Tag: Winter

Isabella’s Winters in California

Published on by Isabella Alden2 Comments

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.

Old photo of two men and a woman standing beside a snow drift that is higher than their heads.

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.

Old postcard that reads "I'll eat oranges for you and you throw snowballs for me." On the left is a drawing of a woman and little girl picking oranges from trees above the caption "Winter in California." On the right is a drawing of a boy and girl building a snow man above the caption "Back East."
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.

1918 postcard. On the left is a drawing of two men and two women swimming in the ocean with sailboats in the background under a caption that reads "How we spend our winter in California." on the right is a boy in the snow at a water pump where the water has frozen as he tries to fill a bucket. Above is the caption "How we spend our winter in the east."
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.

"A Typical California Highway in Midwinter" shows a road with palm trees and flowers on one side, flowers and orange trees on the other side. In the background are mountains with snow on top.
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.

Old photo of people in an open Model T car. The are on a driveway in front of a house covered with vines. Beside the driveway the grass is green.
Beautiful California. Automobiling in Winter, about 1909.

Some postcards featured images of flowers that bloomed in the winter months, like poppies and bougainvillea.  

A group of men and women pick wild poppies from a field. Behind them are green mountains.
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!”

A little girl picks white roses in a garden. Behind her pink roses form a bower that is is taller than she is.
Gathering Roses in Mid-Winter, California

Other postcards showed people boating on lakes or swimming in the ocean in the middle of winter.

A group of people on the shore of a lake. One woman rides by on a bicycle. On the lake are boats and swimmers.
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!

Hello, Spring!

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In 1868 printmakers Currier and Ives published a set of illustrations titled, “The Four Seasons of Life.” And since today marks the first day of Spring, sharing the old-time prints seem like a fitting way to mark the change of season.

Spring: Childhood

Known as the “Printmakers to the American People,” Currier and Ives produced prints on a wide range of subjects: comics and reproductions of great paintings, illustrations of disasters and wrecks, scenes of farm and city life, and political lampoons.

Summer: Youth

When “The Four Seasons of Life” series was published, Isabella Alden was a married twenty-seven-year-old woman and a popular best-selling author of Christian fiction.

Autumn: Middle Age

It may have happened that Isabella had Currier and Ives’ prints in mind when she wrote Miss Dee Dunmore Bryant, a story that featured little Daisy Bryant who longed for colorful illustrations to adorn the bare walls of her “study.”

Winter: Old Age

For over fifty years Currier and Ives produced prints that documented almost every phase of life in America—a country that was rapidly growing from adolescence to maturity.

And for over sixty years Isabella Alden wrote inspiring stories about American men, women and children who chose Jesus as their savior, friend, and guide.

New Free Read: Living a Story

Published on by Isabella Alden2 Comments

This month’s free read is a short story that first appeared in The Pansy magazine in 1893.

The story is about three school friends who pass a snowy afternoon by making up stories for each other. For two of the girls, the stories are simply fun diversions; but for Sarah Brewster, one of their stories strikes a little too close to home.

You can read “Living a Story” on your phone, ipad, Kindle, or other electronic device. Or you can read it as a PDF document on your computer screen. You can also print the story to share with friends.

To begin reading, just click on the book cover to choose your preferred format from BookFunnel.com.

A New Free Read: Choker and Old Stuffy

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This short story, set in a big city during the dead of winter, first appeared in the 1875 book Dr. Deane’s Way. Isabella and her best friend Faye Huntington (whose real name was Theodosia Toll Foster) contributed several stories each to the book.

In Isabella’s story “Choker and Old Stuffy,” Tom Benton and Dick Graves are struggling medical students. They’re so poor they have to take turns wrapping up in a ragged old comforter just to stay warm during the cold winter months! But a chance invitation from an unexpected source will soon change their lives forever.

You can read this story on your phone, ipad, Kindle, or other electronic device.

Or you can read it as a PDF document on your computer screen. You can also print the story to share with friends.

Click on the book cover to choose your preferred format from BookFunnel.com.

 

Let’s Go Sledding!

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It’s the last day of February, and some parts of the U.S. are waking up to a cold winter morning. There’s snow on the ground and a nip in the air; and for many children, those conditions equate to perfect sledding weather.

Children sledding in Washington D.C. in 1915

The children in Isabella Alden’s books are fond of sledding, too, especially the boys.

In Her Mother’s Bible, Ralph Selmser looks forward to having a day of fun that includes sledding:

“Tomorrow’s Saturday, and I’m going to give Ned a ride on my sled, and I’m going to get green things and berries for Mary Jane to trim up the room for father’s birthday; and there isn’t a thing to do all day but I’ll rather do than not.”

A sledding party in Rochester, New York, 1908.

For some of Isabella’s characters, sledding wasn’t just for fun and games. Sidney (in Sidney Martin’s Christmas) uses his sled in a variety of different and practical ways.

A 1910 toboggan party

With his sled, Sidney gives a pleasant ride to a friend. He also hauls heavy items, and transports an injured boy home after he takes a tumble in the snow.

Sledding in Central Park, New York in 1900

Joseph, the young hero of A Dozen of Them, didn’t own a sled of his own, but still found a way to enjoy sledding.

He liked nothing better than to turn pony himself, and give Rettie a ride on her box sled; and so through the day everything was merry and happy.

Sledding on an icy pond in 1869

Later in the story, Joseph is astonished to learn he is the recipient of a sled of his own! His friends joyously break the news to him:

And then all the children talked at once.
“Why, you had a hand-sled!” said one.
“A perfect beauty!” exclaimed another.
“One of the boss kind!” explained a third. “And it has your name on it in red letters.”

Adults also enjoyed sliding through the snow. Toboggans, which are longer than child-sized sleds, could carry more than one passenger.

An 1885 ad for Star Toboggans

In her books Isabella didn’t mention grown-ups enjoying downhill sledding, but these images show it was a popular winter pastime for people of all ages.

The Toboggan Party by artist Henry Sandham, 1882.

In fact, sledding and tobogganing were so much fun in Isabella’s time, children, especially, didn’t always wait for perfect conditions like fresh snow and gently-sloping hills—they made do with what they had.

That’s what these children did in 1921. They took advantage of a sleety morning by sledding down the steps of the War and Navy building in Washington D.C.

You can read all the stories mentioned in this post for free! Just click on a link below to get started:

A Dozen of Them

Her Mother’s Bible

Sidney Martin’s Christmas