve” in writing. He ends, “If in the hurry and rush of the strenuous college life you can ﬁnd time to write me I shall be glad. Please give my regards to Marion. Sincerely yours, Edwin F. Snell.”

There is of course a background. They may have met socially at the Powerses’ in the summer of 1903, though I doubt it. Father very likely took the new “interurban” electric line to Muskegon^{^[4]} , to see Will and Ett; nothing more natural than that Marion would have invited her roommate Ethel for a couple of days. But would they have been invited at the same time? All we can say is that Ethel will have heard a good deal of talk about “Uncle Ed.”

At the latest, the two have met at the Martin farm, where the Shafers are spending the warm season. He writes, in this opening letter, that he has not paid them another visit “since the last day I was out there when you were at home.” That would have been, at least a month earlier, the weekend of 19-20 September.^{^[5]} He means to call again before they come to town for the winter. He could not see Marion and Ethel off to school, as proposed, he explains, because of a conﬂict with a house party at Highland Park^{^[6]}.

Meanwhile he has sent her a photo, perhaps promised for the day she was to leave—another sign of longer acquaintance. He writes near the end of the letter, “I do not think that ‘chromo’ that I sent you was hardly worthy of a gold frame and—well—maybe it didn’t get it, so I will not assume.” The “chromo” (which I still have) is small enough to ﬁt inside the cover of her watch (the “gold frame”).

He leads into the news by saying, in a current phrase, “nothin’ doin’” up his way. He tells of a bicycle trip to his farm the day before (mentioned earlier), class assignments, new teachers, a dinner invitation from Mr. Holmes’ replacement William Templin, and an impending football game with Muskegon, in which he expects Central to avenge last year’s defeat—said to get a rise out of Marion, who has become a Muskegon fan.

They exchange a very few letters that fall. On Wednesday evening, 6 January 1904, in the ﬁrst of Ethel’s letters that we have, she writes that aside from her parents, who expect at least three letters a week—all gone, I’m sorry to say—”others among my numerous (?) correspondents consider themselves martyrs if perchance I inﬂict more than one letter a month upon them.” She goes on to say in effect that she will write oftener if he does: “Therefore I will let you be the judge and will form my standard by the promptness with which you answer.” She says it over before closing.

The same letter, addressed to “My dear Mr. Snell,” lets us know, amid talk of basketball and studies, that they have gone dancing during the Christmas holidays. Neither she nor Marion has “indulged in any pleasure or pastimes since we have been back except one night when we played a game of “Pit”^{^[7]}. They have both been “burning the midnight oil almost every night.” She goes on, “But how I would enjoy a good dance, at the Lakeside, for instance.”

And she thanks Mr. Snell for agreeing to look in at the Shafers’ to see how they are getting on; the Doctor has been unwell. They are now of course aware of their daughter’s friendship with her old teacher, whom Mrs. Shafer would have known, or known about, in her youth. Dr. Shafer, too, may have known the family, may even have treated Mary Ann Snell.

They have learned about his letters to Ethel, and of the attention paid to them by the landlady, Mrs. Meier “Mama told you, I believe, about what she said of your handwriting.” Ethel goes on to quote Marion. After the postman arrived that morning, Mrs. Meier:

came in, her eyes nearly bulging out of her head and waving a letter wildly in her hand and said, “Here’s another one of those letters for Miss S. with the address in that beautiful handwriting. I certainly should have to watch the postman now.

Mr. Snell (17 January) answers:

“So ‘it is up to me’ is it? You may be sorry...” and warns that he may keep the landlady busy, going on to observe:

I can imagine how tantalizing you girls are, looking wise and knowing, but keeping mum like the proverbial oyster, while she wonders and speculates upon what it all means...

In the same letter, he asks her to excuse his formal way of writing. It well suits him, as he knows, a self–protective style readily turned to the uses of humor and irony. So he is touching on differences between them in background and temperament as he goes on to observe:

My early training in English was neglected, as you have often noted, and I shall never be able to attain to your newsy, easy style, even if I should live to be a hundred, and write like an engraved copy book.

In January the exchange of letters becomes indeed more frequent: there are seven from him and at least three from her; of which we know only from his references. As the correspondence picks up, he soon (30 January) expresses appreciation for her letters: they “are much to me and very welcome.”

Here is as good a place as any to say that the postman then came twice a day—8.30 A. M. and 2:30 P.M. at the Meeches’—six days a week. By allowing for train schedules, one usually could count on next day delivery, when much of the business district was under water and train service was interrupted up river. Normally, to assure overnight delivery, Mr. Snell took his letters to the Post Ofﬁce^{^[8]}, a brisk fifteen minute walk there and back. If less in a hurry, he could leave them for the postman to pick up on his rounds. Or he could entrust them to a letter box attached to one of the street cars on Bridge Street, though he had found (as noted on 11 January) that collections from the cars were irregular. We may envy them their postal service, observing, however, that at 2 cents the ounce (ﬁrst class), theirs cost more, relative to other commodities generally, than ours.

During the month Mr. Snell calls at 275 Lyon Street twice of a Sunday afternoon (10 January and 24 January), ostensibly to see how the Shafers are, especially the Doctor, although Percy has already reported a sign of improvement (Ethel’s letter of 6 January): their father is again smoking his pipe.

On the ﬁrst visit, Mr. Snell reports, he heard from outside the Doctor playing the ﬁddle “and was very sure at once that all was well.” And so it seems, or as he says, “...all of which pleasant suspicions were fully veriﬁed upon investigation.” He is invited in—the ﬁddle has been put away—and they seem cheerful, though the Doctor is still “shaky” from his fever, probably he is recovering from the grippe. On this ﬁrst visit, conversation begins on Ethel (”We talked, of course, about you.”), but soon shifts to the easier topic of farms. The Shafers go over with him their plans for selling both of theirs—his 80 acres and her 35 3/4 acres/^{^[9]} He “ventured the statement that they would be really disappointed if some one offered them their price, and your mother agreed with me.” (But the Doctor’s farm would be sold by 1907.)

On the second visit the Shafers admit that they have had “the blues,” which a Michigan winter can bring on, but have recovered. They go back to talk of farming. He remarks in the next letter (5 February), reporting this visit, that although the Doctor has come to call him Ed, her mother still addresses him as “Mr. Snell.” He advises Ethel to lead the way, if she wants her mother to change, observing that “example is stronger than precept.” Ethel, too, then has kept to the formal address. He goes on to note having put off calling again at 275 Lyon Street, so as not to have to admit or deny that he knows on what day Ethel plans to come home after exams.

She meanwhile has sent him her portrait, cut out of a group picture, doubtless of last year’s basketball team (acknowledged 11 January). He tells her it is “installed in the place awaiting it”—inside the cover of his big gold Elgin pocket watch, I believe. She later sends him something else, and we learn that she is already most thorough in wrapping a parcel. Reporting the arrival of one (2 February), called to his attention as he is starting upstairs, he notes his incredulity—nothing ever comes except his laundry, back from Gardiner and Baxter which had in fact become the Baxter Laundry the year before. Having recovered his package, he begins unwrapping it:

...when I reached the third wrapper, I thought “This is some kind of a joke,” and hesitated a moment, then plucking up courage I attacked the fourth, when lo and behold! the meat of the coconut was visible. A beautiful cushion and done in my favorite dark red!! Well—to say that I was surprised and pleased would be putting it mildly...Just at the present moment, it is propped up on the white counterpane of the bed, where the sharp contrast between the deep red and the white makes it show up sharply.

He later comments that she would “certainly be very successful in managing the wrapping business of a department store, though you might bankrupt them when it comes to question of paper and tissue^{^[10]}.”

During the month one or the other overworks or is suffering with a cold or fever; they exchange reports, good wishes, and advice. Her trip to Detroit with Marion to see Twelfth Night has left her in low spirits, with a headache; she alludes to the “German Joys,” such as fried potatoes, she believes are to blame. To which he comes back,

The restlessness and probably “Kopfweh,” too, are also strong indications that although your construction may be correct, there is excellent foundation for supposing that there could be an interlinear account of the Detroit trip that would add considerably to the original one.

That is, she might have had too many beers at supper after the show, for she and Marion arrived back at 4 in the morning and climbed in the window, as you may recall.

They play with the question why her watch doesn’t work properly — his portrait inside — and tell what they’ve been about, part of which I have noted earlier. Ethel announces with satisfaction her selection to head the German table, observes that she has been missing meals by her long hours at the gym. Once, Emily Seymour, a classmate and close friend from Flint, insists on taking Ethel to her house, where they have “a big dinner” — “oyster stew (hot), bread and butter, coffee, and home made cake and apple pie.”

Ethel complains about having term papers for every course. In the “seminary” on teaching algebra, she has had the misfortune to be named to read her paper in class. She mutters rebelliously about “sound shifts in old and middle high German”; the second (High German) sound change — zweite (hochdeutsche) Lautverschiebung — of Jacob Grimm will have provided the starting point.

Mr. Snell takes Daisy Meech dancing at the Lakeside, accepts Mrs. Elson’s invitation to join the new dance series at the St. Cecilia, goes to a teachers’ party. There they are served fruit salad and wafers, welsh rarebit, ice cream cake, coffee; afterwards they play “Pit”. He tells his “stock story, after being properly urged”; it takes ﬁve to ten minutes and he resolves not to do it again “unless it be in fresh ﬁelds and pastures new.” The Quinns hold a whist party. Mr. Snell looks in at a reception given by the Citizens Telephone Company, in which he holds shares, to celebrate the opening of their automatic exchange, the ﬁrst in the country (”no more ‘hello’ girl at the Central and ‘busy now’ in reply”), then goes home and calls several friends just to see and show that the new system works. He goes to a high school performance of the Merchant of Venice, which the young audience “guys,” especially during the love scenes, quite justly, he feels, but it has at least made money. He is disappointed by Minnie Madden Fiske; has dinner at the Smedleys’; and corrects a great many papers, including “originals,” optional exercises in geometry. Ethel comments that they shouldn’t do so many.

The Shafers have called to say they have a letter from Ethel, but have not been at the farm. Thus he is still without the Northern Spy apples they promised—tawny skins streaked with green and dark red; tart, slightly yellowish ﬂesh. The apples would have come from the old tree near the path south to the railroad tracks.

