Florida Pier / writings, sorted

Florida Pier Scott-Maxwell (1883-1979) : writings, sorted / jmcvey.net

Florida Pier, later (and better) known as Florida Scott-Maxwell
stage actor, writer (short stories, essays, plays); Jungian psychotherapist; later wrote of aging, women in midlife, and, still later, her own experience of aging

The writings are sorted chronologically, within the sections outlined below. Transcriptions/reformattings are provided for some pieces, either because they are not otherwise available online, or as a means for the compiler to read, and even footnote or otherwise annotate them, carefully.

upper vertical bar ╹ at left returns to top of page

short fiction
The Gentler View
a series of some 165 essays that ran in Harper’s Weekly, 1908-1913
The Woman Who Saw
short pieces in The [New York] Evening Sun ca 1909-?, widely syndicated; byline uncertain
sketches, essays
London sights; aging, women, psychotherapy; book reviews (to come)
plays
some produced, even published; most are earlier typewritten copies filed for copyright protection
books
They knew how to die / The kinsmen know how to die (by Sophie Botcharsky and Florida Pier; 1931)
Towards Relationship (1939)
Women and Sometimes Men (1957)
The Measure of My Days (1968)
life (little progress here)
why ?

— The accompanying photograph of a scene from the second act of “Unleavened Bread,” now playing in Washington, shows Selma’s second husband, the architect, submitting the plans he has made for the Parsons house. Miss Tyree is Selma, Mr. E. J. Morgan is Wilbur Littleton, architect, Virginia Buchanan is Mrs. Parsons, Florida Pier is Miss Parsons, and George Woodward is Silas Parsons.
ex The Book Buyer 22:2 (New York, March 1901) : 98-99
google books : link
Harvard copy (better scan, also google books) : link

Florida Pier is at upper right.

Florida Pier
on the staff of the New York Evening Sun, where she conducts “The Woman Who Saw” column, and she also conducts “The Gentler View” column in Harper’s Weekly. Apart from these. Miss Pier has written many short stories, some of which have appeared in the Century, Harper’s, the Circle, and other magazines.
— The Writer 21:3 (Boston, March 1909) : 40 : link

short fiction, drama

“Miss Harriet’s Extravagance”
The Century Magazine 69:1 (November 1904) : 149-151
link (Ohio State U copy, via hathitrust)
features an electric car...
“The Power of Ancestors”
The Century Magazine 71:3 (January 1906) : 445-447
link (U Michigan copy, hathitrust) / same (Indiana U copy, hathitrust)
“Your Mother’s Moors”
Harper’s Magazine 118:705 (January 1909) : 404-412 : link
ToC : link
illustrations by May Wilson Preston (1873-1949) : wikipedia
“The Little Man with the Safety Pin”
Harper’s Weekly (May 1, 1909) : 22-23
link (hathitrust) / link (google books)
illustrations by Howard V. Brown (1878-1945) : link / more (MagazineArt)
aside —

Odd tale, a kind of morality tale, where one — “I started the world with a vocabulary, and not much else” — who lacked conviction, even apparently was a thief who lost his job for it... now falls into a situation where he brings “the wrong girl” and an irresolute/regretful young man to an agreement.
Has a certain stage (I mean, theatrical, almost Twilight Zone) aspect to it; might be entirely done in a room and adjoining stairwell, although it does commence outside, on the street.
note to self : transcribe.
“Napoleon’s Apples”
Ainslee’s 23:6 (July 1909) : 129-136 : link
“Mid-Sea Madness”
The Smart Set (A magazine of cleverness) 28:4 (August 1909) : 41-51 : link (Ohio State U)
ToC : link
“Musty, Dusty Mr. Cullender”
illustrated by Horace Taylor (1881-1934) : link (London Transport), more (Christie’s)
Munsey’s Magazine 42:3 (December 1909) : 389-398 : link
link (Hathitrust)
“The Summoning Knocker”
illustrations by William L(eroy). Jacobs (1869-1917) : LoC
Harper’s Magazine 120:720 (May 1910)
Princeton copy/scan (via google books) : link
like “The Last of His Family” set in Italy.
“The Last of His Family”
Hampton’s Magazine 25:1 (July 1910) : 129-134
google books : link
hathitrust : link
ToC : link

aside 1

a kind of rewriting of the Jamesian trope, of wealthy young American woman, traveling in Italy, in the sights of the comtessa who needs the marriage to her son, to save the Raspaglione [quite a name! — grasping, rasping, rapacious...] family from vanishing. The family’s fortunes were, it is suggested, violently obtained, and maintained by tricks. The daughter, Spring Ripley, whose father made his money in buttons, “millions of buttons, miles of factories. We’ve climbed, though not so darned high, on buttons, and though I’ve never minded them particularly before, they make me quite crazy about the general bloodiness, as you say, of your family.” (131)
The comte (Paolo) is a playboy and under control of his mother. Spring notices that he cheats in tennis. Later, in an unwelcome and violent action, he kisses her — “her throat, her lips.” Spring has presence of mind enough to leave the palace. She avoids being trapped (or tripped by a fifth step, that has a meaningful role in the story).
Earlier, the comtessa asks about her name, Spring. —
The comte again acted as interpreter and the girl laughed. “That’s easy. My name is Spring. It’s rather foolish, isn’t it? We began to be able to afford poetry about the time I was born and mother rather let herself go on my name.”
I wonder whether Florida Pier’s given name had a similar back story. See her subtle and beautiful essay on James, “The Pale Adventurers” in Harper’s Weekly (December 19, 1910) : 22 : link (transcription)

aside 2

in same issue,
Rheta Childe Dorr, “A Fighting Chance for the City Child” (July 1910) : 103-116 : link
in preceding issues,
“Making Over the Backward Child” (June 1910) : 809-822 : link
“The Prodigal Daughter” (“second article — what organized women can do to take domestic service out of the list of dangerous trades”) (May 1910) : 679-688 : link
“The Prodigal Daughter” (April 1910) : 526-538 : link
see also
“Women’s Battle for the Ballot” in The New Broadway Magazine 21:1 (July 1908) : link (Ann Lewis Women’s Suffrage Collection)
Rheta Childe Dorr (1868-1948) : wikipedia : link
author of A Woman of Fifty (1924, 1925) : link
“Mrs. Nolly’s Real Self”
illustrations by James Montgomery Flagg
Harper’s Magazine 123:777 (October 1911) : 786-795
hathitrust : link
“Rentin’ Hens”
with Pictures by F. R. Gruger (1871-1953) : link (Society of Illustrators) / more (Saturday Evening Post)
The Century Magazine 83:2 (December 1911) : 214-219 : (link) (Harvard copy, via hathitrust)
a father-daughter story.
“Inheriting Bunchy”
Illustrations by Wallace Morgan
The Delineator 29:2 (February 1912) : 93-94 : link
“Horse Management”
[a short in the “Light on the Path” section], The FRA : A Journal of Affirmation, Exponent of The American Philosophy (July 1912) : xliii : link
ToC this issue : link
published by The Roycrofters, East Aurora, N. Y. : wikipedia : link

entire —
It is not that one is afraid of animals, it is just that we are at such a disadvantage in dealing with them, for we have no earthly means of telling what is going on in their heads. It is only our respect for horses that makes us — well, respectful in our treatment of him. It seems so unlikely that the day will not eventually come when horses will realize that they are much stronger than we are and rightly enough should dictate to us instead of permitting us to dictate to them. And what more likely than that the change should take place while one is on a horse’s back? No one can say the idea is unreasonable. When a horse is trotting smartly along, one is not afraid of what he is doing — that stands to reason; one is only absorbingly interested in what he may be thinking of doing. A change in plans on the part of anyone is upsetting if the plans concern you, but a horse, having no way of warning you, even if he was kindly intentioned enough to think it necessary, is apt to act so suddenly, and it is at such moments that actions speak with such jarring loudness. He may feel his actions to be beyond criticism, but as we lack all the deductions which led up to his sudden decision we can not help disagreeing with him and feeling a little chagrined that we were so much slower than he in coming to what he must feel to have been a simple conclusion.
“Mr. Walker”
illustrated by Arthur William Brown
The Delineator 72:5 (May 1913) : 356-357, 414
hathitrust : link
“The Great Little Man”
illustrations by Harvey Emrich
Harper’s Magazine 126:755 (May 1913) : 854-862
hathitrust : link
[sudden event, here, hailstorm and broken window, precipitates major change. something like the story, the guy decides to stay longer in Europe (find it)]
“The Unemployed”
illustrated by John Alonzo Williams (1869-1951)
Harper’s Magazine 127:758 (July 1913) : 281-291
hathitrust : link
father-daughter story
Florida Pier-Maxwell, “Darkness”
The New Adelphi vol. 3 (September 1929 / August 1930) : 18-22
hathitrust : link
transcription ; link
excert —
...Sitting immobile, she stared at life. So one could be alive and yet be outside life, that noisy, warm place where other people were. She knew no door through which she might enter, and so she had strayed here where there was nothing but recurring night with days as too brief respites from the night.
Darkness threatened yet hid her from darkness. Light brought safety yet revealed her to darkness. Now she did not know of which she was most afraid, since one seemed but the opposite of the other.

