Excerpts from the letters of Ethel Augur
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The following excerpts from Ethel Augur's letters are selected from a 350-page typescript preserved in the Augur family archive held by James Platt, of Pomfret Center, Connecticut. Probably typed by Augur's sister Elma in the 1920s or 1930s, the original handwritten letters are lost. The typescript was preserved by Eunice Augur Platt, another sister, herself a traveler. James Platt, Eunice's son, made a copy of the typescript available to me for preparing this essay. An edition of the letters with an informative foreword and epilogue was prepared by Augur's grandniece Cynthia Peck Mitchell and self-published for family members in 2003. Copies were donated to the Woodbridge (CT) Public Library and the Harlem (MT) Public Library. The other half of the correspondence, family letters to Augur, has apparently been lost. Given that the only extant version of Augur's letters is a typed transcription, I have silently corrected obvious typographical errors and edited a very few punctuation errors where they create confusion. Otherwise, the texts are presented as I found them.
The following excerpts from Ethel Augur's letters are selected from a 350-page typescript preserved in the Augur family archive held by James Platt, of Pomfret Center, Connecticut. Probably typed by Augur's sister Elma in the 1920s or 1930s, the original handwritten letters are lost. The typescript was preserved by Eunice Augur Platt, another sister, herself a traveler. James Platt, Eunice's son, made a copy of the typescript available to me for preparing this essay. An edition of the letters with an informative foreword and epilogue was prepared by Augur's grandniece Cynthia Peck Mitchell and self-published for family members in 2003. Copies were donated to the Woodbridge (CT) Public Library and the Harlem (MT) Public Library. The other half of the correspondence, family letters to Augur, has apparently been lost. Given that the only extant version of Augur's letters is a typed transcription, I have silently corrected obvious typographical errors and edited a very few punctuation errors where they create confusion. Otherwise, the texts are presented as I found them.
* * *
Harlem, Montana,
My Birthday.1
My dear Mother, Daddy, Elma & Tom:2
. . . As things are quiet (at present) I'll have to weave you a harrowing tale, but take it from me every tale of the West is not half as true as the real facts, but we who are in it have a certain wild freedom, and rather enjoy the excitement.3
"Forms that never in the daylight."4
. . . I woke up choking, with the smoke sifting under the door and up through the floor around my head. . . . I got to the window and the smoke was everywhere, but no apparent blaze. I thought it must be down in the Ching's5 kitchen. Just then the furnace man6 came up out of the cellar, he had woke up when the fire had dropped on his bed, all he did was to stand down under our window and call, "Hey, Hey"! Daddy Minugle,7 squaw-man Postmaster, came out the back door of the office and Mr. Reed, the barber. They were trying to get the Chings routed. I heard them yell, "Kick the D— door in", and Daddy Minugle rushed for his hold up gun and began firing. I thought it about time to come alive myself and get my two girls8 out, one in bed with a broken shoulder, the other a total stranger to the lay of the house and way at the end of the hall in Blanche's room, No. 8. I got my coat on over my night gown, had on your bed slippers, Mother. That very afternoon Mrs. Murray had showed me the back stairs leading down into the Chings kitchen. . . . I saw a light over that transom and rushed to the stair door. When I opened it, "Ouff", up in my face. In a minute it would cut off the whole wing. Just then the comic stunts began, "Forms [End Page 105] that never in the daylight!" Ernest Smith, one of my "truly friends", roomed...
