Opal Whiteley
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In the diary, Opal is often the source of adults' consternation, particularly her mother's -- or "the mamma," as Opal calls her in the book: "By-and-by, when the washing part was done, then the mamma went to the grandma's house to get some soap. When she went away she did say she wished she didn't have to bother with carrying water to scrub the floor. She doesn't. While she has been gone a good while, I have plenty of water on the floor for her to mop it when she gets back. When she did go away, she said to me to wring the clothes out of the wash. There were a lot of clothes in the wash -- skirts and aprons and shirts and dresses and clothes that you wear under dresses. Every bit of clothes I took out of the tubs I carried into the kitchen and squeezed all the water out on the kitchen floor. That makes lots of water everywhere -- under the cook-table and under the cupboard and under the stove. Why, there is most enough water to mop the three floors, and then some water would be left over. I did feel glad feels because it was so as the mamma did want it." Her mother, of course, did not want it that way -- and Opal later reports that on her backside "I did have many sore feels."

The diary is full of such charming tales -- almost too charming for the cynical reader, says Benjamin Hoff. "People either love Opal, or they don't seem to have any feeling for her at all." Some have said that no child could write like that, express herself with both innocence and perception, he adds. "But I think that those people have forgotten what it was like to be a kid."


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