Jessie Graham Flower (–1931)

Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College is number four in the seven book 'College Girl' series, the second of the four series about Grace Harlowe.

This book opens with the Semper Fidelis club members having a progressive luncheon, which means each house at which the lunch takes place is responsible for one course. This book is copyrighted 1914. One of the characters, Arline Thayer says that progressive luncheons are extremely popular with college and high school girls. I learned about them from Fripsey Fun by Madye Lee Chastain, a delightful children's book from 1955.

Although most of the problems revolve around misunderstandings between friends and problems with Kathleen West, the resident mean girl, Grace will eventually see someone whom she did not expect to see and really doesn't want to have around. (I am annoyed that Grace doesn't immediately inform the local police, even though it's explained that she made a promise to her father in chapter X/10. Yes, even if a lady was supposed to have her name appear in a newspaper only when she was born, when she got married, and when she died back then - if I remember correctly, this is important!)

NOTES:

Chapter II (2): A very tall new student is seen.

Chapter III (3):

a. It's 1914, so the student has a pitcher and washbowl for her room.

b. 'The Wreck of the Hesperus' is an 1842 poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow . The title has been often used to describe someone or something that's a mess.

c. The tall new student is Patience Eliot. She's from just outside Boston. She's skipped Freshman year and is a Sophomore, thanks to studying with her father, who has been ill, which is why she's late arriving.

Chapter IV (4):

a. Kathleen West is referred to as 'that newspaper girl,' later mentioned to be a reporter. She and Patience do not like each other.

b. One assumes the incident for which Miss West unjustly blames Grace and her friends is in an earlier book. Grace is being discreet and not telling Patience what happened.

c. Grace thinks about her good friend Mabel Ashe, whom she'd promised to help Kathleen to like college. She wonders why Mabel hasn't written to her.

d. There's a freshman named Miss Rawle who sincerely admires Miss West, who isn't kind to her.

Chapter V (5):

a. Patience gives Miss Rawle some good advice regarding Miss West.

b. Patience gives Miss West some plain truths that the reporter doesn't take well.

Chapter VI (6):

a. Miss Rawle's first name is Alice. Her room is in Livingston Hall.

b. Miss West and Patience have an argument, in which Kathleen learns that Patient's father is James Merton Eliot.

Chapter VII (7):

a. According to https://collections.carnegiehall.org/archive/Film--Les-Miserables--January-26--1..., there was a 1914 film version of Les Misérables.

b. There was a 1908 film of 'The Taming of the Shrew'.

c. Ruth and Gertrude reside in Morton House. Elizabeth's last name, 'Wade,' is finally mentioned.

d. Grace finally found out why Kathleen West didn't like them from Alberta Wicks when Grace was a junior.

e. Grace calls Arline 'Daffydowndilly Thayer'. There's an old nursery rhyme about a daffodil that calls it 'Daffydowndilly' and describes the flower as if it were a girl.

Chapter VIII (8):

a. Grace sees a man who seems familiar. He's staring at the lithographs on the front of the movie theatre. (This book was written when we Americans still used some British spellings we changed later in the 20th century.)

b. Grace remembers the man is 'Larry the Locksmith', whom she last saw when she was testifying against him (see Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School; or The Parting of the Ways). Larry should still be in prison for another three years.

Chapter IX (9):

a. Grace finally gets a letter from Mabel. The club members have a Thanksgiving invitation.

b. The 'Hippy' mentioned is probably Hippy Wingate. He's one of the eight original friends.
Mentions: the March Hare, the Mad Hatter, Alice in Wonderland

Chapter X(10):

a. Grace sees Larry again. She later runs into Miss West and tells her about the theft of some money that she and Eleanor Savelli found afterwords, and the Oakdale police capturing the thief.

b. Grace wants her name left out of Miss West's story.

Chapter XI (11): Police Chief Ellis has a daughter who is a freshman at the college. No, he wouldn't want her name to appear in police court news.

Chapter XII (12): Grace learns that Kathleen West hadn't kept her word. There is a confrontation.

Chapter XIII (13):

a. Grace gets another letter from Mable Ashe.

b. Grace and some get to spend Thanksgiving at the Ashes' winter home in New York.

c. We meet Mable's father, millionaire Robert Ashe.

Chapter XIV (14):

a. Everett Southard is mentioned again. Apparently, he's an actor.

b. Elfred recounts an incident from when she was eight years old.

c. They have a drive through Central Park.

d. The 'Meadow-Brook Girls' was another series Altemus published. The author was Janet Aldrige. Grace 'Tommy' Thompson of the Meadow-Brook Girls is Hippy Wingate's cousin. The adventure Grace mentions might be book four, The Meadow-Brook Girls In the Hills; or, The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains.

e. Mabel insists on knowing about Kathleen West's actions.

f. Alberta Wicks and Mary Hampton are brought up. Grace explains that those trouble-makers have reformed.

g. Elfred makes an insulting comparison to Native Americans. (Apparently, she either didn't know or didn't care how much had been done to Native Americans by white people.

h. Patience's father lives at the Elms, South Framingham, Massachusetts.

