Tougaloo, Miss.
Apr. 22, 1906.Dear family,
Not having heard from you for some time I judge you may be deep in the measles. If your patients were down here the heat would bring the measles out well.
Yesterday Stone Cottage and the Roe-Hamlins had a picnic; Miss Macdougall and I drove by ourselves in a Lyman-Moore-like turnout; the others going in the "cab" a three-seated vehicle propelled by Rex and Charlie. We went about ten miles to the north-west, to no place in particular, found a grove of pine-trees and there ate our dinner of peanut-sandwiches, salad, pickles, olives, bread-sticks, oranges, bananas, friend chicken, and oatmeal cookies. We came home through the towns of Madison and Ridgeland, which are the next two stations north of Tougaloo on the Illinois Central.
Thursday night the people who wished to try for the prize speaking at Commencement had their preliminary contest to see who would be chosen. There were seventeen who tried, and the program was long and wearisome. Two of the four that I drilled were chosed. [sic] After next Friday, when the Eighth Grade graduation exercise occur, [sic] I shall have only these two speakers to drill; I have been having about thirty a week and I feel as if I had had enough elocution for a season. Please don't ask me to go to Mrs. Lizzie's children's Sunday concert.
I will enclose a program of the recital of Taylor, the one-armed college sophomore. It was pretty good, only you held your breath on high notes, because you didn't exactly know how he was coming out.
Gertrude Mekeel has sent her usual invitation to stop on my way home. Gertrude Alice is to don short dresses this week - she is very fat and good-natured.
We are expecting a visit from Dr. Cooper this week.
The roses are just at their best and the campus is brilliant with them[.] The "Madame Loubet" and the "Sunset" are especially beautiful. The Cherokees lined the roads along which we drove yesterday. I never saw such fields of strawberries as those we passed. The season is at its height, and the fields were full of pickers.
[Unfinished and unsigned, but written by Susie Lawson.]