Letter 39
Contributed by Kathleen Haynes      Contact Myrtle Bridges     June 01, 2008

                                                Fayetteville, No Ca
                                                     April 28th, 1902
                                                     Monday Morning
Beloved Sissie, 
	Yours of the 24th received and while I've head hands and heart full this morning (for this 
court week and my cases, some of them are on the docket, and I'm nervous and oh! so anxious) 
and 'tis near the end of the month. Still I'm determined to have a few words with you. I'm 
thankful you are better. I know so well just how you feel when you say "I'm done for." So am 
I dear, dear Sissie. I know it! All the difference in being tired, and being utterly spent. 
I've lost my grasp and hold of everything it seems to me. I feel as if I was walking in my 
sleep, hoping and expecting nothing. I don't feel to Donald as I did. When he went away, 
everything went. I would not make the fight but for his boy.    
	Thank you for answering my questions when you felt so poorly. Please answer one more, tell me 
Will Pearson's address, Delia Emma's Will. I send check to Mr. Ingold in this letter. I want $2000 
put on deposit and the $500 so I can [write] check on it. Tell Mr. Sloan I want the entire stores, 
all the roof on both stores painted, two coats and the brick walls cemented and I will not pay the 
other $500 till it is done. All my friends here tell me the change is enormous, that the stores 
should be elegant with $2000 for repairs. I want Sloan to understand I will not pay up till the 
whole roof is painted two coats and the wall cemented.
	Tell the girls not to fix their shirt waist, I have a new sleeve pattern and two waists for them. 
I only sent two linen waists and now I have two more for the ones who did not get any. They use 
pointed yokes in the back of the latest shirt waists. I'd a silk waist for W. and am so sorry I 
did not send it to some of you to make for her. She will need it on her trip, but I did not know 
she was going. Write her to go down to St. Augustine by all means and go through those grand hotels.

Monday Night.
	Oh! I'm so tired I can hardly sit up. Before I finished my letter the man I'd hired for last 
Friday came to go over to my house and open my carpets and rugs and I've been working at my 
things that I've packed up all day. What a job. I found so many things broken, glass and china, 
it made me heartsick, and oh! My flowers are dead and ruined. I just got over here in time to 
save a beautiful tree that his dear hands held while the man planted it. They had allowed the 
Negro to pile ashes around it, a regular mound. I had it taken away and clay put round it and 
watered every evening. Now it has come out, the beautiful umbrella china in the front yard I 
fear is dead. Oh! It makes me sick, twenty years of hard work and oh so much money and have it 
ruined in two short years.
	I know just how you feel about Ivy Hayze. It is just that way here. Oh, Ivy is so changed 
since John came here. Mrs. H McD R gives an 'At Home' Thursday next. She is disgusting. Don't 
forget to let me know Will's address. Pray for me. Donald sends love, he sits by me reading, has 
finished his lesson. God bless and spare your dear life. I did not send Alice Jones a present. 
They invited me to come up to the marriage. Fondly, Laura

Go to LETTER 40
Back to Messages From A Hidden Past