Early Experiences Recounted

Occasionally in later years Ellen mentioned her girlhood experiences. When she and her twin sister, who was rather chubby and could not climb as Ellen could, were going through the woods, Elizabeth would say to Ellen, “Help over log.” Of course Ellen did, and as she recounted this years later to a nurse, Delia Walker-Lovell, she remarked, “I have been helping over logs ever since.”1BIO 20.5

In 1901 she wrote of the character-building discipline that had a mold on her life:1BIO 21.1

When I was a child, and was told to do something, sometimes I would begin to speak words of complaint, and would go out of the room. But I would be called back, and asked to repeat what I had said. Then I would repeat it. My mother would take that up, and show me how I was a part of the family, a part of the firm; that it was as much my duty to carry my part of the responsibility as it was my parents’ duty to take charge to me. She would carry that out to the letter. I had my times now and then for amusement, but I tell you there was no idleness in my home, and there was no disobedience there that was not taken in hand at once.—Manuscript 82, 1901.1BIO 21.2