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Show 225 Her justification for leaving was that she could: 1) be near her boys until they departed; 2) take the little girls with her; 3) rest a bit at the seashore; 4) "answer an urgent call of a kind and faithful friend," and 5) "refresh [her] knowledge in hospitals and attending lectures." In preparation for her departure from Salt Lake City, Ellis, having "a personal interest in the old home, the first romantic spot where [she] began [her] wedded life," she moved all of her possessions back into it. Moving did not sit well with Ellis, and she described her feelings about it in the potent language of deep emotion (this, of course, in her later years and after many more moves): Often I have wondered if all people who have loved much and moved often have felt as I have-that dull, sick, heart-aching, life-breaking condition, a sort of indefinite dethronement. 8 This was a genuine uprooting, for she relinquished her horse and buggy in order to pay her tithing, then used her milk cow to satisfy her account at the grocery store. There is a wistful sentence prior to her description of these arrangements: "In those days our financial status was ample for our journey." By the time she wrote of this experience, she had seen much harder times. Once, in later years, she lacked even a dollar to mail a package. The inference through some of her letters of that late period (written on any scrap of paper at hand and in margins and across printed letterheads) is that financial concerns did not diminish in her declining years. |
