The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Digital Edition > My Day
My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt

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HYDE PARK, Monday—As we stopped at our last gas station yesterday, the young man who serviced our car remarked: "I wish the rain would stop so we could all dry off." He did look miserable. Miss Dickerman, Mrs. Scheider and I had really enjoyed the day in spite of the rain. We had stopped in a little restaurant at Margaretville, New York for lunch and I thought we were part of the crowd, till the girl who came to serve us murmured: "Are you Mrs. Roosevelt?" I saw several other people looking at me as though they thought I looked familiar. One person was totally unconscious, however. She was a little girl with tightly curling golden red hair, sitting at a table across the room. I tried to make her smile at me, but she simply covered her face with her napkin and shook her head. She managed, however, to eat two whole ears of corn, which for her age seemed to augur quite a remarkably good digestion. After a while we got some smiles, in the intervals of playing with her own family.

In my mail today I have rather an interesting letter, telling me of a school run in New York City for the training of saleswomen to sell cosmetics. I have not of course, had time as yet to investigate it, but if what they tell me is true, it sounds very interesting. The training costs twenty-five dollars, but the people who run this school write that there are more applications for people who can do this work than they can fill, and they are trying to interest some of the larger manufacturers in establishing scholarships to make it possible for women who cannot afford the twenty-five dollars to take the course on a scholarship basis. This seems to me an opening which would not have any particular age restrictions tions, you might be young or middle aged, and as long as you knew the goods which you were selling, you could be judged as a saleswoman without any regard to your age. It is the first time anything of this kind has drawn to my attention, and I hope it means a new opening for women.

It has continued to rain most of today, and as we returned to a room filled with a large number of packages and bundles of mail, I think Mrs. Scheider and I are glad of our enforced inactivity! We have spent the day at our respective desks!

I was very much interested also to receive a request today from the young crippled girl I visited in Poughkeepsie a few days ago. She is anxious for books to read. I tried very hard to point out in a recent column which I wrote, that infantile paralysis, more than any other disease I have come in contact with, requires that little super-human effort which is so hard to make, to go forward step by step, making new efforts mentally and physically. If a patient can accomplish this, in the end they achieve greater happiness for themselves and those around them. I am very happy that this young girl is making the effort to take an interest in books.

I can hardly believe that Friday I felt warmer than any day during the summer. Today I have had a fire going in my living room and we had luncheon on a table drawn before the fire. Such changes as we go through!

E.R.


Names and Terms Mentioned or Referenced

Geographic
  • Hyde Park (Dutchess County, N.Y., United States) [ index ]


About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, August 24, 1937

Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1884-1962
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Digital edition created by The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project The George Washington University 312 Academic Building 2100 Foxhall Road, NW Washington, DC 20007

  • Brick, Christopher (Editor)
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  • Regenhardt, Christy (Associate Editor)
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  • Black, Allida M. (Editor)
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  • Binker, Mary Jo (Associate Editor)
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  • Alhambra, Christopher C. (Electronic Text Editor)
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Digital edition published 2008, 2017 by
The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project

Available under licence from the Estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.

Published with permission from the Estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.

MEP edition publlished on June 30, 2008.

TEI-P5 edition published on April 28, 2017.

XML master last modified on June 9, 2017.

HTML version generated and published on May 3, 2022.

Transcription created from a photocopy of a draft version of a My Day column instance archived at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library. My Day column draft dated August 23, 1937, FDR Library, Hyde Park, NY
TMsd, 23 August 1937, AERP, FDRL