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

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NEW YORK, Monday—This day started early for at 5 a.m. the alarm clock rang and by six o'clock my hostess and I had breakfasted and left the little country house in order, and started for the great city.

I always feel repaid when I get up really early for the sunrise is beautiful and the air crisp and clear, but I shall not forget in many a long day the sunset last evening as we crossed the bay coming back to Mastic from the beach. We had spent a good part of the day near the coast guard station, cooking our steaks over a fire on the beach, eating out-of-doors and then finding a sheltered spot in the sand dunes where we could sit in the sun. I read the Sunday papers more thoroughly than usual as a result of this peaceful afternoon. When we started back in the little motor boat the sky was red, but gradually sky and water seemed to merge in color until the water looked iridescent as it reflected every shade of green, purple, blue and scarlet, streaming across the sky, with here and there a little cloud looking like a piece of cotton floating overhead and the almost full moon shining down upon us. The ducks were coming in, making for a pond, where our host kindly gives them shelter, and they looked graceful sweeping up and down and finally settling down behind the fringe of trees bordering the pond. Such beauty leaves one with a sense of unreality and at the same time a great sense of peace, nature has a healing touch if we can get close enough to her and let ourselves feel her beauty.

Having missed the opening day at the Todhunter School this autumn I arrived there this morning at a quarter past eight for the opening exercises—I had a chance to go through the school and see some of the summer work done by the various grades and as the girls filed by on their way to their classes I had an opportunity also to meet the new girls whom I had not before seen. There is something about a big group of youngsters facing one at a school assembly which always makes me want to be working with them again—I suppose they appeal to one's imagination because they have so many possibilities before them.

From seeing these youngsters who are just beginning their lives I went on to represent my husband, as well as myself, in the last friendly act that it is open to us to preform for those whose lives are completed on this earth. Grenville Emmet's funeral at St. Thomas's Church, held a triumphant note through the entire service. Life was a triumph for him, but to those he left one can but wish courage, in the fight to build up a new life without him.

I attended and spoke at a luncheon given by the Women's League of Palestine. Their work seems to be a very admirable one, for homeless and friendless girls are even more helpless than boys.

Much mail awaits my attention and I am glad that Mrs. Scheider is rejoining me today so that we will be able to catch up again in the next day or two.

E.R.


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, October 19, 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 October 18, 1937, FDR Library, Hyde Park, NY
TMsd, 18 October 1937, AERP, FDRL