P.S. There is one thing in the midst of all my troubles that I have to
be grateful for: the Hon. Cy has been stricken with a lingering attack
of grippe. In a burst of thankfulness I sent him a bunch of violets.
P.S. 2. We are having an epidemic of pinkeye.
May 16. Good morning, my dear Judy!
Three days of sunshine, and the J. G. H. is smiling.
I am getting my immediate troubles nicely settled. Those beastly
blankets have dried at last, and our camps have been made livable again.
They are floored with wooden slats and roofed with tar paper. (Mr.
Witherspoon calls them chicken coops.) We are digging a stone-lined
ditch to convey any further cloudbursts from the plateau on which they
stand to the cornfield below. The Indians have resumed savage life, and
their chief is back at his post.
The doctor and I have been giving Loretta Higgins's nerves our most
careful consideration. We think that this barrack life, with its
constant movement and stir, is too exciting, and we have decided that
the best plan will be to board her out in a private family, where she
will receive a great deal of individual attention.
The doctor, with his usual resourcefulness, has produced the family.
They live next door to him and are very nice people; I have just
returned from calling. The husband is foreman of the casting room at the
iron works, and the wife is a comfortable soul who shakes all over
when she laughs. They live mostly in their kitchen in order to keep the
parlor neat; but it is such a cheerful kitchen that I should like to
live in it myself. She has potted begonias in the window and a nice
purry tiger cat asleep on a braided rug in front of the stove. She bakes
on Saturday--cookies and gingerbread and doughnuts. I am planning to pay
my weekly call upon Loretta every Saturday morning at eleven o'clock.
Apparently I made as favorable an impression on Mrs. Wilson as she made
on me. After I had gone, she confided to the doctor that she liked me
because I was just as common as she was.
Loretta is to learn housework and have a little garden of her own, and
particularly play out of doors in the sunshine. She is to go to bed
early and be fed up on nice nourishing food, and they are to pet her and
make her happy. All this for three dollars a week!
Why not find a hundred such families, and board out all the children?
Then this building could be turned into an idiot asylum, and I, not
knowing anything about idiots, could conscientiously resign and go back
home and live happily ever after.
Really, Judy, I am growing frightened. This asylum will get me if I stay
long enough. I am becoming so interested in it that I can't think or
talk or dream of anything else. You and Jervis have blasted all my
prospects in life.
Suppose I should retire and marry and have a family. As families go
nowadays, I couldn't hope for more than five or six children at the
most, and all with the same heredity. But, mercy! such a family appears
perfectly insignificant and monotonous. You have institutionalized me.
Reproachfully yours,
SALLIE McBRIDE.
P.S. We have a child here whose father was lynched. Isn't that a piquant
detail to have in one's history?
Tuesday.
Dearest Judy:
What shall we do? Mamie Prout does not like prunes. This antipathy to a
cheap and healthful foodstuff is nothing but imagination, and ought
not to be countenanced among the inmates of a well-managed institution.
Mamie must be made to like prunes. So says our grammar teacher, who
spends the noonday hour with us and overlooks the morals of our charges.
About one o'clock today she marched Mamie to my office charged with the
offense of refusing, ABSOLUTELY refusing, to open her mouth and put in
a prune. The child was plumped down on a stool to await punishment from
me.
Now, as you know, I do not like bananas, and I should hate awfully to be
forced to swallow them; so, by the same token, why should I force Mamie
Prout to swallow prunes?
While I was pondering a course that would seem to uphold Miss Keller's
authority, but would at the same time leave a loophole for Mamie, I was
called to the telephone.
"Sit there until I come back," I said, and went out and closed the door.
The message was from a kind lady wishing to motor me to a committee
meeting. I didn't tell you that I am organizing local interest in our
behalf. The idle rich who possess estates in this neighborhood are
beginning to drift out from town, and I am laying my plans to catch
them before they are deflected by too many garden parties and tennis
tournaments. They have never been of the slightest use to this asylum,
and I think it's about time they woke up to a realization of our
presence.
Returning at teatime, I was waylaid in the hall by Dr. MacRae, who
demanded some statistics from my office. I opened the door, and there
sat Mamie Prout exactly where she had been left four hours before.
"Mamie darling!" I cried in horror. "You haven't been here all this
time?"
"Yes, ma'am," said Mamie; "you told me to wait until you came back."
That poor patient little thing was fairly swaying with weariness, but
she never uttered a whimper.
I will say for Sandy that he was SWEET. He gathered her up in his arms
and carried her to my library, and petted her and caressed her back to
smiles. Jane brought the sewing table and spread it before the fire,
and while the doctor and I had tea, Mamie had her supper. I suppose,
according to the theory of some educators, now, when she was thoroughly
worn out and hungry, would have been the psychological moment to ply her
with prunes. But you will be pleased to hear that I did nothing of the
sort, and that the doctor for once upheld my unscientific principles.
Mamie had the most wonderful supper of her life, embellished with
strawberry jam from my private jar and peppermints from Sandy's pocket.
We returned her to her mates happy and comforted, but still possessing
that regrettable distaste for prunes.
Did you ever know anything more appalling than this soul-crushing
unreasoning obedience which Mrs. Lippett so insistently fostered? It's
the orphan asylum attitude toward life, and somehow I must crush it out.
Initiative, responsibility, curiosity, inventiveness, fight--oh dear! I
wish the doctor had a serum for injecting all these useful virtues into
an orphan's circulation.