This month’s Free Read is a short story Isabella wrote in 1908. You’ll see that it was a very “modern” story that reflected the times; her characters drove about town in automobiles!
Poor Rachel Norse is in need of help! She’s far from home, working a job she dislikes, and thinking of abandoning the Christian principles her mother taught her. Little does Rachel know someone is developing an interest in her; someone who can point her in a brand new direction, if only Rachel will have a little faith.
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When Isabella wrote her short story “Their Day at the Beach” in 1909, she based her story on personal experience.
It was common practice at the time for physicians to prescribe a change of climate for certain medical conditions, particularly ailments of the skin and respiratory system.
Isabella’s son Raymond suffered his entire life from a chronic condition that caused Isabella and her husband to consult numerous doctors in search of a cure. Ultimately their search took them to Florida, where they hoped the sunshine and moderate climate would benefit their son.
An 1897 map of Florida.
There’s a special reason they chose Florida over any other southern state: in 1885 a new Chautauqua Assembly opened on Florida’s gulf coast. Located in what is now Defuniak Springs, the Assembly was built around Lake De Funiak (as it was then called), a naturally circular-shaped lake about a mile in circumference.
A travel brochure advertising the new Florida Chautauqua.
The Aldens found the location very much to their liking. The climate was delightful; the temperature rarely rose above ninety degrees, fruit trees and forests grew in abundance, and a gentle gulf breeze meant the dry air always felt fresh and pure.
The Florida Chautauqua officially opened on February 18, 1885, and the Aldens were there!
An announcement in The Chautauquan, May 1885.
As they did in New York, the Aldens built a small house on the Florida Chautauqua grounds and promptly named it Pansy Cottage.
A rendering of Pansy Cottage at Lake Defuniak in 1885.
Their cottage faced the lake and gave the Aldens a lovely view of the lake shore and the promenade.
This view of the lake from the porch of Hotel Walton is similar to the view Isabella would have had from her cottage.
With her usual energy, Isabella dove into the Florida Chautauqua experience. Many of the Chautauqua New York programs were duplicated here: A school of Greek, a kindergarten, a school of cookery, an art school, and the C. L.S.C. all took root in the new Florida location. There was even an amphitheater and a Hall of Philosophy.
Hotel Chautauqua on Lake de Funiak, 1907.
The most marked difference between the two Chautauquas was duration. While the New York assembly remained open for three months every summer, the Florida Chautauqua packed as many speeches, studies and classes as possible into a thirty-day assembly.
When the first Florida assembly came to an end in March 1885, The Aldens began to entertain the idea of staying in Florida for the remainder of the winter months. Eventually, they decided to settle in Winter Park, not far from Orlando, where they built a large home they also named Pansy Cottage. (You can read more about her Winter Park home by clicking the link at the end of this post.)
Isabella’s charming cottage in Defuniak Springs still stands today!
The city of Defuniak Springs has erected a plaque to commemorate its history. The plaque reads:
Pansy Cottage
People of all economic backgrounds enjoyed the Florida Chautauqua Assembly with a small daily entry fee or a week-long hotel stay. More affluent members built homes o n these once-gated resort/campus grounds, allowing them proximity to the activities of the Winter Assembly. Author Isabella MacDonald [sic] Alden, with the penname [sic] Pansy, was among these.
Alden wrote more than 100 Christian books during her lifetime. She worked with her husband, Rev. G.R. Alden, editing a children’s magazine—The Pansy. Several of her books, such as Ester Ried, were based on personal experiences; others, like Chautauqua Girls series were inspired by her interest in the Chautauqua movement. Her books were enormously popular during the late 19th century. In 1900, sales were estimated at around 100,000 copies annually. Some titles were translated into several languages, including French, German, Russian, and Japanese. (Alden was also the aunt of author Grace Livingston Hill.) Alden was intimately involved in the Chautauqua movement. She was a graduate of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle, Class of 1887, which was appropriately named the Pansy Class. Alden was an instructor of primary teaching skills during the first years of the Florida Chautauqua.
Alden leased (and later purchased) this lot in her own name in 1885, unusual for a married woman at that time. The May 1885 Chautauquan makes reference to Pansy building as one of the pretty cottages around Lake DeFuniak. Due to her son’s ill health, the family made Winter Park, Florida their permanent home in 1886, building another house there also known as Pansy Cottage. The latter house was torn down in 1955, so Pansy Cottage in DeFuniak Springs is now the only Pansy Cottage.