Toward the end of the month they exchange notes on when Ethel will come home after exams, and how long she will stay. On 30 January Mr. Snell asks whether she will be home by Wednesday, 10 February, to which he later (2 February) adds the hope that she will stay through Saturday the 13th. He is happy (5 February) to learn she will indeed be coming on the 10th, at 1:10 P.M., although he will be at school, unable to meet her, for the second term has begun at Central. He hopes she will save him Friday or Saturday night for a dance at the Lakeside and another for the theater, in case anything’s worth seeing.

Perhaps they go skating, apparently do not attend the theater. A later reference suggests a trip to Muskegon to see the Powerses^{^[11]}. They doubtless go to the Lakeside, and almost certainly to the St. Cecilia— on Friday evening 19 February, for the scheduled dance of the “Octopus.” It is a chilly evening, the mercury dropping from 17˚ F. at 7 P.M. to about 0˚ by early morning. That morning, 20 February, after coming back from the dance, they become engaged, as noted in his letters of 22 and 29 February, and hers of 27 March. On arrival at Ann Arbor Sunday evening she goes to bed early and sleeps 12 hours. He too rests soundly. They wake up Monday in a new world, to face social problems, and choices.

Most of the letters that we have from the next several weeks are, again, from Ed, or as he signs, Edwin; again we know of Ethel’s from his references. He begins (22 February) by telling her how he feels; it may strike a familiar note. “It seems,” he says, “an age since you passed from my sight yesterday noon, and I can scarcely realize the events of the past few days as having really occurred...” He can’t concentrate. The principal, A.J. Volland, has asked him to ﬁnd the proof of a proposition in geometry, received from a teacher out of town. He has been trying, “but I fear that I have made a failure of it. My mind is continually wandering to the ‘demonstrations’ of the past few evenings.” He has worked at school instead, among other things “washing the leave of my plants.”

Another theme that you may recognize is that of having a new purpose in life, along with that of feeling unworthy:

...I have a stimulus to work for now that I have never had before; not that I have been in the habit of loitering greatly, but everything has always seemed so indeﬁnite, nothing in particular to look forward to, just a grind without any reward except that which comes from trying to do my work as well as I could. I feel just now as if my promised reward were too great, beyond my deserts, but I shall try to prove worthy.

There are references to Ethel’s feelings, which seem to be exalted, as reﬂected in a passage he quotes (26 February) from her last letter:

I want to develop into the kind of woman you want me to be, to attain as near as possible, both mentally and physically, the ideal womanhood.

She also expresses admiration for his having succeeded in spite of such handicaps, to which he replies (1 March), “I know that I have had more or less of a hard row to hoe, but I don’t take any particular credit to myself, and it is news to me to learn that I deserve any.” Nonetheless he has told her something about his childhood and youth.

She has painted a picture of happiness to which he can only hope to rise:

...I hope I shall know how to live under the changed and happy conditions, and to have a song in the heart always. Comforts and luxuries are much, but they are not all. They are helping auxiliaries. Your own ideas are ﬁne and I trust that we can approximate them.

Meanwhile Ethel sends him proofs of a portrait of her, to see which he likes best. The ﬁnal choice will later serve as her wedding portrait.

They are not left alone long with their private emotions, but must deal almost at once with gossip, rumors, and direct questions. On Thursday evening, 25 February, he goes to a party at Perry Dowling’s^{^[12]}, Welsh rarebit and 6-handed euchre. He’s not home till midnight—”...extremely late for me.” He and Ethel have been seen together, perhaps at the Lakeside (he doesn’t say):

...Of course they remembered you and having seen us together there once before, were at once suspicious that there might be “something in it.” To see me out twice with the same girl was sufﬁcient ground for conjectures and I was called upon to make explanations, all of which I did—not.

He advises her not to conﬁde in any of her friends:^{^[13]}

I certainly should be very cautious about giving anything away to Rena or Liefy or any other of the gossipy girls down there. Such an affair would be a delicious morsel for them to retail and wholesale too.

What makes it so hard is that they propose to keep their engagement a secret for such a long time, until the spring of 1905, when she will ﬁnish. He has a letter from Marion with talk about what’s happening and a very warm approval of the engagement; at that moment she is the only one in the know. He continues (1 March):

She also vowed that she was pledged to profound secrecy, not even a word to “papa and mamma” who would be “so glad.” Well, we shall see whether a girl can keep such a gnawing secret or not. If she has to wait until you graduate, I am afraid that she will suffer—with impatience. I know I shall.

The rumors spread. On Saturday morning, 5 March, a young teacher, Otto Marckwardt, walks home from school with Ed, and asks right out: “Did you see Ethel Shafer when she was home?” “Answer, ‘Yes I called there’ at the house. That was all...Your name was not mentioned again, but I surmise that he has been receiving reports from someone in A.A...”

He goes on to say that Mrs. Meech seems to have heard something, too:

She said the other day at dinner, “I heard some news about you.” Of course I was politely curious and she explained that Mrs. Frost, Mr. Meech’s sister, had telephoned her that Mr. Snell was to be married during the spring vacation. That was news, though I took it very calmly and remarked that such stories always ﬂoat around periodically. I inquired if she knew who the unfortunate lady might be. She said that she knew, but did not seem inclined to take me into her conﬁdence.

He remarks that Mrs. Meech may wonder, he continues, when he will be giving up his room, concluding that if the news is true, it won’t be long.

The next week the situation is worse, as he reports on Friday evening, 11 March:

In spite of our imagining that we had guarded our secret carefully, from some source or another the atmosphere at the H.S. is simply charged with it. I cannot imagine from what source, for I have simply said and done nothing except escorting you a few places when you were here.

He says again it must have come from Ann Arbor; some girls, seeing his picture and “that ring,” have jumped to the conclusion. He is referring to an earlier occasion, when she reported slipping a ring on sometimes as if engaged, just to see what it would feel like. That would cause talk, but she apparently goes on doing it.

He is evidently a little upset:

Even one of the janitors had the “nerve” to tackle me about it, saying some of the “kids” had been discussing the matter in his presence, giving as a reason for some of my alleged “crankiness” (which may have been the case) that I was “engaged.” I replied that if it were true it would most likely have the opposite effect. However he did not appear convinced.

It comes up all the time:

...Then one of the teachers came in yesterday morning to see me about something, and I chanced to be talking to some one else at the time. “Oh!” said she, “I see you are engaged,” with particular emphasis on the last word, and then they all smiled knowingly.

The ﬁnal straw; he has nothing projected for spring vacation except to go to his farm

...and do some planning for the spring campaign. One of the janitors is very anxious to rent my farm, but he told one of the others, who, of course, told me at the ﬁrst opportunity, that he did not think there was much chance for him now, as I would probably move out there myself!!!! And so it goes.

He proposes taking some other girls out, on condition Ethel trusts him: “The case is quite a desperate one and requires heroic treatment.” He is not willing to admit, may not realize, that people in love stand out in a crowd. There’s no need to bring in indiscretions in Ann Arbor; everyone who has seen them together will have had an idea what is going on. And they themselves are not to blame either; romantic love deﬁes discretion.

A greater challenge is to open the subject with the Shafers. The ﬁrst opportunity comes on Sunday afternoon, 28 February, when he calls at 275 Lyon Street, “as you are aware.” He can’t collect his thoughts, and wonders whether they see that and guess why:

...They seemed to be in good spirits and I staid {sic}^{^[14]} quite a long time. I sat in the rocker, and visions of the past continually ﬂoated before my mind &, possibly they may have noticed that I had short spells of abstraction. I think that you being present “in spirit” must have had something to do with it...Your mother is exceedingly quick to notice, or to imagine, any change of any sort.

For example, she comments that Ethel, for the ﬁrst time, has addressed her in a letter as “Mother” rather than “mama.” He continues:

I did not broach “the question;” there did not seem to be any particularly favorable opening at any time. Do you think I should have made one?

One last note:

“Oh yes! she said last Sunday that she was sleeping better nights. Warum?”

On Tuesday evening, Ethel’s mother calls at about 6:30

...wanting to know if I had heard from you recently, as they had not heard from you for two days {in a larger hand}.…So you had better look out. When she began to talk she said that she was going to ask questions that I could answer by “yes” or “no.” There was not anyone in the room but the “kids,” and it would not have made any difference anyhow.

The next week, on Monday evening 7 March, he can report that he has ﬁnally come to the point. The letter, by the way, is in a green envelope, instead of the usual buff colored one, and addressed in a different hand, as he explains, “for the beneﬁt of the landlady; I think that I can fool her, just for fun.” (He will now and then repeat this ruse.) He, too, is stimulated, isn’t he, by being an object of attention? After listing errands, among them a second visit to the dentist, Dr. Booth, he reports:

Yesterday I made just one call, or rather, visit. I was at 275 Lyon from 4-30 until 9-30. and you can doubtless guess the nature of the conference, if indeed, you have not heard ere this reaches you.

It’s not easy, but he ﬁnally says his piece—the passage is rather a favorite of mine:

...It seemed as difﬁcult as ever to ﬁnd a natural opening, but I had to make one anyhow, natural or unnatural. I do not recollect clearly now just how I did it, but think it was something in this wise... I ventured to say, “I wish Ethel were here now” (just as if I were not wishing it all the time), and then, before my courage deserted me, I managed to follow it up with something like this,—”I suppose that you have already surmised that Ethel and I have an understanding with each other.” I won’t swear that was what I said—anyhow, it was prosy, wasn’t it, if it was anything like that? Perhaps your mother may remember better, though I hope not. The ice was broken, however, and then it was easier to talk.

The Shafers, of course, have been waiting patiently for this opening, as he perceives:

It seemed, however, that my avowal was only corroborative, and cumulative evidence, for your mother at once mentioned having recently received a letter from you which evidently had explained the situation better than I could, and that she meant always to keep that letter.

I haven’t found the letter; I wonder whether it isn’t the one she mentioned the Sunday before, in which Ethel calls her “Mother.”

Then the Doctor leads off in “a long conversation during which I managed to get my bearings on the chart as outlined by your father and mother.” The Doctor expresses great conﬁdence in Ethel:

“Ethel is a good girl and one of excellent judgment” (I may have been a little skeptical as to this last qualiﬁcation, though not as regards the ﬁrst) “and I trust her fully. She has looked at this matter from every possible standpoint and has arrived deliberately at her conclusions, and I am perfectly willing to accept them.”

