“Most girls would have preferred some fashionable watering place. . . .”

Ima, Mike, and Tom spent the summer of 1904 in South Egremont, a small town in western Massachusetts. They stayed at the Larkhurst, a resort hotel in the rolling hills of Berkshire County. Their father was planning to summer at Varner, and Will labored away in the heat of Austin.

Jim Hogg’s boys might disappoint him, but his daughter could do no wrong: At the beginning of the summer he wrote her a letter of paternal praise:

“Your splendid character, your sweet disposition, your charming manners, your fidelity to your younger brothers added to your thoughtfulness of me at all times on all appropriate occasions have so impressed me that it is but natural for me to make you second to no human being. . . . Most girls would have preferred some fashionable watering place where they could smile on other girls’ brothers, to a quiet, substantial summer home surrounded by refinement, where they are compelled to submit to the frowns (now and then) of their own young brothers.”

         But she had a good time that summer, as we shall see.