The plaque that marks Isabella’s cottage at the Florida Chautauqua.
You can read Isabella’s Story “Their Day at the Beach” for free! Click here for details.
Click on the links below to read more about Isabella’s home in Winter Park Florida:
For many years Isabella had an advice column in a popular Christian magazine. She used the column to answer readers’ questions—from a Christian perspective—on a variety of topics.
In an 1897 column Isabella wrote that she had received several letters in one week about “imprudent confidences.” The letters were from young women who regretted something they said or wrote.
Two or three girls wrote about their mothers in ways they wished they had not.
One young wife wrote “with utmost frankness” about the failings of her husband to a lady friend!
Several young ladies were very harsh in their criticisms of “certain gentleman acquaintances.”
Each ended their letter to Isabella with the same two questions:
“Ought I to take back the words I wrote? And ought I to tell the persons of whom I wrote what I have done?”
Here is Isabella’s advice:
There are really two questions. Let me so divide them.
With regard to the first, I answer: By all means, YES. Perhaps there is no more common error than that of giving vent to one’s anger by putting on paper words concerning others that in our cooler moments we would not even think, much less say.
Moreover, in nearly (if not quite every) case of the kind, the written words are more or less untrue. For the hour they may seem to us strictly true and justifiable; but the next morning, after the mail has been sent, and it is too late, what would we not give to be able to recall them? How sure we are to remember entire sentences that we no know to be false, or—at the very least—to convey entirely false impressions!
In all such cases, what better can we do than to write promptly and frankly:
“I am sorry I told you what I did. I was angry at the time, or so strangely hurt that I did not realize what I was doing. My mother meant what she said in an entirely different way from what I translated it; she did not speak the words in the manner which I ascribed to her; she did not speak quite those words. I see it all now. Please burn my letter, and forgive me.”
Or:
“Dear Friend, I have been unjust to my husband; he is not what I have led you to infer. It is I who was angry, and misinterpreted him.”
Some such reparation as this we owe to our own sense of honor, even though we are quite sure that our mistaken confidences will go no further. Every true correspondent will approve such a course, and think more highly of her friend that she can possibly do without this frankness.
Especially should this course be urged in the case of husband and wife. In a very peculiar and solemn sense these two are pledged to each other, and no third person should be permitted, save in the cases of gravest necessity, to step between them even in thought.
As to the second question, there may be individual cases where confession would be wise; but as a rule I see no reason why the heart of a husband or friend should be made sore by explanations of what they would otherwise never hear. A good general rule in such matters seems to be:
If you are quite confident that silence will do no one any harm, and reasonably certain that speaking would give pain, be silent.
I think I would make one exception to this, in the case of mother and young daughter. Between these two there should be not only implicit confidence, but such deference on the part of the duaghter that it would wound her conscience to keep even such a matter secret. In nine cases out of ten the good mother would rather be told the exact truth, and would be able to help her child to grow stronger.
There is one potent reason why it is best always to take back, so far as possible, confidences of the kind named; and that is because it is a humiliating thing to do, and helps one to be more careful in the future.
The fact is, confidences are very important and choice and troublesome matters. They need to be guarded with great care, and bestowed warily.
What do you think of the advice Isabella gave?
Does it sound like the kind of advice that applies today, too?
This month’s free read is “Carl Hammond’s Lesson,” a short story that first appeared in The Pansy magazine in 1892.
Twelve-year-old Carl Hammond is in big trouble. Not only did he disobey his father’s instructions, he lied about it, too. But Carl’s conscience won’t allow him to forget the incident, which makes him wonder: If he confesses his crimes, will his father ever forgive him?
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For over twenty years Isabella Alden and her husband edited a children’s magazine called The Pansy. While their names were credited on the magazine’s cover, the entire endeavor was a family affair.
Isabella’s son Raymond regularly contributed poems, short stories, and science-related articles.
Her sister Marcia wrote “Baby’s Corner,” a monthly column for the magazine’s youngest readers.
Marcia’s husband, the Reverend Charles M. Livingston, contributed stories, anecdotes, and news items.
Charles Livingston (from the Livingston Family Album, courtesy GraceLivingstonHill.com)
Rev. Livingston had a talent for explaining the Bible’s most challenging verses in terms young people could understand. He told young readers:
When one thing in one part of the Bible seems to conflict with another part or say something which seems to be wrong, you are to conclude that a little better understanding will set it all to rights in your mind.
