Nelka by Michael Moukhanoff

Nelka

Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch

By

Michael Moukhanoff

(0 Reviews)

Published:

1964

Downloads:

347

Nelka

Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch

By

Michael Moukhanoff

(0 Reviews)

Read Online

This book is available for free download in a number of formats - including epub, pdf, azw, mobi and more. You can also read the full text online using our ereader.

In attempting this biographical sketch of Nelka I am using thememories of 45 years together and also a great number of letters asmaterial. Her Aunt, Miss Susan Blow, had the habit of keepingNelka's letters over the years. There are some as early as whenNelka was only five years old and then up to the year 1916, the yearher aunt died. These letters reflect very vividly the personality,the ideas, the aspirations, the disappointments and the hopes of aperson over a period of a long life. They paint a very real pictureof her personality and for this reason I am using quotations fromthese letters very extensively.

Book Excerpt

erve, more than one should dare hope for."

"I was sorry to disappoint you yesterday, but I cried all the afternoon."

A year later--Washington 1899.

"Try as I will I do not see how I can ever take up any interest again. I have so little desire to go on with anything and I am so satisfied with what I have had."

Washington 1899.

"I went to church this morning and I was surprised to realize how heathenish and unchristian the sermon sounded to me. It was painful to feel that I did not believe one word of what a Christian minister said. What a network man seems to have made of the simplest things, wherein to be everlastingly confounded. Might one just look up and reach out overhead, instead of looking around one and trying to grope at one's level. Truths made intangible by the impenetrable meshes of faulty creeds and imperfect reasoning."

Ashantee 1899.

"Please do not worry about me. I told you that I was peaceful and content, which I am. I want nothing which I canno