“Scared the life out of me.”

Ima Hogg was an independent young woman, and she made her own decisions. One day she decided to explore Berlin. She ventured out alone--a daring act for a young woman of good family, unchaperoned in a large city. She rode the “U-bahn,” or Untergrundbahn, the underground railway system that had opened in Berlin in 1902. Ima had, after all, spent time in New York City, which had trolleys and elevated trains, and a subway by 1904. This Berlin adventure left her badly frightened. Her diary is not clear on the details, but she took the underground to a distant part of the city. She visited a music store, bought some flowers at a stand, and then, on the street, as she wrote afterward, “a man said something to me--scared the life out of me. Then another . . . I thought was going to insist on walking with me. I really was never more frightened. They say Berlin is a terrible place for such things. My first & hope my last experience.”         

         There were good times, too. She went for a sleigh ride, her first, and noted that the “novelty was intoxicating; the cold cold air in your face, the merry people on the streets.”

         But in a few weeks later she wrote, “Am homesick and stupid and lonesome and utterly miserable.” And she was waking with headaches.

         

         In the summer of 1908, Ima Hogg would be twenty-six years old. What was she going to do with her life?