aside —

C. G. Jung’s essay “Woman in Europe” appeared in The New Adelphi 11:1 (September 1928) : 19-35
There are themes in here that will be taken up by Floria Scott-Maxwell, about relationship, and indirect method, and the feminine in man, and masculine in women; I wonder too about her marriage to a logic-only electrical engineer John Maxwell Scott-Maxwell (1880-1951), referred to (I believe) in The Measure of My Days (1968) — "It is baffling to be loved by someone who is incapable of seeing you. It is pain to have your love claimed as a cloak that another may hide from himself.”
“Storm”
Pall Mall Magazine 5:5 (September 1929) : 76-89 ? link
[have not been able to locate, may not exist; only reference is from phisp.com : link]
not in volume 88 containing April-September, at NYPL : link; maybe in succeeding volume? (stored off-site)
“Miss Naseby’s Life.”
The Fortnightly Review 126 (October 1929) : 541-556
archive.org : link
also in Edward J. O’Brien, ed., The Best British Short Stories Of 1930; With An Irish And Colonial Supplement (1930) : 145-162
archive.org : link
nuances of character (above all, of Miss Naseby’s brother, who comes over to Paris, from London, to see what is going on; she wants her investments to generate more.)
Florida Pier, “Entering London”
The Adelphi 1:6 (March 1931) : 491-495
hathitrust : link
transcription : link
a bleak story — moving on from divorce? starting anew?
“Pray for the Princess”
Life and Letters 6:32 (January 1931) : 50-61
has flavor of fairy-tale...
“Bigger and Worse Lies.”
This Quarter 3:4 (April, May, June 1931) : 644-654
UC copy/scan (via hathitrust) : link
reprinted with different title — “Lies” — in Edward J. O’Brien, ed., The Best British Short Stories of 1931 (1931) : 173-182
borrowable at archive.org : link
the narrator, a new arrival at the pension, gets to know two other residents there, Miss Cunningham who seems unable to tell a truth, and Mademoiselle Béraud and her “kaleidoscopic posturing” (647). The story is psychologically astute (like “Miss Naseby’s Life” of 1929), and brought to this mind Rachel Cusk’s Kudos trilogy for its use of the narrator, who draws the others out.

The Gentler View / Harper’s Weekly (1909-1913)

These are essays, not stories. Here and there are found thematic DNA shared with the short stories, and also with Florida Pier’s later writing — as Florida Scott-Maxwell — in particular her The Measure of My Days (1968).
The Gentler View series appeared in roughly three out of every four numbers, in what (beginning with “The Decency of Time” in the March 6, 1909 number) would be the “Advertising” section in the back of the issue.

Included here are four pieces from 1908, the first three of which preceded appearance of “The Gentler View” heading, but exhibit the same tone that is typical of essays in that series.
“What Does Man Know of Woman?”
(November 14, 1908) : 33 : link
transcription : link
One cannot be blamed for having a lively curiosity about the domestic happiness of certain of the learned gentlemen who have lately written on that burning subject, woman.
“The Penalties of Authorship”
(December 5, 1908) : 29 : link
transcription : link
“The Passing of the New England Conscience”
(December 19, 1908) : 29 : link
transcription : link
“For the Suppression of Mothers”
(December 26, 1908) : 29 : link
transcription : link
last line — “What is Russian poetry to wet feet now?”
a wonderful piece, by — a mother.
“The Senseless Necessities”
(January 16, 1909) : 33 : link
transcription : link
a suggestive catalogue — necessarily partial — of the micro-pleasures that pass without much notice, and of “bounce.”
“The Serious Results of the Late Humor”
(January 23, 1909) : 31 : link
“The Inadequate Eye”
(January 30, 1909) : 31 : link
transcription : link
...and he has it on the best authority that if he does not see in the one and only way there is no use in his seeing at all. He would cut a much more respectable figure if he were blind.
aside —
a theme taken up elsewhere, perhaps in the story “The Great Little Man” (1913)?
“Confidences”
(February 20, 1909) : 31 : link
transcription : link
on indiscretion — on not keeping some things to oneself, and its irremediable consequences.
“Collecting One’s Past”
(February 27, 1909) : 27 : link
like “Confidences” the previous week, somewhat philosophical. actual past, not so pleasant, softens with age; might be invented too. Last (of three) paragraph —
It is not only those adventures which we seek, but those which come unsought, that grow precious with age. If we had an unhappy childhood — if we lived, perhaps, in a place lonely or dull — these experiences take on the most engaging attributes when we remember them but faintly; and without in the least intending it we cloak these years in becoming garments; a child that had just the usual juvenile troubles we transform into a a poignant little figure with a tragic eye and a loneliness that was symbolical of his rarefied soul. And this small fictitious person, having at one time been closely connected with us, sheds on our present stage of development an excessively interesting light. The least imaginative of us are quite capable of transfiguring our pasts up to within, say, five years back. Many a man has built his mysteriously charming manner on the things he thinks happened to him in early youth; and it would not be easy to distinguish these chimerical things from the things that really happened. A blank past is so deadening a thing that young people had best begin collecting theirs now. If you see an incident loping along, get in its path and persuade it to stay with you permanently. Romantic things are of course disagreeable at the time, but they must be gone through with, and if one only waits long enough they will become convulsingly funny.A past well managed is very helpful, quite an asset. It is no wonder that we hoard up these invisible riches, counting them and turning them over until they have increased in worth surprisingly. They are the only bank that we always have access to, and it is imperative that we should always find it plethoric. To know that one’s life has been full, to feel that it has, perhaps, been romantic, gives one a confidence, a poise, that is most bracing. One wraps oneself in the rich garments of one’s adventures, and the rustling as it drags on the floor makes one’s carriage very upright and impressive. A blank past is so deadening a thing that young people had best begin collecting theirs now. If you see an incident loping along, get in its path and persuade it to stay with you permanently. Romantic things are of course disagreeable at the time, but they must be gone through with, and if one only waits long enough they will become convulsingly funny. One is very apt to get rheumatism from hazardous adventures, but even rheumatism will, in after-years, appeal to one as something extremely humorous. The hope felt in the future is a mild sentiment compared with the obliterating fondness felt for the past. Privation, cold, , bodily pain, become topics for lively conversation; and, unable to speak for strangled peals of delighted remembrance, you try to recall the time when you were stone-broke and had serious thoughts of begging. A voyage during which seasickness seemed a thing you could not live through is in years after chuckled over, gaining one a reputation for spritely wit. And so the staggering, limping footprints we have left behind turn, with a little help from us, into an orderly, even triumphant march of impressions. They are suggestive of the swing of an oncoming army. They endow us who walk at their head with the captivating graces of a drum-major; and, feeling that we have whipped a shocking lot of recruits into admirable shape, we swagger convincingly, thanks to the past which meekly follows at our heels.
“The Decency of Time”
(March 6, 1909) : 27 : link
[on timing, when right to let something (anger) go, etc etc. nice.]
“The Disquietude of Being Liked”
(March 20, 1909) : 27 : link
...Boys have been driven away to sea because their mothers so adored them. They have tried being wayward, but it is an exhausting business to perpetually remain the worst boy in the village when one’s inclinations draw one to a quieter life. Going to sea is their only chance of leading a harmless existence, and, at the same time, leaving the impression firmly behind in a mother’s mind that one is a good-for-nothing. To recall the really nice youngsters who have strained their powers of mischieveousness in an effort to down their mothers’ exalted idea of them is quite a saddening reflection...
The idea is elaborated in The Woman Who Saw series (below), “Why Chivalry Is Nipped in the Bud,” encounted in in The Kindergarten-Primary Magazine 28:8 (April 1916) : 234 : link
Travellers, the Outer Shell, and a Man
(March 27, 1909) 29 : link
transcription : link
on the inevitable interpersonal dynamics problems of traveling in groups of three; on the mismatch of a person’s physical appearance with the realities of their personality; and on shopping for the wife’s coat, by a couple of a certain age (with the unhelpful aid of a saleswoman of a very different age).
Guide-Books, etc.
(April 10, 1909) : 27 : link
Misfortunes, Mysteries, and the Happy Medium
(April 17, 1909) : 27 : link
Incorrigible Nature
(May 8, 1909) : 31 : link
an essay in/on/of pathetic fallacy; will transcribe in full. for now —
Nothing is as unprincipled as the way she assures reproduction. She makes our greatest obligation appear the most cherished prize. Her methods are so so feminine that we wring our hands in despair of the sex. She is the Tom Sawyer of all time, and the inevitableness with which we desire to whitewash that pesky fence is one of the marvels of the world...
Tongues, Cameras, and Other Things
(May 15, 1909) : 27 : link
Wandering Spinsters, etc.
(May 29, 1909) : 29 : link
“The Need of Self-Expression”
(June 5, 1909) : 28 : link
transcription : link
second thoughts about self-expression; what self might there be to express... virtues of opacity, non-disclosure.
Panoramas, etc.
(June 12, 1909) : 27 : link
[ Staying quietly in one’s room, with a busy back turned to the windows, panoramas seem things easily avoidedd. It is possible, or so the housed person happily feels, to skirt panoramas, to turn one’s head away, to do any number of rescuing things if panoramas happen to affect one unpleasantly. But once out in the open, they assault you on every side. Considering their size, it is amazing how many there are, almost all countries giving them room without visible inconvenience. With a tightening of the throat islands are suddenly beloved islands so msall that “views” are out of the question. Islands just able to hold detail and nothing a whit bigger... ]
The Tyranny of Buying
(June 19, 1909) : 27 : link
The Iniquity of Art Galleries
(July 3, 1909) : 27 : link
Subjects, Confidences and Decisions
(July 10, 1909) : 29 : link
Concerning Plans, etc.
(July 24, 1909) : 29 : link
Proprieties, Absurdities, and Umrella Carriers
(July 31, 1909) 29 : link
In Praise of Novel-Reading
(August 7, 1909) : 29 : link
transcription : link
on novel-reading; and on not finding a passage well-remembered from a prior reading, upon re-reading a book.
The Venus of Milo and the Winding Road
(August 21, 1909) : 29 : link
Views on Slang, Lost Property, and Dentists
(August 28, 1909) : 29 : link
at p 13 ( link ), nice drawing of “A Book-worm’s Paradise” (the main reading room of the NYPL), by Vernon Howe Bailey
Runaway Names, etc.
(September 4, 1909) : 29 : link
on lapses of memory; a fire in the house; and subjects to be avoided.
The Disappointments of Surprise Visits; The Woes of Returned Travellers; etc.
(September 11, 1909) : 29 : link
This Matter of Being Comfortable, etc.
(September 18, 1909) : 29 : link
[the “once-upon-a-time” school in English art.
Sympathetic Antagonisms, Pets as Conversation-Silencers, etc.
(September 25, 1909) : 27 : link
The Blessed Ambient
(October 2, 1909) : 22 : link (hathitrust) / same (University of Michigan scan, google) : link
transcription : link
The Ostentatious Sea and Disappearing Man
(October 23, 1909) : 31 : link
Those Unescapable Exercises, etc.
(October 30, 1909) : 29 : link
The Educational Value of Hunger
(November 6, 1909) : 27
hathitrust : link
archive.org : link
transcription : link
on elective hunger, and the unasked for kind; and on realizing that one cannot trust — or that one doesn’t know — one’s own taste.
Mothers Explained
(November 13, 1909) : 27 : link
also in Toronto Saturday Night 23:8 (December 4, 1909) : 31
archive.org : link
transcription : link
on daughters, and the changing role of mothers toward them; >followed by a brief paean to the sky — “the loveliest side of the world, no matter how lovely our side for the moment is...”
Open Pictures, and Boomerang Ideals
November 20 1909 : 27 : link
three sections —
“Pictures should be openings in the wall, so many escapes from the room in which they hang. If they come out of their frames to you, refusing you shelter, failing you in your dumn nosing for a recess, they are not pictures, but furniture, and conqequently abominations.”
Mr. Hewletter in his Open Country, a book whose charm and advtertised sting are robbed of point by the Danteësque ideas of the hero, reminds us afresh of an argument that from time to time crops up and dazzles us with its boomerang qualities. Boomerang because the elevation of a certain very exalted idea seems to knock the man who built it twice as far down as others, when he thought he had gone a double number of leagues upward.
and a sketch of a philosophical boy named Maeterlinck.
Open Pictures followed by two other musings —
the first on the Senhouses of the world (from Maurice Hewlett his Open Country : A comedy with a sting (1909 : link )) — men who will not test or soil their ideals or even love by actual engagement; the second on what might be — today — called the “five whys” theory.
To Every Man His Own Plum, etc.
(November 27, 1909) : 27 : link
transcription : link
The Delightfully Quaint Antis
(December 11, 1909) : 34 : link