Here again I ﬁnd echoes of Ethel’s letter home, much as one may read in an appellate court opinion the influence of a good brief. Ethel will have said, in part, that she knows she intends to live, quitely, as her parents have lived. Like her mother she wishes for a husband a man that has been tested, that she can trust. And what she has said rings true: that is the girl they know. For days, I imagine, they have been back and forth over the matter, always coming out at the point that she is of age and knows her own mind. Neither of them welcomes the engagement—she’s very inexperienced and he’s much older, even for the time—but they are too wise, and considerate, to oppose her. Also they recognize, as they tell Ethel soon after, that he’s a good, responsible man. I don’t believe, incidentally, that worldly considerations—money and position—will have entered into the discussion, though they may have been in Mrs. Shafer’s mind.

In any case, she ﬁnds it hard to accept:

...Your mother, of course you know, was more agitated and her voice trembled when she said,— “I hope it is for the best, and may God bless you both,” and I am very free to confess that I was considerably shaken myself.

There is another passage that suggests her reluctance to accept the engagement. After saying she will continue to call him Mr. Snell for the moment, as a precaution—for fear she might call him Ed in the wrong company—there is some talk about his name, and she can’t forbear a remark on it:

…Your mother, however, quoted the saw— “Change the name and not the letter, Change for worse and not for better,” which reads just as convincingly (?) as Change the name and change the letter &c. Old saws don’t cut much ice— not with me.

Not surprisingly, they want Ethel to stay at the University for her last year:

...They expressed the desire that you should remain in college until your course was ﬁnished, which conclusion we had already arrived at, and one which is really the reasonable one.

They rather expect, I believe, or assume, that marriage will be put off for that year, giving her time to reconsider, perhaps. Interestingly enough, he doesn’t report anyone as having said so, but he himself seems to be taking it for granted, as appears from the statement of another of Mrs. Shafer’s concerns:

..Then your mother suggested that the house is a large one and that she couldn’t bear to think of losing you and that we might ﬁnd it agreeable to dwell under the same roof. I said that for myself I should have no objection, but that would be entirely as you might decide. In any event there is plenty of time to decide, too much, in fact.

A long engagement is also suggested by an agreement on keeping it classiﬁed:

...We agreed fully upon the point that all of the people are now in the secret that should be admitted, until the time when it can no longer be a secret. Marion, of course, is the only one outside the family and she will have her crucial test when she goes home and meets her people who know us both so well and who would be so deeply interested.

The same appears in still another connection:

...Some one made the remark that you would not be as useful an adjunct to the farm next summer as you were last with an omnipresent chap like me frequently looming upon the horizon. But that was settled satisfactorily by the declaration that the farming operations might be carried on on a larger scale with the additional help (?) nicht wahr?

An appealing scene. They are now recognizable as the “same people” I remember, younger and more vigorous, of course, the Doctor still with his pipe, Mr. Snell heavy, with a moustache. The day has been overcast and chilly, the mercury about 39 degrees; it’s raining off and on, the barometer falling. As they begin, in the back sitting room, where I see them, they can still look out the bay window, over to the hill. There may be a little coal in the grate. They are in chairs I remember, including the rocker, very likely a platform rocker with red upholstery, somewhat bigger than the one Suzy kept. They hardly notice the groan of the new electric streetcar climbing the hill, the clip-clop of a horse once in a while, a bird chattering, a mandolin being plucked, or the ripple of a piano cadenza. By six o’clock the gas is lit, Mrs. Shafer serves chocolate and sandwiches; they begin to talk quietly about this question that closely touches them all. Percy is upstairs in bed, he has not been feeling well lately. Mr. Snell reﬂects, “Poor fellow—I am afraid that he does not get as much happiness as he might out of life.” At nine thirty they part, on good terms, with some relief. Ed is invited to come to the house as often as he can, and to feel that he is at home.

Customs are changing, as this episode reﬂects. In the time-honored way, Ed is nominally responsible for opening the matter formally, but not by asking Dr. Shafer “for Ethel’s hand”; instead he “talks to” Dr. and Mrs. Shafer, asking them to take in good part the “understanding” between Ethel and him, of which they have already heard from her.

On the next Sunday afternoon, 13 March, Percy and then Dr. and Mrs. Shafer show him plans for a second house to be built just to the west on their property. One feature, on which Ethel’s mother has her heart set, is an upstairs sitting room, 12 feet by 18 feet—”for you and me,” Ed exclaims to Ethel. He is later shown about upstairs at 275 Lyon Street, for his information and as a further sign of acceptance.

Ethel does not fall in with the idea; she wants a house of her own. Ed comes back (17 March) to say of course he understands and agrees, but there’s “the practical side.” He is not …“a millionaire;”… he will explain his ﬁnancial situation—and it won’t take long—when she comes home on spring vacation. He estimates, reasonably enough, to judge from advertisements of that spring, that it would take $2,000 to $3,000 to

…”set up” even a very modest establishment, if we own it, and it would undoubtedly be necessary to go out farther where property is cheap in order to get a fair house and furnish it within the above estimate. Either east or south would be my idea. In general I personally prefer not to rent… it just would not be “home.”

In the same letter he urges her to put off another question she has raised,

…I do not think that I would at present attempt the conversion of the folks to the idea of not ﬁnishing college...

They have their hearts set on her ﬁnishing, and she owes them a lot. On the one question as on the other, “we can go further,” he concludes, “when you come home on vacation.”

Very rarely during these long weeks do they strike a note that you might expect from people in love. At one point, Ed teases her, on hearing that she can climb the 20-foot rope, “Well, I shall be a little cautious how I excite those muscular arms of yours to action. It might be dangerous.” Or the cold weather in late March makes Ethel “long for the ‘good old summer time’ when we can get out and pick ‘green pease’”, at the farm: as he has mentioned, “I’m afraid we will have to start early in the morning to pick in order to get enough for dinner in time for dinner.” Mostly, though, they talk like married folk unavoidably separated^{^[15]}.

There’s always the news; on the Grand Rapids side, several items. On Monday ,29 February, Clifford Crittenden takes Ed to the annual retail grocers’ dinner at the Pantlind, reported (in the Herald the next morning) as “the most pretentious affair of its kind ever attempted by that organization. About 250 men, cigar smoke (much worse than what she has complained about at the Lakeside), many speeches, mostly, he says, “rather light weight—same as the results of their labor with the scales.” Perhaps he, too, enjoys a rare cigar; if so, doubtless a local product costing at most 5 cents; some forty cigar makers are listed in the 1904 city directory. The last of a series of four whist parties since the holidays is held at Mrs. Elliott’s (at the Plaza) on Saturday, 12 March, two tables. On 14 March “the snow of the season” falls, a foot or more “of the beautiful,” beginning in early morning. “The snow plows did not get out until P.M. and everybody ﬂoundered, Indian ﬁle, through the drifts.” Not only many “kids” are late but also the ﬁreman, and school starts cold. The rest of the week Ed tries to catch up on work, also takes long walks to lose weight. But the weather is too bad for a spin out to his farm. On Thursday evening there’s a heavy windstorm; he’s at the Shafers’ and, walking home, is startled to see the damage. On Friday evening the 25th he goes to gymnastic exercises and a basketball game at the auditorium.

He has a letter from the superintendent’s ofﬁce in Indianapolis asking what salary he would accept to go there to teach. He writes back telling what senior teachers are paid at Central, and says he might move for a “substantial” raise. As he writes later, he’s been recommended by a Mr. S.R. Smith of the American Book Company, then an inﬂuence in school affairs^{^[16]}. He waxes indignant about “hazing” of Freshmen—cutting off their hair, as at Ann Arbor^{^[17]}.

On Saturday 26 March the Spains arrive in town from Detroit for a week’s visit, staying with the Dent Pratts^{^[18]}. Ed goes alone to an Optimus party at the Lakeside, the last of the winter season, not much fun, he says, for him. This is the weekend when the great ﬂood crests at 20 feet above low water: “...the oldest inhabitant has no parallels, to say nothing of greater ones.^{^[19]}” Several feet of water cover the “west side” as well as part of the business district. Postal service between Grand Rapids and Ann Arbor is held up.

On Monday 28 March Ed’s spring vacation begins. Tuesday evening he goes to a six-course dinner at the Plaza—not described—for a Miss Alice Marsh from Detroit; “covers were laid for ten.” Afterwards there is music and dancing. Shortly he “bids them adieu” and goes on to a leap-year party at the Masonic Temple, under the auspices of the ladies of the Eastern Star. He has been invited by a Miss Louisa Verner, a teacher in the Central Grammar School, whom he has known “for several years.^{^[20]}” “She did not really expect to be ‘accepted,’ so she said, so I decided to fool her.” He has a good time, has to “pose as a ‘wall ﬂower’ but once,” then gratefully, for the hall is crowded and hot. He gets home about one in the morning. Wednesday evening he takes the Spains to see the “Royal Lilliputians” at the Majestic Theater. Thursday afternoon he sends ﬂowers to Ethel for Easter.

The weekend begins with two invitations for dinner Friday evening, 1 April, at the Pratts’ to dine with the Spains, and at the Jewells’. As it happens, the Spains’ youngest daughter Annie Lyle comes down with the measles; so he goes to the Jewells’. After dinner they play Flinch “for diversion (?)”^{^[21]}. On Saturday he takes the Spains to dinner at the Pantlind, on Sunday has lunch with them at the Pratts’. Mr. Spain is due back in Detroit Monday. Later in the week Ed reports that a summer boating trip with his friend is still “up in the air;” Mr. Spain may be too fond of creature comforts. He looks forward to boating with Ethel. The inﬂuence of the Spains is reﬂected in comments on the report that the Powerses are to move to Detroit; a good idea, “for I should think that D. is about the ﬁnest city in the country to live in. I should like to live there myself.” Not the Detroit of our day.

There’s less news from Ann Arbor. In early March Ethel is overdoing again, she barks her shin playing basketball; Marion puts her to bed. When she writes, she’s still “shaky.” Ed scolds her, tells her not to try to write in bed on her back, and thanks Marion for watching out for her.

