Middlebury Vt.
Mar. 10th.My dear Abby:
It is a long, long time since I have heard from you either directly or indirectly, Perhaps we are all reaching that stage in life where we only write when there is a business transaction. At any rate, it is partly business that has prompted me to write you now.
Perhaps you know, our Rebecca is in Portland, Me this year. We left her there on our return from our vacation with Mr. & Mrs. Cyrus Farley, cousins of Chris. They are wonderfully fine people, advanced in years, but young at heart. They invited her to live with them this winter and go to school there.
She certainly is having one grand good time beside doing good work in school and in her violin.
For some time her heart has been set upon going to So. Hadley, so I sent for a catalog a short time ago, and when I saw that board and tuition were now $600 I told her I feared she would have to take one or two years here at Mid. and then go there for the last two. In her letter rec'd this a.m. she says "I'll bet you anything that if I scratch around a bit, I can go all four years to Mt. H. It sounds rather foolish, but I bet it will come to pass!!" She then goes on to tell of various schemes for earning money summers, and by doing work for other girls while in college.
Now, as I understand it, the college never aids freshmen financially. Provided we paid her way this first year, and that her rank was good, how much aid might she get after that? Also do they pay girls for waiting on tables or what ways would be open to her for earning a part of her board or her pin money?
She is not a brilliant scholar but she does what she sets out for. She is slow and steady mentally but a live wire in some ways. When she went to P.H.S. she said she was going to try for all "A's" and so far she has got them.
By the way her S.S. teacher is Janet Stevenson, M.H.C. 1902, I think, and her Latin teacher last semester was Edith Turner, both of whom knew you. I still am hoping to bring both girls with me to our next reunion, but I know Rebecca would be crazy if, after seeing such a wonderful college, she couldn't go there.
She is now fourteen, will graduate at sixteen, but will have her seventeenth birthday before college opens in the fall. I have suggested her working one year and entering college at eighteen.
Any suggestions you may offer will have weight with us.
Am sorry Chris is among those ministers whose salary has not advanced with the H.C.L. With so many to provide for we mean to scratch to the limit for the next few years, and then hope to see the older ones, at least, on their own feet.
We have kept well this winter, but it surely has been a winter to be remembered here in Vermont.
With much love to you and Gertrude, I am,
Sincerely yours, Edith Hamlin