My dear Girls,

It has been a great inspiration to me to read your letters. As the Christmas time comes near we are expecting our oldest boy home from Syracuse University for his vacation. Well do I remember the vacation seasons at Goucher. How anxious we were to go home and then to get back to work again! He is a junior in electrical engineering. I feel older in experience in many ways than you all because I have a six foot boy call me mother.

Since I last wrote we too have had changes in our family. In April 1917 just as the war broke out we moved from our home in Germantown in Frankford. My husband is pastor of Central N.E. Church, a large up to date church with a fine chapel and recreational hall, kitchen and rooms for various meetings etc. Something is going on here every night in the week, and my husband is a very busy man, too busy like some of the rest of you write about yours. I take care of the family. During the war the house was a very strenuous place in many aspects, so much mail to handle, telephone calls, letters to be sent to our 86 boys in the service every week, entertaining soldiers and sailors, practicing economy and food conservation sometimes with a maid, more frequently without so that we worked hard here just as you all did in your part of the country. Our boy was on the sea too.

We have been spending our summers in our bungalow at Mountain home in the Poconos. This is a delightful spot near Buckhill Falls where you may find us when you are journeying that way during the summer. Last year it was my pleasure to have Dr. Van Meter and Miss Johnetta come to see me up there. He has failed very much since I last saw him. He told me that when he chanced to call on Claire Ackerman he found the children sitting around the table with her enjoying raw potatoes.

Frankford is a busy bustling town of 35 000 inhabitants, situated in the NE section of Phila. It is a great manufacturing centre. During the war it was a very busy place. We are soon going to have an elevated railroad into the main city.

Outside of the house work, serving for the children unending, church work, I belong to a sewing circle composed of ladies most of them old enough to be my mother. I am invited because I am the pastor's wife. I belong to the College Club and I generally attend all the Goucher Alumnae meetings. Here I meet some of the recent graduates and always some of the older faithful ones. I have not been back to Baltimore since 1908, so I would feel like a stranger in a strange city with so many changes in college. It seems to me the college is producing a different type of graduates from the old one, in ascendance with the progress of the times, I suppose.

We have a fine modern high school here with three Goucher girls on the Faculty. I am always interested in educational methods. I think Nancy Nulton's child must be a wonder. My little girls are quite normal. They go to Orthodox Friends' School, a little school with 34 pupils just across the street so I do not have to worry very much about them. I just love every one of these children of 1903 and would like to see them all. I am not president of any thing, just plain mother and homemaker. Sometimes I have to use the electric washer all myself and also the mowing and lots of things, to that I am never done my work sometimes. The older girls are pretty large girls now both taller than I am so they help me very much when I do not have a maid. It looks now as though this scarcity of help will be over soon as many mills are closing throughout this section.

I wish I could write you something real grand and beautiful but I have never felt called to literary efforts. I take great comfort from that verse in Samuel which reads 'As his part is that goeth down to battle so shall his part be that tarrieth by the staff' My task has always seemed to be to stand by the staff and help someone else to achieve honors in the battle of life.

I shall place in the envelope a picture of our children. I just hate to let Robin fly away as he was four and one half years coming to me but some day I do hope he may return and bring to me the joy and gladness and blessings from you all.

Wishing you love and happiness,
Sincerely yours,
Hattie Taylor Channell

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