By the last week in March, Ethel is up and at it, meetings, basketball practice, missing dinner, and so on. Marion is reported as “quite disgusted” by Uncle Ed’s concern over her own failure to take care of herself. Ethel says Marion’s “doing better than she was, although she never gets to bed until about eleven and gets up the next morning at 6:30.”

On Sunday 27 March it’s “snowing and thawing at the same time” and very unpleasant out. She reports the track meet with Cornell, notes that Marion has fallen into an irritating habit of calling her “Tante” (to match “Uncle Ed”). Finally on 13 April, she reports “grand success” in the women’s meet, in which the juniors are just beaten by the freshmen but come out far ahead of sophomores and seniors. Meanwhile, she’s been studying and is pretty tired, and looking forward to getting back to Grand Rapids on vacation.

All this time, of course, gossip and questions go on. At school the superintendent gives a little talk on Cuba; on coming out, he is asked by the principal, Mr. Volland, whether he knew that Mr. Snell “was going to resign — that is., “to become a Benedict,” Mr. Volland hastens to explain. Ed tells the superintendent that such rumors do pop up from time to time. On the 29th, when he goes to the “leap year party,” some students comment that it must be “his last ﬂing.” Later on he notes that Miss James (then preceptress assistant to the principal), “is consumed with curiosity;” tells him she knows all about it and he might as well ‘fess up. To be sure some have been more tactful. Mrs. Spain has written a while back, asking him sweetly if he has found “the only she.” The Dowlings go easy on him, he thinks because they themselves were married without a word, sending out announcements when they were on their wedding trip. There’s a short respite when a lady teacher elopes with a young Russian whom she had met the previous summer; he has been working at the high school; afterwards there are those who say she paid his way over. Ed tells Ethel not to worry; it doesn’t bother him any more.

The Shafers face the same thing from the neighbors. Caroline. Treadway drops in from across the street and appears to expect answers; of course she doesn’t get them. Mrs. Shafer, calling on the Barlows, across Ghilda Place, again has to deal with “the situation,” but easily, for they are “very sure that if there were any truth to it, they would not be neglected.”

In Ann Arbor, Otto Markwardt comes to call, and expresses surprise not to see “his picture,” which Ethel has prudently locked away. She meditates traveling with Otto to Grand Rapids for vacation, as further disinformation. A lady teacher or administrator is sure she knows all about it, she knows Ethel, and so on. Ethel comments that she had better watch out. Anyone who lives in such a fragile glass house as she does ought to be careful about those stories; I know a thing or two about her that I would just as soon not know.” The landlady also has been a nuisance, although Marion has given her such a rude negative as to keep her quiet for a little. The one bright spot is that the Powerses, in writing to Marion, have had nothing to say; Ethel ﬁnds it surprising, mentioning sources that should have tipped them off. She, too, is now used to it:

...I am getting so now that I can control every muscle of my face and tell the biggest lies with the straightest face and look the people in the eye, too.

She adds, “I am also overcoming the tendency to blush even when I am not guilty and so that doesn’t give me away.”

Finally, on the afternoon of Friday 15 April, she takes the 1:10 P.M. for Grand Rapids, for a week’s holiday. They ﬁrst arrange that Ed will meet her; but her mother is set on her father’s going instead. Ed says he will wait for her at the house and she agrees.

The same evening, or the next day, she ﬁnally says in so many words that she won’t go back to Ann Arbor for another year; she’s had enough. Perhaps someone suggests that they could be married in the summer anyway, commuting weekends and vacation; or married at Christmas; there are various possibilities. But that’s not what she wants. Ed may be a little disappointed that she doesn’t set more value on a degree; it’s a chance for her that he didn’t have. But it’s her decision, and it’s wonderful, if overwhelming, that a young woman — and what a young woman — is eager to devote all her time to you. And once she has said her mind, her father accepts it, we may be sure, and her mother gives way. All decided in one session, or so I imagine. Change in social customs, you note, is carried a step further, with the young lady telling her parents how it is going to be. It is they, and her ﬁancée, not Ethel, that are concerned over her education.

Ethel and her mother then go on to decide when the wedding will be, agreeing to set a date about four weeks after she ﬁnishes exams, or by mid-July. There is some talk about where to hold the wedding, and when to tell close friends, such as the Powerses. Ethel does not —yet —contest her mother’s wish that they live at 275 Lyon Street.

Ed and Ethel have a lot to say to each other as well. There’s the future to consider, beginning with the wedding trip. The inquiry from Indianapolis has been followed by an offer; ﬂattering, but she agrees he should turn it down. As promised, he doubtless tells her what he is paid, how much he has saved. They take at least one long walk, on Saturday 23 April, to the north of town looking for arbutus, but it’s a late season. They sit far into the night, by turns playing his mouth organ. They keep out of the public view. The week passes fast.

Monday noon, 25 April, they part at 275 Lyon Street; her mother will see Ethel off, pour les gens. On their way down in the streetcar, Ethel catches sight of Ed down on Monroe Street on the south side “near Winans and Booths ofﬁces. You looked at the car but didn’t see us.” She and Marion leave at about 5:30; Marion, who has fainted at the dentist’s, is at the station barely in time. They are back in Ann Arbor at 920 Monroe Street about 10:15, a little late. There is such a crowd from Chicago joining the train at Jackson that a “special” is pout on. Ethel remarks that it certainly was special, “for I think it had been on the road since the railroad was started.”

The next day she asks permission to drop two courses, approaching the women’s athletic director Dr. Lynch, herself secretly planning to get married, as Ethel knows. Ethel explains her case: they decide to plead overwork, saying her parents want her to go easy. The next ofﬁcial “swallowed bait and hook,” everyone falls in line, dean and professors—Professor Alan S. Whitney in pedagogy and Asst. Prof. Tobias Dieckhoff, whose class in the Middle High German “folk epic” she’s been attending. Now she can sleep late in the morning —till 7:30 —just in time to catch breakfast. She can relax and enjoy the spring.

She uses her new leisure, for example, to begin reading Middlemarch; no comment, nor does she say anything about ^J@”orn Uhl|. She wears the red-trimmed hat and the red and black tie Ed has given her—presents with his favorite colors—and is complimented. It’s beautiful outside; “the soft maple and elm are in bloom.” Several girls are planning to go out Saturday 30 April, to make May baskets.

Now that she has time to eat, other than on the run, she ﬁnds that “boarding house is worse than before;” she has toast and eggs for breakfast, bread and horseradish for lunch, bread and gravy for dinner—”of course there are occasionally other things thrown in.”

She has time to write him four letters the ﬁrst four days, expressing concern that he will not get enough rest to make up for late nights the week before. She reads his letters of the last four months and daydreams. She ﬁnds she has (for the second time!) brought back his mouth organ, and apologizes. The landlady judges him very handsome from his portrait, again on display; Ethel replies that it no more than does him justice. It’s about this time that Marion remarks on a resemblance she sees in the expressions of Ethel and “Uncle Ed.”

They exchange ideas about the wedding. He writes (17 April) asking whether it’s all right to put it off till the end of July, six (rather than four) weeks after she’s due home. She tells him (29 April) she is unwilling to make problems for her mother, but it won’t leave them much time before school opens. Whenever, Ethel hopes, the wedding will be small and informal, no “dress parade.” She agrees to his talking to the Rev. George E. Cooley, at All Souls Church, Universalist^{^[22]}. Mrs. Shafer does call, but he’s not in. It appears (Ed, 10 May) that Mr. Cooley will by then have joined his wife in St. Louis on vacation. Ethel replies that’s too bad, but she’s always reasonable—anyone but “a Methodist or Episcopal, and I do draw the line there.” During this period Ed, too, has a portrait made and sends proofs to her; that selected will be his wedding portrait.

She has a shock on 29 April when she goes to hear Grand Rapids superintendent W.H. Elson talk to the class in pedagogy, a good talk, to the point; the Grand Rapids students are “all very proud of him.” Afterwards, as they crowd about, she tries to escape...

...but I was on the front seat and Prof. Whitney immediately took me in hand and introduced me saying Miss Shafer, a Grand Rapids girl. Mr. Elson jumped up about two feet in the air and as he was coming down he shouted, “Miss Shafer” (very long drawn out), I’m glad to meet you,” and he shook hands and looked me square in the eye with a most peculiar look in his eye. Of course I like an “it” turned red although I don’t think I really disgraced myself.

In the same letter she tells about a party, at which all the guests are given parts to play for the evening; she is Susan B. Anthony, the suffragette; Marion is Frances Willard; others are Sunny Jim, Happy Hooligan, Glowing Gus, Montmorency, Carrie Nation, Teddy Roosevelt, the Gold Dust Twins^{^[23]}. They are to act in character, and she in her turn

...made a speech to college girls in which I disclosed my opposition to matrimony and exhorted all girls who had had the advantages of a college education to shame men...

They are all given prizes by lot, she gets the “best”, a box of fudge. In the same letter, she observes that one of her classmates, having seen her after some time, said she looked so thin; in reporting this, Ethel notes, parenthetically: “Well now, as a matter of fact I am several pounds heavier than I was last fall.”

The latest report in Ann Arbor, she says, is that she was married over spring vacation:

...I hear it every day from people who haven’t the slightest idea where G.R. is even. And they all begin every time I appear and greet me with, “Well, now, Ethel, I think now that you might have sent us invitations.” “Oh,” I say,”you’re too soon; it hasn’t come off yet.” And they answer, “Oh, will you send me an invitation.” And I say, “Why sure, I’m going to give a general invitation to the public and all students in particular and have engaged University Hall for the day after Commencement” and on and on...

Basketball continues. On the afternoon of Thursday, 5 May they play the sophomores and lose, though Marion swears Ethel played the best game of her life. Ethel explains:

She judged by the amount of yelling that they did for me (but they only did it because I was captain and they thought they had to).

On 11 May, Ethel looks forward to a game with the seniors on Saturday morning, when she will again face the tall red-headed girl:

...We have real interesting ﬁghts and make them quite personal. But she isn’t at all vicious and never does anything worse than to dig into my hands and arms or to jump up and come down on my feet...