In 1888 Rev. Livingston wrote a brief article for The Pansy magazine about a certain Bible verse that young people—and adults—often found very confusing!
Here’s what he wrote:
A Hard Text?
If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:26)
A hard text? Some readers think it is. But suppose it read this way:
“If any man come to me and love not his family less than me … he cannot be my disciple.”
The other way is simply a strong way of saying this idea, that Christ must always be FIRST to His child. He must have our supreme love, and nothing must stand in the way. Do you get the idea?
Of course it does not teach one to hate anybody, much less a dear father, mother, brother, sister.
You know this same Jesus who spoke Luke 14:26 also said:
“Love,” even one’s enemies, and “Honor thy father and mother.”
Jesus cannot contradict Himself.
Readers of The Pansy enjoyed Rev. Livingston’s lesson so much, he wrote several more installments, and “The Hard Text” became a regular recurring column in ThePansy magazine!
Would you like to see more “The Hard Text” columns by Rev. Livingston?
What do you think? Did Rev. Livingston do a good job of explaining the meaning of this particular Bible verse?
Isabella was born and raised in upstate New York, so she was very familiar with east coast winters.
After she and Reverend Alden married, they served congregations in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Jersey, and Washington D.C. where winter storms often brought snow, wind, and dangerous ice.
Fortunately, Isabella’s book sales allowed the Alden family to sometimes spend a portion of their winter months in sunny Florida; still, there were times Reverend Alden’s duties kept them in the cold and snowy north instead.
When the good reverend retired in 1910 the Aldens moved to California, where they built their dream house in Palo Alto (click here to read more about their house).
Never again did they have to deal with harsh winters, extreme cold, or deep drifts of snow that had to be cleared from walkways and roads.
A postcard Isabella might have sent from California.
The Aldens found California winters delightful. Januarys were warm and mild; Februarys boasted average temperatures around 60 degrees. For them, snow banks and ice dams were things of the past.
A 1918 postcard.
In her letters to old friends and relatives in the east, Isabella might have mentioned the perfect weather she enjoyed, free of “fierce storms and slushy spring thaws.”
And when she hadn’t time to write letters, she could send off a quick postcard that made her point for her about California winters.
Sunshine, Fruits, Flowers, and Snow.
Picture postcards made up a large portion of the California printing industry. They featured color photographs that depicted what it was like to spend a winter in that state.
Beautiful California. Automobiling in Winter, about 1909.
Some postcards featured images of flowers that bloomed in the winter months, like poppies and bougainvillea.
Gathering poppies in midwinter in California.
Isabella loved flowers and often marveled over the varieties of roses that bloomed beside her porch in California:
“Red, cream, salmon, pure white, and every shade of pink. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them! The world seems made of roses!”
Gathering Roses in Mid-Winter, California
Other postcards showed people boating on lakes or swimming in the ocean in the middle of winter.
A winter’s day in Westlake Park about 1909.
Each postcard was like a little advertisement for the state of California, teasing and enticing people to come live the good life among the orange groves and poppy fields of the west coast.
Isabella was an ambassador for the state, as well, because California life certainly seemed to agree with her. One day in November she wrote to her niece, Grace Livingston Hill:
“Today is glorious sunshine, and the grass and trees glow in their freshly painted garments of green after the rain of yesterday.”
It sounds like Isabella was very happy in her California home!
For many years Isabella had an advice column in a popular Christian magazine in which she answered readers’ questions—from a Christian perspective—on a variety of topics.
While the commercialization of Christmas seems like a twenty-first century problem, this letter from a young woman shows it was a concern in Isabella’s lifetime, too.
Here is the letter:
I know that it is quite too late—or too early—to talk about Christmas, and yet that is just what I want to talk about, or, rather, I want you to.
Ought not something be done about all this Christmas business to give us a different state of things from that which now exists? Why, I know homes whose happiness is simply wrecked by this mania for giving costly presents that they cannot afford, and giving multitudes of them, at that!
But I need not tell you about these things; you know just how people go on.
What can be done? Ought the custom of exchanging Christmas gifts to be abolished? Won’t you tell us what you think?
—A Grown-up Sister
Here is Isabella’s reply:
I am going to draw from my own observations for my talk about Christmas.
