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One day in a long, long ago, . . . [Victor] was a young man with whom I was very much in love because he seemed so manly and reliable and intelligent,— handsome too, but not like an Apollo, more like some Rodin statue. I was young too, and slender, and he was in love with me because he said he would rather talk to me than to anyone he knew. [Victor] said that some time he would like a house with a garden around it, and in one part of the house a laboratory where he could keep his precious microscope, and continue to mess around with his specimens of health and disease. He loved chemistry and physics, and had a scientific mind. If he could have he would have been a research man, but he had always been compelled to make a living to help his family. Even as a little boy, he sold newspapers, raised mint in his garden, and sold bunches of mint wherever he could, and ran errands for people, so he could earn some money to give to his mother who needed it. Such talking together made me love him all the more, and I hoped I was good enough for him because we had promised, in the far distant future to marry each other. He was a senior medical student at that time. I was earning a little money by writing and teaching , although I was not a full fledged school-teacher and never became one.1 During our long engagement, my husband served his internship at one of our larger hospitals [Michael Reese], and then borrowed money to spend a year in post-graduate work in Heidelberg and Vienna . It was a trying year for both of us. . . . After his return we Marriage and Children, 1898–1906 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 waited almost another year before we were married, for there were few patients, office rent to pay and a debt hanging over us. . . . And then came one of the great adventures of my life — my marriage to the young M.D. who had been my brother’s best friend. I was the first of my group to wear the wedding veil that in turn was worn by my best friend, my older sister etc. I loved the glamour of being a bride.2 We were married in November [1898].3 We found [a] new apartment, near 45th St. which was then “way out South,” moved the office into our home thereby paying very little more for rent than my husband had been paying above a drug store 10 blocks nearer the centre of town.4 [For our honeymoon] we rode to Evanston on a street car, remained there one day and visited Victor’s old haunts at Northwestern University, specifically the biological laboratory in the basement of the science hall, the first building on the Northwestern campus. Then we returned to Chicago, had dinner at Rector’s and went to our apartment . . . —[a] very elegant apartment where we had the first electric light and hot and cold water on tap always — the first among all the persons that we knew. Entire cost of our wedding trip was $10.00.5 We had $180.00 left of our entire fortune, part of which had been wedding presents. Our first breakfast, the morning after we returned from our honeymoon, consisted of some old, stale dry schnecken [rolled sweet bread] Mamma had given Victor the week before, washed down with a pint of milk the milkman had left us to try. Never has any meal tasted better. But we really needed a hot dish, freshly prepared for subsequent meals. . . . I resolved that if I had to cook, I’d try to be a good cook, and, furthermore if any one should be in the kitchen while I was cooking, that person would want to eat what I was preparing . I would never taste the soup or gravy without washing off the spoon, taste it again for a further judgment, that if I had to wash vegetables I would wash them very clean, in other words, that the process , as well as the end result would be appetizing.6 We were very happy. Everybody came to see “our flat” because we had the first electric lights, the first telephone and the first constant hot water of anybody we knew.7 m a r r i a g e a n d c h i l d r...

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