1.) Describe the author’s credentials and professional relationship to Miss Ima Hogg.
2.) Describe how Ms. Ima came to have been given the name of “Ima.”
3.) Why did future governor James Stephen Hogg grow up in such reduced economic circumstances from his much-admired brother Thomas Elisha Hogg?
4.) Describe the circumstantial/conditional differences between the Hoggs and the Stinsons. Warren writes that both sides of Ms. Ima’s family were of “genteel southern” stock. What happened to impoverish the Hoggs?
5.) From what childhood experiences at the East Texas Stinson farm did Warren suggest were the stimuli for Ms. Ima’s interest in American antique furnishings?
6.) What event took James Stephen Hogg and his family to Mineola thus causing Ms. Ima’s birth in that small northeast Texas town.
7.) Describe one of Ms. Ima’s most striking physical features that led to her first nickname bestowed upon her by her oldest brother Will.
8.) In 1886 after two years in Tyler practicing law, the Hoggs relocated to Austin. Why?
9.) At age five Ms. Ima began school in the Austin public school system; she also began her study of what subject that became a lifelong enthusiasm. (Hint: Given a change in her situation and family’s good fortune, this study might have provided a successful career.)
10.) Describe Ms. Ima’s childhood relationship to her siblings.
11.) Why did Warren write, “The four years in the Governor’s Mansion, during Jim’s two terms, were probably the happiest of Ima’s young life.”
- Why are there to this blessed day large nail holes in the Texas Governor’s Mansion’s main stairway railing?
13.) Describe Ms. Ima’s first trip to America’s east coast? What was the ostensible occasion? Why did her mother not come along?
14.) Describe the Hogg family’s economic situation in the spring of 1895. What happened that September to change the family and Ms. Ima’s role in it forever?
15.) Identify “Aunt Fannie,” and describe the difference between the role she was asked to play in Ms. Ima’s immediate family and the role she actually played?
16.) Describe how Will Hogg interacted with Ms. Ima.
17.) Why did Warren suggest that Will Hogg’s attitude toward his sister’s future “raised…a conflict and resultant stress that Ima would battle until she reached middle age.”
18.) Contrast Ms. Ima’s elder brother’s relationship with her to her father’s.
19.) Describe Ms. Ima’s time at the University of Texas. What subject, taught by whom attracted “her greatest interest.”
20.) Describe how Varner Plantation near West Columbia came into Hogg family possession and how did Governor Hogg envision its future?
21.) 1901 brought several important personal, professional, family, and financial events into Ms. Ima’s life. Describe them.
22.) How did Ms. Ima come to meet future World War II Pacific Commander Douglas MacArthur?
23.) In addition to the social events that occupied Ms. Ima during her years at the turn of the twentieth century in New York City, she spent a great deal of her time doing what?
24.) What evidence suggests the superlative level of Ms. Ima’s musicianship at the end of her first year of piano study in New York City in 1903?
25.) Why, in light of her musical success by 1903, was she described by a friend as, “so sad, forlorn, and in the dumps.”
26.) What event, according to Warren, suggested that Ms. Ima would not return to the New York City musical conservatory?
27.) What evidence shows clearly that Ms. Ima, during her young adulthood, enjoyed significant attention from the opposite sex?
28.) Describe a turn of the 20th century “flower parade.”
29.) What 1905 event began Governor Hogg’s fatal decline? How did he attempt to regain his health?