Chapter XVI (16):

a. The girls visit the newspaper where Mabel and Kathleen work.

b. The girls take an 'automobile bus' from Overton station to Wayne Hall.

c. Grace receives that longed-for letter from her father.

d. This is where Grace asks Anne if she would give up acting if David proposes to her.

e. The girls discuss the proposed honor competition among the girls of the senior class to write a play that class will then perform. It's decided that the competition will be open to all the girls of the college, although only seniors will be in the class.

Chapter XVII (17):

a. Arline apologizes to Grace.

b. Arline is the president of the senior class.

c. The rules for the play writing competition are given and three teachers agree to be judges.
Mention: 1914 film version of 'The Merchant of Venice,' which has since been lost.

Chapter XVIII (18):

a. Grace addresses Elfreda as 'J. Elfreda Briggs,' which is confirmed as her name in chapter XX/20. I don't know what the 'J' is for, but I wonder how bad it could be if Miss Briggs prefers to use her middle name.

b. Tom Gray and his aunt, Mrs. Rose Gray, have arrived. Rose agrees to include Elfreda among her 'adopted' children.

c. Reference is made to a 'ghost party' when Elfreda was a freshman.

d. The girls perform the 'Wonderland Circus' for Mrs. Gray and some of the faculty. Mr. Thomas Renfield, who is the benefactor of the Semper Fidelis Club, is included. (It's about animals from at least the first Alice book.) Emma plays a Sphinx, although it's not part of the circus.

Chapter XIX (19):

a. Four lines of the Overton College song head this chapter.

c. The Semper Fidelis Club wants to give a 'Famous Fiction' masquerade and dance.

d. Patience makes up eight lines in praise of Grace and Arline.
Mentions: Hamlet, Sancho Panza, Faust, Marguerite, Robinson Crusoe, the Three Muskateers, Peter Rabbit, Hiawatha, Rosalind, Shylock, ands Portia

Chapter XX (20):

a. A new building is going up on campus.

b. The winner of the play contest and second place winner are announced.

c. Relatives and friends who came to the Commencement are named.

d. The new building's donor is named as is the building itself.

e. Engagements are announced among the Oakdale friends, but two of the young men are going to have to wait.

This is a nice book. I have long enjoyed the same author's Marjorie Dean series under the pen name 'Pauline Lester'. This book is similar in style. The morality play that won the contest made me cringe a little because it would be considered corny by 21st century standards, but it's sincerely meant. The characters are not without flaws, which helps.

The worst thing I can say about this book is that the reader seems to be expected to be familiar with the series so far as characters are concerned. I don't know if the David Nesbitt who appears in the last chapter is Miriam's brother or cousin. If Tom Gray hadn't called Mrs. Rose Gray 'Aunt Rose,' I would have guessed she was his mother. I've done my best with the character list, but some characters had no first name provided, or the last name was never mentioned, or whether that person was a student or instructor or what.… (mehr)

Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Lost River Trail is the tenth and last volume of the Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders series, which is the last of the four Grace Harlowe series. (The others are about Grace in high school, Grace in college, and her overseas series, which appears to be about her adventures as an ambulance driver during World War I.)

Grace is still referred to as 'Grace Harlowe' by the author, although characters address her as 'Mrs. Gray'. Her husband's name is Tom. He's been around since the first series. He's a forestry engineer and off making a timber survey for the government. According to https://pdsh.fandom.com/wiki/Grace_Harlowe, which cites Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers for this information, our heroine is actually Grace Harlowe II. The original Grace Harlowe was her grandmother, who led a group of riders in what was then the Western Frontier during the 19th century.

The Overland Riders are being guided through Washington state's forest by Hamilton 'Ham' White, who gets the book going by telling Hippy Wingate, husband of Grace's friend Nora, to rouse the others. There's some trouble, but he doesn't want to spell it out, even though Hippy tells him he has the wrong idea about the riders. Ham does explain, after everyone is ready to go. Yes, a wildfire is sufficient reason to get moving. A wildfire in the character's path is not a bad way to start off an adventure. Adding a village that needs to be warned makes it better. Keep those ponies moving!

It's a good thing for Ham White that he has the Overland Riders to help him in felling trees and creating burned areas around Silver Creek Village, because none of the villagers will help until they realize there IS a fire, and it's less than a quarter mile (0.4 km) away! The village is surrounded on three sides early into chapter three.