As the anti-suffrage men feel so strongly about women voting, a natural nervousness arises in the minds of the women as to why. They cannot help wondering if the men know some damning thing about them, of which even they are ignorant. It makes one walk so circumspectly; and with more than a little effort the women ask, half expecting to be crushed to the ground with the answer, “Why shouldn’t women vote?” The answer comes, with a great deal of masculine weight, “Because they are women.”
concludes :
The principal thing, of course, is to calm the fears of the antis as much as possible, and to make them believe, if it can be done, that though women will have to ponder mildly on fibrous matter — which will, we do not deny, be more or less exhausting — their long rest and preparation will doubtless enable them to endure the strain.
Man’s New Humility
(December 18, 1909) : 27 : link

The men have suddenly decided, apropos of the trend of the times, that they will be everlastingly disappointed if the women descend from their great heights and become the equals of the men. This begging us to stay where we were put is heard on all sides, and it renders us amazed, humble, protesting. The men must not think so little of themselves. If they are a worthless lot we refuse to hear of it, and on no accunt will we believe a word they say regarding themselves. This we have decided, and if underneath our shocked surfaces we are aching to hear the men enlarge upon the subject of their unworthiness, it is a feeling that comes in spite of the repulses of our better judgment, and it need have no hope of receiving any recognition from us.
the “etc” deals with Ravello, “that curious crumbling hill town where Wagner wrote the Flower Music.”
Either One Does or One Does Not
(December 25, 1909: : 27 : link

An open mind is a serious drawback. It is difficult to understand how any one ever supposed anything else to be the case. We say with innocent injured eyes, winking away nobly born misunderstanding, “I hope no one thinks that I am prejudiced!” But every one not only thinks us prejudiced, but is perfectly sure of it...
Typewritten Letters
(January 15, 1910) : 29 : link
archive.org : link
transcription : link
on typewriters (and their detrimental effect on letter writing); on snow (and weather, generally); on feeling accusatory (in the company of a modest person, who doesn’t fight back); and on time-zone differences and their influence over one’s imagining the more (or less) fast lives of distant relatives.
Abjurers of the Hackneyed
(January 22, 1910) : 29 : link
The Treachery of an Imagination
(January 29, 1910) : 27 : link
The Solemn Responsibility of Influencing Father’s Vote
(February 5, 1910) : 27 : link
On Resembling Oneself
(February 12, 1910) : 27 : link
Possessions
(February 19, 1910) : 27 : link
link (google books)
To have things because they are convenient and render life more livable is obviously the basis on which collectors of encumbrances start, but it would seem that they forget their original intentions almost immediately, for in a very short time they are the harassed hosts of more things than a dozen families have need of, their lives given over to providing shelter to chairs and cars, their nerves worn to a shred preventing these things which they do not want from being stolen from them. It would be an act of kindness t obrugle them monthly. The persons who do so at less regular intervals may be tender-hearted friends acting at great personal risk in their best interests. Any one running for a train would stop to free a trapped kitten wich whome she had no acquaintance whatever; yet, with abundant leisure on our hands, and knowing these trapped people intimately, we hesitate to loosen them from their three houses and four automobiles, or, if one has the type of mind, it is possible to be equally in need of unshackling from a canary and a four-room flat...
Statistics and Genealogies
(February 26, 1910) : 29 : link
Generations, Pessimism, Dreams
(March 5, 1910) : 27 : link
Browning, and the Lost Cork
(March 12, 1910) : 27 : link
transcription : link
on Browning Societies, and reading-group-sized big questions; and on losing (and finding) a favorite cork stopper, somewhere under/behind the furniture
Novelties — Waltzing — Broadway
(March 26, 1910) : 27 : link
Making Conversation, etc.
(April 2, 1910) : 27 : link
Profanity, Poses, and Tact
(April 9, 1910) : 29 : link
“It does seem such a joke on the winter to be planting seeds in the back yard. The blustering cold thought it was going to do such damage, perhaps even succeed in discouraging us permanently; yet, though we led it on its hopes of making a tremendous fuss about the bad weather and pretended to be thoroughly depressed, we knew all the time that these days would come, and on the very first of them up every one popped armed with a trowel and a beaming smile and set to work ebulliently. It must be a great blow to winter. He must feel us to be so hopelessly irrepressible. He has worked for years to down us, and never have we failed to bob up chipperer than ever, always even enjoying a little the joke on him, recovering from our winter gloom suddenly, as though to make the mutiny more marked, throwing off winter’s influence with our tongues thrust impishly out. As we all do it at once, winter is, of course, powerless. He recognizes that we have escaped from his control, and in his rage he probably makes plans for an even severer winter next time. If we continue to make such open demonstrations of welcome to spring, winter will incrase his efforts and the Ice Age will result. We are tempting Providence by our open prancing interest in crocuses and upturned earth. It would be much more diplomatic to pretend that spring bored us, to dissimulate and cut our capes on the sly. In this way winter’s ire would not be roused and his accumulative revenge would cease to threaten us. Our present demented hanging out of the window because puttering has begun in the back yard is enough to provoke any one, especially a departing tyrant with a divergent theory. For our own good, if not for our own safety, we must stop our abandoned ecstasies.”
Country Houses by James, etc.
(April 16, 1910) : 27 : link
where to go in the summer... “that modern development, the woman of affairs,” “self-reform”
On Travelling Companions
(April 23, 1910) : 27 : link
The People We Write To
(April 30, 1910) : 29 : link
transcription : link
on writing and receiving letters; on the communistic (no private property, no privacy) quality of the post-card; and on virtue best practised privatedly (and vices best shared)
Superhuman Maps, etc.
(May 14, 1910) : 27 : link
One hears on the best authority that all proper touring cars are now provided with human maps, and from the description they are terrifying things. Some people, it is rumored, prefer getting lost to entering into a compact with the Evil One by providing their car with one of these curious attachments. Their workings are left for some one else to explain; it is their effect on one’s mind that interests the writer. Setting the needle to Boston — it being supposed that the occupants of the car have strong inclinations Bostonward, one starts out, blithesome and gay, knowing that nothing can prevent one’s reaching Boston eventually. For no matter what road one takes or how right the direction apparently is, that obsessed little needle points always toward Boston. No windings or turnings muddle it or induce it to change its mind. It has its ideas as to where Boston is, and it sticks to them through everything. What there is about Boston that attracts its needle-point so, no one knows. Boston’s influence is surely not as universal as that of the Magnetic Pole, but the fact remains that, if the needle had been pointed in that direction in the beginning, it never varies, no matter what infinitely more attractive places are approached.
The effect of such a map on motoring is to be watched with avid interest...
Marriage and Steel Teeth, etc.
(May 21, 1910) : 27
hathitrust : link
transcription : link
on making a good choice in marriage, and — relatedly! — on the conscientious writer, trying to get his “facts” right.
Italian Tea, etc.
(June 4, 1910) : 27 : link
re: the tea (at the Metropolitan Museum) —
The tea is — and the miracle and simplicity of the thing refuse to diminish a jot — the tea is of that rare awfulness hitherto only to be found in Italy. One could cry with joy over the badness of it and drop tears of convulsed rejoicing in each and ever cup. Not for worlds would one ask the brand, for the first sip brings with it such a rush of feeling that one is moved to hug the teapot. It is the very identical tea that used to amaze and bewilder us in small Italian towns. It always seemed impossible that a second cup should possess the exact, untraceable, terrifying, and yet harmless flavor of the first. It was so plainly not tea at all, and yet never has the faintest inkling as to the whatness of it ever been hit upon...
On reading these complaints over the writer is amazed to find what a masculine flavor they have. She is quite unable to account for their discontented before-dinner tang.
Bookworms, etc.
(June 11, 1910) : 27 : link
“We cannot be too thankful for ignorance. The leeway it gives is tremendous. It is with real horror that one contemplates the approach of knowledge. It limits our flights, hedges us in, shackles and anchors us. The more we know of a thing, the more cowed we are in its presence; the less any one knows, the braver and freer our behavior. Halley’s comet has been a noticeable demonstration of this...”
Careless Folk, Etc.
(June 18, 1910) : 27 : link
Rural Letters, Chapter Headings, Etc.
(June 25, 1910) : 27 : link
references George Borrow, Thackeray...
“Chapter headings are not at all what they were, which is saying the worst possible thing for present-day chapter headings, as nothing could have been nicer than what they used to be...
Next to nothing is done with chapter headings nowadays. Their aid is discarded as being superfluous and a shade prosy. There used to be a something gradual, rambling, and suggestive of genteel leisure in the manner of beginning a book. The chapter headings used to bewilder, charm, and entice one’s interest, to pique one into an immediate retirement into a corner with the book...]
Masculine Logic, Etc.
(July 2, 1910) : 33 : link
Fellow Artists, Etc.
(July 30, 1910) : 21 : link
The Inconvenience of Ideas, Etc.
(August 13, 1910) : 21
hathitrust : link
transcription : link
It is only of recent years that the inconvenience of ideas has been felt with its full weight. It is not to be forgotten that the years before we came to consciousness are always known to be, and ardently called, the “good old days,” while the time in which we live is dubbed from personal experience a depraved age. Still, the impression remains that fifteen years ago ideas did not have their present unpleasant trick of coming home to one. Ideas used to be long-distance pleasures bearing entirely on things that concerned us only remotely, if at all...

