April 17.
Dear Gordon:
Thank you for the tulips, likewise the lilies of the valley. They are
most becoming to my blue Persian bowls.
Have you ever heard of the Kallikaks? Get the book and read them up.
They are a two-branch family in New Jersey, I think, though their
real name and origin is artfully concealed. But, anyway,--and this is
true,--six generations ago a young gentleman, called for convenience
Martin Kallikak, got drunk one night and temporarily eloped with a
feeble-minded barmaid, thus founding a long line of feeble-minded
Kallikaks,--drunkards, gamblers, prostitutes, horse thieves,--a scourge
to New Jersey and surrounding States.
Martin later straightened up, married a normal woman, and founded a
second line of proper Kallikaks,--judges, doctors, farmers, professors,
politicians,--a credit to their country. And there the two branches
still are, flourishing side by side. You can see what a blessing it
would have been to New Jersey if something drastic had happened to that
feeble-minded barmaid in her infancy.
It seems that feeblemindedness is a very hereditary quality, and
science isn't able to overcome it. No operation has been discovered for
introducing brains into the head of a child who didn't start with them.
And the child grows up with, say, a nine-year brain in a thirty-year
body, and becomes an easy tool for any criminal he meets. Our prisons
are one-third full of feeble-minded convicts. Society ought to segregate
them on feeble-minded farms, where they can earn their livings in
peaceful menial pursuits, and not have children. Then in a generation or
so we might be able to wipe them out.
Did you know all that? It's very necessary information for a politician
to have. Get the book and read it, please; I'd send my copy only that
it's borrowed.
It's also very necessary information for me to have. There are eleven of
these chicks that I suspect a bit, and I am SURE of Loretta Higgins. I
have been trying for a month to introduce one or two basic ideas into
that child's brain, and now I know what the trouble is: her head is
filled with a sort of soft cheesy substance instead of brain.
I came up here to make over this asylum in such little details as fresh
air and food and clothes and sunshine, but, heavens! you can see what
problems I am facing. I've got to make over society first, so that it
won't send me sub-normal children to work with. Excuse all this
excited conversation; but I've just met up with the subject of
feeble-mindedness, and it's appalling--and interesting. It is your
business as a legislator to make laws that will remove it from the
world. Please attend to this immediately, And oblige,
S. McBRIDE,
Sup't John Grier Home.
Friday.
Dear Man of Science:
You didn't come today. Please don't skip us tomorrow. I have finished
the Kallikak family and I am bursting with talk. Don't you think we
ought to have a psychologist examine these children?
We owe it to adopting parents not to saddle them with feeble-minded
offspring.
You know, I'm tempted to ask you to prescribe arsenic for Loretta's
cold. I've diagnosed her case; she's a Kallikak. Is it right to let her
grow up and found a line of 378 feeble-minded people for society to care
for? Oh dear! I do hate to poison the child, but what can I do?
S. McB.
Dear Gordon:
You aren't interested in feeble-minded people, and you are shocked
because I am? Well, I am equally shocked because you are not. If you
aren't interested in everything of the sort that there unfortunately is
in this world, how can you make wise laws?
You can't.
However, at your request, I will converse upon a less morbid subject.
I've just bought fifty yards of blue and rose and green and corn-colored
hair-ribbon as an Easter present for my fifty little daughters. I am
also thinking of sending you an Easter present. How would a nice fluffy
little kitten please you? I can offer any of the following patterns:--
Number 3 comes in any color, gray, black, or yellow. If you will let me
know which you would rather have, I will express it at once.
I would write a respectable letter, but it's teatime, and I see that a
guest approaches.