NOTES:

Chapter I (1):

a. Emma Dean's offer to 'demonstrate' over the problem, and the others' remarks about her offer is explained by the writer of the notes on the various series a thttps://c.web.umkc.edu/crossonm/graceharlowe.htm . Emma is described as having 'inexplicably ... become a mystic cult-of-the-month devotee'.

b. Because someone named Arline Thayer is said to have put something over on Emma last year, that was probably one of the earlier books in the Overland Riders series.

Chapter II (2):

a. Because I have not read any of at least three books involving Grace Harlowe's war work in France, or the books between that one and this one, I can't say how many crushes Emma has had before her current one on Ham White.

b. Silver Creek, stream and village, are reached.

c. Washington Territory became a state in 1889, so Stacy is really insulting the crackers in the barrel.

Chapter III (3): Elfreda is towed down Silver Creek to Roaring River.

Chapter IV (4):

a. Emma has known Ham White less than a week. The Overland Riders hired him on the recommendation of a banker in Cresco. They're heading for the Cascade Range.

b. Stacy rode a log, which he called a 'Roaring River Liner'.

c. To be 'f*gged out' is slang for being exhausted. It has nothing to do with slurs.

d. Elfreda meets a man who says he was shot.

Chapter V (5):

a. Elfreda wears a jeweled watch presented to her by the French Government.

b. Ham White warns about the Murrays, notorious bandits.

Chapter VI (6):

a. Sam Peterson was shot by the Hawk Murray gang. Elfreda worked with the wounded in WWI, so she tends him.

b. Sam Peterson tells Elfreda about the Lost Mine.

Chapter VII (7): Elfreda meets the six men of the Hawk Murray Gang.

Chapter VIII (8): Elfreda and Stacy are found.

Chapter IX (9):

a. Elfreda asks Ham about Lost River and if there's a legend about 'Grandma and the Children'.

b. Elfreda calls Grace's flashlight her 'pocket lamp'.

c. There are two mysterious thefts and Elfreda has a suspect.

d. The Pony Rider Boys was another Henry Altemus Company series. The author was Frank Gee Patchin.

Chapter X (10):

a. The Overland Riders meet Jim Haley, who tells them he's the International Peanut Company's sole representative in Washington state. He calls himself the 'Man From Seattle' and dresses like a Mexican rancher.

b. To 'foozle' is to bungle something or be awkward about it. Apparently it's a golf term.

Chapter XI (11): Stacy staying in his tent with his blanket over his heat when he hears gunfire is described as 'practicing safety first'.

Chapter XII (12):

a. I do not know why Elfreda feels she has an obligation to Stacy that she can never repay.

b. Stacy plays a prank.

Chapter XIII (13):

a. Ham White says it's illegal to shoot black bears [out of season].

b. Stacy uses 'cart wheels' as a term for dollars.

Chapter XIV (14): This is not a chapter for animal lovers.

Chapter XV (15):

a. The author is using 'queer' in its old meaning of being odd or strange.

b. Granted, the words are of a man who was already old in 1924, but I'm afraid the 'N-word' is used here.

Chapter XVII (17): Grace is out of practice reading wigwag signal flag signals.

Chapter XVIII (18): A familiar face makes an appearance and a message is sent by an unusual means.

Chapter XIX (19): Grace's husband's pet name for her is 'Loyalheart'.

Chapter XX (20):

a. Sadly, the Native American speaks in the ghastly dialect writers inflicted on them back then.

b. The Chief Forester and a special agent show up.

c. The book jumps ahead five weeks and then to Christmas.

d. Tom and Grace's adopted daughter, Yvonne, was rescued by Grace probably in Grace Harlowe With the Red Cross in France, or Grace Harlowe With the Marines at Chateau Thierry or Grace Harlow With the U. S. Troops in the Argonne.

e. Elfreda probably met Little Silver in Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Great American Desert.

f. Given that most of the book takes place in summer and the baby is four weeks old at Christmas, Grace must have been pregnant during the Lost River adventure.

There's plenty more action than a mere forest fire in this book. There are bandits, wild animals, a Native American, and a legendary lost gold mine. Even the last two unmarried women in the group find husbands, although their romances are hardly center stage. There are a couple of racists touches, some of the unnamed female characters are hysterical and useless, and the fat boy of the Overland Riders is mostly comic relief, but on the whole, it's not a bad book.… (mehr)

I grew up in a house that had a lot of old fashioned "girls" books. Most of those series predated Nancy Drew and were kin to Grace Harlowe. Even though I grew up in the 80's I read and loved them all. Grace Harlowe was one of my favorites. I recently found that this series is available via project Gutenberg and it is so fun to revisit it. I do still have this book in hardcover but have never been tempted to reread it because I stronly favor reading on my e-reader these days and the pages and binding on my copy are so brittle it makes me nervous.

The adventures Grace and her gang have are very wholesome and silly by today's standards. There is definitely breath taking gender stereotyping throughout but if you can stand that - the generous descriptions of clothing, parties and school provide a glimpse into life during that time that are really alive.… (mehr)