Though every man dislikes thinking and feels wronged when compelled to do so, no one can say that we have not reduced it to the terms least inconvenient to our comfort. We think in detours, amd the spaces leaped by our thoughts are of far more interest than the thoughts themselves...
The Depressing Effect of Humor
(August 20, 1910) : 23 : link
Castilian Shopping, etc.
(August 27, 1910) : 21 : link
The Great Emolument, etc.
(September 10, 1910) : 21 : link
The Conservation of Revolutions
(September 17, 1910) : 21 : link
The Masculine and the Feminine Mind
(September 24, 1910) : 21 : link
transcription : link
In fact and now the matter is to be settled once and for all — there is not a jot of difference between the masculine and feminine minds: there is only a difference in what is and what has been put in them, and what the world expects to come out of them. The world gets very much what it expects.
Some Delusive Joys
(October 1, 1910) : 30 : link
The Agile Minority
(October 8, 1910) : 26 : link
Living Along
(October 22, 1910) : 25 : link
Chance Encounters
(October 29, 1910) : 21 : link
People with Gardens
(November 5, 1910) : 33 : link
transcription : link
Hotel Rooms
(November 12, 1910) : 26 : link
The Philosophy of Presents
(November 19, 1910) : 21 : link
Dinners and Men
(November 26, 1910) : 21 link
Blankness of Mind
(December 3, 1910) : 32 : link
transcription : link
If we did begin to think — but at the very idea the cavalcade of our thoughts shows utter confusion. One limp little figure treading on the heels of the one in front, the smaller flâneurs getting bumped by those bigger thoughts who think they are marching, a serious congestion of traffic sets in...
Pale Adventurers
(December 10, 1910) : 35 : link
transcription : link
on Henry James, his Strethers, so to speak.
The Importance of Parents
(December 17, 1910) : 26 : link
better scan (Indiana U, google) : link
The Ploughers
(December 24, 1910) : 26 : link
the keen mind, who ploughs the way for resentful others. —
“As we do not observe ourselves we cannot draw straight conclusions, and having no conclusions of our own, we borrow half thoughts from unaccounted-for sources, misapply them to things we learn of by hearsay, and with such a receipt for living, we breathe for seventy years or so, mere monuments of insensibility, with faith in our own infallibility and ignorant scorn for all else.”
Thinking in Detours
(December 31, 1910) : 26
hathitrust : link
Indiana U copy, better scan (lower left of page, via google books) : link
transcription : link
Though every man dislikes thinking and feels wronged when compelled to do so, no one can say that we have not reduced it to the terms least inconvenient to our comfort. We think in detours, amd the spaces leaped by our thoughts are of far more interest than the thoughts themselves...
Those Immoral Romanticists
(January 14, 1911) : 21 : link
An Opinion Embedded in Much Irrelevant Matter
(January 21, 1911) : : link
Being Dull Around the World
(January 28, 1911) : 31 : link
Emotions Attendant on Acquiring a Desk
(February 11, 1911) : 23
hathitrust : link
U Michigan copy/scan (via google books) : link
transcription : link
There cannot exist a heart so dull that it has not thrilled to the word pigeonhole... ¶ ...and from then on you face life with the supported, sheltered, substantial feeling of one who is owned by a desk...
Remembering, etc.
(February 18, 1911) : 21 : link
etc : takes up with wry criticality something in W. D. Hudson, his A Shepherd’s Life
Capitulating to Popularity
(February 25, 1911) : 35 : link
Evolution’s Culs-de-Sac
(March 11, 1911) : 21
hathitrust : link
archive.org : link
transcription : link
Consciousness
(March 18, 1911) : 21 : link
transcription : link
To awaken late in life to the realization that one has bustled outwardly, while inside an immature blankness reigned, would be so awful that after a while to become conscious is out of the question. It would be too painful, to[o] rending a process...
Summer
(March 25, 1911) : 23 : link
The Care of Genius
(April 1, 1911) : 25 : link
Two Difficulties that Confront the Seeker of Truth
(April 22, 1911) : 23 : link
on (1) the near-impossibility of admitting one was wrong, and (2) patriotism
The Critical Sense
(April 29, 1911) : 21 : link
Flicked on the Raw
(May 6, 1911) : 33 : link
We quiver at such unexpected places and reveal, by our admission of a raw spot, our idea of what constitutes for us a striking blow. We sail complacently through many things, apparently considering ourselves unscathed, and then wince, involuntarily avowing a flick on the raw, which shows up, with such an effect as to puzzle our innocent torturer, the contradiction between our view of ourselves and his view of us. General criticism of a general characteristic interests each of us, discussions of those traits which we have not, or only assume, are occasions for bearing ourselves, bravely; it is when anything which we imagine to be integrally and incurably ours is touched upon that we fly the blush of ownership, of aggrieved and unforgiving exposure. It is because we show in this manner more clearly than we can in any other what we feel to be innate in us that observers are at such moments so struck into silence, so prevented from rescuing us or themselves from their blunder, held by the revelation that what they hit on lightly without thought of us we have all disarmedly declared to by painfully applicable, that they rest amazed beyond effort at a reparation, by the oddity of seeing what we precisely feel ourselves to be.
There is perhaps nothing else so quaint in all psychology as our view of ourselves. There is no way for any one to trace, and we, of course, are barred from doing it, the exact grounds on which we base our surprising conclusions. At what point in our development did we get it into our head that certain things were true of us, and other things were decidedly not?
We never take stock, we have not the requisite vision and balance, we must gradually, with an arbitrariness that is forever keenly tantalizing to the world at large, make assumptions about our make up, never on any account question them after they are made, and suffer, enjoy, and live by them to the very end...
Domesticating Art
(May 13, 1911) : 23 : link
transcription : link
We live with people either by an accident over which we have had no control, and cannot remedy, or because it is the only way to assure not se[e]ing too much of ourselves, and more than a little of them...; and on skipping in books
Golden Spoons
(May 27, 1911) : 21 : link
Mementos
Mementos; The Sleepy Housekeeper’s Dilemma; and Rabbits and Periwinkles (June 3, 1911) : 25 : link
Published Letters of Great Folk
(June 10, 1911) : 26 : link
Profiles
(June 17, 1911) : 26 : link
also : Meetings, and Small Packages
The Feeling for Games
(June 24, 1911) : 21 : link
The “My Room” Habit
(July 1, 1911) : 21 : link
transcription : link
In almost every family there is one person who has what can only be called the “my room” habit. Its development may very probably be the result of family life; or the attraction of one’s room may be as strong as it is because one cannot say “my house.” Or, again, it may be a mere matter of temperament. This is undoubtedly the true solution. If one has the “my room” habit it is because one is made that way. To sociable-minded people who enjoy wasting time and find that it can be more unconsciously and comfortably done in company with others there is something enraging about those who softly remark, “I think I will be going to my room now...”
Those Happy Hindoos
(July 8, 1911) : 21 : link
Short-story Marriages
