“I got up with a bad tooth ache,” Pearl wrote in August or September, probably in 1924. “Mother got a good dinner and I could feel that he was coming but you see I couldn’t tell. They were all gone but Inez and Watson for Watson is married now. Inez and I are very good chums but I can’t tell her this secret of him, for she don’t like him to very well no how. If she was to know I’m in love with him, she would get real angry and maybe tell Cora and mother. Cora just hates him and she would say things that hurt my very heart, so I had better keep it a secret from all. Mother wouldn’t say any thing but I would feel so ashamed to be where he is at if she knew I love him. Such a thing never entered her mind that I might love some body. If she ever thought of such a thing she never said any thing about it. To go back to my story. As I said, Mother had a good dinner but he never came till evening but he did look good in his blue suit but he never stayed long to my sorrow. Oh my tooth did hurt and so did my heart.”

     “Me and Inez have kept house,” Pearl wrote early in November. “They all have been gone all day but the children. I have a tooth ache again. My jaw is all swollen up. Oh Lord, my tooth and jaw. Won’t I be pretty when he comes for I feel he is coming. I do hate to look like this for he won’t think I’m pretty I know — but I do love him so much.”

     “He came last night and stayed all night,” Pearl wrote the following day. “It was after supper. We were all sitting around the fire. I was sitting on the bed. He came in and set down beside me just as if he knew I wanted him to. Of course I wanted him to but I blushed to the roots of my hair to have him so near me. None of them ever dreamed I loved him and I don’t guess he did either. I guess God led him to come and to sit down beside me for God alone knew how much I loved him.”

     “Thank God my prayer has been answered,” Pearl wrote on Tuesday, November 11. “I see him now coming. Oh Lord, just a glimpse that was all. My sorrow is too deep for me ever to tell. I have loved you dear so long that you shall never know it by me telling it. The wound you have caused on my heart is always about to heal, but if I live and get till I can’t walk I’ll get even with you.”

     “All is over and for ever,” Pearl wrote on Wednesday. “Prayers are answered to some extent,” she wrote the following day. “Friday evening is the same.”

     “It is a rainy and dreary day,” Pearl wrote on Saturday morning, November 15. “Oh, how heavy the fog is hanging over the field but it isn’t as heavy as my heart.”

     “He was passing by and Cora ran to the door and invited him in,” Pearl wrote in December. “She didn’t know how much it pleased me for her to ask him in for I couldn’t do it myself. It seemed that she should like every one but the one I loved. Well, I hope she will like him better in the future for I hate to love some one they all hate but that’s what I’ve done but I can’t help it. I loved him before I knew it. We don’t love or hate as we will but we love as divine power makes us love.”

     The latter part of Pearl’s first diary is filled with vaguely dated entries spanning from January until July, probably for the year of 1924. Early entries for her second diary seem to fill the summer and fall months of that same time period. Subsequent entries, dated in November and recorded in the first diary, are clearly for 1924.

     “Oh dear, it seems that my dreams are coming true,” she wrote one Sunday morning in January. “Aw, how my heart beats with joy to look from my window and see the one I love with all my heart coming after what had happened. Oh, the day is fleeting. Now, it’s gone and he has gone with it. My heart is gone, too.”

     “He’s here again,” Pearl wrote on a Saturday and Sunday in March. “It makes my lonely life a few sparks brighter to have him near me if I can’t be nothing more to him.”

     “April is here with its birds and its flowers but they don’t make my burdens any lighter,” she wrote the following month. “If any thing, a little heavy to bear.”

     “It is raining this morning,” Pearl wrote on a Sunday in May, “making the day dark and dreary for me. I guess my heart is just as heavy as the rainy air. I am alone and thinking of the one that’s dearer to me than my own life.”

     “Shadows of the night is gathering dear,” Adkins wrote on a July Saturday. “Alone am I thinking of you. My love will never die for you. It’s all true that I love you. You are my sole thought. If something awful happens I will love you still more fondly for my heart yearns for your presence now while the darkness is gathering fast just as my thoughts are still forming my love still deeper for you. Aw, it’s raining. That don’t make me love you any less for I have loved you for months — might have slipped into years. I’m not saying how many years it has been. I think my love is of too long a standing for me ever to forget now. I’ve tried to but all in vain.”

     “Things are just the same as ever,” Adkins wrote later in July. “God grant my prayer that I may see him, my darling, in my sweet dreams. Aw, but he’s nothing more to me than a dream. How my heart yearns for just one look on his handsome face and to hear his sweet voice. I barely see these lines for tears is gathering so fast. Just ready to fall any minute. Jesus, blessed Jesus, stand by me now. Make him love me, oh Lord. Aw, it’s all sad, and the saddest of it all is what it might have been if I only could have walked. Oh God, grant that I may enjoy the pleasures of life that the other girls enjoy. My life has been only one long dark empty dream. Oh, Lord, will my life always be like this? If I could only have died when but a baby. Now, if I had some one to talk to but like always I’m alone. No one cares for me. No one but mother. The rest seeks each others’ company and leaves me alone. Oh God, help me to bear it all. My heart is almost breaking now. Aw, I can’t write any more for my tears are falling on my paper, Shucks, this is all nonsense but I can’t help it.”

     Later in the summer, Inez Adkins, a friend and sister-in-law to Pearl, made a couple of entries.

     “This sad and lonesome evening finds us alone and together thinking of the past,” wrote Inez on Friday, July 11, 1924, “and God bless Margret, Edward and Wetzel at our feet playing.”

     At that time, Pearl’s head was full of dreams. Based on entries in her diary, she had become fixated on a local beau who made occasional visits to the Adkins home.

     “It’s been a many sad and dreary days since I had last seen him,” Pearl wrote on February 6, 1922. “I almost count the hours and minutes of his absence. So why worry? Life is what we make it. Oh dear, when shall I see you again?”

     “Oh, you are here,” she wrote later that day. “As I looked up from my work I gazed straight into the kindest eyes I’d ever seen — deep and unfathomable like a well of clear, pure water where my famished soul might drink. His clear sweet voice broke the spell, and I dropped my gaze while the hot blood burned over my neck and cheeks. It has the same affect now as I write this as when it happened. It causes my heart to beat wildly and my hand to tremble so I can’t work at my sewing.”

     The following day, Pearl’s thoughts drifted away from romance and more toward her handicap.

     “A day remembered by me if by no other,” she wrote on February 7, “but no one remembers me or my lonely life. Shut up here a helpless cripple for all this time.”

     Four days later, on February 11, Pearl was stirred to write again about the object of her affection.

     “Oh, I wish I could see my darling boy this evening. It seems that every one comes — all but the one I love.”

     “Now alone in my little hut,” she wrote on the 12th, “but my thoughts and dreams has wondered to one in a far distant country.”

     “He has completely gone out of my presence but not out of my mind,” Adkins wrote on March 14. “He is always with me in my day dreams. He will never be mine but nothing can prevent my loving him forever and ever. I see him now as I last saw him as he stood gazing out the window at the mist and rain. Aw, how he looked and looked as if he was grieving about some thing. He made a sad picture. It makes me cry when alone and to imagine him standing there. Oh God, that could I shut that out of my mind my life wouldn’t be so lonely. I don’t see what makes me always think of him when I know he cares nothing for me. All there is left for me to do is hope and pray for his love.”

     On March 29, Pearl wrote, “Oh, what a sweet dream I had last night and I feel that it’s coming to pass. Why shouldn’t it come to pass? Haven’t I suffered long enough?”