Davida de Guibert
To: Miss Ethel E. Adams
4326 – 4th Ave.,
Moline, Illinois

Snow Hill, Maryland
November, 22, 1910.

My dearest friend,

Your letter of love and sympathy reached me only last evening. I do not deserve any love, but am glad you are still so dear and I need you now if ever I did. There is nothing much to write about my mix up. I thot I loved John, we were married kept house one week and he gave me the money with which to leave him and come home. He was as good and kind as he could be. I did not love h im could not stand it any longer and left. My aunt, uncle, grandparents and his folks did everything to make our home beautiful and to make me happy but all in vain. I was crazy, do not see how I ever got home at all, I was so crazy and it was awful. John left too about the time I did. [He] wrote from North Dakota. He went to his sisters there.

My [De Guibert] grandparents are disgraced, his home is near theirs [in Wolford County, Illinois], we rented one of my grandmothers houses a half mile from her and expected to be happy. I was coming home to see mother and all when I felt like it but things turned out so differently. Could you see how I could be so wicked? Oh! Ehtel it is awful.

I do not know what to do with the remains of my broken life. I feel ashamed to look any one in the face. Have not tried to write back to the old place and grandma feels so awful.

Here it is nearly Thanksgiving. I am thankful to be home with my dear mother and father. Milton [DE GUIBERT] is so good, he is going up to Winchester my cousins place [near Berlin, Maryland], twenty miles up the bay tomorrow, to spend Thanksgiving with a boy his age [Lowell Jameson CARTER, 1895-1952], my cousins eldest. None of Uncle Irvin [INGELS']s folks [in LaFayette, Illinois] know a word about my whereabouts. I think I shall write to Jamie [James INGELS, 1884-1973] and tell him.

Read in the paper Mr. Nicholson was home to see his parents over Sunday.

Well Ethel I thot I would see you again but I didn’t. I left in a hurry, my usual style. Well I may get over this but as Jamie says I’ll never look the same. I hope you will write when you can. The weather here is lovely, all are well. My sister [Undena DE GUILBERT Eberlein] is back in old New York [City] [after giving birth to Roxane EBERLEIN in Snow Hill on April 16, 1910].

I must help with the supper. Will write again some day.

Your loving friend,

Davida

I went to Dixon [College] to study. The President gave me work to pay my board and room. I kept the post office and supply store, studied short hand & type.