(July 22, 1911) : 26 : link
transcription : link
Bills
(July 29, 1911) : 34 : link
Lucid Days
(August 5, 1911) : 30 : link
same (U Mich copy/scan, via google) : link
transcription : link
on our evaluation of a day not rational, but mysterious, emotional; and, on emphasis
Extracting Flavor
(August 12, 1911) : 26
hathitrust : link
google books : link
transcription : link
on the feminine passion for “tasting, for rolling scant, non-essential, or infinite experiences luxuriously on the tongue, for getting from all life’s processes the final grain of flavor,” that cumulatively yields intuitive strengths unknown to men
A Characteristic or Two
(August 19, 1911) : 26
hathitrust : link
google books : link
transcription : link
on “words being the treacherous chameleon things they are;” and on perfection, and on blame
Untimeliness
(August 26, 1911) : 21
hathitrust : link
google books : link
transcription : link
The substitution of vagueness for processes fairly strengthens us in our opinions; also, on the oldest inhabitant, and authority
The Provincial Mind
(September 16, 1911) : 24 : link
Noise
(September 23, 1911) : 21
hathitrust : link
archive.org : link
transcription : link
on noise, and on the construction of admiration for others
Great Happenings
Vol. 55, No. 2861 (October 21, 1911) : 34
hathitrust : link
transcription : link
on wanting the drama of important events or crises in our lives, and then minimizing them; and on the “common iniquity” of silently wishing ill of those who irritate us, and their refusal to mindread us.
Handicapping Virtues, Etc.
Vol. 55, No. 2862 (October 28, 1911) : 26
hathitrust : link
The New Method
Vol. 55, No. 2863 (November 4, 1911) : 19
hathitrust : link
transcription : link
on bringing up children with an insistence on their personality, their uniqueness...; and the downstream problems of having done so
Beauty and Boredom
Vol. 55, No. 2864 (November 11, 1911) : 26
hathitrust : link
transcription : link
The Archaeological Attitude
Vol. 55, No. 2866 (November 25, 1911) : 25
hathitrust : link
Happiness
Vol. 55, No. 2867 (December 2, 1911) : 26
hathitrust : link
National Characteristics
Vol. 55, No. 2868 (December 9, 1911) : 26
hathitrust : link
archive.org : link
British Loyalty to Weather
Vol. 55, No. 2869 (December 16, 1911) : 32
archive.org : link
google books : link
transcription : link
From Door to Door
Vol. 55, No. 2871 (December 30, 1011) : 26
hathitrust : link
transcription : link
on canvassing for suffrage, door to door; a sobering, discouraging experience
The Mental Pendulum
vol. 56 no. 2872 (January 6, 1912) : 30
hathitrust : link
same (University of Michigan) scan at google : link
transcription : link
The dogmatism of philosophers either takes account of the strong pendulum instinct in each of us or else it does not. But then this is precisely the case with so many things....
Hobbies
vol. 56 no. 2873 (January 13, 1912) : 26
Purdue copy/scan (hathitrust) : link
Public Speaking, Etc.
vol. 56 no. 2875 (January 27, 1912) : 31
Purdue copy/scan (hathitrust) : link
British Train Journeys
vol. 56 no. 2876 (February 3, 1912) : 26
Purdue copy/scan (hathitrust) : link
Historical Novels
vol. 56 no. 2877 (February 10, 1912) : 26
Purdue copy/scan (hathitrust) : link
Playing Up
vol. 56 no. 2878 (February 17, 1912) : 26x
Purdue copy/scan (hathitrust) : link
On Matches
vol. 56 no. 2779 (February 24, 1912) : 21
Purdue copy/scan (hathitrust) : link
Women and Their Furniture
vol. 56 no. 2880 (March 2, 1912) : 21
Purdue copy/scan (hathitrust) : link
transcription : link
Wearing Qualities
vol. 56 no. 2882 (March 16, 1912) : 26
Purdue copy/scan (hathitrust) : link
Centers of Congeniality
vol. 56 no. 2884 (March 30, 1912) : 23
Purdue copy/scan (hathitrust) : link
A Talkative Recluse
vol. 56 no. 2885 (April 6, 1912) : 24
Purdue copy/scan (hathitrust) : link
transcription : link
on the tortures visited upon others (and himself) by the accidental recluse, suddenly exposed to social situations.
Random Reflections
vol. 56 no. 2886 (April 13, 1912) : 26
Purdue copy/scan (hathitrust) : link
What Is the World Coming To?
vol. 56 no. 2887 (April 20, 1912) : 26
Purdue copy/scan (hathitrust) : link
Authors of the Past
vol. 56 no. 2889 (May 4, 1912) : 18
Purdue copy/scan (hathitrust) : link
Current Events, Etc.
vol. 56 no. 2890 (May 11, 1912) : 23
Purdue copy/scan (hathitrust) : link
Markets
vol. 56 no. 2892 (May 25, 1912) : 21
Purdue copy/scan (hathitrust) : link
Tweeds, and other Things
vol. 56 no. 2893 (June 1, 1912) : 23
Purdue copy/scan (hathitrust) : link
on tweeds; on the danger of making moral remarks; and on weeding gardens (best done by women, who unlike men have the requisite determination)
Babies, Etc.
vol. 56 no. 2896 (June 22, 1912) : 21
Purdue copy/scan (hathitrust) : link
Proverbs, Etc.
vol. 56 no. 2897 (June 29, 1912) : 23
Purdue copy/scan (hathitrust) : link
Routine
(July 6, 1912) : 26
U Michigan copy/scan (hathtrust) : link
Purdue copy/scan (hathitrust) : link
The Comic Again
(July 13, 1912) 26
hathitrust : link
Akin to Nature
(July 27, 1912) : 25
hathitrust : link
The Rueful Group
August 3, 1912): 26
hathitrust : link
“Nothing of the Kind”
(August 10, 1912) : 23
hathitrust : link
Devastating Happiness
(August 17, 1912) : 26
hathitrust : link
Random Railings
(August 24, 1912) : 23
hathitrust : link
Bits and Pieces
(August 31, 1912) : 26
hathitrust : link
Coming Home, Etc.
(September 7, 1912) : 22
archive.org : link
transcription : link
on housekeeping; “Some women never dare leave their homes for fear of the revelation that it could get on without them....; The life of a housekeeper is not a life at all. It is a maelstrom of petty charges...”
The Romantic Mind, Etc.
(September 14, 1912) : 21
hathitrust : link
The Younger Dramatists, Etc.
(September 21, 1912) : 21
hathitrust : link
Op. 29, Etc.
(October 5, 1912) : 24
hathitrust : link
transcription : link
on the wish that writers’ would number their works, as composers do, so that one might get a sense of the place of a given work in the author’s development and milieu; and on the resistance of the old to airy theorizings by the young — with a lovely excursus into gardening !
Temperature and Other Things
(October 12, 1912) : 25
hathitrust : link
Gatherings
(October 19, 1912) : 25
hathitrust : link
Flowers
(November 2, 1912) : 21
hathitrust : link
British Cold, Etc.
(November 9, 1912) : 19
hathitrust : link
Perfunctory Christmas
(December 14, 1912) : 21
hathitrust : link
An American Trait
(January 11, 1913) : 40
hathitrust : link
Middle Age and Other Things
(January 18, 1913) : 21
hathitrust : link
Virtues and Vices
(February 1, 1913) : 26
hathitrust : link
“Awe of the Abstract”
(February 8, 1913) : 21
U Michigan (via google books) : link
same (via hathitrust) : link
transcription : link
on strong emotions, and avoidance thereof : “we only collide with it, and there is all the picking up afterward that naturally follows a collision”
wonder about terrible mismatch with her husband.
British Ornaments
(March 1, 1913) : 24
hathitrust : link
Premature Content
(March 8, 1913) : 29
hathitrust : link
transcription : link
“content,” in the sense of satisfaction; on others’ contradictory attitudes about “a family that answers all the requirements of the model family of the future”
An Idée Fixe, Etc.
(March 15, 1913) : 23
hathitrust : link
Our Appaling Consciousness
(March 22, 1913) : 25
hathitrust : link
The Crotchets of Equality
(March 29, 1913) : 23
hathitrust : link
transcription : link
“one cannot expect the owner of a miniature gyroscope railway to share the modest thrills experienced by one who occupies himself with broken bits of shells picked up at random”

