170 Albert St., Waterloo, Ont.,
July 9, 1939.
Dear Mother:
As I must start off early to-morrow morning to meet my preaching appointment at Woodstock, I am writing my letter to you to-night. I got my cheque this afternoon after the banks were all closed. So I couldn’t cash it. This accounts for themeasly envelope in which this missive comes to you. There was, however, one agreeable surprise about it, and that was this: the cheque was a little larger than I expected. Instead of its being for one hundred dollars, it was for $ 125. This brings the amount owing me down from $ 630 to $ 505, as of the 1st of July, as the auditors would say. When I go around Monday and pay my debts as far as my money will reach, I won’t be any better off than I am now; but I will have the satisfaction that I don’t owe quite as much as I did. I expect to get five dollars for my services to-morrow and in that case I will have a little money with which to buy envelopes in which to inclose my letters, and will not need to make my poverty so voluble. If you were here now, I guess you wouldn’t think Canada was much different from the South. We have had sweltering weather nearly all this week. Yesterday the thermometer got up to 93 in the shade. To-day, however, there was a nice cool breeze, and while it was still hot, it was quite endurable. We thought we would get a letter from Mabel by the end of this week telling us that she was sure enough coming to see us and advising us of the approximate time; but no letter arrived, and we are still in purgatorial suspense. If she hasn’t written yet when this reaches you, maybe this will be a gentle reminder. Dr. Schorten is going to Scranton, Pa., in a week or so for a couple weeks visit with his married daughter, Mrs. Motheral, who is very inappropriately
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named, she being no mother at all. But what I set out to say was that with Dr. Schorten gone, I will be the only professor left on Seminary Hill. The fact that it is vacation time accounts for its depopulation. It will not be a great job, however for me to hold the hill down alone. I have become accustomed to hoeing a lone row in the Seminary anyhow. This week we received a nice letter from Mrs. Sandrock, widow of the late Prof. Sandrock, who was a good friend of mine when he was a professor in our Seminary. Mrs. Sandrock is now in California trying to recuperate her health, which suffered greatly from all that she had to go through during her husband’s long sickness. He wouldn’t have any other nurse around him, and Mrs. Sandrock was exhausted and completely played out by the time he finally passed away. He had internal cancer and was probably too sick to realise that he was overtaxing his wife’s strength. We had a letter again from Arthur this week. He informed us that his school will be out to-day a week i.e. July 15th. It was cut two weeks short by government regulation. This was due to the coming of harvest time. In other years when the government’s relation to Poland was different from what it is now, they employed Polish boys to help gather in the harvest, but this year they refused to import them; and as they had to have help, they conscripted the native University students for work in the harvest fields. This only shows the truth of the old saying, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” Arthur, however, not being a native will not be conscripted. But this will not shorten his stay, it will give him more time to bicycle around Germany and visit places of interest. I don’t remember whether I told you or not in my last letter, but he has bought a bicycle for this excursion. He doesn’t expect to get back to Canada until September unless his money runs out before that time. We also had a letter from Robert. He told us that he got a night
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job at one of the hotels in Noranda that will net him $ 2. 50 a night while it lasts. He has been kept quite busy at the bank but he couldn’t let the oppotunity slip to add a little to his meagre salary account. The children are all out of school now: so Bonnie has some help with the housework, help which she very much needed. Eileen has landed another beau or boy-friend. As she will probably not tell you in her letter, I thought I had better mention it. This boy works in the office in the same factory that she does, namely the Gooderich Rubber Co. His surname is Thaler, which he pronounces “Thayler”. This, I think, doesn’t improve it any more than our bandmaster Thiel improves his name by pronouncing it “Theel” instead of “Teel”. However a rose, says Shakespeare, by any other name would smell as sweet. This young man is culturally and financially an improvement over her discarded Earl, but he is a pietistic Baptist, who looks down on picture shows, dancing, drinking, cardplaying, and who neither smokes nor chews. He won’t have to spend much money on her, that’s sure; but how long the attachment is going to last, it is hard to say. I met the lad last night when he came to take her down to the park to the band concert. He seemed to be genteel and cultured. I have finished my Minutes of Synod, and they would probably have published some of them to-day, but I told them to hold back until I heard from my German Co-Secretary, to whom I sent the proofs after I had corrected them. The Minutes make an even-up 100 pages. I still have to transcribe them in my own handwriting in the Protocol, which is quite a job looking me in the face. But I must close. With all good wishes and love to you, one and all,
I am
Most Sincerely Yours,
(signed) Carroll
