Journal January 15, 1963
January 15, 1963 (continued)—So now I’m living at the Mission Home at 3, rue de Lota, Paris 16e. A very pleasant place to live. I have a little single room up on the second étage. We have a Spanish cook named Antonio who prepares two excellent meals a day: we take turns making breakfast for everybody. We get up at 6, like good missionaries, gather for a study class at 6:30, and go up to breakfast at 7:30. Then office work until dinner at 12:30. Back to the office until supper at 6:30, after which we go out and proselytize. In principle, we’re home in bed by 10:30. In practice…

Our D-Day is Saturday afternoon, and we take rather full advantage of it. Last Saturday was perhaps the most amusement-filled [229] that I’ve enjoyed on my mission. After dinner (about 1 p.m.), an elder who was visiting Paris was looking for a companion to go visit the Eiffel Tower. Having never seen it close up myself, I volunteered quickly, and Elder Card and I hiked over to the monument. It was too cold for the escalators to work; so, we had to climb it on foot, which didn‘t scare us. It was a clear day, with a gentle but icy wind, and the view from the second étage was magnificent. They wouldn’t let us climb any higher, or we woulda.

Before returning to the office, we spent an hour and a half in the Musée de l‘Homme at the Palais de Chaillot. Back home, we found an opportunity to sample another diversion: we went to Cinerama and …More, next page…

I treasure an autographed copy of this very funny and insightful publication; please scroll down for her typically gracious dédicace
What can I possibly write, by way of loving tribute to my last and greatest senior companion, the inimitable Elouise Mildred Bell?1 Coming with no background at all in the publishing area, I had a ton to learn, and it will surprise nobody that this award-winning teacher got it through my swimming head effectively and joyfully. In her group’s farewell testimony meeting in the President’s office on my 22nd birthday, she was kind enough to describe me as versatile, and as a quick study. If I had an opportunity to respond, whatever I said wasn’t memorable; I can only hope it was suitably gracious.

We couldn’t go out proselytizing together, of course. So we promptly developed the habit of hanging around after supper in the dining room—a decently public place—continuing such business discussions as hadn’t already saturated out for the day, but mainly swapping literary treasures.

It was there and from Ella’s lips that I first learned of Lear’s “…lovely monkey with lollipop paws,” for which I hope my children and grandchildren will ever be as grateful as I. We’d each already fallen under the spell of “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats,” not to mention that of Gerard Manley Hopkins, in general. Can’t recall for sure whether she introduced me to Vachel Lindsay and “The Moon’s the North Wind’s Cookie,”2 but I think maybe so. Gregory Tucker had already enhanced my life with “General William Booth Enters Into Heaven.” …More, next page…
1Yes, we were officially companions for the month that we overlapped in the Home. I can still raise eyebrows by mentioning that I had two (count ’em, two) official sister missionary companions in the French Mission (Ella in ’63, and Valerie in ’68-’69). When Ella and I run into each other nowadays (not nearly frequently enough), it’s with joyous cries of “Companion!”
2These days (2022) the first literary appreciation my first granddaughter Margaret Anderson Millar has passed along to my second great-granddaughter Miriam Emmeline Wells Millar.
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