Friday. My dearest Judy:
You should see what your hundred dollars and Betsy Kindred did to that
dining room!
It's a dazzling dream of yellow paint. Being a north room, she thought
to brighten it; and she has. The walls are kalsomined buff, with a
frieze of little molly cottontails skurrying around the top. All of
the woodwork--tables and benches included--is a cheerful chrome yellow.
Instead of tablecloths, which we can't afford, we have linen runners,
with stenciled rabbits hopping along their length. Also yellow bowls,
filled at present with pussywillows, but looking forward to dandelions
and cowslips and buttercups. And new dishes, my dear--white, with yellow
jonquils (we think), though they may be roses; there is no botany expert
in the house. Most wonderful touch of all, we have NAPKINS, the first
we have seen in our whole lives. The children thought they were
handkerchiefs and ecstatically wiped their noses.
To honor the opening of the new room, we had ice-cream and cake for
dessert. It is such a pleasure to see these children anything but cowed
and apathetic, that I am offering prizes for boisterousness--to every
one but Sadie Kate. She drummed on the table with her knife and fork and
sang, "Welcome to dem golden halls."
You remember that illuminated text over the dining-room door--"The Lord
Will Provide." We've painted it out, and covered the spot with rabbits.
It's all very well to teach so easy a belief to normal children, who
have a proper family and roof behind them; but a person whose only
refuge in distress will be a park bench must learn a more militant creed
than that.
"The Lord has given you two hands and a brain and a big world to use
them in. Use them well, and you will be provided for; use them ill, and
you will want," is our motto, and that with reservations.
In the sorting process that has been going on I have got rid of eleven
children. That blessed State Charities Aid Association helped me dispose
of three little girls, all placed in very nice homes, and one to be
adopted legally if the family likes her. And the family will like her;
I saw to that. She was the prize child of the institution, obedient and
polite, with curly hair and affectionate ways, exactly the little girl
that every family needs. When a couple of adopting parents are choosing
a daughter, I stand by with my heart in my mouth, feeling as though I
were assisting in the inscrutable designs of Fate. Such a little thing
turns the balance! The child smiles, and a loving home is hers for life;
she sneezes, and it passes her by forever.
Three of our biggest boys have gone to work on farms, one of them out
West to a RANCH! Report has it that he is to become a cowboy and Indian
fighter and grizzly-bear hunter, though I believe in reality he is to
engage in the pastoral work of harvesting wheat. He marched off, a hero
of romance, followed by the wistful eyes of twenty-five adventurous
lads, who turned back with a sigh to the safely monotonous life of the
J. G. H.
Five other children have been sent to their proper institutions. One of
them is deaf, one an epileptic, and the other three approaching
idiocy. None of them ought ever to have been accepted here. This as an
educational institution, and we can't waste our valuable plant in caring
for defectives.
Orphan asylums have gone out of style. What I am going to develop is a
boarding school for the physical, moral, and mental growth of children
whose parents have not been able to provide for their care.
"Orphans" is merely my generic term for the children; a good many
of them are not orphans in the least. They have one troublesome and
tenacious parent left who won't sign a surrender, so I can't place them
out for adoption. But those that are available would be far better off
in loving foster-homes than in the best institution that I can ever
make. So I am fitting them for adoption as quickly as possible, and
searching for the homes.
You ought to run across a lot of pleasant families in your travels;
can't you bully some of them into adopting children? Boys by preference.
We've got an awful lot of extra boys, and nobody wants them. Talk about
anti-feminism! It's nothing to the anti-masculinism that exists in the
breasts of adopting parents. I could place out a thousand dimpled little
girls with yellow hair, but a good live boy from nine to thirteen is a
drug on the market. There seems to be a general feeling that they track
in dirt and scratch up mahogany furniture.
Shouldn't you think that men's clubs might like to adopt boys, as a sort
of mascot? The boy could be boarded in a nice respectable family, and
drawn out by the different members on Saturday afternoons. They could
take him to ball games and the circus, and then return him when they
had had enough, just as you do with a library book. It would be very
valuable training for the bachelors. People are forever talking about
the desirability of training girls for motherhood. Why not institute a
course of training in fatherhood, and get the best men's clubs to take
it up? Will you please have Jervis agitate the matter at his various
clubs, and I'll have Gordon start the idea in Washington. They both
belong to such a lot of clubs that we ought to dispose of at least a
dozen boys.