April 7. My dear Judy:
I have just been reading a pamphlet on manual training for girls,
and another on the proper diet for institutions--right proportions of
proteins, fats, starches, etc. In these days of scientific charity, when
every problem has been tabulated, you can run an institution by chart.
I don't see how Mrs. Lippett could have made all the mistakes she did,
assuming, of course,that she knew how to read. But there is one quite
important branch of institutional work that has not been touched upon,
and I myself am gathering data. Some day I shall issue a pamphlet on the
"Management and Control of Trustees."
I must tell you the joke about my enemy--not the Hon. Cy, but my first,
my original enemy. He has undertaken a new field of endeavor. He says
quite soberly (everything he does is sober; he has never smiled yet)
that he has been watching me closely since my arrival, and though I am
untrained and foolish and flippant (sic), he doesn't think that I am
really so superficial as I at first appeared. I have an almost masculine
ability of grasping the whole of a question and going straight to the
point.
Aren't men funny? When they want to pay you the greatest compliment in
their power, they naively tell you that you have a masculine mind. There
is one compliment, incidentally, that I shall never be paying him.
I cannot honestly say that he has a quickness of perception almost
feminine.
So, though Sandy quite plainly sees my faults, still, he thinks that
some of them may be corrected; and he has determined to carry on my
education from the point where the college dropped it. A person in
my position ought to be well read in physiology, biology, psychology,
sociology, and eugenics; she should know the hereditary effects of
insanity, idiocy, and alcohol; should be able to administer the Binet
test; and should understand the nervous system of a frog. In pursuance
whereof, he has placed at my disposal his own scientific library of four
thousand volumes. He not only fetches in the books he wants me to read,
but comes and asks questions to make sure I haven't skipped.
We devoted last week to the life and letters of the Jukes family.
Margaret, the mother of criminals, six generations ago, founded a
prolific line, and her progeny, mostly in jail, now numbers some twelve
hundred. Moral: watch the children with a bad heredity so carefully that
none of them can ever have any excuse for growing up into Jukeses.
So now, as soon as we have finished our tea, Sandy and I get out
the Doomsday Book, and pore over its pages in an anxious search for
alcoholic parents. It's a cheerful little game to while away the
twilight hour after the day's work is done.
QUELLE VIE! Come home fast and take me out of it. I'm wearying for the
sight of you.