I know a home where are father and mother, four daughters in various stages of growing up, a married son with his wife and baby, and two boys of high-school and grammar-school ages—a large family circle.
There is not a wealthy nor hardly well-to-do member of this household. A good deal of management is required to meet the necessary monthly bills with anything like comfort. Yet they are, as a rule, a cheerful, happy family; busy from morning until night with school duties, household duties, and, on the part of the father and his eldest son, work that requires strength and brain-power.
This family has planned, whenever it is possible for them to do so, to spend three evenings of each week in the home circle, with music and pleasant talk, or with one reading aloud while the others sew, and mend disabled books and toys, and all sorts of things.
Popped corn and taffy, or apples and nuts, are occasional accompaniments of these pleasant evenings, and the cicle is often enlarged by the dropping in of a neighbor; those who have dropped in once, seeming eager to repeat the experience.
Many enjoyable books—not only of the kind that leave a pleasant flavor, but help to strengthen an underlying purpose—have been read aloud in this circle, to the enjoyment of all and the lasting helpfulness of some. These evenings always close with a favorite hymn, the repeating of a choice Bible verse by each one present, and a good-night prayer, led by the father. All things considered, this is as wholesome and delightful a family circle as one could find among our American homes.
That is, until three or four weeks before Christmas. By that time the spirit of unrest steals into this home and gets possession, more or less, of almost every member of the family.
The social evenings are entirely broken up; no one has time for family life. As soon as possible after dinner, the girls retire to their own rooms to struggle with secret preparations.
The mother works rapidly and with nervous glances toward the door, and the quick hiding of something every few minutes, for she has countless interruptions. She frankly declines to be read to, owning herself too busy thinking and planning to listen.
The father, who himself looks over-tired, tries with poor success, after he has skimmed the daily news, to be interested in his paper; and yawns and wishes they could get to bed early, and knows they won’t.
The school boys, their study-hour over, look in, ask for the others, lounge about uneasily for a few minutes, whistle a little, their mother wishing, meantime, that they would go, for one of the “things” she is trying to make is for them; and they do, finally, take themselves elsewhere in search of “something to do.”
The young mother upstairs wrestles with an unusually wakeful and nervous baby, and explains wearily to the tired father that the child has acted all day as though his Christmas plans were going crooked, just as most of hers are. Somehow, even the baby has caught the spirit of Christmas unrest.
Oh, the pity of it, that all this should be because the birthday of the Christ-child draws near!
Still, if the interrupted family gatherings and the pressure of a little extra work were all, these might cheerfully be borne for the sake of the greater good to come. But it is very far from being all. With unrest comes dissatisfaction in various lines.
One of the girls, who is a teacher, and whose duties in the school room press more heavily as the Christmas vacation nears, snatches minutes between times to join the throngs of Christmas shoppers and is jostled and bumped and pushed from counter to counter, and does not find the things she wants, and cannot afford to buy the things she sees, and is, by no means, sure any of the time just what she does want, only that she “must have something!”
The second daughter, who is learning dressmaking and sews in a shop where they have the “Christmas rush” upon them in full force, has no time for shopping, and comes home after hours, ready only for rest, and shuts herself up and tries to sew on her attempts at pretty secrets; and hasn’t the material she needs, and cannot afford to buy it, and stains the ribbon she is struggling over with a few rebellious tears, and wishes that she could ever have anything that she wanted! And “what on earth is she going to give Aunt Melissa, anyway?” That girl has been heard to say that she wishes Christmas did not come but once in twenty years.
I might continue the description, but I am only too sure that there is no need. You are all acquainted with homes where the true spirit of Christmas is all but lost in the pressure of added cares, and responsibilities, and expenses, and disappointments, and longings, and vain struggling, and over-wrought nerves, until there are hours when it becomes a dreaded thing, a nightmare, and ever increasing hopeless burden from which at any cost, some would escape.
Yet it is the anniversary of the coming of the King! The harbinger of peace and good will. Oh, the pity of it!
Now, what was the question? “Ought the custom of exchanging Christmas gifts be abolished?”
Oh, no, no! Abolish a good and beautiful and helpful custom because it has been warped and twisted into ugliness? A thousand times, no!
But it needs reformation. I am deeply interested in this problem, and I could fill this reply with quotes from those who are groaning under the burden. I think I know the remedies, if we could get them applied. If we could persuade all the dear people who have large hearts and many friends, with little time and less money, to begin their Christmas plans on the first, or, at the latest, the second day of the new year the problem would be largely solved.