There’s no later report, but a letter from Ed toward the end of the month, noting the end of the season, indicates that the juniors lost to the seniors, too.

While ﬁnishing papers, beginning exams, sending Ed some wild violets, and preparing for the end of the year, Ethel’s thoughts race ahead. It is very hard to wait, and she suggests (7 May) that he come down for Memorial Day weekend:

...I would like to have you come to A.A. but I have my doubts as to how pleasant it would be for you would doubtless be stared at more than you were before in your life; however, if you could stand that we might have a very pleasant time. I think it would be nicer, though, to be in Detroit where quite so many people didn’t know it. However, perhaps you would rather wait till later in the summer (ahem)...

On 24 May, perhaps having been asked again, Ed replies simply that he would like to go, but has “piles” of work to do, and it won’t be long till they see each other.

Occasionally there is a let up. A teacher “bolts” class, and she goes out to play tennis, pretty much out of practice. On Friday 26 May, Ethel and Marion get up soon after three in the morning, eat a cold breakfast, make up a pack of sandwiches, oranges, and bananas, and “sally forth in search of wild crab apple blossoms.” They have heard that they might ﬁnd some “out in Washtenaw <County> beyond the poor house,” so off they go, about three and one half miles, she estimates:

...At any rate we walked till we found our blossoms, then ate our lunch and came home. We enjoyed every minute of the walk, for the morning was perfect and the country through which we passed is rolling, as is typical of the A.A. country. We got back about seven and I packed up a box of the buds to send to you..After breakfast I hied me down to the depot and waited for the west-bound train and saw the box safely deposited in the mail car...

The blossoms arrive safely and give great pleasure. She also has hemstitched some linen handkerchiefs for his birthday (the 29th), but lacking time to work in his monogram, sent them to her mother to be stamped.

In Grand Rapids, there has been some ﬁne weather, too. On Saturday 30 April Ed goes out looking for arbutus with Mr. Templin, A.H. Holmes’ replacement for the year, you recall. They walk out to the Mill Creek area, north of Grand Rapids, near the border of Grand Rapids and Plainﬁeld Townships. They start following the same course taken by Ed and Ethel the week before, then veer off, over open country “covered with pine and oak scrub.” They ﬁnd wintergreen, last year’s, with the new berries; Templin, a Hoosier, who has never seen the like, is delighted. He also wonders about rattlesnakes. Arbutus is harder to ﬁnd. They go over six or seven miles—or about the same as Marion and Ethel in the jaunt mentioned above. Ed, who is a little tired, has just time to send her some arbutus, hurry through supper, shave and dress, and rush off to escort a lady to a whist party at Miss Sheldon’s, at the Plaza. The arbutus arrive, a little damaged.

Spring weather makes Ed restless, too, as he announces on 6 May; he is eager as a schoolboy to escape:

...I feel “the call of the wild” very strongly. Your assertion that “whither though goest I will go” may be brought to the test some of these days when I have to go camping, ﬁshing, etc. be a wandering nomad, barbarian, or what—impulses that make him want to get out into the woods and on the waters.

Ethel replies by return mail that she never cared for boating on a river—“the current is too swift”—but would love boating on a nice lake with plenty of ﬁsh. She goes on:

...All that is wanting in my picture is a good companion, not one who wants to talk too much but who likes the same sort of thing that I do and who understands without talking. Do you know that sort of companion? I think I do and I think you could guess his name, but I’ll tell you that his ﬁrst name is Edwin.

She volunteers to go with him,though only of course if that’s what he wants:

...I know you love a free wild life for part of the year at least, and although of course I have never been camping, I love the woods, the streams and lakes, and if some time you had the impulse to get away from the whirl of the city life I think we might be comrades as well as man and wife and enjoy such a trip. But dearest, I wouldn’t have you think for a minute that I would object to your getting out with other men and roughing it as it wouldn’t be possible with women in the crowd.

As spring comes on, the Shafers prepare to move out to the farm again. They are hoping to get a van on Wednesday 111 May; there has been a strike, but they and their belongings arrive safely at what Ethel in one letter refers to as “Bleak House”—Ed protests that. There, rather late in the season, they are busy setting out fruit trees. Peas shoot up, asparagus and pieplant (rhubarb) are soon said to be “ripe”; by the end of the month, strawberry plants are blossoming, and green fruit forming. Ed promises that berries will be ready for her.

He is oppressed by work more than usual. It’s “an intermittent fever,” or “a nightmare.” He is invited by the Elsons to join a small party at the opening of the summer season at the Lakeside. He undergoes two painful sessions with the dentist; after the second he stops at the druggist’s for an analgesic; he wonders whether he will sleep. On the afternoon of Friday the 20th—pay day, or as he says, “Today the ghost walked^{^[24]}” —Otto Markwardt invites him to walk down to Muir’s, where he treats; Ed has ginger ale, Otto a strawberry sundae. As work thins out, he agrees to take a boy to tutor for entrance exams to Annapolis. He visits his farm and is dissatisﬁed with “progress (?)”.

Spring sports are underway. On 14 May he goes to the school “ﬁeld day,” small attendance, unremarkable performances, except that the school record for the hammer throw is broken.

On Saturday afternoon, 21 May, he and Mr. Gurney O. Dillingham^{^[25]} walk down to a Grand Rapids-Terre Haute baseball game. Grand Rapids is shut out. He later notes that the locals are in last place, as usual. On Saturday 4 June he ofﬁciates at a Grand Rapids-Muskegon track meet, “because they couldn’t get anyone else.” He has an obligation, having been reelected president of the high school athletic association, in an election largely run by the “frats,” as is customary. This meet is at Comstock Park, by the river, at the north end of town. It is a dreary affair, though Grand Rapids wins. It starts late: the manager forgot to bring a tape measure, so “the referee walked to Mill Creek to buy one, which he couldn’t do but ﬁnally borrowed one from a carpenter and had to return the same day.” Events drag on, and it gets dark before they can all be run off. In the dark, another walk to Mill Creek, then back home.

One pressing question is who will tell the Powerses, and when. In early May they are in town, on their way from Muskegon to Detroit, and Mrs. Shafer asks them to dinner (at noon, of course). Ed comes over from school to join them. But she still makes no announcement, and he feels he can’t under the circumstances. He sees the Powerses later on in the day, and there’s an opening, but no direct question; he passes. Ethel (12 May) asks him to write a letter to them “about the state of affairs” as a special favor to her before she and Marion leave to spend Memorial Day weekend with them in Detroit. He asks for their address and sends off a line to Will Powers on 23 or 24 May. The reply is prompt, and inevitably a little dry; “the burden of it was congratulations for the tardy imparting of a secret (?) which as he put it was already known from one end of the state to the other.” Ed comments elsewhere (27 May) that he knows they had their ﬁrst hard information only after arriving in Grand Rapids.

The wedding is tangible for a moment as Mrs. Shafer shows him two pieces of cloth for a suit for the occasion; he chooses the darker of the two, which Ethel also has preferred. That’s a custom new to me, the bride’s family providing the groom’s wedding suit.

The date is still uncertain. Ethel at various points mentions the 27th of July (a Wednesday) and, more generally, late July or early August. She’s apparently thinking about Ed’s going off on a boat trip after school. He observes that it would get him out of the way, not “mooning” about so much, her mother’s expression. But his alternate companion, a Mr. Kelley of Detroit, suggested by Dr. Spain—”a nice sort of pedagogue,” says Ed—can’t go after all, as Ed writes on 20 May. At that point, I should imagine, preferences shift back to mid-July, as originally agreed, though no date is set just then.

They both repeat expressions of incredulous love and commitment; they also have their anxieties. Ethel’s happiness “is sticking out all over her,” comments Dr. Lynch, the departing women’s athletic director, Ethel’s conﬁdante. But she worries (12 May) about learning to cook properly in those few weeks, so that he won’t be looking for excuses to go out to eat. She adds, however, “I am getting so sick of the boarding house monotony that I believe even my own cooking would be acceptable.” She’s also concerned, understandably, about ﬁtting in with Ed’s friends, all much older; she wonders, for example, whether the Smedleys^{^[26]} “will approve of” her. She may ask herself how she will like them; probably not: as noted earlier, she’s long been at ease in the company of elders.

Ed remains uneasy; she may have too high a notion of him, and will be undeceived. She keeps reassuring him, and he can’t get it out of his mind. On 24 May, for example, he exclaims:

...Love is blind. If I were going to mention your principal fault I should be obliged to state that it consisted in elevating me upon a pedestal, much higher than my deserts. Still, I shall try to not get off that perch. Maybe trying to maintain it will do me good...

Ethel of course repeats her reassurance (4 June):

...Mrs. P[owers] hasn’t got my ideas of your virtue any higher than they were before, she has merely tended to conﬁrm my own ideas on the subject. You won’t have to live life “on stilts” to keep up your reputation. All that is necessary is for you to live your own natural life. I am perfectly willing to share your lot with you just as you are...

And more of the same.

They discuss the wedding trip. Ethel suggests traveling about in Michigan. Ed agrees to look up schedules. An agent for resort property urges on him the merits of Higgins and Houghton Lakes, well to the north in the “lower peninsula,” where there are cottages for rent and a 30-room hotel. She tells him (4 June) she will be happy to go wherever he wants, just so long as it’s not a big hotel, please; it will be so expensive, the food is probably no better, and again there’s that “constant dress parade.”

There’s no more talk about where to live, but Ed is keeping an eye out. He goes to inspect one house almost ﬁnished that’s advertised for sale on the instalment plan (”it didn’t say how many instalments”), on Richard Terrace^{^[27]}. It looks all right outside, he reports, but on going inside—the back door was unlocked—”I was rather disappointed...for the ﬁnish was that of a place to sell.” He doesn’t even call to ask the price.

Finally, the term winds down to an end, painlessly enough for Central High School students; higher authority has ruled there will be no ﬁnal exams this year. There is still the matter of calculating grades, which Ed does from the meticulously kept record of tests and class work. Then the grades must be copied into the school ﬁles. All the teachers are reappointed, though not all are granted the salary increases they expect. He goes on tutoring the Annapolis candidate—his ﬁrst venture, he says, into tutoring— attends Baccalaureate service at Park Congregational, which some teachers pass up, and, of course, graduation exercises on Wednesday 15 June.

