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

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NEW YORK, Wednesday—This is the most delightful July weather that I can remember, warm enough in the sun to enjoy drying off after a swim, but cool enough so that even a good walk is not too exhausting. I tried walking in the woods yesterday afternoon, but found the mosquitoes were still in undisputed possession!

My little birds got out of their nest this morning and paraded along the ledge, exercising their wings by flapping them up and down, but they hopped back into the nest with great rapidity when their mother appeared with a worm.

The weather cleared up and it was lovely late yesterday afternoon. so I took my mother-in-law and my sister-in-law, Mrs. J. R. Roosevelt, to the Norrie Park Point Inn for dinner. They had never been there before and both of them found it a very attractive spot. We had quite a gay party.

The inn is quiet on a week-day night and I rather missed the young man who played for us last Saturday. But the sun made a beautiful, golden pathway on the water as it went down behind the Catskill Mountains, and there was a great sense of calm in that peaceful, apparently motionless water.

We arrived at home in time to gather on my porch and listen to the radio. My husband telephoned me to say that Senator Barkley was reading a statement from him, and though it had never occurred to me for a minute that the delegates to this convention did not feel entirely free to make their own choice, I suppose it is always wise to say exactly what you mean.

This is a serious time in our history, not a time for blind partisanship but a time for careful consideration of what the two major political parties have to offer, not only for the service and safety of our own nation, but for the service that may lie ahead of us because of our position in the world.

There is no such thing as isolation. We desire peace for the protection of our people from the horrors of war, but we cannot cut ourselves off from the conditions which prevail in other nations. What they suffer, we must feel one way or the other.

In a newspaper, I saw that some one said, in effect, that we are a bankrupt nation. The allusion was entirely to our financial status. No nation is bankrupt which has natural resources and production potentialities, and undaunted and unified people. These things we have, and I count on our engaging in this campaign with a determination to use our best judgment to make this country a steadying force, and a beacon of light to all people who believe in freedom and the triumph of the theory of government which is based on spiritual values.

E.R.

(COPYRIGHT, 1940, BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC


Names and Terms Mentioned or Referenced

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  • New York (N.Y., United States) [ index ]


About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, July 18, 1940

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

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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 UFS wire copy of a My Day column instance archived at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library.
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