Eudora Welty's precise physical description of her first-grade teacher, Miss Duling, also provides insights into the character of this "lifelong subscriber to perfection." The following paragraph appears in Welty's memoir, One Writer's Beginnings (1984).
from One Writer's Beginnings
by Eudora Welty
Miss Duling dressed as plainly as a Pilgrim on a Thanksgiving poster we made in the schoolroom, in a longish black-and-white checked gingham dress, a bright thick wool sweater the red of a railroad lantern--she'd knitted it herself--black stockings and her narrow elegant feet in black hightop shoes with heels you could hear coming, rhythmical as a parade drum down the hall. Her silky black curly hair was drawn back out of curl, fastened by high combs, and knotted behind. She carried her spectacles on a gold chain hung around her neck. Her gaze was in general sweeping, then suddenly at the point of concentration upon you. With a swing of her bell that took her whole right arm and shoulder, she rang it, militant and impartial, from the head of the front steps of Davis School when it was time for us all to line up, girls on one side, boys on the other. We were to march past her into the school building, while the fourth-grader she nabbed played time on the piano, mostly to a tune we could have skipped to, but we didn't skip into Davis School.
Eudora Welty's memoir One Writer's Beginnings was published in 1984 by Harvard University Press.
