Sunday.
Dear Gordon:
I know that I haven't written lately; you have a perfect right to
grumble, but oh dear! oh dear! you can't imagine what a busy person an
orphan asylum superintendent is. And all the writing energy I possess
has to be expended upon that voracious Judy Abbott Pendleton. If three
days go by without a letter she telegraphs to know if the asylum has
burned; whereas, if you--nice man--go letterless, you simply send us a
present to remind us of your existence. So, you see, it's distinctly to
our advantage to slight you often.
You will probably be annoyed when I tell you that I have promised to
stay on here. They finally did find a woman to take my place, but she
wasn't at all the right type and would have answered only temporarily.
And, my dear Gordon, it's true, when I faced saying good-by to this
feverish planning and activity, Worcester somehow looked rather
colorless. I couldn't bear to let my asylum go unless I was sure of
substituting a life packed equally full of sensation.
I know the alternative you will suggest, but please don't--just now. I
told you before that I must have a few months longer to make up my mind.
And in the meantime I like the feeling that I'm of use in the world.
There's something constructive and optimistic about working with
children; that is, if you look at it from my cheerful point of view,
and not from our Scotch doctor's. I've never seen anybody like that man;
he's always pessimistic and morbid and down. It's best not to be too
intelligent about insanity and dipsomania and all the other hereditary
details. I am just about ignorant enough to be light-hearted and
effective in a place like this.
The thought of all of these little lives expanding in every direction
eternally thrills me. There are so many possibilities in our
child garden for every kind of flower. It has been planted rather
promiscuously, to be sure, but though we undoubtedly shall gather
a number of weeds, we are also hoping for some rare and beautiful
blossoms. Am I not growing sentimental? It is due to hunger--and there
goes the dinner-gong! We are going to have a delicious meal: roast beef
and creamed carrots and beet greens, with rhubarb pie for dessert. Would
you not like to dine with me? I should love to have you.
Most cordially yours,
S. McB.
P.S. You should see the number of poor homeless cats that these children
want to adopt. We had four when I came, and they have all had kittens
since. I haven't taken an exact census, but I think the institution
possesses nineteen.
April 15. My dear Judy:
You'd like to make another slight donation to the J. G. H. out of
the excess of last month's allowance? BENE! Will you kindly have the
following inserted in all low-class metropolitan dailies:
Notice!
To Parents Planning to Abandon their Children:
Please do it before they have reached their third year.
I can't think of any action on the part of abandoning parents that would
help us more effectually. This having to root up evil before you begin
planting good is slow, discouraging work.
We have one child here who has almost floored me; but I WILL NOT
acknowledge myself beaten by a child of five. He alternates between
sullen moroseness, when he won't speak a word, and the most violent
outbursts of temper, when he smashes everything within reach. He has
been here only three months, and in that time he has destroyed nearly
every piece of bric-a-brac in the institution--not, by the way, a great
loss to art.
A month or so before I came he pulled the tablecloth from the officers'
table while the girl in charge was in the corridor sounding the gong.
The soup had already been served. You can imagine the mess! Mrs. Lippett
half killed the child on that occasion, but the killing did nothing to
lessen the temper, which was handed on to me intact.
His father was Italian and his mother Irish; he has red hair and
freckles from County Cork and the most beautiful brown eyes that ever
came out of Naples. After the father was stabbed in a fight and the
mother had died of alcoholism, the poor little chap by some chance or
other got to us. I suspect that he belongs in the Catholic Protectory.
As for his manners--oh dear! oh dear! They are what you would expect. He
kicks and bites and swears. I have dubbed him Punch.
Yesterday he was brought squirming and howling to my office, charged
with having knocked down a little girl and robbed her of her doll. Miss
Snaith plumped him into a chair behind me, and left him to grow quiet,
while I went on with my writing. I was suddenly startled by an awful
crash. He had pushed that big green jardiniere off the window-sill and
broken it into five hundred pieces. I jumped with a suddenness that
swept the ink-bottle to the floor, and when Punch saw that second
catastrophe, he stopped roaring with rage and threw back his head and
roared with laughter. The child is DIABOLICAL.
I have determined to try a new method of discipline that I don't believe
in the whole of his forlorn little life he has ever experienced. I am
going to see what praise and encouragement and love will do. So, instead
of scolding him about the jardiniere, I assumed that it was an accident.
I kissed him and told him not to feel bad; that I didn't mind in the
least. It shocked him into being quiet; he simply held his breath and
stared while I wiped away his tears and sopped up the ink.
The child just now is the biggest problem that the J. G. H. affords.
He needs the most patient, loving, individual care--a proper mother
and father, likewise some brothers and sisters and a grandmother. But I
can't place him in a respectable family until I make over his language
and his propensity to break things. I separated him from the other
children, and kept him in my room all the morning, Jane having removed
to safe heights all destructible OBJETS D'ART. Fortunately, he loves
to draw, and he sat on a rug for two hours, and occupied himself with
colored pencils. He was so surprised when I showed an interest in a
red-and-green ferryboat, with a yellow flag floating from the mast, that
he became quite profanely affable. Until then I couldn't get a word out
of him.
In the afternoon Dr. MacRae dropped in and admired the ferryboat, while
Punch swelled with the pride of creation. Then, as a reward for being
such a good little boy, the doctor took him out in his automobile on a
visit to a country patient.
Punch was restored to the fold at five o'clock by a sadder and wiser
doctor. At a sedate country estate he had stoned the chickens, smashed
a cold frame, and swung the pet Angora cat by its tail. Then when the
sweet old lady tried to make him be kind to poor pussy, he told her to
go to hell.
I can't bear to consider what some of these children have seen and
experienced. It will take years of sunshine and happiness and love to
eradicate the dreadful memories that they have stored up in the far-back
corners of their little brains. And there are so many children and so
few of us that we can't hug them enough; we simply haven't arms or laps
to go around.
MAIS PARLONS D'AUTRES CHOSES! Those awful questions of heredity and
environment that the doctor broods over so constantly are getting into
my blood, too; and it's a vicious habit. If a person is to be of any
use in a place like this, she must see nothing but good in the world.
Optimism is the only wear for a social worker.
"'Tis the middle of night by the castle clock"--do you know where that
beautiful line of poetry comes from? "Cristabel," of English K. Mercy!
how I hated that course! You, being an English shark, liked it; but
I never understood a word that was said from the time I entered the
classroom till I left it. However, the remark with which I opened this
paragraph is true. It IS the middle of night by the mantelpiece clock,
so I'll wish you pleasant dreams. ADDIO!