The Woman Who Saw
This column ran in the The [New York] Evening Sun ca 1909-16 ?; I have not located the column in that paper (online), but it was carried (syndicated?) in whole or part, in other publications of the time. What I have found is presented below; there may be more out there : link
Florida Pier is described as conducting the column in a short piece about her, in The Writer 21:3 (Boston, March 1909) : 40 : link. She is not named in the byline (at least in these other publications), and may not have authored all of the pieces under in the series. Still, her tone and subtle, wry humor are in evidence here and there. Others too were associated with the column, including Emma L. McAlarney.
One issue of the paper (February 12, 1909) is available at archive.org : link

The Evening Sun, New York, N.Y., has begun a department “The Petty Philosopher,” for which brief contributions are invited. The Evening Sun also buys material for its department, “The Woman Who Saw.”
The Editor 38:9 (November 25, 1913) : link
and/but
The Evening Sun, New York, N.Y., has discontinued contributions for the “Teacup Philosophy” and “The Woman Who Saw” columns of its Woman’s Page. This is in accordance with an annoucement from Miss Eva E. Von Baur, Editor of the Woman’s Page>.
The Editor 38:11 (December 25, 1913) : 389 : link
microform at NYPL : link
“The Right Word at the Right Time”
The Telephone Review 6:9 (September 1915) : 268 ; link
The irregularities which come up all the time put spice into the jobs we are doing, especially in the matter of handling the public. “The Woman Who Saw” in the Evening Sun tells of a bit of diplomacy which we who deal with the public, whether from central or commercial offices, will not be slow to appreciate.
At the ticket window of a transportation company two people tried to buy tickets at the same time, having approached from opposite sides. The coins collided and one fell to the floor of the ticket seller's booth. Only one ticket was given out, and the girl who had parted with her money for no return waited for her ticket without result. Finally she stormed up the gateman, demanding the number of the man at the window.
It was a situation which needed to be saved. Puff! came the wind out of the sails of the excited girl as the gateman said slowly:
“G’wan through.”
“But what about the lost nickel?” She gased at him with a bewildering, beguiling smile.
“Well, if he don’t find it,” said the ticket taker consolingly, “I'll rob the baby’s bank. Go on through.”
. . . . .
Though an entirely similar situation would never be met in our experience, the essence of it is familiar — “The Public” — needing just the right treatment at the right time.
Many of you girls know of cases handled with as much diplomacy and success as this. Tell us about it!
“A Trolley Car Face”
The Western Fruit Jobber 2:6 (October 1915) : 40 : link
This world-stage of ours, upon which all of us are merely players, occasionally furnishes some mightily amusing scenes of comedy and face — amusing, that is, provided we are so fortunate as to be standing in the wings and not actually engaged therein. An excellent example is the following tale of five fervid minutes in a New York City surface car, vouched for by a writer on The Evening Sun whose department is headed “The Woman Who Saw.” The car was well filled with the usual assortment of peaceable, undemonstrative types that seem to inhabit surface cars perpetually. Down two sides of the car they sat, staring dully into the eyes of their vi-a-vis in an open-eyed state of coma — save for the instinctive cringings with which they guarded their toes from the few who stood swaying in the aisle. A scene of bovine peace, upon which, without so much as a warning cue, enter terror, mirth, pandemonium, anguish, heroism, pity, love, loathing, and low comedy — all the usual attributes of melodramatic farce. The curtain rises :
A dignified Englishman and an attractively gowned woman boarded the car. He carried a much-labeled suit case and she carried a queer looking square tin box suspended from a leather handle. Just as they sat down on the long side seat, the car gave a jolt; the lid flew off the tin box, and out shot a streak of blurred gray and brown fur.
“Rats!” called out a cheerful man.
A dozen shrieks pierced the air and twenty-four black and tan pumps clambered up on the seats.
But it wasn’t a rat at all — it was a squirrel, and a mighty scared squirrel at that. He went tearing down the car, scurried up the new spring suit of the man in the corner, made the return trip over the hats of the astonished crowd and — disappeared.
The Englishmen [man?] looked bored. The woman with the deserted tin box began to cry. Then down on their knees the two went and under the seats they peered. The timid woman descended and joined them — likewise a few men. It looked like a Billy Sunday audience hitting the sawdust trail.
“He’s here!” “He isn’t!” “I’ve got him — no, I havn’t!” “There he is — I saw him.”
“Charlie,” rang out a woman's horrified voice, “come out of that dirty hole this minute.”
But Charlie, spick and span, aged six, crawled under the seat and was quickly lost to view. A moment later he emerged, triumphantly squeezing the squirrel — its heart beating like a trip-hammer.
“My baby— My baby!” cried the tin box woman as she snatched her pet and kissed it ecstatically.
The car had stopt at Forty-third St. A woman stood grasping the rail — her foot on the lower step.
“Is this the regular Madison Avenue car?” she asked anxiously.
“No,” said the conductor scornfully, “it’s the nut special — get right on.”
“Why Chivalry Is Nipped in the Bud”
in The Kindergarten-Primary Magazine 28:8 (April 1916) : 234 : link
He was a little, eager eyed boy in a Scotch cap. The Woman Who Saw had noticed him the instant she boarded the car, because there was about him such a pronounced air of expectancy. When she took the last vacant seat beside him he gave a comically great sigh of relief.
“Mother,” he said, in a happy little voice, “the car’s all filled up now. If an old lady or a lady with a baby gets in I can give her my seat, can’t I?”
“Yes, dear,” said his mother. And then, catching the interested gaze of the Woman Who Saw, she smiled.
“I've been instructing my son in the duties of a male citizen to the community,” she said, parenthetically. “This is the first chance he’s had to put my teachings into practice, and we are so afraid that the ladies with babies will all stay home today.”
Indeed, that seemed to be the case. As the car went on the scarcity of eligibles for the little boy’s seat became more and more marked, and his anxiety increased apace. It seemed almost as if there were no ladies with babies left in the world. At last, however, the car stopped to take on a passenger; and instantly the would-be knight was on the alert.
“It might be a lady with a baby,” he said hopefully.
But it was not a lady with a baby. It was a ruddy cheeked, motherly lady, who immediately made the Woman Who Saw think of molasses cake and a sunny kitchen with a canary bird. The little boy watched her make her way toward a strap in the center of the car, his disappointment changing to deliberate calculation.
“Mother,” he said, “she hasn’t got a baby — but she’s a lady. Can I give her my seat?”
His mother said that he might and that he was not to forget to tip his hat. The Woman Who Saw could not help wondering how one would tip a sailor hat held on with elastic under the chin; but the little boy solved the problem very efficiently. Standing before the motherly lady, he raised both hands to his hat, and, lifting it an inch or two from his head, allowed it to snap back in place.
“Please,” he began, radiating importance. “Beg your pardon — there’s a seat up here.”
The motherly lady looked down upon him, smiling a great motherly smile.
“Well, well,” she said, in a hearty, mollasses-cake voice. “Is there!”
“Yes,” said the little boy, happily. “It’s my seat.”
With intense gratification he led the motherly lady down through the car, and watched her insert herself tightly between his mother and the Woman Who Saw. Then he stood and surveyed his work in satisfaction. Only a minute was he permitted to enjoy it; for the motherly lady, having arranged her goods and chattels to her liking, reached over and caught her youthful knight in her arms.
“Now,” she beamed, “just for being such a good little boy and giving me your seat you're going to have a seat too!” And oh, horror of horrors, — she lifted him upon her lap!
The instants that followed were fraught with a terrible intensity that made the Woman Who Saw think of the minutes preceding an electrical storm in summer. However, the boy stuck to his post of ignominy valiantly, although the Woman Who Saw, watching, could see that it required great effort. It was when the motherly lady, sublimely unsuspecting, had gone on her way and set him down in his own seat again that he turned upon his mother, and she quailed before the accusing light in his eyes.
“I gave her my seat!” he said, in a terrible undertone. “I gave her my seat and she made me sit on her lap, like a baby! I wanted to stand up like a man! I don’t care now if everybody in cars is old ladies or ladies with babies! I won’t get up and give anybody my seat! Never, never!”
The Woman Who Saw could not exactly blame him. Could you?
— The Woman Who Saw in N. Y. Evening Sun.
The Woman Who Saw
(Reprinted from the New York Evening Sun, October 24 [, 1916]), in Theosophical Outlook (“A weekly magazine devoted to the theosophical movement, the brotherhood of humanity, the study of occult science, and Aryan literature”) 1:46 (San Francisco, Saturday, November 11, 1916) : 367 : link
She was a short, fat woman, with a round, fat face, and childish blue eyes. The Woman Who Saw met her waddling down the corridor of the public library, her arms piled high with books. In fact she was carrying so many books that when she took a hasty step forward, three huge volumes spilled out of her arms and thudded on the floor. She bent over to pick them up, when down dropped two more.
“Good Gracious!” she wailed, and the Woman Who Saw fled to her assistance. “I’ll wager $10 she’s getting literature on how to reduce her flesh; well, she needs it,” the Woman Who Saw thought, and with a smile she bent over to pick up the books. The titles that met her eyes almost made ger gasp; there was no “Eat and Grow thin” here, no indeed! Instead there was “Occultism.” There was “The Astral Body” and “The Secret Doctrine,” “Isis Unveiled,” “Karma," “Reincarnation,” “Planetary Influences.” “My Soul!” exclaimed the Woman Who Saw, “you don’t mean to read all of these, I hope?”
“I certainly do,” answered the fat woman emphatically. “I mean to read everything of the sort in the library. My husband says I’m crazy, but I’ll just tell you why I do it. I have five children, five noisy, troublesome children; my cook's given notice, and my nursemaid is no good. My husband’s been sick and is as cross as the dickens. Everything in the world in the line of trouble’s happened to me; everything always does happen to me; I’m fated.”
“So you're going to take your mind off your troubles?” smiled the Woman Who Saw, much amused.
“Indeed I am,” said the fat woman. “I find my outlet in reading. It gives me lots of pleasure. I can sit and read philosophies of the East by the hour, while the children fight, and not mind them at all. Do you know why I have so many troubles” — she fixed the Woman Who Saw with her mild blue eyes. “Because in my last incarnation I was a wicked person. My planetary influence is very bad indeed. I’ve got to work out a hard Karma; I’ve got to pay up for a lot of things. I know that. So when things go wrong I just say to myself, instead of crying: ‘This is my destiny; I have made my own fate and I shall overcome it.’ It works very well.” She gathered the books up in her arms again and faced the Woman Who Saw. “When I get through reading all these, I’ll be further than ever along the road,” she remarked cheerfully. “Maybe I'll be so far along that I’ll get to like my mother-in-law, and further than that my imagination won’t carry me,” and with a parting smile she went her was down the corridor.
“Honor to the Army”
The Railway Conductor 34:9 (September 1917): 685 : link
Thirty-fourth street was crowded, hot and dirty. The Woman Who Saw hurried along to catch her train, conscious of weariness and depression. Suddenly at Sixth avenue a little band of ragamuffins scurried around her, six or eight little boys in various stages of undress, all a uniform grimy brown in color and each carrying a strip of lath — one with his in his hand, the others carrying theirs over their shoulders. On they swept with the utter unconcern of their surroundings which the child of the street acquires, darting from the curb and apparently doomed to destruction in the middle of the crowded avenue.
On the instant the big policeman saw them, around he swung, holding up two commanding, impassable hands, stopping the traffic so suddenly that the nearest taxi slid, stalling its engine, and the big truck horses on the other side came within an ace of sitting down, so suddenly were they pulled up by their outraged driver, who at once began to tell the policeman what he thought of him.
“Ah, wait a minute,” said the big policeman, still holding up his hands. “Can’t ye see these fellers go by? They’re soliders! Look at the sword this one has got!” He grinned at the leader of the urchins, who grinned back at him as he scampered along the sidewalk with the others. Away they ran, shouting. Then the big policeman waved his hand and let the waiting traffic through. — Evening Sun.
“A Jog to Memory”
New York City Mission Monthly 43:4 (June 1919) : 10 : link
Rocco, aged seventeen, had enlisted over the protest of his mother. But his assignment of salary had been very useful to the family, as the Woman learned when she brought her green groceries. Then Rocco’s father fell ill, there was money owing, and for some reason the allotment failed to come. Heavily Rocco’s mother waddled across the street to consult the Woman, who could understand her limited English.
Letters and inquiries solved the mystery and she felt that she had done a good deed for the family. When next she saw Rocco’s mother the good soul beamed. “I gotta de mon. T’ree day ago. One hundred five-a dolla.” Then she pointed with pride to a pair of gold earrings with tiny diamond stones that hung from them under her black hair.
“How you like-a? I buy wit’ de mon.”
“What!” exclaimed the Woman. “You bought earrings! What of your debts and the sick husband? I thought you needed all of that money for necessities.”
“Sure, we need it. But,” and the mother of Rocco, with the army along the Rhine, smiled ingratiatingly, “I need-a it not to forget de war.” — The Woman Who Saw in the Evening Sun.

