FOUNDERS’ DAY PROGRAM F – 24
CANDLELIGHT
(Historical)
Introductory speech:
At some time each year, we murmur the names of the P.E.O. founders and thank them, - but make no effort to understand them, their lives, their backgrounds or their individual problems. Seven musical notes do not make a symphony, but seven notes can form a motif to be heard again and again against a great surging musical background.
Thus it is that we have endeavored to examine the lives and backgrounds of the students at Iowa Wesleyan in May of 1869. They were not isolated but part of a world of family, school, church, nation. Some of the problems these girls worried over have long since disappeared. And other problems which they thought solved are, unfortunately, still with us.
The nation had just finished the Civil War. President Lincoln had been assassinated and the power of the government was in the hands of the northern extremists. Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson, had been impeached and been within one vote of being convicted. President Grant, the war hero, had now to face the task of rebuilding his country. The south had been devastated with carpetbaggers adding to the ruin. The Ku Klux Klan was at its height. Veterans were attending colleges.
In other parts of the world – Cuba was in the throes of a terrible revolution; Maximilian had just been executed in Mexico; Napoleon III was about to be deposed; Queen Victoria was just beginning her widowhood which would keep her from London for forty years; an earthquake in Peru had completely destroyed Lima and its port city, Callao.
Our west was still to be conquered. Indians were everywhere. The previous November General Custer had led a successful expedition against the Cheyenne Indians in Kansas. He was to meet his own defeat at the Little Big Horn in 1876, seven years later. The cry “Cut them off at the pass!” was not just something on the late, late show. This was for real.
Prospectors hunted precious metals in the west, not yet knowing of the black liquid gold back home in Pennsylvania. But let’s let the girls tell it. Here comes Alice Bird now---
CANDLELIGHT
Time: May, 1869
Place: Alice Bird’s room – Mt. Pleasant, Iowa
Alice Bird comes in reading a book by the light of a candle which she puts in the candelabrum.
The light is poor and she has to hold the book quite close to the flame as she recites:
By the shores of Gitchee-Gumee
By the shining Big-Sea-Water
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis,---
Suela Pearson enters, also with candle which she adds to the other, -
My, it’s dark in here. Candles don’t give too much light.
Alice: No, they don’t, but I broke my lamp chimney. Luckily mother found some candles. Oh, Suela, I’ve been wanting to tell you how much I loved your Easter bonnet. I could hardly keep my eyes off of it during service. I haven’t seen anything like it in Mt. Pleasant. Where did you find it?
Suela: I didn’t find it. Mother bought it for me in Cleveland when she was on her way home from the inauguration in Washington. It’s after a style set by Empress Eugenie. I’d rather copy her than Queen Victoria. Isn’t she an old frump?
Alice: Why, Suela! Of course, all of the British royal family isn’t like her – the way the newspapers talk about His Royal Highness Champagne Prince Charlie. Anyway, tell me about President Grant. My father is afraid we are just changing from one whiskey drinker to another.
Suela: Mother said it was so exciting. Her cousin, Will, - you know, the Will McKinley I’ve told you about – worked hard on Grant’s campaign and he went along too. He said that someday he was going to live in the White House, too. We’re not sure yet but papa is thinking of moving to Washington himself.
Alice: To Washington! And you’ll be leaving Mt. Pleasant?
Suela: Yes, away from Mt. Pleasant. And what about you? You are graduating and will be leaving. We start a society in January and then I realize I’m the only undergraduate come June. Everyone is a senior except for me and Ella Stewart – and now she isn’t even in school in any class.
Alice: Now, please remember, - we all live here in town. And I have just promised to teach in the preparatory school and so has Franc Roads so I know we’ll be here. Also remember how hard we have worked initiating eighteen girls since January. Right now I am rehearsing Hiawatha so when I give it to the Epworth League next week I won’t forget and give my part in the ritual and initiate everybody there.
Oh, Alice Virginia – come on in. Suela was just saying her family might move away. Has her brother said anything to you?
