LITMIR.BIZ

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the library, where could also be found the piano which she played so well.

      Twenty-year-old Carrie was surrounded by adoring young male suitors. That she hadn’t yet married, Edgar quickly realized, wasn’t for lack of proposals. She simply had hadn’t found the right man and wasn’t willing to settle for second best because she was no longer a teenager. She, too, was a striking contrast to Edgar’s own familiar experience where a woman wasn’t welcome to express an opinion of her own, freely mingle with unmarried men, or use perfume.

      Mingling, as Edgar soon realized, was what the moonlight was about. In a matter of minutes he was introduced to clergymen from the Methodist church, railroad engineers, and practically the entire junior class from South Kentucky College. He couldn’t easily enter into the conversation, but he was a good listener, and Ethel Duke filled in gaps in their conversation. All too soon, though, she disappeared, leaving him on the lawn in front of a table with small sandwiches, cookies, and a punchbowl of lemonade. Young people sat on benches and chairs or lay on the ground looking up at the moon. Almost miraculously, Edgar found himself face to face with Gertrude, who took his hand and led him down the carriage path to see her rose garden.

      Edgar couldn’t take his eyes off of her. Fifteen-years-old, standing just five-feet tall and weighing eighty pounds, she had silky brunette hair, large brown eyes, an oval face, porcelain white skin with fine, delicate features. This evening she wore an embroidered ankle-length gingham dress that her aunt Carrie had purchased in Springfield for her. “A mere slip of girl” was the way Edgar described her. “Petite, win-some, and graceful” another would say.

      How much time Edgar spent inspecting Gertrude’s rose garden, or the full moon overhead, is anyone’s guess. However, in the years to come, he always associated her beauty with roses. He brought her a rose when they later went out on dates and would never plant a garden in any of the homes they lived that didn’t feature at least one rose bush which was produced from stock originating from Gertrude’s plot at The Hill. Today at the A.R.E.’s Virginia Beach headquarters roses from this same stock still grow.

      To Edgar’s relief, Gertrude did the lion’s share of talking that night. A romantic, she encouraged him to listen to the sound of tree limbs swaying in the wind. “The souls of lovers, who were cruelly parted,” she is reported to have told him. Eventually she got him to talk about himself and flattered him by suggesting that he was probably so good as a clerk that he would someday own a bookstore himself. A great reader herself, she knew the Hopper Brothers’ inventory nearly as well as he. Clergyman and fiction writer E.P. Roe was her particularly favorite author, something Edgar would note on her next birthday.

      Edgar left The Hill that night convinced of two things: that she was most certainly behind Ethel Duke’s invitation and that she knew considerably more about him than he did her. This, too, would soon be confirmed. Thanks to Ethel Duke, who had been a substitute teacher at the Beverly School, and Gertrude’s aunt Carrie, who knew Edgar’s sister Anne from Anderson’s Department Store, Gertrude had been told all about the stories of his ghostly encounters and strange abilities. That Gertrude knew this in advance and was still interested in pursuing a relationship made him all the more enamored of her.

       With a chaperone on a date to Pilot Rock, Gertrude is at far right, c. 1902.

      No sooner had Edgar attended the party at The Hill than he received numerous other invitations to parties and social gatherings which, by no coincidence, Gertrude was also invited. Still, he remained painfully shy around her, mostly because he couldn’t fathom why a beautiful young woman like Gertrude, from a well-off and well-educated family such as hers, could be interested in a mere bookstore clerk with an eighth-grade education. He wasn’t certain she actually liked him until he accompanied her and Ethel Duke on a picnic to Pilot Rock, a massive limestone outcropping nestled into the Christian County foothills.

      They set out from Hopkinsville by wagon with baskets of fried chicken, beaten biscuits, fresh tomatoes, and cake. Outside of town they parked at the foot of the towering rock formation and made the rest of the journey up Pilot Rock on foot. As was customary on this day, and on the many dates they would have in the future, they were accompanied by a chaperone. Their Pilot Rock picnic was followed by a more adventurous trip to a mineral spring (boys and girls bathed separately) and then an exploration, by lantern light, of an abandoned mine.

      Edgar and Gertrude soon became a couple, joining one another at parties, church socials, presentations at the Union Tabernacle, and shows at Holland’s Opera House. Both greatly enjoyed sitting in the bleachers whenever the Hopkinsville Moguls took the baseball field. Gertrude’s brother, Lynn Evans, played shortstop. Sunday mornings were devoted to church—Edgar attending the Christian Church and Gertrude the Methodist Church. Afterwards, Edgar would ride his bicycle to The Hill, and they would sit together on the large veranda or in the parlor playing games or reading out loud from books that he had brought from Hopper Brothers.

      As a future in-law would later write, theirs was an appeal of opposites. “He [was] excitable, earnest, born of extremes, a social outsider; and she—calm inquisitive, practical, an embodiment of southern gentility. He became charismatic and extroverted [as their relationship developed]; she kept her own counsel. Their immediate rapport held their relationship intact through one crisis after another.”

      The first crisis was the disapproval of the senior Salters. Edgar wasn’t educated, had no refinement, and most important couldn’t raise a family working as a bookstore clerk. Even when, several months into the courtship, Edgar received a substantial raise at the bookstore, he was still having difficulty supporting his parents. Leslie hadn’t yet found a job, and Edgar’s mother earned money taking in laundry and working as a seamstress. His sisters helped out as well, but Edgar was the primary breadwinner.

      The younger Salter generation—Ethel, Hugh, Lynn, and others—however, embraced Edgar as a brother. They truly enjoyed his company as he did theirs. Hugh and Lynn also engaged him in ways that few others dared. They challenged him to psychically read a deck of playing cards face down (which he did without apparent difficulty). They also tested his uncanny ability to find lost objects (which he invariably was able to do) and to read unopened letters. To them, he wasn’t a freak, but a wonder to behold.

       Edgar and Gertrude at the house known as The Hill, c. 1902.

      Gertrude’s aunt Carrie wasn’t interested in these activities, but she, too, appreciated his unique abilities. She was more fascinated by his experience with the angel, and how, when praying, he sometimes heard heavenly music. Feeling secure in her company, he shared aspects of himself he had kept hidden. Among other things, he revealed that he could sometimes see colors or patterns of colors around people when the person was feeling strong emotions.

      Gertrude didn’t embrace this part of Edgar’s life. Concerned, she discussed the matter with one of her college professors. He told her in no uncertain terms that Edgar would become mentally unstable if he continued to experiment and indulge in psychic-related activities. Likely he would one day have to be committed to the Hopkinsville asylum. This was a particularly difficult thing for Gertrude to put out of her mind. She had only to step out on the veranda of her house to see the asylum’s spires, built by her grandfather, on the horizon. They became a constant reminder of what might be. Unable to remain silent on the matter, she finally discussed the subject with Edgar. He told her the truth. He didn’t like or understand the strange abilities he seemed to possess and wanted nothing more than to live a normal life. He also promised not to engage in further experimentation.

      Two incidents, however, left Gertrude frightened. One Sunday evening, when Edgar was nodding off on the sofa in the family’s parlor, Gertrude told him to “go to sleep.” Edgar immediately went to sleep and couldn’t be woken up that night or the following morning and afternoon. Not until a frantic and frightened Gertrude shouted, “Edgar, wake up!” did he instantly open his eyes, acting as if minutes, not an entire day, had passed.

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