I read last week in a daily city paper an account of a girl who was highly commended for putting aside a dollar of her earnings each week for a Christmas frolic. She said that when Christmas week came, she took her fifty dollars and went out and had a good time shopping. The writer of the article explained that she was a girl who earned eighteen dollars a week. She was living at home, but was “paying a dear price for her board, as every self-respecting girl whose father was poor would want to do.”
Some definite sum set apart each week for Christmas plans by those who have an allowance or are wage earners, is, undoubtedly, an excellent solvent of part of the Christmas problem.
The next thing is to have plans. A little blank book for Christmas notes as they grow in one’s mind should be kept in a secret drawer, to be taken out on occasion. One can imagine its record growing after this manner:
“Jimmie’s heart is set on a mechanical register bank that will register as high as ten dollars.”
“An electric toaster would be nice for mother, if I don’t think of something better.”
“Father ought to have a larger-type Bible.”
“Aunt Carrie very much wants Holman Hunt’s picture of Christ to hang in the room where the girls meet.”
“The Light of the World” by William Holman Hunt.
“Christmas Hints,” the book could be called, and it would make very interesting and helpful reading as the days passed. There could be pages set apart for the names of little trifles as they occur to mind or might be pretty for someone. It is a great relief when one starts out on Christmas shopping to have two or three entirely satisfactory alternatives, provided the first choice is not available.
Next: Wide open eyes, as one passes shop windows or takes a trolley ride to another town, or has a week’s vacation at the shore.
“There’s that very abalone pin that Emma admired so much, or one just like it!” exclaimed a friend of mine as we were viewing a shop window. “And it’s marked only one dollar. Isn’t it handsome? I mean to get it; I’ve been looking for one a long time.”
While she made her purchase the group of girls that I was chaperoning waited for her outside and discussed her. They wanted to know as soon as she appeared if her sister Emma was to have a gift of it then, for it certainly wasn’t her birthday.
“Oh, it isn’t for now,” said the shopper, showing her pin with great satisfaction. “This is to go into my locked box, against next Christmas.”
There were shouts of laughter and exclamations. “Christmas! But this is only July.”
“Yes, my dear, but December will come here as sure as fate, and I shall be serenely ready for it, while you are hopping about upsetting yourselves and all your acquaintances. I’ve done quite a bit of my Christmas shopping already.”
I knew a dear girl whose leisure and play were scarce and who, on one January day, planned the very kind of dress that she would make for her mother ready for the next Christmas. In the early fall she chose her material, and two weeks before Christmas Day had the dress finished and folded ready for mother.
“Made it!” I hear you exclaim. “Then she was a dressmaker; I should as soon think of making a house as a dress!”
No, she was not. She was simply a clever daughter. She selected her fabric from samples and sent her measurements to a dress-making company; they sent the dress to her, cut and fitted, ready for plain sewing. The result was a satisfactory and useful dress that cost no more than the materials would have cost in any store. How did she know about such a system? She had been keeping her eyes open, watching out for ideas and opportunities.
When I began this article my chief desire was to say an earnest word against the growing habit of indiscriminate Christmas giving. The “commercial habit,” we might call it, is the spirit that says, “I must give Mrs. Blank something, I suppose, because she sent me a book last year; but I’m sure I don’t know what it will be; I don’t care enough for her to waste my money on her.” That is a quote I heard from the lips of a thoughtless girl.
A great deal of our Christmas trouble derives from the fact that we do not carry the real Christmas spirit into our giving. If all planning and all buying and all presenting were done as in his sight, and in his name, we should be held from extravagance of expenditure, from selfishness as regards time and strength, from anything that would mar the joy of the Christmas morning in the eyes of him whose love and sacrifice we celebrate.
What do you think of Isabella’s advice?
Do you think her advice would work today to help people feel less stressed about christmas?
Christmas may be over, but the spirit of the season continues with this Isabella Alden short story from 1889.
Miss Louie Chalmers just turned eighteen, and she’s ready to throw a party! She wants to impress her friends by serving only the best food and drink; but when she happily embarks upon a lavish shopping spree, an unexpected encounter makes Louie rethink all her party plans.
You can read “Louie Chalmers’ New Year’s Table” for free!
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Isabella Alden 