Alice Virginia Coffin adds her candle to the other two.
Not much. He just talks and talks about rock oil. Whatever that is. He says it’s the coming thing. That all Cleveland is talking about it and that your friend, Mr. Rockefeller says it is just fantastic.
Suela: It is, it is. Rock oil was discovered near Meadville, Pennsylvania about ten years
ago. That year the discoverers got two barrels of it. Last year there were over 3,000. Imagine that! It can be used for heat and for light. Some call it petroleum and some call it paraffin oil. Father calls it crude oil, because sometimes it is refined and then it is even better.
A. V.: But Will says something about the navy using it.
Suela: The navy should. So far it won’t. Says it is too expensive and it isn’t safe. But when it does use it our fortunes will be made. And we won’t have to use that fishy, smelly whale oil in our lamps any more. Can you imagine New England without a whaling fleet?
Alice: But we will still need whales.
Suela: Whatever for?
Alice: You’re so slender you wouldn’t know, - but some of us do need whalebone. Or does Pennsylvania have a substitute for whalebone too?
Suela: I wouldn’t know. But somebody has just discovered how to make steel – and so now Pennsylvania is developing big blast furnaces. But I can’t imagine them helping our waistlines. By the way, Alice Virginia, Will was out awfully late last night. What were you two up to anyway?
A. V.: I was trying to teach him to dance.
Alice and Suela: Dance! Methodists don’t dance.
A. V.: Well, I dance. And if I can’t be a Methodist and dance, I can always join another church. The Episcopalians don’t mind and I’ve always liked their service. Papa says I can change if I want to. Even he says Iowa churches seem awfully plain after living in the South so long.
Suela: Better not let Mary Allen or Hattie Briggs hear you. I don’t think dancing is a sin but Hattie’s father is a minister and Mary Allen is engaged to one. Franc Roads’ and Ella Stewart’s fathers helped get Iowa Wesleyan on its feet. And that was some job when you realize that this was the first college west of the Mississippi. And they were all Methodists.
A. V.: Oh, no – not just Methodists – Methodist Episcopalians. I’m just going to change the emphasis. (Swishes towards the door.) Come around some time when you feel like waltzing. (Off stage) Oh, hello, Hattie. No. I was just leaving.
Hattie: (Places candle) Oh, Alice, I am so glad to find you in. I wanted to return your copy of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. Wasn’t it a wonderful book? It is so new and everyone is talking about it. I was so glad to be able to read yours.
Alice: We were just talking about our plans for the summer. Do you have any?
Hattie: Not anything definite, but we heard that father may be transferred to Ottumwa. It seems I’ll never get out of southeastern Iowa. At least, in Ottumwa I’ll be able to look at a train, even if I never get on one.
Alice: Why, I didn’t know you were interested in trains.
Hattie: All this publicity this last week about the Golden Spike being driven in out in Utah just sticks in my mind. Imagine, if one lived in Council Bluffs or Des Moines he could get on one of those trains and go straight to California in less than a week. It’s always been months to sail around the Horn. Even going to Panama and going over the mountains there has always taken at least one month.
As for the Atlantic Ocean, we even have a telegraph cable across it. Seems like
there is nothing left to invent. Of course, the closest I’ll probably get to one of those modern miracles is –if I can afford it – is one of those mechanical sewing machines.
Ella Stewart enters: I wondered who was ahead of me coming up the walk.
(Places her candle)
Hattie: Yes, it was I. We’re all dreaming about this summer of 1869 – how are things with you?
Ella: Summer? I’m just glad to get away from the house for an hour. With six children in a family and hungry boarders, there is always a lot of work, but it was such a lovely spring evening I felt I had to take a walk.
Alice: Hattie was talking about all the new inventions. They are exciting, aren’t they?
Ella: Maybe so. I just wish Mr. Mason hadn’t invented the Mason jar two years ago. I’m going to spend my summer filling jars by the hundreds so that we can empty them next winter. I can already feel the heat of the coal range in August. Freezing food in the old days had its advantages. But, of course, that is out of date.
