March 26. My dear Judy:
I have just been holding an interview with a woman who wants to take
a baby home to surprise her husband. I had a hard time convincing her
that, since he is to support the child, it might be a delicate attention
to consult him about its adoption. She argued stubbornly that it was
none of his business, seeing that the onerous work of washing and
dressing and training would fall upon her. I am really beginning to feel
sorry for men. Some of them seem to have very few rights.
Even our pugnacious doctor I suspect of being a victim of domestic
tyranny, and his housekeeper's at that. It is scandalous the way Maggie
McGurk neglects the poor man. I have had to put him in charge of an
orphan. Sadie Kate, with a very housewifely air, is this moment sitting
cross-legged on the hearth rug sewing buttons on his overcoat while he
is upstairs tending babies.
You would never believe it, but Sandy and I are growing quite
confidential in a dour Scotch fashion. It has become his habit, when
homeward bound after his professional calls, to chug up to our door
about four in the afternoon, and make the rounds of the house to
make sure that we are not developing cholera morbus or infanticide or
anything catching, and then present himself at four-thirty at my library
door to talk over our mutual problems.
Does he come to see me? Oh, no, indeed; he comes to get tea and toast
and marmalade. The man hath a lean and hungry look. His housekeeper
doesn't feed him enough. As soon as I get the upper hand of him a little
more, I am going to urge him on to revolt.
Meanwhile he is very grateful for something to eat, but oh, so funny in
his attempts at social grace! At first he would hold a cup of tea in
one hand, a plate of muffins in the other, and then search blankly for a
third hand to eat them with. Now he has solved the problem. He turns in
his toes and brings his knees together; then he folds his napkin into
a long, narrow wedge that fills the crack between them, thus forming a
very workable pseudo lap; after that he sits with tense muscles
until the tea is drunk. I suppose I ought to provide a table, but the
spectacle of Sandy with his toes turned in is the one gleam of amusement
that my day affords.
The postman is just driving in with, I trust, a letter from you. Letters
make a very interesting break in the monotony of asylum life. If you
wish to keep this superintendent contented, you'd better write often.
. . . . . . . .
Mail received and contents noted.
Kindly convey my thanks to Jervis for three alligators in a swamp.
He shows rare artistic taste in the selection of his post cards. Your
seven-page illustrated letter from Miami arrives at the same time. I
should have known Jervis from the palm tree perfectly, even without the
label, as the tree has so much the more hair of the two. Also, I have a
polite bread-and-butter letter from my nice young man in Washington,
and a book from him, likewise a box of candy. The bag of peanuts for the
kiddies he has shipped by express. Did you ever know such assiduity?
Jimmie favors me with the news that he is coming to visit me as soon
as father can spare him from the factory. The poor boy does hate that
factory so! It isn't that he is lazy; he just simply isn't interested in
overalls. But father can't understand such a lack of taste. Having built
up the factory, he of course has developed a passion for overalls,
which should have been inherited by his eldest son. I find it awfully
convenient to have been born a daughter; I am not asked to like
overalls, but am left free to follow any morbid career I may choose,
such as this.
To return to my mail: There arrives an advertisement from a wholesale
grocer, saying that he has exceptionally economical brands of oatmeal,
rice, flour, prunes, and dried apples that he packs specially for
prisons and charitable institutions. Sounds nutritious, doesn't it?
I also have letters from a couple of farmers, each of whom would like
to have a strong, husky boy of fourteen who is not afraid of work, their
object being to give him a good home. These good homes appear with great
frequency just as the spring planting is coming on. When we investigated
one of them last week, the village minister, in answer to our usual
question, "Does he own any property?" replied in a very guarded manner,
"I think he must own a corkscrew."
You would hardly credit some of the homes that we have investigated. We
found a very prosperous country family the other day, who lived huddled
together in three rooms in order to keep the rest of their handsome
house clean. The fourteen-year girl they wished to adopt, by way of a
cheap servant, was to sleep in the same tiny room with their own three
children. Their kitchen-dining-parlor apartment was more cluttered up
and unaired than any city tenement I ever saw, and the thermometer at
eighty-four. One could scarcely say they were living there; they were
rather COOKING. You may be sure they got no girl from us!
I have made one invariable rule--every other is flexible. No child is
to be placed out unless the proposed family can offer better advantages
than we can give. I mean than we are going to be able to give in the
course of a few months, when we get ourselves made over into a model
institution. I shall have to confess that at present we are still pretty
bad.
But anyway, I am very CHOOSEY in regard to homes, and I reject
three-fourths of those that offer.