April 13.
Dear Judy:
I am gratified to learn that you were gratified to learn that I am going
to stay. I hadn't realized it, but I am really getting sort of attached
to orphans.
It's an awful disappointment that Jervis has business which will keep
you South so much longer. I am bursting with talk, and it is such a
laborious nuisance having to write everything I want to say.
Of course I am glad that we are to have the building remodeled, and I
think all of your ideas good, but I have a few extra good ones myself.
It will be nice to have the new gymnasium and sleeping-porches, but,
oh, my soul does long for cottages! The more I look into the internal
workings of an orphan asylum, the more I realize that the only type
of asylum that can compete with a private family is one on the cottage
system. So long as the family is the unit of society, children should be
hardened early to family life.
The problem that is keeping me awake at present is, What to do with the
children while we are being made over? It is hard to live in a house and
build it at the same time. How would it be if I rented a circus tent and
pitched it on the lawn?
Also, when we plunge into our alterations, I want a few guest rooms
where our children can come back when ill or out of work. The great
secret of our lasting influence in their lives will be our watchful care
afterward. What a terrible ALONE feeling it must give a person not to
have a family hovering in the background! With all my dozens of aunts
and uncles and mothers and fathers and cousins and brothers and sisters,
I can't visualize it. I'd be terrified and panting if I didn't have lots
of cover to run to. And for these forlorn little mites, somehow or other
the John Grier Home must supply their need. So, dear people, send me
half a dozen guest rooms, if you please.
Good-by, and I'm glad you didn't put in the other woman. The very
suggestion of somebody else taking over my own beautiful reforms before
they were even started, stirred up all the opposition in me. I'm afraid
I'm like Sandy--I canna think aught is dune richt except my ain hand is
in 't.
Yours, for the present,
SALLIE McBRIDE.