"STERILIZED AND FERTILIZED"
This is Sunday, and we have done all the usual Sunday things. There
won't be another for seven days. For that we give thanks in our hearts,
but not out loud.
This was Presbyterian Sunday. Miss Bray is a Presbyterian.
It is a solemn thing to be a Presbyterian, and easy for the mind, too.
Everything is fixed, and there is no unfixing. You are saved or you are
not saved, and you will never know which it is until after you are dead
and find out. Miss Bray believes she is saved, and she takes liberties.
She also thinks everything is as God ordered it, and she believes God
ordered poor Mrs. Craddock to die--that is, took her away. I don't. I
think it was that last baby.
She had had twelve, and the thirteenth just wore her out at the thought.
There being nobody to do anything for her, she got up and cooked
breakfast in her stocking feet when the baby was only a week old, and
that night she had the influenza, and the next pneumonia. On the sixth
day she was dead, and so was the baby. They forgot to feed it.
I don't believe God ever took any mothers away intentional. He never
would have made them so necessary if He had meant to take them away when
they were most needed. When they go I believe He is sorry.
I don't know how to explain it. Nobody does, though a lot try. But I
know He sees it bigger than we do, and maybe He is working at something
that isn't finished yet.
Minnie Peters is real sick. Miss Katherine has put her in the
hospital-room, and is staying in there with her.
I am all alone by myself to-night. I don't like aloneness at night. It
makes you pay too much attention to your feelings, which Miss Katherine
says is the cause of more trouble in this world than all other diseases
put together.
She says, too, that what we feel about a thing is very often different
from the way other people feel about it. And when you don't agree with
people, the only thing you can be sure about is that they don't agree
with you. I believe that's true. Not being by nature much of an
agree-er, and having feelings I hope others don't, I would be a walking
argument if Miss Katherine hadn't stopped me and explained some things I
didn't realize before.
Last night, being by myself, and not being able to go to sleep, I wrote
a piece of poetry.
Miss Katherine says it's hard to forgive people who think they write
poetry, so I won't show her this. But it does relieve you to write down
a lot of woozy nothing that is somehow like you feel. This is the
poem--I mean the verses:
1
Out upon life's ocean vast,
With the current drifting fast,
I am sailing. Oh, alas,
'Tis a lonely feeling!
2
Why was such a trip e'er started
On a pathway all uncharted?
Why from loved ones was I parted?
Who will answer? Who?
3
None will answer. So I'll see
What there is on this journey (journee)
That will bring good-luck to me--
I'll look out and see!
I hope Minnie isn't going to be sick long. She is the first girl to be
really ill since Miss Katherine came. It makes you feel so queer in the
throat to know somebody is truly sick.
A lot of the girls have been sick a little with colds and small and
unserious diseases in the past year. But Miss Katherine says it's her
business to keep us well, not just get us well after we're sick, and
she's certainly done it. We've been weller than we ever were in our
lives, and no medicine taken. Just plain common-sense regulations.
I wonder what's the matter with Minnie? The doctor hasn't said, but Miss
Katherine is uneasy, and she won't let anybody come in the room. She
hasn't been out herself since yesterday.
* * * * *
My, but we've had a time lately!
We've been fumigated and sterilized and fertilized so much that we are
better prepared for the happy-land than we ever were before. But the
danger of anybody going to it right away is over.
Minnie Peters has had scarlet fever, and the commotion made her real
famous.
Miss Katherine knew it from the first, but Dr. Rudd wouldn't believe it
until he had to, and Yorkburg got so excited it hasn't talked of
anything else for weeks.
Minnie was awful ill. Two days and two nights they didn't think she
would live, and for three weeks Miss Katherine didn't leave the room. If
it hadn't been for her Minnie would be dead.
Miss Katherine's room has been closed since they first found out it was
really scarlet fever Minnie had, and I have been in No. 4 again. She is
going away to spend a week with Miss Webb. Going to-morrow.
I am so glad she is going. All of us are glad, for she has had to do
something which shows whether you are a Christ-kind Christian or the
usual kind, and she is tired out. She won't admit it, though, and laughs
and kisses her hand over the banister, which is all the closer we have
seen her yet.
Miss Bray was scared to death. She didn't offer to share the nursing,
but she made excuses a-plenty for not doing it. Miss Bray is a church
Christian. You couldn't make her miss going to church. She thinks she'd
have bad luck if she did.