March 1.
Dear Judy:
Do stop sending me telegrams!
Of course I know that you want to know everything that is happening, and
I would send a daily bulletin, but I truly don't find a minute. I am so
tired when night comes that if it weren't for Jane's strict discipline,
I should go to bed with my clothes on.
Later, when we slip a little more into routine, and I can be sure that
my assistants are all running off their respective jobs, I shall be the
regularest correspondent you ever had.
It was five days ago, wasn't it, that I wrote? Things have been
happening in those five days. The MacRae and I have mapped out a plan of
campaign, and are stirring up this place to its sluggish depths. I like
him less and less, but we have declared a sort of working truce. And the
man IS a worker. I always thought I had sufficient energy myself, but
when an improvement is to be introduced, I toil along panting in his
wake. He is as stubborn and tenacious and bull-doggish as a Scotchman
can be, but he does understand babies; that is, he understands their
physiological aspects. He hasn't any more feeling for them personally
than for so many frogs that he might happen to be dissecting.
Do you remember Jervis's holding forth one evening for an hour or so
about our doctor's beautiful humanitarian ideals? C'EST A RIRE! The man
merely regards the J. G. H. as his own private laboratory, where he
can try out scientific experiments with no loving parents to object.
I shouldn't be surprised anyday to find him introducing scarlet fever
cultures into the babies' porridge in order to test a newly invented
serum.
Of the house staff, the only two who strike me as really efficient are
the primary teacher and the furnace-man. You should see how the children
run to meet Miss Matthews and beg for caresses, and how painstakingly
polite they are to the other teachers. Children are quick to size up
character. I shall be very embarrassed if they are too polite to me.
Just as soon as I get my bearings a little, and know exactly what we
need, I am going to accomplish some widespread discharging. I should
like to begin with Miss Snaith; but I discover that she is the niece
of one of our most generous trustees, and isn't exactly dischargeable.
She's a vague, chinless, pale-eyed creature, who talks through her nose
and breathes through her mouth. She can't say anything decisively and
then stop; her sentences all trail off into incoherent murmurings. Every
time I see the woman I feel an almost uncontrollable desire to take her
by the shoulders and shake some decision into her. And Miss Snaith is
the one who has had entire supervision of the seventeen little tots aged
from two to five! But, anyway, even if I can't discharge her, I have
reduced her to a subordinate position without her being aware of the
fact.
The doctor has found for me a charming girl who lives a few miles from
here and comes in every day to manage the kindergarten. She has big,
gentle, brown eyes, like a cow's, and motherly manners (she is just
nineteen), and the babies love her.
At the head of the nursery I have placed a jolly, comfortable
middle-aged woman who has reared five of her own and has a hand with
bairns. Our doctor also found her. You see, he is useful. She is
technically under Miss Snaith, but is usurping dictatorship in a
satisfactory fashion. I can now sleep at night without being afraid that
my babies are being inefficiently murdered.
You see, our reforms are getting started; and while I acquiesce with
all the intelligence at my command to our doctor's basic scientific
upheavals, still, they sometimes leave me cold. The problem that keeps
churning and churning in my mind is: How can I ever instil enough love
and warmth and sunshine into those bleak little lives? And I am not sure
that the doctor's science will accomplish that.
One of our most pressing INTELLIGENT needs just now is to get our
records into coherent form. The books have been most outrageously
unkept. Mrs. Lippett had a big black account book into which she jumbled
any facts that happened to drift her way as to the children's family,
their conduct, and their health. But for weeks at a time she didn't
trouble to make an entry. If any adopting family wants to know a child's
parentage, half the time we can't even tell where we got the child!
"Where did you come from, baby dear?"
"The blue sky opened, and I am here,"
is an exact description of their arrival.
We need a field worker to travel about the country and pick up all
the hereditary statistics she can about our chicks. It will be an easy
matter, as most of them have relatives. What do you think of Janet Ware
for the job? You remember what a shark she was in economics; she simply
battened on tables and charts and surveys.
I have also to inform you that the John Grier Home is undergoing a very
searching physical examination, and it is the shocking truth that out
of the twenty-eight poor little rats so far examined only five are up to
specification. And the five have not been here long.
Do you remember the ugly green reception room on the first floor? I have
removed as much of its greenness as possible, and fitted it up as the
doctor's laboratory. It contains scales and drugs and, most professional
touch of all, a dentist's chair and one of those sweet grinding
machines. (Bought them second-hand from Doctor Brice in the village, who
is putting in, for the gratification of his own patients, white enamel
and nickel-plate.) That drilling machine is looked upon as an infernal
engine, and I as an infernal monster for instituting it. But every
little victim who is discharged FILLED may come to my room every day for
a week and receive two pieces of chocolate. Though our children are not
conspicuously brave, they are, we discover, fighters. Young Thomas Kehoe
nearly bit the doctor's thumb in two after kicking over a tableful of
instruments. It requires physical strength as well as skill to be dental
adviser to the J. G. H. . . . . . . . . . .
Interrupted here to show a benevolent lady over the institution. She
asked fifty irrelevant questions, took up an hour of my time, then
finally wiped away a tear and left a dollar for my "poor little
charges."
So far, my poor little charges are not enthusiastic about these new
reforms. They don't care much for the sudden draft of fresh air that has
blown in upon them, or the deluge of water. I am shoving in two baths
a week, and as soon as we collect tubs enough and a few extra faucets,
they are going to get SEVEN.
But at least I have started one most popular reform. Our daily bill
of fare has been increased, a change deplored by the cook as causing
trouble, and deplored by the rest of the staff as causing an immoral
increase in expense. ECONOMY spelt in capitals has been the guiding
principle of this institution for so many years that it has become a
religion. I assure my timid co-workers twenty times a day that, owing to
the generosity of our president, the endowment has been exactly doubled,
and that I have vast sums besides from Mrs. Pendleton for necessary
purposes like ice cream. But they simply CAN'T get over the feeling that
it is a wicked extravagance to feed these children.
The doctor and I have been studying with care the menus of the past, and
we are filled with amazement at the mind that could have devised them.
Here is one of her frequently recurring dinners:
Boiled potatoes
Boiled rice
Blanc mange
It's a wonder to me that the children are anything more than one hundred
and eleven little lumps of starch.
Looking about this institution, one is moved to misquote Robert
Browning.
"There may be heaven; there must be hell;
Meantime, there is the John Grier--well!"
S. McB.