Epilogue

Dear Enoch,

Your letters written the seventh reached us today.  By this time I hope you have all of ours except, of course, the ones written yesterday.  Have you received the Clarion papers?  We think the Democrat, in spite of the Country editor style, has given a very interesting account of the wedding.  The A.M. has sent away about ten thousand.  People are still saying what a beautiful wedding it was, how sweet Alice looked, what a fine wedding party she had!  Tell Rocky1 that Mrs.  Aaron thinks “little Alice has a grand good man”.  Sarah Wilson told me yesterday as we walked up the street together that Alice’s husband was a “dandy goodlooking fellow.”  She was sure he was first rate and Harold Coblentz was much relieved at the wedding to see Alice being married to you and not to Mr. Punk2.  That’s a little hard on poor Mr. Punk.

We’ve had pleasant letters from them all, from Punk and [Deb], Mr. Hall, Mrs. Chandler, May [Dutson], Sue, your mother, and your sister Mary.  Didn’t we all have a good time.  And with what pleasure we shall always look back on it.  But we miss our Rocky, Enoch, even though we feel she is in good hands.  The thought of the little commonplace things that she liked, brings a lump in my throat.  Tell her I haven’t had the heart to have baked squash since she left!!

Just now the A.M. is sitting in the livingroom in his favorite chair reading the Philadelphia Ledger, and Sallie is on the davenport “looking over” the Gazette Times, May has gone out with her beau, and Shang sits by the fire in her room trying to write to her new brothercousin-in-law and swearing at her fountain pen. I forgot to put the cover on the blamed thing when I set it up in a little vase inside my desk during the wedding excitement.  Everybody who passed my desk, crammed something into it until my pen was buried under a young mountain of trash.  It was beat almost to the breaking point. And now refuses to work properly.

Aunt Hat is sick in bed with erysipelas; Uncle John and Nell left last week.  Uncle John for Buffalo and Nell for Peoria.  Rebecca is uncertain whether she will go to California, but as soon as her mother recovers she will visit in Missouri.  Vernon was courting Ruth over Sunday, and Sara has gone back to school.  We haven’t heard lately from Mary and our little Sara3.  They are probably all right, for “no news is good news.”

Uncle Al4 gave a very good lecture at the church last Tuesday and repeated it in the Normal5 auditorium last evening.  It was a talk on Jerusalem and the Holy Land.  His pictures were beautiful, Enoch, I wish you could see them.  He has had no further word from the people who suggested his speaking at a dinner in Scranton this week nor any word from his Chicago people.  If those engagements do not hold, he will stay here until the twentieth.  I am surprised at how contented he is.  He is working on a new set of lantern slides6 and is interested in a Sunday school class of about sixty.  Tell Rocky he and I are still eating apples and peanuts.  I got a bushel of beautiful Northern Spies the other day and the A.M. keeps two bags of peanuts on hand all the time.  I fill his jug every night and turn down his bed, and make fun of his crytomareas (or however you spell them).  He has started a lot of apple seeds in cracks on the table at the foot of the cellar stairs.  These he patiently watches and waters.  My paper-white narcissus by the dining room windows are in bud now, and I hope in a few days they will bloom.  The seed catalogues are coming in fast.  Soon I shall begin planning my garden and making my lists.  Spring will be here before we know it – though February is still to come.  It’s the meanest month in the year.

I am glad you and Rock have had such a pleasant trip and are enjoying so much your first days in Galveston.  It’s a great pity you must be kept in suspense about the movements of your regiment.  We’ll hope and pray that soon it will settle in some good place for several years.  But really I don’t see how we can hope for much (forgive me for being a Job’s comforter) so long as Mexico is in the turmoil.

Today I read my paper on Jane Addams.  Thank goodness it is off my mind!  Now I am going to enjoy myself writing letters and reading – I’m crazy to do some serious reading  – and visiting some of these pleasant people in Clarion I haven’t called on in months.

The wedding presents kept coming for several days after you left.  At the present writing you have just eight sets of carving knives and forks.  A beautiful hand-wrought silver  water pitcher came from the Gillises.  It is smaller than the one […] your Sallie and much handsomer = I mean more artistic.  I wish ours was like it.

Mother and I will go over Alice’s letter carefully and do the best we can about exchanging the duplicates.  I must confess it made me a little dizzy to read that letter, and the A.M. exclaimed “Heavens above!  How does the kiddie remember all that stuff!”

Give Rock a big hug and a kiss from all of us and tell her to return the same to you.  That’s a fitting message to send a bride and groom, isn’t it?

Thank you for your nice little note from St. Louis and for your letter from Galveston which came today.  With much love I am always

Shang

Clarion, Pa., January 11, 1915

-             A dispatch from Carion, Pa., January 1 says: “A romance that began two years ago in the Philippines culminated here last evening in the marriage of Miss Alice Brewer Ross, daughter of Rear Admiral Albert Ross, U.S. Navy, of Clarion, and Lieutenant Enoch Barton Garey, U.S. Army, stationed at Texas City, Texas.  The ceremony was performed by the Rev. Glenn M. Schaffer in the First Presbyterian Church.  The matron of honor was Mrs. Arthur B. Stewart.  The bridesmaids were Misses Alice Ross [Shang] Ruth Campbell, Lena [G]arey7, and Louise Garey.  The best man was Lieutenant A. A. Ellis, U.S. Army.

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1 Rocky, Plymouth Rock, Plymie – Alice Ross Garey 1890-1980

2 A.A. Ellis nickname is Punk

3 Sara Stewart Hinckley

4 Admiral Albert Ross

5 “Normal School” in Clarion, PA – now the State College

6 Magic Lantern slides to go to Chris Garey in 2008

7 Sister of E.B. Garey, Mrs. Caleb WInslow