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Show 147 At once I jumped to my feet and spoke to my husband as I ne'er had spoken to him before! "Yesterday you said that I should go. I am going, going now!" Did Milford consider this an attack on his masculinity, on his authority within his own family? Did he react with an anger which he had displayed on other less critical issues? Not according to Ellis. His response was as surprising as was her reaction. It seemed it could not be that I could ever do such a disrespectful thing. And yet no other word was said but kindly loving admonitions for my wisest course and caution for my health and promises of aid the very best that could be secured.12 There are details, not available in her diary, to flesh out what were perhaps the most pivotal 24 hours in the life of Ellis Reynolds Shipp. She recounted, in her eighties, that as she was packed and ready the night before her scheduled return to Philadelphia, her little boy became ill, with a rising temperature and a cough. All night long, every few minutes, she attempted to alleviate his discomfort with oil and alcohol rubs and cough medicine. At dawn he looked up at his mother, smiled, and said, "I'm all right. You don't have to stay home for me." This illuminates and makes more understandable the tearing sensation she felt at her departure. By taking with her the trunk of clothes she had made for her very first baby (enough to last for all the babies she would have), Ellis made some provision for the child she was to bear while away in Pennsylvania. Her sunset recollections of other aspects of that departure are more dramatic but less accurate than what she wrote in her diary at |