Till very near the end Ed is casting dust in the eyes. On Monday 6 June he takes Daisy Meech to the Powers Theatre, on complimentary tickets sent to teachers, to see the repertory company play in a comedy, “The Late Lamented.” The company, he thinks, is pretty fair; not the play. Daisy was happy to go, he reports, even though she had another invitation to the same show, for the next night. The teachers—many of them for a free event—stare at her.

Early in June Ethel tells some of her basketball players that she will not be back the next year; as already noted they have been talking about putting her up as a candidate for class vice-president. After her last extant letter, of 4 June, she still has another paper or two to ﬁnish and exams to take. She is due home on Tuesday the 14th^{^[28]}, again by the 1:10, arriving about 5:30; once more Ed, after some discussion, will come to see her at the house after she’s had a short rest.

Here the correspondence ends, except for a note from Ed to Ethel at the farm a month later. The Meeches have put their house up for sale, but he keeps his room in June and July.^{^[29]} He spends some days at his own farm, where he has agreed to do the haying. He still cuts hay with a scythe and cradle, laying it in windrows, rakes it and stacks it to dry, later loads it in a wagon for the short run to the barn and pitches in the mow, all by hand. He has to attend a session or two with the tailor. But although he has undertaken to “make himself scarce” at the Shafers so as not to hold up the proceedings, he surely is out there quite often, helping with the work. As he has warned, Ethel can’t expect him to stay away many days “in concussion.”

Ethel, too, helps with the garden, perhaps picking “green pease”with her intended, has her ﬁll, at last, of strawberry shortcake and home cooking, doubtless tries her hand in the kitchen. Of course she is in town, too, with the dressmaker, seeing friends, and meeting Ed. Apparently they go house hunting, ﬁnd and rent a house nearby Lyon Street (no. 307 just west of Oakley Court), presumably furnished, but there are still things to buy^{^[30]}. Ethel gets her way. And they should have time to go dancing, boating, and walking together. Time passes. That last note of Ed’s, of Friday 15 July, just says he “will not attempt to come out to-morrow evening, but will be out Sunday morning instead—for breakfast.”

On Wednesday afternoon, 20 July, having been engaged exactly ﬁve months, they were married at the farm, standing by the bay window in the east sitting room. The day was partly cloudy, warm, not hot. How did they feel? Perhaps, in the words, again, of Anthony Powell, marriage was

...a change that presented itself in terms of action rather than reﬂection, the mood in which even the most prudent often marry; a crisis of delight and anxiety, excitement and oppression.

It was surely a small wedding, by common consent. Marion would have been maid of honor. Percy may have been best man. The Rev. George E. Cooley performed the ceremony after all. Their marriage license was recorded on the recto of the leaf following the title page of a small book (16mo) with a linen cover, entitled: “The House Beautiful.”^{^[31]} The contents read:

The Building of the House,

House Furnishing,

The Ideal of Beauty,

Flower Furniture,

Book Furniture,

Out Guests,

The Dear “Togetherness”

I forbear to quote, observing only that in shying away from traditional formulas—not only in this case—one is apt to deviate into sentiment, if no worse.

We can’t say, with any certainty, what guests were there. No photographs were made; the portraits made earlier were the couple’s wedding pictures, those framed and hanging on my wall (following p. ***). James Henry Martin and his wife Mary doubtless were present. If any of the Shafers were invited, then Dr. Shafer’s brother Mason and his wife Ellen. The A.W. Meeches^{^[32]}, Barlows, and Treadways would have been invited, and probably attended. The A.C. Denisons may have been invited, and Julia Barlow Denison perhaps came. The Powers family were of course invited, perhaps the Spains, but could hardly be expected to make the trip from Detroit. I should imagine announcements, rather than invitations, went to Father’s old friends and some of his high school colleagues. An announcement went to W.W. Earnest, who wrote to the Doctor in very strong terms about his son-in-law and sent good wishes. If any country neighbors came, then Roy and Kate Hendershott, perhaps Carrie Squiers Swank, a niece of Dr. Shafer, and her husband Will. As many as twenty people would have been a crowd in the two rooms available.

Und da werde di@-e Hochzeit des K@”onigssohns mit dem Dornr@”oschen in aller Pracht gefeiert, und sie lebten vergn@”ugt his an ihr Ende. (Freely rendered. “And so the wedding of Prince Charming and Sleeping Beauty was celebrated in state, and they lived happily ever after.”)

Early Married Life (1904-13)

After the wedding and reception, I should imagine the happy, nervous couple were driven, perhaps escorted, down to 275 Lyon Street for the night, to be ready to leave early the next morning. Possible some friends serenaded them, in a “shivaree,” nothing so very indecorous, I should think. They went to a hotel on Stony Lake, close by Lake Michigan^{^[33]}. They would have taken the Grand Trunk (or the interurban) to Grand Haven, the Pere Marquette to Shelby; a hired buggy with driver doubtless took them over to the lake.

What can one say about anyone else’s wedding trip? They surely walked and talked a lot, probably rented a boat, and didn’t have to dress up often. They began with fair, temperate weather, with light winds; that lasted for two or three days. Then followed a spell of rain, and they would have been conﬁned to quarters. Fair weather had returned by Thursday the 28th, with a stiff breeze off Lake Michigan for the Mackinac race. The month ended with stormy weather; by then they were certainly back at work on the farm.

They brought with them two dozen or so spruce seedlings, which they set out in a row along the edge of the yard west of the house, bordering the orchard. Over the years some of them will reach thirty feet or more.

In the few weeks left before school started, they would also have spent some time setting up housekeeping. Thus began a period of more than nine years, of which the principal record is the set of photographs they took—beginning in 1906—of work and play at the farm, moments of nature captured on long walks, themselves and friends against the background of the half-wild rivers down which they boated, and ﬁnally the Snell cousins met in 1913. From the beginning they sent their film to Walter K. Schmidt’s Camera Shop on Monroe Street, which did excellent work.

Besides telling us that they were physically active, as they had promised themselves, the photographs suggest that they were “comrades as well as man and wife,” as Mother had hoped. From this time on, she would appear in photographs relaxed, usually smiling, at times amused, as she had rarely appeared earlier. Father would still try to look composed for the camera, often averting his gaze, focusing on a remote point. But he, too, came to seem more at ease, absorbed in the feeling of the moment. One will not go through these albums without getting an impression of how much comradeship had brought to the lives of two self-sufﬁcient people.

Susan Sontag observes of our age of the camera: “Ultimately having an experience becomes identical with taking a photograph of it.” “Ultimately” means in the extreme case, that is, but not necessarily, perhaps not even commonly. It is true that to record an experience in any way — and she takes note of the analogy with written records — is to sharpen self-consciousness, altering the experience. We do that indeed if we only speak — even think — about remembering the passing moment, as people must have done in all times, as Mother and Father often did.

Their grandparents, and those before them, had been little moved to record their world. Dr. Shafer had been the ﬁrst to feel the need. What explains the change? Doubtless education and afﬂuence, certainly the new ease of photography, perhaps also a sense that change was accelerating, perspectives shifting, vanishing, ever faster, an idea being explored by Henry Adams.

Their comradeship we see reﬂected in the photographs they took, but not their love, never directly expressed to the world. You never see them touching, or even looking directly in each other’s eyes. A marriage is a secret society; theirs had tight security. Needs, pleasure, failures, sympathies, fantasies, inhibitions were for them to discover and explore by the light of nature, under the constraint of a great reserve in expressing their feelings, especially in words, even to each other, even to themselves.

Once, much later, Mother would drop this reserve a little, in talking to Tee in early March 1944, on the eve of our marriage—seven months after Father’s death. “Oh,” she exclaimed, “to feel again a man’s arms around me,” then pausing with a smile at her indiscretion, “You didn’t know you would have such a passionate old woman for a mother-in-law, did you?”

Along with human needs we recognize at once, and share, Mother and Father had an outlook that is slowly passing into history in this country. They relied heavily on the family for purpose and security, in a social and of course an economic sense. Theirs was then a working relationship, and one could almost apply to them the metaphor of St. Exupéry: “to love is not to look at each other but to look together in the same direction.” Today, men and women look increasingly to their own careers and to large impersonal organizations for purpose and security, thereby attaining greater freedom to experiment and develop. As man and wife, they are quite likely “to look at each other.”

Mother and Father understood and accepted that reliance on the family involved limitations on self-expression and realization. Those living under the new conditions, with the new outlook, must be reconciled to the uncertainty of family relations. Mother and Father were fortunate in that they could live comfortably under the conditions they accepted. Happy those of the new dispensation that can say as much.

On the “practical” side earlier mentioned by Father, Mother did not insist on living apart from her parents after the ﬁrst year. She had made her point; her mother had ﬁnally and completely accepted her independence. Mother will have found that to buy an acceptable house would tie up more capital and require greater current expenditure than she had realized. Whatever the precise terms, it cost materially less to live with the Shafers than to have a house to themselves.

According to city directories, Father “boarded” at 275 Lyon Street from 1906 (1905/06) through 1909, and that would continue months into 1910. (Wives were listed only on request.) In November 1909, Dr. Shafer signed a contract for building the long-planned second house on his property, one that Mother and Father will have had a hand in designing. This house, numbered 271 Lyon Street, was probably done by the end of the winter. Father was then recorded as boarding at 271 Lyon Street in 1910-11; ﬁnally in 1912 he was shown occupying the house, renumbered as 311 Lyon Street^{^[34]}. The daily view down the hill is captured in a photograph of the period (following p. ***).

It appears then that Mother and Father shared a house with the Shafers for about six and one-half years — 1905/06 through 1910/11. (Even after that, until the spring of 1916, Percy continued to lodge with them.) Dr. and Mrs. Shafer were in town about ﬁve months of the year; from April through October they were in the country, where the Doctor reestablished a considerable practice. Mother and Father of course spent a good deal of time out there, too.

Such an arrangement seems much stranger today than it did then, when they often lived together, especially in this country. Two generations were apt to have more in common then than now, and it worked well enough, given the requisite forbearance and courtesy, perhaps more usual then. The Shafers came to be well pleased with their daughter and son-in-law.

