Minutes 1 January 1904
Item
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Title
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Minutes 1 January 1904
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Description
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[Page 1] Mrs. Harrison’s Minutes
The regular meeting of the Book Club was held January first, 1904, at the home of Mrs. Harrison, ten members being present. The room presented the aspect of a first class China-shop, [unavoidably however] owing to its having been the scene so recently of an unavoidable marriage. The day was a sunshiny winter’s day, the kind North Carolina is so justly proud of. A harbinger let us hope, of the New Year that had just been born! The President being absent, owing to the illness of her small boy, the Vice-President, Mrs. Currie opened the meeting: but at the eleventh hour Mrs. Smith appeared, announcing that she was only able to come since her husband had consented to sit by the little invalid and administer the medicine at short intervals. The Club was much pleased, as it likes to see men in their proper place. The literary items were rather short, the members pleading Christmas engagements as excuse for their delinquencies. Mrs. Currie gave us Current news but we regretted that she took it for granted that we had all read the carefully culled note that lay
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[Page 2] in her lap, forgetting that our Boys are not all so grown up as hers. When it was announced that Mrs. Sloan came next in order to furnish the Club with [General Information] the minutes of the last meeting, she protested so ardently and “begged-off” so eloquently, that Mrs. Harrison offered to exchange place with her but here Mrs. Sloan forgets that the memory of our pleasant afternoon with her, spent in consideration of the character of Jacob A. Riis is still far too vivid for us to excuse her from any of her Club duties. The topic for the afternoon was the character and writing of the virile young author, Frank Norris, whose death one year ago is still filling our magazines and periodicals with laments and eulogies. Mrs. Thompson read some extracts from widely known newspapers, all yielding the white haired young [author] writer the most unstinted praise. Miss Holt gave us some opinion of the man as a man— generous, impulsive, open hearted, a veritable type himself of the great unbounded West of which he wrote so eloquently, so passionately. From the now grey haired Howells, his friend, his admirer, his generous patron in the world of criticism, down to
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[Page 3] Owen Wister his young contemporary and ardent admirer, all stop and bow their heads to do this young man reverence. Wheat, Wheat, Wheat! It is still springing green in the rich furrows, rocking and swaying in the winds of Spring and Autumn and “laughing to the Harvest” from California to where the salt waves again kiss the eastern coast of our great land. But where in the Poet who sang of it, sang of its subtle growth, its power to enrich and then to crush-where is he? And “The Pit” still thunders on the great Gong sounds each day at ten o’clock and the surging maddened multitudes still press to where white faced men are made and men undone each day! But where is he who makes all this so real to me as we sit beside our quiet firesides, who makes our cramped lungs[dilate] expand with a deeper breath, our nostrils fairly dilate as we breathe with him the wild fresh air from prairie and canyon, from mountain and sea? Dead, Dead, Dead! “And the unfinished window is Aladdin’s palace. Unfinished still remains."
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Subject
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Women-North Carolina-Davidson-Societies and clubs.
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Books and reading.
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Women-Societies and clubs.
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North Carolina-Davidson.
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Creator
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BookLovers Club
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Publisher
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Davidson College
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Date
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1 January 1904
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Rights
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For permission to reproduce image, contact archives@davidson.edu
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Language
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eng
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Type
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Text
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Identifier
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bl-029
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Coverage
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1904
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4049696
