“Alone on Xmas Eve with my thoughts centered on my one love,” Pearl wrote. “I was thinking of writing to a friend. Some folks came in. He was with them. They were all enjoying their selfs, all but me and I couldn’t help but be sad. He was looking rather sad, too. He walked around and after a while he said some thing about his girl. They laughed about her and he said, ‘She’s one of these girls that can talk.’ And, ‘I don’t like a girl that sits in the corner and smokes and talks to the cats.’ Well that caused a loud laugh but no one ever knew the wound those thoughtless words caused on my tender heart. No one shall ever know till I’m through with this life. There was no more pleasure for me that evening. He went away not knowing the hurt feelings he left behind or cared as little as he knew I supposed.”

“He come early in the morning and stayed till late in the afternoon — but he stayed in the next room,” Pearl wrote later. “Oh God, what I have to suffer just to think he was in the room and I didn’t have the strength to walk to where I could see him. What misery is some people don’t know, but if they were in my place they would soon learn. For instance, if some of you was in love and in my standing and in love and not a single hope of him ever being in love with you. If it wasn’t who it is I would have some hope, but as it is I’m in despair. What would you do, dear friend, if you were like me? Do nothing as I am doing? I know with out asking but the Lord above may change him and make him love me by and by.”

“We hadn’t any guests all day,” Pearl wrote on a Sunday in February. “Cora and I was setting by the fire. When he came in it was like the ray of sunshine drifting through a window pane on a bleak day for my life was as bleak as the day. Cora was rather friendly to him, some thing she hardly ever is. She asked him where he had been. He told her he was just walking around and thought he would stop in to see them all. He kept eating some thing. She asked what it was. He told her and said, ‘Don’t you want some?’ but never offered me any. I don’t guess he thought of me for I was as cold as an ice burg in those days. But I’m not one bit colder than he is but I’m not much better yet. Dear reader, don’t judge me too harshly for I have enough to bear and enough to make me cold and bitter for I didn’t have any girlfriends to talk to. Cora didn’t seem to care whether I was happy or not then. Aunt Marg had died then and Ma had to work so I didn’t have any one to talk to. All I had to do was to nurse my misery and think I was the most unfortunate girl in the world. You know, while Aunt Marg lived she could tell me of many things which helped to while away the hours. And I never was so bitter till after she was gone. I don’t blame my mother for my growing so hard and cold at life, for her life is a hard life to live any way. Aunt Flor was the only one that ever talked to me. She told me all the news and I liked for her to come. She seemed to understand me, but she didn’t stay much with us in them days. You see, I had a lot of time to keep growing bitter and crosser for I thought they didn’t care any thing about me, whether I lived or died. The Lord only knows what I could have been like by now if a certain thing hadn’t happened. Well, that changed me a little for a while but I soon grew cold again, but not so bad as at first. Kind friend, believe me. I spent a many a sad and lonely day then without one glimpse of happiness only when he came, not to say anything about the ones I spend now.”