I read somewhere that if Napoleon could have used modern methods of preserving food he could have conquered Europe. I don’t want to conquer Europe, but I would like a chance to sit down once in awhile. Anyway, I may have a solution.
Suela: You do?
Ella: Maybe it’s just an impossible dream. But I asked mother if after school stops if I could try to give piano lessons. If I could get as many as eight pupils at 25 cents an hour, that would pay for a hired girl and she could help with the drudgery this summer a whole lot better than I could.
Alice: What a wonderful idea. If we can help, let us know. We ought to be able to find some hopeful pianists.
Ella: What I really stopped by was to tell you girls how much I appreciate your initiating Lulu Corkhill. I know she is only 15 and won’t enter college for two more years, but I know she’ll be a wonderful member – and a hard worker. Her father was such a good friend of my own father when we used to live here. Mr. Corkhill does such wonderful things with wayward boys. If I were a man, there is nothing I would rather do.
Franc Roads: (suddenly appearing) Do it anyway! (Puts down candle)
Ella: Do what?
Franc: Help the boys to be men. If men won’t let anyone else vote, we’d better see to it that the men are as good as we can make them. I’m just sick about it. I thought when the states passed the 14th and 15th amendments this year that women would come under them and be allowed to vote. No! The states knock out the race restrictions, but leave in that phrase “male persons”. Always “male persons”. Every illiterate male in the country can vote but no educated woman.
Alice: Oh, yes they can. In Wyoming.
Franc: A territory! Moreover, I doubt if there are any women in Wyoming. Anyway I can move to Wyoming when all else fails.
Alice: And Mr. Babb says a woman has been admitted to the Iowa bar.
Franc: Yes, Mrs. Mansfield. Isn’t it wonderful that she should be a wife of one of our own faculty members – and your future sister-in-law. Your Mr. Babb has a right to be proud of her.
She was more fortunate than the Mrs. Bradwell who applied to the Illinois bar. She was turned down because she was a married woman and had no power to make a contract. An expert on contracts, but couldn’t sign one. How’s that for justice?
But just watch the women from now on. Remember when Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony spoke here this past year? They met with other women leaders in New York last week. They all decided that if they were to get no help from the new amendments, they would have to organize. Even going to publish a magazine.
Hattie: What are they going to call it?
Franc: “The Revolution”, of course.
Alice: Now, Franc, relax. The country is about to celebrate its centennial. We are almost a hundred years old and the country has survived even if we women don’t run it.
Franc: Yet. Yes, we are going to have a centennial – but it will be held in Philadelphia. The national capitol is in terrible shape. The men haven’t even finished putting up the monument to honor our first president. You should see that unfinished pile of rock going nowhere. And Washington’s own home was going to ruin until the Mt. Vernon Ladies’ Association was organized.
Suela: But Franc – even if you were a man you couldn’t vote. You are still only 17.
Franc: Well, I won’t be 17 forever. And I’m going to do something. Good-night.
Hattie: Wait for me. (She and Ella follow)
Alice: And I think she will. Such a determined soul. I wonder where Mary Allen is. Everyone else has been here tonight. She ought to be in the picture.
Mary: Yoo-hoo. Anybody home?
Alice: Oh, Mary, do come in. You make the evening complete. Where’s your sister, Cassie?
Mary places candle: Oh, busy. She hasn’t quite got over the thrill of being the first initiate of P.E.O. And to think her friends, the Ambler sisters, joined at the same time.
Aren’t we lucky to have such a fine school here? It just seems a shame that Ella was the one to give up hope of graduating when it was her father who helped raise the money to get it established. And she spent her own girlhood right here in one of the campus buildings. I do hope the P.E.O.s will initiate her sisters, Annie and Kate, when they get a little older.
I do wish there was a girls’ school with a big endowment to help worthy students. I hear one has been started in the east by a brewer named Vassar.
Alice: Can you imagine the Methodists using money from beer??
Mary: No, I can’t – but there are other sources for money. Maybe a lot of women working together----