Allabach correspondence

Roble Hall October 25, 1891

Dear Helen:

You do not enjoy my letters any more than I do yours and so please write as often as you can. I would writer oftener but really I am going to be very busy and with the other letters that I must write I fear I can't write you more than once a week. So you got your box of candy. I hope you did not forget to write and thank him; for it was good of him to make it so large and from his letters to me, which have been mere notes, he is quite lonesome and needs to know that his friends are interested in him.

You ask how we know our places at table. We always have the same and at our table the three other Iowa girls sit. There are six tables seating fourteen each and each half is served as though a separate table having its own sugar, milk butter, meat sauces, etc. and is served with separate dishes of vegetables, meat and all that we have.

I am sorry Grandma has been ill and give her my love and hopes that she will improve

I wish you could have been with Minnie and me yesterday. We decided to call on Mrs. Jenkins, one of the Professor's wives who had called at Roble Hall and asked us to come. Yesterday afternoon we took the road back of the Hall and going west walked perhaps a mile along a terribly dusty road, through rather a pretty one, past Sen. Stanford's barns and horse years. After a while we came to a pretty stream almost dry but its bed and overhanging trees were very pretty. The bridge was moss grown and is a private one belonging to Stanford's grounds. Just across the bridge is a while picket fence and showing in relief against an evergreen hedge. We opened the gate, since it had over it the name, "Cedro Cottage", and passed up a long avenue of fine hard packed gravel bordered or rather fenced on each side by a tall hedge of pine trees, that feathery kind whose branches grow to the ground. We could not see what it led to. Branching off from this main drive were foot paths, some shut in by tall hedges of evergreen, some having merely a narrow border of close clipped foliage. At the end of these you caught glimpses of flowers and shrubs but nothing else. It was like a main road leading to some beautiful place and all along were these side paths to tempt you away but if you kept steadily on you reach the main object and got to see all the minor things as well.

We could not catch even a glimpse of the cottage till we stood right near it, and so were not prepared for the view which burst upon us. The Cottage itself is a rather modern, pretty, brown, one stories house with bay windows, but it rose up out of a veritable flower bed set in a large garden. The vines growing on it were in bloom and great heliotrape plants seem to be embracing its feet. The gravel walks and drives cut the green lawn into small paradises where bloomed roses, geranimums, chrysanthemums, heliotrops, etc., or where grew palms, lemon trees, magnolias, or, as in some places, just one immense live oak tree with gnarled out spreading branches and its trunk for a long distance up covered with ivy and from its branches California moss, hanging. It seemed like a dream and when the man who was watering the lawn (Mrs. Jenkins was not home) told us to take some flowers it seemed more real. I picked a beautiful pink rose and sprig of heliotrope whose sweet odor I inhale as I write this. Minnie chose a yellow rose and heliotrope. We might have carried away a load before it would have been missed. At last we decided we must leave this paradise and came back along the dusty road to Roble Hall, but we are going again.

Last evening the students formed an organization for organized Christian work.

With best love to you, I am your sister,

Lucy Allabach

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Roble Hall November 1, 1891

Dear Mama:

Your letter is before me and I'll try to help you to more fully understand the view in the quadrangle. As you stand in the court looking east you see on your left the main arch which leads into and out of the quadrangle. This is the main arch only because the main road way leads up to it not because it is any finer. On your right is the tall Chapel looking building but as this is unfisnished I can't tell what it will be. On the west and east are also high arches leading out beyong the buildings. The rows of smaller regular arches are the supports to the roof of the Arcade, whose floor is paved with diamond shaped stone of dull red and gray. The Arcade is nothing more nor less than the porch which runs around in front.of and connecting all the various buildings of study. The rooms are numbered according to a regular plan and there are 125 at least

including the Chapel and Library which each occupy a whole building. There are exits between each building so that one can come into the court most anywhere without going to a main arch. If you take the main arch and walk perhaps a block on the asphalt road you reach the cement walk which, going east leads to Eucina, giving west to our Hall and north of you is the Museum which will be very fine when finished.

I hope so much that you can come see it for yourself.

You ask who I write to. I am not going to have the time to do much letter writing but I must keep up some I suppose and it is so nice to get letters here. I've written to Gertrude, Mell, Emery (he sent me a mother goose picture on my birthday so I wrote us here first), and then when Alice Patterson and Lizzie Carrothers had a letter here when we arrived. These we answered as soon as possible. Yesterday we wrote our part of the class letter which is now to go back to Des Moines. As soon as I can I intend writing to Addie, Mamie, Elinor, Aunt Matt, Hattie, Sallie, etc.