Food purchases for the ﬁve of them—including Percy—ran nearly $25 a month during the ﬁve months November 1908 - March 1909, according to Mrs. Shafer’s accounts. An expenditure on food of $5 a month per person is probably a fair average for those months in the period 1904-13. That of course does not cover potatoes and winter fruits and vegetables—apples, pears, onions, cabbage, beets, turnips—dried fruits, and preserves, which came partly from the farm. She spent monthly about $7 for meat, $10 for groceries and $5 for dairy products. The rest went for coffee, tea, bottled water (some months only), olive oil, salt, pepper, yeast, mustard and so on.

The household used per week perhaps 10 pounds of meat, chieﬂy pork, varied occasionally by oysters, clams, ﬁsh, and fowl—a turkey for Christmas, but not Thanksgiving—a dozen or more of eggs, three pounds of butter, a gallon of milk, along with plenty of potatoes and homemade bread. Winter vegetables would be used mostly in stew; apples would be eaten raw, in pies, and in applesauce and applebutter. Fresh pork or round steak was $.16 a pound, or somewhat less for a quarter of pork, one of the main expenditures of the winter season ($8.82). Flour was $.16 for ﬁve pounds, butter about $.25 a pound, eggs $.15 - $.22 a dozen, and milk $.16 a half gallon (delivered). Tea was $.50 a pound, sugar $.30 for ﬁve pounds^{^[35]}

Mrs. Shafer doubtless continued to shop on Bridge (Michigan) Street for groceries and meat, with which grocer, I don’t know; her butcher shop was Mohrhardt’s. Whoever did the ordering, she or Mother, will have taken the short walk to look and choose, though purchases very likely were delivered. In season, Grandma Shafer will have bought fresh Lake Michigan whitefish and perch from a peddler. The milkman of course came daily; the peaceful clatter of his horse and wagon was a familiar sound of early morning.

At the farm, Mrs. Shafer’s monthly expenses were smaller, $15 or less in April, 1908, and again in September/October. Percy may have spent considerable time at the farm in these months—he doesn’t seem to have been regularly employed—but Mother and Father were out only on some weekends, perhaps just for Sunday. In May-August, the amount ran about $17 - $18. Mother and Father were away during much of July, and Percy may have been in town part of the time. Even so, food costs per person were obviously lower in summer than in winter, chieﬂy because Mrs. Shafer then spent less than $1 a month for meat, fowl, and ﬁsh. It would appear that she raised broilers in season, though she would not keep hens until the fall of 1917, long after the Shafers had begun living in the country the year ‘round. But expenditures for groceries and dairy products were down very little in the summer. Fresh farm produce was substituted not so much for boughten products as for the potatoes, winter fruits and vegetables, and dried and canned fruits stored from last year’s output. With hard labor, people ate more as well.

Their diet was not unlike what you might still find in old–fashioned farming country: a substantial breakfast and a heavy noon meal, with a light collation in the evening. But let me give a few details. Father had sugar as well as vinegar on his salad and on slice tomatoes; it may be the others did the same. Fresh sweet corn was often sliced from the cob and boiled in milk, to accommodate the dentures of Father and Grandpa Shafer. Coffee was taken with a good deal of cream and sugar, and bread with plenty of fresh butter, especially by Grandpa Shafer, compensating for the oft recollected years of Army hardtack and black coffee. With dinner they generally had green tea. A cruet of almost colorless hot pepper sauce, always on the table, might be passed about to season a dish. For shortcake, served with berries in season, Grandma Shafer made a kind of light biscuit of sweetened, shortened bread dough baked in a deep pan; it had a crisp irregular crust. A large piece, cut off for each person, could soak up the juice of a quart of berries, the usual portion, without becoming soggy.

In addition to paying a share of food costs, Mother and Father doubtless paid rent, presumably at the going rate for roomers, through 1911/12, or perhaps $20 - $25 per month^{^[36]}; after that they would have paid rent for the whole house, besides buying coal and paying for utilities, though charging Percy something for room and board. Food and lodging would have accounted for at least one-half of Mother’s and Father’s living costs in the earlier years, when they may have come close to making “two live as cheaply as one”; that is, for as little as Father had spent as a bachelor. In 1912/13, when they began renting 311 Lyon Street, total living costs and the share of housing will have risen somewhat.

As the years passed, Father became a senior teacher, being responsible for all; by 1910/11 he had taken over entirely classes in trigonometry and solid geometry. In 1909/10 Mother had taken a good portrait of him at his desk, before the move to the “new” building on Fountain Street^{^[37]}. He looks quite youthful, less ﬂeshy than a few years earlier. In a formal portrait of about 1913 he appears fined down, no longer has a moustache; he seems older. (Photographs follow p. ***)

By then he had long been recognized as a demanding teacher. That was the form in those days; of course some met the requirement, others less fully; a few only went through the motions. It is a matter of conviction. Could one tell, on looking at a group portrait of the staff taken in the spring of 1907^{^[38]}, who was more, who less demanding? (The portrait follows p. ***.) The students knew, of course. In the school yearbooks, Father was now and then celebrated for keeping order. In the 1910 “Helios” annual, for example, in a set of verses about teachers, he is the one singled out for that:

And then? As yes, ‘twas Mr. Snell

Of great mathematical renown,

But alas for the maid who sought to evade

His piercing eye and frown.

And that is exactly the way he was remembered, in the fall of 1978, by Mrs. Roderick White^{^[39]}; as Marion Stuart (’08), she had sat in his class.

The same is indicated in the 1911 annual, recording a party given on 6 May by the teaching staff for the seniors, at which a group of teachers put on a farce “As Others See Us”—unthinkable in later years. Miss James played the classroom teacher; several others, including Father, the students; he was sent to stand in the corner for being disorderly.

Father himself would testify to the wide difference among teachers, in a talk in the late 1930’s^{^[40]}. He recalled the time in the “old building,” when students could make their views clearly known. It was then “customary for students to choose their own teachers from a schedule posted on the blackboard of their session rooms.” On Alice James, the preceptress,

...fell the burden of straightening out the confusion of 30 to 60 in the classes of the popular teachers while 4 or 5 elected to go to those instructors known to be stiff. (I remember this well, for I never had anyone in my class the ﬁrst day.)

He was exaggerating for effect, perhaps not greatly as concerns classes in algebra and plane geometry.

He was also known as patient and thorough, and his long monopoly of trigonometry and solid geometry—the latter, to be sure, long required for admission to the University of Michigan—did not keep his classes from being well attended, by 25 students, more or less, per class. He was helpful as well. When Don Denison (’08) was injured early in the 1907 season, in which he made fullback, and was laid up on the ﬁrst ﬂoor of the Barlow house, Father would stop each evening to help him keep up in trigonometry.^{^[41]}

As a married man he continued to work long hours, often staying well after 3:30, when school let out, to be available to students, and bringing papers home to correct several times a week. Not only was he among the more conscientious of his hard-working generation; he was also among the slowest, as I have observed. Mother accepted, indeed respected, his patient devotion, but we may imagine her joking about it once in a while.

His salary remained at $1400 a year through 1910/11, increasing in each of the two following years by $100^{^[42]}. In real terms then his salary declined slowly until 1910, for the cost of living rose by 2% to 3% per year. Even so, Mother and Father, living modestly, were able to save money. It was probably in about 1913 that they began to build or buy houses, one at a time, for sale in Wyoming Park, a new “development” southwest of the city. A.H. Holmes was doing the same, may have begun even earlier. They also may have acquired a farm mortgage and bought additional securities. On two occasions Father lent money to Dr. Shafer on his personal note and in 1907 he also bought the Martin farm for $1,200, though the deed seems not to have been recorded^{^[43]}. I should guess that from 1904 to 1913 their assets almost tripled, rising to nearly $15,000. By then their “unearned” income would have been almost enough to support them as they were then living, raising their total “real” income to nearly one and one-half times the 1904 level.

In passing, one other transaction may be noted. According to Mother, in 1912 Father sent $500 to his brother Lynn on the West coast, in answer to his appeal for help. Father and Lynn had not met since about 1880, as told earlier, though letters may have been exchanged. But Lynn remained very close to Father’s heart. Mother was surely in sympathy with Father in his insistence on attaining “ﬁnancial security,” knowing how much he wanted to feel on solid ground, and inclining toward caution herself. It is my belief that they deliberately avoided having children—how? one may ask, but not answer—until they had reached a point of minimum security, where they could get along, if need be, without drawing on capital, even if his teaching appointment should not be renewed.

But at some point, perhaps toward the end of this time, they began to look beyond simple ﬁnancial security to becoming “comfortably off,” in the phrase of the time. That gave an outlet for Father’s ambitions, unsatisﬁed in his profession. Indeed he and Mother both had energy and ability to spare. And they shared an old-fashioned country belief that what you owned, not what you earned, much less what you spent, was what counted. They doubtless were conﬁrmed rather than unsettled in this view as they saw it going out of fashion.

Mother did not work at tutoring or substitute teaching in these years, so far as I know. She undoubtedly took over much of the work in the Shafer/Snell household, with food to buy and prepare and laundry to do for ﬁve. She doubtless spent time during the day with her parents and their friends. In spare hours, she went happily back to her stamp collection, or played the piano, may even have taken lessons again for a time.^{^[44]}

In 1912/13, however, when Grandma and Grandpa Shafer were at the farm the year around, there was less to do, and she and Father both taught at night, on Wealthy Street, as I recall, presumably at Lafayette School. Most of the students were foreign born adults, the greater part with little schooling. Father probably taught arithmetic, possibly bookkeeping. Mother taught English to Hollanders; I still have the Dutch/English dictionary she bought to help her. Her background in German was very useful, of course; though spoken Dutch sounds quite different, in grammar and vocabulary the two languages have much in common. Mother and Father enjoyed sharing this activity; they walked back and forth together.

They doubtless went on at ﬁrst with the familiar dances at the Lakeside and at the St. Cecilia, whist parties, occasional plays and concerts, and dinners with his circle. But it is hard to see that continuing for long at the old pace. In the course of a few years, apart from ofﬁcial school functions, their social life probably came down to seeing a few especially congenial people.