sketches, essays
“London Sights”
Chelsea Embankment; Sunday in the Park; Tea Hour in a Big Shop
The New Statesman vol. 36, no. 920 (December 13, 1930) : 303
archive.org : link
transcription : link
“London Sights”
Cocoons in the Green Park; School Was Out; The Marble Arch
The New Statesman and Nation (incorporating The Athenaeum) vol. 1, no. 4, New Series (March 21, 1931) : 148-149
archive.org : link
transcription : link
“London Sights”
Rush Hour in the Underground; Court Ladies; Our Girls
The New Statesman and Nation (incorporating The Athenaeum) vol. II, no. 20, New Series (July 11, 1931) : 46-47
archive.org : link
transcription : link
“New Fiction.”
Time and Tide, xv (February 3, 1934), 148-149.
listed in E. R. Hagemann, “A Checklist of the Work of B. Traven and the Critical Estimates and Biographical Essays on Him; together with a Brief Biography”
Papers of the Bibliographical Society of American 53:1 (1959) : 37-67 (60)
archive.org : link
“Unfavorable” review of B. Traven The Death Ship
have not seen
“Refractions”
Life and Letters vol. 9, no. 62 (February 1935) : 541-543
archive.org : link
transcription : link
an essay on the facets of a person’s life — Jungian perhaps? a poetic, philosophical dramatic monolog.
in five sections : statues (as if each a dancer, in a performance), spectrums, signals, actuality, predicament.
the relationship of the experience of living, to having/being in a body.
“So Near Mystery / A flight of questions on age,” by Florida Scott-Maxwell
The Listener vol. 51, no. 1307 (March 18, 1954) : 478-479
archive.org : link
transcription : link
“We Are the Sum of Our Days,” by Florida Scott-Maxwell
The Listener vol. 52, no. 1337 (October 14, 1954) : 627, 629
archive.org : link
evidently also in Harper’s Bazaar (October 1956)
transcription : link
from the next issue’s “Notes on Contributors,” The Listener (October 21, 1954) : 45
archive.org : link
Mrs. Florida Scott-Maxwell is not, as stated last week, a psycho-analyst, but a psychotherapist.
“Women and Sometimes Men” (“The first of three talks by Florida Scott-Maxwell”)
The Listener (September 15, 1955) : 425-426
archive.org : link
transcription : link
on tapping the man within woman, and the attendant risks
“The Feminine Paradox” (“The second of three talks by Florida Scott-Maxwell”)
The Listener vol 54, issue 1386 (September 22, 1955) : 464-465, 479
archive.org : link
transcription : link
“A New Peace Between Man and Woman?” (“The last of three talks by Florida Scott-Maxwell”)
The Listener (September 29, 1955) : 503-504
archive.org : link
“Early Memories of Jung.” Inward Light 36 (1976) : 30-34
have not (yet) seen.

mentioned in Paul Bishop, “The Members of Jung’s Seminar on Zarathustra” in Spring 56 (“Journal of Archetype and Culture”); (Fall, 1994) 93-122 (116-117)
archive.org : link (accessed 20260725)

and in
Florent Serina. Florent Serina. A C. G. Jung Bibliography. A Selection of Books, Articles and Reviews (1970-2018) (2019)
10.32724/phanes.2019.Bibliography.Serina. hal-02500887
link (accessed 20260725)

