H-5
IOWA AND WISCONSIN
ADRESSES GIVEN BY ALICE BIRD BABB
AT THE
SECOND ANNUAL CONVENTION OF WISCONSIN STATE CHAPTER
BEAVER DAM, D, APRIL 24, 1919
I once heard Josh Billings lecture on the present day important subject, “Milk,” and all the reference he made to the topic, was an occasional drink of the article. So tonight, after glancing in my thoughts at the shelves of books entitled, “History of Iowa,” “History of Wisconsin,” I will merely remark that for my inspiration I will occasionally only take a spoonful of the beverage and even this will be denied me after next July. So I will “make hay while the sun shines,” and two good states they are in which to make hay.
P.E.O began in Iowa - the first chapter was there, the first Grand Chapter was there; Iowa is the Mother of P.E.O., but she has reared many competent daughters and one of the youngest and, may I say, one of the loveliest, is the Grand Chapter P.E.O. of Wisconsin! In this paper, the Mother and Daughter will often meet; reference to the “Airly Days” of voluminous skirts, three cornered shawls, short hair and braids, will mingle with the narrow skirts and chic appearance of today, and the one will not destroy the effect of the other. The ambrotype will meet the Kodak and the result will be a composite picture of Mother and Daughter. No danger of a Mother’s finding fault with her youngest Daughter. When I was in Iowa at the setting of the P.E.O. Table in I.W.C., someone asked me the name of my favorite state. I answered unhesitatingly “Iowa”. “What state comes next?” she asked. “Wisconsin”, I answered, “Because it belongs to Iowa.”
We do not advance very far in life before we begin to glance back over the road we have traveled, and the experiences of the last few years have caused many of us to jog our memories well, for the question has attacked us again and again, ‘Did you have experiences like these after the Civil War’? The experience were alike, and yet very difference, and easier to bear. Economy then was not a fad nor a fashion, but a necessity and a habit and the best of it was we did not know we were economizing. People were not rich then. At the close of the Civil War there were probably not more than two millionaires in the United States. Getting rich was not the style until about ’70. The girls of the Civil War did not work with sanitary gauze in the Red Cross rooms, but they went to the rooms of the Sanitary Commission taking with them all the old linen table cloths possible from which to scrape lint, and worn out muslin for bandages. I scraped lint so that to this day I never see a nice soft piece of old table linen, but I think, what good lint that would make; yet, I have heard that the lint and old muslin in the Civil War were not sanitary; but we hear so much and anyhow that was the best that Anna Wittmeyer and her devoted host of nurses could do. It was also a sentimental age, as sentimental as the present is cynical; the war songs, although beautiful, were very sad.
Mrs. Hemans and Mrs. Sigourney, our favorite poets, wrote the storm-tossed landing of the Pilgrims and how “The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck”, peculiarrrrly harassing situations; and then about that time, we began to get our pictures “took” - the photograph was born and with it that embossed repository of elegance, the photograph album. I remember well when the picture of President Lincoln with his son, Tad, was printed in the newspapers from a photograph taken by the famous Brady. When we sat for a picture we struck attitudes; we had a pitchfork jabbed into the back of our head and were told to “look pleasant for just one minute, then resume the natural expression.” Look at the photographs taken of us Founders in ‘69 if you want to see attitudes! Frank Roads has the Evangeline pose, I have the Anna Dickinson, some of us look like the first line of one of the then favored declamations, “The Shades of Night Were Falling Fast.” About this time when the air was heavy, for it was heavy, there were still shadows behind the doors and quiet forms which came only in the stillness of the night-time; about this time we seven girls struck. Our Graduation Day was approaching and our good Mothers had arranged for one good dress for all the festive occasions, mostly of black silk that would wear well, that would turn upside down and inside out and then color and be made over again. But we girls demanded two new dresses, and one a bright colored one; we said, “the war was over and they couldn’t say think of the poor soldiers” any more, for many of those soldiers were back in college doing more mischief than they’d done in the war by making love to their girls - but our serious Mothers said we must continue to economize till the war debt was paid, and then it was, we struck, being tired of black. Sou Pearson said, “Let’s get something cheap, but bright and make the dresses ourselves.” Just yank them up here and ruffle them there and a big sash. “How would tarlatan do?” asked practical Hattie Briggs. “Just the thing.” Now tarlatan, then as now, was a kind of refined mosquito netting. Cheesecloth we would call it today. So we sold gooseberries, bought the goods and made the dresses ourselves and they were lovely, but not half so lovely as the girls who wore them in old Union Hall at the Ruthean Exhibition. Sou Pearson wore canary color, Hattie Briggs, blue, Allie Coffin, white, Mary Allen, light purple, Frank Roads, light green and I wore rose color. The bright colors, so extravagant, threw a radiance on the somber time; and I am sure gave zest to the declamations and orations.
It is customary these days to have a patriotic beginning or ending to a piece. I can not suggest singing the Star Spangled Banner for fear you’d ask me to start it and of all up-and-down and round the corner pieces, I consider it the limit, although the loveliest. So I will just refer you to the toast Benjamin Franklin gave when he was Minister to France. Around a table sat distinguished men of every nation and each one was asked to toast his native land. The Englishman said, “England, the sun, which warms, brightens and invigorates the world.” The Frenchman said, “France, the moon, which purifies, mollifies and teaches the world.” Franklin said, “America, Joshua, who commanded the sun and the moon to stand still and they obeyed.”
Prepared By: Susan B. David, A.E.
State Historian
Madison, Wisconsin
June 14, 1945