Minnie Harms was about 56 when she wrote this letter to her daughter-in-law. How it ended up in the steamer trunk is a mystery to me. Perhaps it is only a draft, or was never mailed.
Letter with poems. 1953. by AinsworthIN
Courtesy of E.H.
I suspect she was writing out all those lines from memory. I have heard, from people who knew her, that Minnie loved poetry and could recite it readily.
The poem she mentions on the first page, and later quotes, is "An Order for a Picture" by Alice Cary (whom I had never heard of before — thank you, Minnie). On the second page, she quotes "Gradatim" by Josiah Gilbert Holland. Her trip to Virginia brought to mind "The Blue and the Gray" by Francis Miles Finch.
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