plays
When Julia Lied
copyrighted by Floria Pier between March 24 and April 7, 1904
source : The New York Dramatic Mirror (April 16, 1904) : link
aside — have not seen
Lovers in law; a fantastical romance in 3 acts, by F. Pier.
93 p. 4°. Typewritten.
© Florida Pier, New York ; D : 6074, Jan. 14, 1905 ; 2c. Jan. 14, 1905. 26671
from Dramatic Compositions Copyrighted in the United States, 1870 to 1916 (1918) archive.org : link
Dance of the Dolls
by F. Pier. 9p. 4º. Typewritten.
© Florida Pier, New York; D 7780, Dec. 29, 1905; 2c. Dec. 29, 1905. 9708.
LoC Copyright Office, Catalog of Title Entries of Books etc., Dramatic Compositions, 1870 to 1916 (1918)
archive.org : link
from Dramatic Compositions Copyrighted in the United States, 1870 to 1916 Vol. 2 (LoC Copyright Office, 1918)
archive.org : link
2084
Secrets; play in 3 acts, by F. Pier.
[1], 73 p. 4°. Typewritten.
© Florida Pier, New York; D: 5604, Oct. 5, 1904; 2c. Oct. 5, 1904; 1c. new ed., title The secret, Oct. 23, 1907. 41370
2539
When a man tells; in 1 act, by F. Pier.
17 p. 4°. Typewritten. © Florida Pier, Easton, Md.; D: 6829, June 17, 1905; 2c. June 17, 1905. 50189
2542
When Julia lied; in 3 acts, by F. Pier
[95] p. 4º. Typewritten. © Florida Pier, New York; D: 4774, Mar. 16, 1904; 2. Mar. 16, 1904. 50245
2642
Younger (The) Miss Carkwell; in 3 acts, by F. Pier.
[75] p. 4°. Typewritten.
© Florida Pier, New York; D: 18040, May 23, 1908; 2c. May 238, 1908. 52217
Generations (The); a play in 3 acts, by Florida Pier [i.e., F. Scott-Maxwell]
[2]. 113p. 4º, Typewritten.
© 1c. Aug. 22, 1912; D:30938; Florida Scott-Maxwell, Glagow
archive.org : link
The flash-point, a play in three acts. By Mrs. Scott-Maxwell.
(London: Sidgwick & Jackson, Ltd., 1914)
U Michigan copy/scan (via hathitrust) : link
Jean. Now mother, listen. Quite by myself, without any help from you, I’ve found and made my own intentions, plans, ideals. They are what thinking people believe in, and when I try to explain them to you you call me either impertinent or foolish. You potter about this house all morning doing things that could perfectly be eliminated, and in the afternoons you either do that useless embroidery or else you pay calls where people talk unkindly and stupidly.
p 30 : link
Taken up, somewhat critically (and with a useful summary) in “Play-Craft” by Robb Lawson, in The Bookman (July 1914) : 184 : link
reads better — as a story — than it might work on the stage.
Many Women
reviewed under heading “Nothing Too Much” in The New Statesman vol IV, issue 85 (October 8, 1932) : 406
archive.org : link
It is a real achievement to avoid writing a tract in treating of the familiar struggle in the mind of a woman who wants to combine marriage with a career. Miss Florida Pier has no battle-cry about the mission of women in modern life. In Many Women, at the Arts Theatre, she is concerned rather to indicate, with the resigned gesture of the artist, that there is no case either for the feminist or for the woman at home. Everything, she points out, depends on the circumstances. Kate, the central figure of the play, has to give up her florist’s shop when she finds she is neglecting her home; on the other hand, Natasha, exotic creature of passion, realises that she has nothing to fall back upon when she is deserted by her lover. The hard and efficient young Nina ought never to have married at all, but poor deprived Lump needed a large family of children. The only connecting link between these diverse people is their common work in a grower’s nursery. The characters are excellently observed. Nina’s touching, inarticulate little husband, admirably played by Mr. Peter Ridgeway, is painfully true to life, and Nina and Lump, if presented with occasional exaggeration, are truthfully conceived. Even the stormy Natasha of Mis Olga Lindo is more than a piece of good theatre. But the author’s impartiality has its dangers. The very feeling for the variety and richness of life, which would have enabled her to make of this theme a good novel, has made her play undramatic.
dir. Esmé Percy; see Wendy Trewin, The Arts Theatre, London, 1927-1981 (1986) : 82
borrowable at archive.org : link
I Said to Myself
a play (Mercury Theatre), reviewed by John Sommerfield (along with two others, under the heading “A Real Waste”) in Our Times 7:1 (August 1947) : 13-14
archive.org : link
I Said to Myself is quite another cup of tea. The author had an idea for a new method of writing plays, the notion of using several actors to represent different aspects of each character; the heroine, for instance, is played by three people who are all on the stage at the same time.
As a new way of presenting human beings in the theatre the idea has possibilities. However, quite apart from whether the idea itself is good, bad or indifferent, and whether the way in which it is exploited is intelligent or the reverse, the playwright’s approach to it has been fundamentally wrong. It is quite obvious that the real motive of writing this play was the exploitation of an original approach and method. But for any new method or technique of writing (or music or painting or any other art form) to be valid, it must arise from the artist’s solution of the problems of the subject with which he or she is concerned. Here, the process has been reversed — a subject found for an original form instead of a new form devised for a subject that demands it.
Then the method itself has not been exploited either seriously or even consistently. It derives from the findings of psycho-analysis. Florida Scott-Maxwell is, I understand, a psychologist. An Adlerian psychologist, I should judge from this play. I cannot take her to task for basing her interpretation of human actions on a theory with which I do not agree and of which my knowledge is not sufficient to conduct a public argument. None the less, I would say that the way in which her characters are split is consistent neither with the facts of their conduct nor the formal demands of her play.
The heroine has three personalities; Lawrence, her husband, and Rose, his girl-friend, have two each; and Dick, the obnoxious brother-in-law, has only one actor on the stage to stick up for him. Dick is represented as a typical one-idea-ed person (we’ll discuss the idea later), yet his reaction to Rose’s other and libidinous self shows very clearly that he has another idea too, the same idea as Rose’s alter ego. I’m not saying it’s a bad idea, but why isn’t Dick represented by another actor to play this side of his character? The same question can be asked about the disparity between the heroine’s three characters and those of the others.
Finally, the story to which all this is fitted is entirely trivial and inconsistent itself. It hesitates between a feeble and uninteresting triangular situation—wife loves husband, thinks it’s all washed-up because of girl-friend, emotional scene, reconciliation and their relationship is more REAL than it was before — and a pretentious attempt at a satirical theme. Dick, admirably and solely played by Donald Houston, is the embodiment of all those mythological planners and evil bureaucrats that buzz in the bonnets of Tory newspaper leader writers. The part is written as oldfashioned farce. The writer’s own prejudices and confusions have resulted in that classical bloomer, to intend satire and produce low comedy.
It is not the play’s trivial plot and shallow characterisation that make it worth discussing. The important and interesting thing about it is that it does represent an attempt to get away from that West End convention of naturalism in the drawing room, which certainly isn’t naturalistic anyhow and whose drawing rooms never existed.
Incidentally, the play’s method presents considerable problems to the producer, which are hard to solve on any stage, and especially on a tiny one like that of the Mercury. In the circumstances they have been solved fairly well. And the actors do as well as can be expected with the material at their disposal. There are no brilliant performances, but no bad ones either. Sebastian Shaw is too intelligent an [14] actor to be able to take his part very seriously; no basis exists upon which he can be expected to show his real powers.
note —
wondering whether to include a list of plays in which Florida Pier appeared, e.g., Friquet (at the Savoy Theatre, in which Marie Doro plays the title role)
Theatre Magazine 5:49 (March 1905) : 56-57
archive.org : link

books
They knew how to die
New York edition : The kinsmen know how to die : being a narrative of the personal experiences of a Red Cross Sister on the Russian front. Sophie Botcharsky and Florida Pier
(P. Davies / London and William Morrow / New York, 1931) : permalink (BL)
do not have dustjacket; cover illustration by Paul Wenck : link (Great War Dust Jackets, part of Alan Hewer’s fantastic resource : link)
Sophia Alfredovna Borman Botcharsky (1896-1982) : findagrave : link
Sophie Botcharsky was the daughter of the Russian feminist, politician and writer Ariadna Tyrkova-Williams (1869-1962 *) and step-daughter of the linguist and journalist Harold Williams (1876-1928 *)
collection guide, The Tyrkova-Williams Collection at BL : link
review by Arthur Ruhl (dramatic critic at the New York Herald Tribune), in The Saturday Review of Literature (October 19, 1931) : 184 : link (pdf; The Unz Review)
The book contains a preface by Bernard Pares (1867-1949), diplomat, historian, academic and writer (wikipedia). It concludes with this paragraph :
“Madame Botcharsky has had the advantage of collaborating with a writer, Florida Pier, who has helped her to put her experiences into a form which should carry conviction and interest to the reader, and the book should take an important place among the great records of that great and tragic story.”
The book, btw, is cited/quoted in various studies of wartime nursing (and nurse anaesthetists), see for example :
Laurie Stoff. “The ‘myth of the war experience’ and Russian wartime nursing during World War I.” Aspasia, vol. 6, annual 2012, pp. 96+.
Gale Academic OneFile, link. Accessed 12 Jan. 2023.
It is Stoff who clarifies that Botcharsky’s surname is properly Bocharskaia.
Towards Relationship (1939)
Women and Sometimes Men (1957)
The Measure of My Days (1968)
borrowable at archive.org

life

still still still to come

wikipedia

why ?

I came across Florida Pier whilst trawling for usages of the word “puttering,” early August 2022. There were two for Florida Pier —
164 and
171 —
as I looked into this Florida Pier was — her later writing dispenses with the “Pier” in favor of “Scott-Maxwell” — and looked further into her Harper’s Weekly essays under the heading “The Gentler View,” I came to realize the range and depth of her writing as well as of her experience.

and so I began to include transcriptions of other of her essays, sans the word “puttering,” and to look for more by and about her.

20230106, 20230812, 20250308, 20260809