Sweet Briar College - Briar Patch Yearbook (Sweet Briar, VA)

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when you get accustomed to it. She seems to have hked French better, for the next day she writes, I took a French conversation. He (the professor) does not talk much, but asks me words which generally I do not know. Mr. K. gave me a dictation; he said the English and I wrote it in French. I had not very many mistakes, and he said he would give me something more difficult next time. During the winter of ' 83, Mr. Williams ' s health became very bad, Mrs. Williams was called to New York on business, leaving the entire care of Mr. Williams to Daisy. A spirit of tender, unselfish love breathed through the fre- quent letters she wrote to her mother at this time. Unusually gifted, she spared no pains to attain what was highest in her education, but never very strong, the care of her father and the strain of overstudy seemed to have been too much for her. Her system became weakened and almost before her mother realized her condition, this child of sixteen short summers had left the home once so dear to her, to become the living memory and inspiration of the college founded as a memorial to her. A. W. B. ' . r.04

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happy life, the lack of companions of her own age being filled by her passion for flowers, music, and books. Often m her letters to her mother does she talk of flowers or of some plant in whose growth she is interested. In a letter dated May 6th, 1883, she says, The magnolias came late last night. I have wet them well and will set them out soon to-morrow morning. There was a storm last night, so the ground is too wet to-day. They seem very nice, but are large. Then again on May 1 0th she writes, The apple orchard is in bloom. The apricots are killed. There is not a sign of a rosebud. The big roses near the little ones have grown so that they hang over them. Had they better be trimmed some? Daisy was passionately fond of music. Many and long were the hours she spent practicing. Once she wrote her mother, Do not forget the harp strings. The harp seems to have taken pity on me and does not break any strings, for which I am very glad. Her father and mother were also musical, and her harp at Sweet Briar House standing opposite the piano in the corner, can well make us imagine a happy picture of this musical family. For in the long summer afternoons, when the song of the mocking birds could be heard and the heavy perfume of roses came through the open windows, Mr. Will- iams would take his violin and Mrs. Williams accompanying on the piano, would call Daisy, this small figure with golden curls and lustrous eyes, to play on her harp between them. But perhaps more than she loved her flowers, more than even her music, she loved her books. On them she concentrated her attention and early became ambitious to do well at school. In a letter dated 1877, we read, I take my doll ' s slippers to school. I am going to try very hard to be a good girl; I am going to try to get good marks in school. During the months .spent in New York, she had private tutors, but at Sweet Briar there were times when such were hard to obtain; then it was that her father used to take her over to Ken- more Academy, near Amherst, for instruction in German and French. Of her German, she writes to her mother, The German exercises are hard and long, and I only do two or three at a lesson. I have got to those dreadful verbs that you split in pieces; the last part has to fit in somewhere at the beginning and the first somewhere at the end, and I never fit them in where they belong. I never liked puzzles, and the verbs are just like them, but I suppose it is easy 8

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Board of Directors Rt. Rev. A. M. Randolph. LL. D., D. C. L President Norfolk, Virginia Mr. N. C. ManSON, Jr Chairman Executive Committee Lynchburg, Virginia Rev. Arthur P. Gray Secretary Lawrenceville, Virginia Judge Leigh R. Watts Portsmouth, Virginia Rev. Carl E. Grammer, S. T. D. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Mr. Fergus Reid Norfolk, Virginia Mr. Charles E. Heald Lynchburg, Virginia