Father no longer had the same need for diversion and companionship—or the urge to look for a mate—that had led him to go out a good deal. Mother only slowly became more tractable about, and adept at, meeting people, entertaining, being entertained. Besides they had little enough time left in the school year, after work, events connected with the school, family gatherings, and weekends of hiking and farming. In the early years they took long walks from late fall to early spring, memorialized in numerous photographs; one, of a stop for lunch near Thornapple, is shown following p. ***.

At the same time, Father’s circle, which had valued him as an available single man, would have had less use for him in the company of his attractive young wife, even though on her very best behavior. His contemporaries, becoming older, may have become less sociable. Several friendly couples had small children. The school and the school system expanded, leaving social relationships among teachers less close. The departure of the Elsons in 1906^{^[45]} may have made a difference; they had been unusually active in getting teachers together.

The people Mother and Father saw the most of were four couples—the Holmeses, Jewells, Crittendens, and Smedleys—and the Powers family, who came back from Detroit in 1905. This group dwindled during the period. Two couples left the city—the Jewells in 1906/07, the Crittendens in 1910/11. At some point Mother and Father and the Smedleys seem to have drifted apart. A.H. Holmes’ wife died in 1913. Of Father’s close friends in town remained at the end only A.H. Holmes and the Powerses. Of course Mother and Father did meet other people, including the Shafers’ old friends in town and in Paris Township and several teachers that lived in the neighborhood.

By 1913 their social life had taken the pattern with which I should become familiar as a child. In general, they saw one couple at a time, or the Powers clan by themselves. They felt little of that urge, almost irresistible for some, to bring together people one has known in different connections. Although politics and cultural events were touched on, conversation was rather more personal than general. They took a boating trip with the Jewells in 1905^{^[46]}, which they shared with them in planning and recollection. With Arthur Holmes they would have talked about the housing market and speciﬁc projects they had in hand at Wyoming Park. With him and his wife they had summer outings past and future to discuss—boat trips that they made together in 1907-10 and meetings at Herring Lake in 1911-12.^{^[47]}

With the Powerses there were several ties: the country background shared by Father and Will and his association with the Powers family in the Black Hills; Mother’s close relation with Marion in Ann Arbor, which had led also to friendship with Jessie; and the common ground between Father and Marion Powers (beginning in 1907/08) as teachers. During these years, Will Powers was working as a bookkeeper, ﬁrst (in 1905) for Jandorf’s, thereafter for the F. Raniville company^{^[48]}, where he would later become a senior executive. Mother and Father would have seen them regularly through 1910, when they rented houses in town, less often beginning in 1910/11, when they went out on West Leonard Street to live, beyond Walker Road, almost in the country.

Work at the farm during this period increased, as Father had foreseen. In the ﬁrst years, with his help, the Shafers enlarged the orchards, especially with a sizeable planting of cherry trees to the east of the side yard. They also added to the asparagus beds. Most of the immediate increase in output came, however, from setting out more strawberry plants.

In 1908, the ﬁrst year for which we have accounts, the Shafers sold strawberries, red and black currants, peaches, plums, pears, apples, potatoes, and hay, to a total value of $168. In the next four years (1909-12) they added red raspberries, blackberries, and cherries (1911) and asparagus (1912), averaging more than $200 a year.^{^[49]} In 1913 they took in almost $300. In one year or another these ﬁgures include small sales of vegetables—chieﬂy green (sweet) corn and ﬁeld corn, sometimes beans, onions, squash, and cucumbers—as well as grapes and melons, and some wheat in 1911. The sales ﬁgures are gross; allowance must be made for cost of seeds and seedlings, some equipment, pesticides—chieﬂy the traditional Bordeaux mixture and lime-sulfur^{^[50]}, and the labor of Henry van Sledright, who had bought the old Leavitt farm. He prepared the land for hay and grain, seeded it, and helped with the harvest. The net cash income would have run at $150 or more a year beginning in 1909. Father also began to keep bees, as an orchard man must: they are worth while in any case for the honey.

The main cash crops were strawberries and hay. In 1908, the ﬁrst year in our records, 777 quarts of strawberries were sold, over and above 169 quarts used or given away. In 1909, the record year, output was up to 1,500, sales to about 1,100 quarts, sold at an average of 8 cents a quart^{^[51]} —by 1913 the volume would fall by one-half while the price doubled. Berries were sold in substantial amounts daily from 21 June through 7 July 1909, except for the 4th (a Sunday) and 5th. The peak daily sale was reached on Tuesday 29 June—7 crates of 16 quarts each and 4 crates of 12 quarts each, or 160 quarts, plus a few for the family, the greater part picked by Mother and Father. Strawberries and other produce were taken regularly to Daane and Witters at the head of Monroe Street. It would have fallen generally to Mother to drive the 12 miles there and back, daily in strawberry season. In addition there were occasional sales to one other grocer, farmers down the road, passers-by, one or two neighbors in town.

Hay was sold from the barn to neighboring farmers, including Henry van Sledright and Roy Hendershott. They came in their wagons to pick it up. The record shows the weight, so there must have been scales. Hay cut in 1908 sold at an average of $12 a ton; that cut in 1909, at an average of $17 a ton. In later years the price sometimes ran over $20 a ton. Sales from a year’s crop began as early as June and ended as late as the following spring. Three to seven tons were sold per season^{^[52]}. In 1913 sales from the farm included the following:

Strawberries 518 quarts $82.55

Asparagus 19 dozen bunches 14.72

Raspberries 280 quarts 41.95

Currants 81 quarts 7.25

Apples 18 1/2 bushels 14.16

Green corn 25 dozen 3.05

Seed corn —- 1.00

Field corn & stalks — 13.49

Cherries — 1.80

Green beans — 4.62

Onions, peppers & squash — 3.18

Hay about 6 tons 110.01

———

297.78

For 1909/10 we can subtract sales from output to get some measure of how much the family consumed from the farm during the 1909 growing season and the rest of that agricultural year, as follows^{^[53]}:

Strawberries 400 quarts Grapes 600 pounds

Cherries 1 bushel Watermelons 100

Raspberries

& blackberries 368 quarts Muskmelons 100

Apples 8 bushels Tomatoes 25 bushels

Peaches 12 bushels Onions 3 bushels

Plums 1 bushel Potatoes 40 bushels

Pears 8 bushels Butternuts 150 pounds

Some of the fruit Grandma Shafer dried; peaches, cherries, berry preserves, jam and jelly, and perhaps tomatoes she and Mother “put up”; the fall apples and pears, late potatoes, onions, and nuts were saved for winter. Could they eat all that?^{^[54]} Granted that the above estimates are rough, we can still use them to estimate how much the farm supplied of their total food consumption. At farm prices, the value of the products listed came to 127; at retail, it would have run to about $175^{^[55]}, to which should be added most of the garden produce not listed— currants, gooseberries, quince, pie plant, peas, lettuce, cucumbers, Golden Bantam corn, butter beans, lima beans, cabbage, carrots, beets, and squash,—together with broilers in the summer and honey. Valued at retail, the total would come to $200 or more, even without counting “value added” in preserving fruit. That would equal about two-ﬁfths of what the family ate. In the twelve months February 1908 - January 1909, Grandma Shafer had spent $235^{^[56]}, and she would not have spent a great deal more in 1909/10. To her account should be added expenditures at 275 Lyon Street in September/October 1909 and April/May 1910, and whatever Mother and Father spent for food on their 1909 summer outing. All told, the household’s expenditure for food probably ran no more than $300. Without the farm, they would have had to spend fully $500;, or somewhat over $8 per month per person, in order to maintain the same diet^{^[57]}. The greater part of the farm work fell in spring and early summer. It began in March with ditching, mowing, backﬁring, reseeding meadow, cultivating (harrowing) ﬁelds to break up the soil, spreading manure, and spraying fruit trees. Ditching, the heaviest work, had to be done over every year; plant growth and soil erosion clogged the ditches. The water table was high then, and low-lying ﬁelds were often ﬂooded spring and fall. The P@’ere Marquette Railroad added to the work. Flooding was aggravated by poor drainage under the railroad tracks, which crossed the farm from the northwest corner, in a direction east of southeast. In some years, strips were plowed in the spring parallel to the tracks to cut off ﬁres started by sparks from engines. Live sparks can be carried by wind some distance, and dry summer ﬁelds were easily ignited. Little love was lost between farmers and railroad administration, the former getting little satisfaction from repeated complaints about poor drainage and ﬁres; the latter convinced that farmers were trying to “do” them, as surely happened, especially on claims for cattle killed by trains. Public relations had not yet been invented to befog all issues; railroad administration was slow in answering, and rarely took action. By late March or early April, often before the ﬁrst tasks were ﬁnished, spring planting began, along with other chores—removing protective cover of straw from strawberry beds, cutting and burning cover of straw from strawberry beds, cutting and burning dead raspberry and blackberry canes, sometimes threshing last year’s navy beans. Soon would begin the ﬁrst cutting of asparagus, transplanting of tomatoes from the hotbed. The ﬁrst garden vegetables came in. When school was out, they began picking strawberries, afterwards cherries as well. Soon came haying, weeding and cultivating crops and garden, spraying cabbage and potato plants, looking for tomato worms, digging early potatoes, picking the ﬁrst summer apples. Then Mother and Father would get away for a few weeks on a trip, coming back in August to begin harvesting bush fruits, peaches, plums, pears, apples, late potatoes. That went on into fall. Before frost came the harvest of winter vegetables—to be stored in the cellar and, if necessary, in a deep hole—picking up fallen apples for cider, cutting (with honed sickle) sweet corn for fodder, cutting and shocking ﬁeld corn, hoeing strawberry plants, perhaps putting out new ones, pinching off runners, covering the beds. Bucking and chopping wood, hauling it to the house by wheelbarrow, to be stored, shucking and shelling corn, pruning vines and fruit trees, plowing under asparagus and stubble, gathering nuts, raking leaves took as many weekends—at least Sundays—into late fall as could be spared from correcting papers, attending to duties for the school athletic association, and carrying on a little social life. For Mother and Father it was truly a labor of love, in which they shared the arduous pleasure of helping the earth to bloom. The purpose was to add something to the income, in cash and in kind, of the Shafers; they, too, valued the addition to the domestic economy. But the effort was at the heart of their satisfaction. Mother discovered another aspect, on the whole congenial, of the world, Father’s and her parents’. Father stepped back into a life in which he felt most at ho