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NEW YORK, Sunday—I wrote my column so early on Friday that I am going back to tell you a little about our guests, President Somoza of Nicaragua, his wife and daughter. This family speaks English and, instead of the languor of the tropics, they seem to have acquired through education and work in this country, a good deal of our energy and enthusiasm.
Nicarguans, they tell me, are great travellers and may be found living almost anywhere in the world. The thing which impresses me, however, is my complete lack of knowledge of conditions and ways of life in Central and South America. I inquired, of course, whether women were beginning to enter into fields of professional work and was told it was largely an agricultural country where, as a rule, women do more work than the men, but not, I gathered, along professional lines! However, they are beginning to train the young women as teachers and nurses. They have one normal school and college in Nicaragua and they send their nurses to Panama for training. The girls are also being given training in office work and are becoming stenographers and typists. I am quite sure though, that these occupations for women are the exception and not the rule. I feel convinced we will need far more intercourse before we will really know much about our neighbors to the south.
President Somoza, his wife and daughter, were pleasant and thoughtful guests and we enjoyed their day with us. Senorita Enya Gonzales, a soprano, and Mr. Stephen Hero, a young violinist, our artists for the musical after the state dinner, gave us a delightful evening.
Saturday I lunched with the Seventy-Third Congress. They had a very charming program of songs by Mrs. Galloway, a Washington singer.
I just had time afterwards to spend a few minutes at the Corcoran Gallery of Art to look at the Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary Painters. I am no art critic, so I can only say that the picture I would have liked to take home under my arm was one with which I am fairly familiar, namely, Jonas Lie's "The Birches."
Two teas, one for the International League For Peace and Freedom, one for the Maryland Democratic Club women, brought my afternoon guests up to some seven hundred. After they departed, we had a small party for the Danish Crown Prince and Princess and their group. This is farewell to them, for they sail for home shortly.
I left Washington early this morning to stop in Philadelphia to see Mrs. Curtin Winsor and her new baby. He is certainly very sweet and I always enjoy an opportunity to see a little baby. I am now on my way to New York City for a day.
E.R.
(Copyright, 1939, by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.)
About this document
My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, May 8, 1939
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