Such sad news that the Delphian Club announced, after more than 100 years they have decided to disband “due to COVID-19 and the age of members.” It was a wise decision, albeit sad for Commerce.
Four years before in February 1914, our favorite correspondent, Georgia Walden of the Northeast Corner of Hunt County wrote that circumstances had taken her out of the world for quite a while and she was beginning to come back again through her columns of the Commerce Journal.
Mrs. Walden uttered that social ways were helplessly. She was desperate for words to write. Weather was too trite. Music? Hadn’t been a concert or play for months. The most engrossing subject musically had been Paderewski in Ft. Worth. Probably the last tour for the grand old man, the master pianist of the world. Virgean England, a Commerce girl attending the musical conservatory, attended with a company of young music lovers, chaperoned by their teachers.
Apart from music, clothes are the absorbing topic of the day. They are more interesting than they have ever been. Dressmaking has become one of the fine arts. Poiret and his Parisian rivals are international celebrities, recognized as creative arts. O Tempora, O Mores! There are so many things worthier of our study and enthusiasm.
The continued services at the Methodist Church began Sunday, the 8th, under very auspicious conditions but Dame Nature blew up a contrary wind and rain and mist gloomily enveloped the town on the 9th. Today, the 10th, is warm and springlike with occasional glimpses of sunshine, so we hope to be blessed with sunshine and showers of blessings spiritually during the week. Rev. Young from Greenville arrived today to assist in the services. Never before did people so wish to have real common sense help in their inner life. We may not express ourselves as they did in olden times, but we are still “incurable religious.” We want to be preached to, if it be done well.
We had a kindly message from the “Golden Gate” last week, a letter from our dear friends and former townswoman, Mrs. Lee Carter. She left Commerce on the 27th of December, arrived in San Francisco on the afternoon of the 31st. Had a gala day on the 1st, heard the old year rung out by chimes of bells. She is pleasantly located at the Maryland Hotel in the heart of the city, gets meals at the Victoria Cafeteria, kept by ladies who were formerly school teachers, everything dainty and nice. She has visited the Cliff House, the Golden Gate Park, the Exposition grounds and many other places of interest, even experienced a slight earthquake shock.
We will note also a kindly message from Colorado Springs, a beautiful hand-painted calendar bearing these lines so replete with tender kindness from our beloved townswoman, Mrs. W. B. DeJernett:
“Be glad and keep smiling,
And keep you own worth;
Be glad, and you’re helping
Each brother on earth.”
Our public school is progressing fine. Quite a large class of pupils will graduate in June. We are proud to say among them a goodly number of boys. They deserve the name of young men for we have noticed in the past ten years only the manly boys who are willing to be strictly disciplined have remained in the public school to graduation and these exceptions are honors to Commerce. They remembered that among the rights of men there was no right to be idle.
We are still advocating our children’s rights to a fine school library and fire drills and last but not lease, a Mother’s Club to study the best methods of home keeping, where mother is Queen.
Footnote: The Delphian Club in Commerce answered the request for a fine school library four years later.