Stephanie Grace Whitson - [Quilt Chronicles 03] by Message on the Quilt

she must depart in order to benefit those attending the event scheduled in Long Pine, Nebraska, the end of this month. Miss Jones is widely known for her unique method of instruction, and our Interstate Chautauqua is indeed fortunate to have her stop in our fair city. Inquire at the Paddock Hotel to reserve an appointment for private instruction. Many will undoubtedly wish to take advantage of the opportunity to purchase Miss Jones’s privately published “Favorite French Phrases” and “German for Gentlemen.”
    Miss Ida Jones will give her renowned lecture:
    “Resolved: That woman has as much influence in the nation as man”
    Check the special Chautauqua Edition of the
Daily Dispatch
for further details.
    After penning the announcements about Miss Ida Jones, Emilie sat back. Father might veto the idea of highlighting that last announcement, but surely the ladies who read the
Daily Dispatch
would appreciate the newspaper’s emphasizing such a topic. She pondered the lecture title. It was hard to imagine anyone believing that a woman could have as much influence as a man. The women she knew didn’t have any influence at all—at least not when it came to things that really mattered such as politics and business.
    She looked back up at the Methodist ladies’ announcement about pie and cake and “mission efforts at home and abroad.” As far as Emilie knew, that was the only acceptable way for women to have influence in the nation—or the world, for that matter. No one looked askance at a woman selling cake so that she could send money to missionaries in China—or to the Pawnee students attending the boarding school in Genoa up in Nance County. The latter was one of Mother’s pet projects. Mother thought the single missionary ladies who served on Indian reservations heroic. Wasn’t it interesting that a woman who thought it was perfectly all right for someone else’s daughter to socialize with Indians declared her own daughter’s writing for a newspaper unacceptable. How ironic. How hypocritical.
    Emilie looked over the announcement again. How did Miss Jones manage to travel the lecture circuit and still maintain the kind of reputation that encouraged Chautauqua boards to invite her to speak? How wonderful to be free to travel from place to place: to teach and speak about things one cared about; to be independent, with no one to answer to but oneself; to make a living from words. Whatever Emilie did over the next few days, she would make it a point to attend Miss Jones’s lecture and to linger afterward to ask a few questions.
    Inspiration struck.
I could request an interview.
In fact, she could interview all the women teaching or speaking over the next ten days. She could give them a chance to express their views to the thousands of ladies who’d be coming from all over this part of the country to attend Chautauqua. Emilie’s mind raced from one possibility to the next, and then, as quickly as she’d gotten excited about the idea, things came to a grinding halt.
    If Father wouldn’t let her continue with the Ladies’ News, there was no possibility of his publishing interviews. That was, after all, real news. Something that people might actually read. Something that could give Emilie a chance to use her writing talent. If she’d ever had any. She glanced over at the trunk that held the books and papers from her year away at Rockford. Excellent marks on school papers might not translate to newspaper interviews. But then again, who was to say they wouldn’t? She wouldn’t know until she tried.
    What had Bert said just moments ago?
“People everywhere are going to read Emilie Rhodes someday.”
She reread the announcement about Miss Jones. Taking a deep breath, she put her final Ladies’ News in the folder for Father. And she decided that somehow, in the midst of delivering it and going to rehearsal and helping Mother get set up out at the cottage, somehow she would manage to interview Miss Jones and take