Saturday.
Dear Gordon:
Your letter of Thursday is at hand, and extremely silly I consider it.
Of course I am not trying to let you down easy; that isn't my way. If I
let you down at all, it will be suddenly and with an awful bump. But
I honestly didn't realize that it had been three weeks since I wrote.
Please excuse!
Also, my dear sir, I have to bring you to account. You were in New York
last week, and you never ran up to see us. You thought we wouldn't find
it out, but we heard--and are insulted.
Would you like an outline of my day's activities? Wrote monthly report
for trustees' meeting. Audited accounts. Entertained agent of State
Charities Aid Association for luncheon. Supervised children's menus for
next ten days. Dictated five letters to families who have our children.
Visited our little feeble-minded Loretta Higgins (pardon the reference;
I know you don't like me to mention the feeble-minded), who is being
boarded out in a nice comfortable family, where she is learning to work.
Came back to tea and a conference with the doctor about sending a child
with tubercular glands to a sanatorium. Read an article on cottage
VERSUS congregate system for housing dependent children. (We do need
cottages! I wish you'd send us a few for a Christmas present.) And now
at nine o'clock I'm sleepily beginning a letter to you. Do you know many
young society girls who can point to such a useful day as that?
Oh, I forgot to say that I stole ten minutes from my accounts this
morning to install a new cook. Our Sallie Washington-Johnston, who
cooked fit for the angels had a dreadful, dreadful temper and terrorized
poor Noah, our super-excellent furnace man, to the point of giving
notice. We couldn't spare Noah. He's more useful to the institution than
its superintendent, and so Sallie Washington-Johnston is no more.
When I asked the new cook her name, she replied, "Ma name is Suzanne
Estelle, but ma friends call me Pet." Pet cooked the dinner tonight,
but I must say that she lacks Sallie's delicate touch. I am awfully
disappointed that you didn't visit us while Sallie was still here. You
would have taken away an exalted opinion of my housekeeping.
Drowsiness overcame me at that point, and it's now two days later.
Poor neglected Gordon! It has just occurred to me that you never got
thanked for the modeling clay which came two weeks ago, and it was
such an unusually intelligent present that I should have telegraphed my
appreciation. When I opened the box and saw all that nice messy putty
stuff, I sat down on the spot and created a statue of Singapore. The
children love it; and it is very good to have the handicraft side of
their training encouraged.
After a careful study of American history, I have determined that
nothing is so valuable to a future president as an early obligatory
unescapable performance of CHORES.
Therefore I have divided the daily work of this institution into a
hundred parcels, and the children rotate weekly through a succession of
unaccustomed tasks. Of course they do everything badly, for just as they
learn how, they progress to something new. It would be infinitely easier
for us to follow Mrs. Lippett's immoral custom of keeping each child
sentenced for life to a well-learned routine; but when the temptation
assails me, I recall the dreary picture of Florence Henty, who polished
the brass doorknobs of this institution for seven years--and I sternly
shove the children on.
I get angry every time I think of Mrs Lippett. She had exactly the
point of view of a Tammany politician--no slightest sense of service to
society. Her only interest in the John Grier Home was to get a living
out of it.
Wednesday.
What new branch of learning do you think I have introduced into my
asylum? Table manners!
I never had any idea that it was such a lot of trouble to teach children
how to eat and drink. Their favorite method is to put their mouths down
to their mugs and lap their milk like kittens. Good manners are not
merely snobbish ornaments, as Mrs. Lippett's regime appeared to believe.
They mean self-discipline and thought for others, and my children have
got to learn them.
That woman never allowed them to talk at their meals, and I am having
the most dreadful time getting any conversation out of them above a
frightened whisper. So I have instituted the custom of the entire staff,
myself included, sitting with them at the table, and directing the talk
along cheerful and improving lines.
Also I have established a small, very strict training table, where
the little dears, in relays, undergo a week of steady badgering. Our
uplifting table conversations run like this:
"Yes, Tom, Napoleon Bonaparte was a very great man--elbows off the
table. He possessed a tremendous power of concentrating his mind on
whatever he wanted to have; and that is the way to accomplish--don't
snatch, Susan; ask politely for the bread, and Carrie will pass it to
you.--But he was an example of the fact that selfish thought just for
oneself, without considering the lives of others, will come to disaster
in the--Tom! Keep your mouth shut when you chew--and after the battle
of Waterloo--let Sadie's cooky alone--his fall was all the greater
because--Sadie Kate, you may leave the table. It makes no difference
what he did. Under no provocation does a lady slap a gentleman."
Two more days have passed; this is the same kind of meandering letter I
write to Judy. At least, my dear man, you can't complain that I haven't
been thinking about you this week! I know you hate to be told all about
the asylum, but I can't help it, for it's all I know. I don't have five
minutes a day to read the papers. The big outside world has dropped
away. My interests all lie on the inside of this little iron inclosure.