December 11.
Dear Judy:
Your Jamaica letter is here, and I'm glad to learn that Judy, Junior,
enjoys traveling. Write me every detail about your house, and send some
photographs, so I can see you in it. What fun it must be to have a boat
of your own that chugs about those entertaining seas! Have you worn all
of your eighteen white dresses yet? And aren't you glad now that I made
you wait about buying a Panama hat till you reached Kingston?
We are running along here very much as usual without anything exciting
to chronicle. You remember little Maybelle Fuller, don't you--the chorus
girl's daughter whom our doctor doesn't like? We have placed her out.
I tried to make the woman take Hattie Heaphy instead,--the quiet little
one who stole the communion cup,--but no, indeed! Maybelle's eyelashes
won the day. After all, as poor Marie says, the chief thing is to be
pretty. All else in life depends on that.
When I got home last week, after my dash to New York, I made a brief
speech to the children. I told them that I had just been seeing Aunt
Judy off on a big ship, and I am embarrassed to have to report that the
interest--at least on the part of the boys--immediately abandoned Aunt
Judy and centered upon the ship. How many tons of coal did she burn a
day? Was she long enough to reach from the carriage house to the Indian
camp? Were there any guns aboard, and if a privateer should attack her,
could she hold her own? In case of a mutiny, could the captain shoot
down anybody he chose, and wouldn't he be hanged when he got to shore?
I had ignominiously to call upon Sandy to finish my speech. I realize
that the best-equipped feminine mind in the world can't cope with the
peculiar class of questions that originate in a thirteen-year boy's
brain.
As a result of their seafaring interest, the doctor conceived the idea
of inviting seven of the oldest and most alert lads to spend the day
with him in New York and see with their own eyes an oceanliner. They
rose at five yesterday morning, caught the 7:30 train, and had the most
wonderful adventure that has happened in all their seven lives. They
visited one of the big liners (Sandy knows the Scotch engineer),
and were conducted from the bottom of the hold to the top of the
crow's-nest, and then had luncheon on board. And after luncheon they
visited the aquarium and the top of the Singer Building, and took
the subway uptown to spend an hour with the birds of America in their
habitats. Sandy with great difficulty pried them away from the
Natural History Museum in time to catch the 6:15 train. Dinner in the
dining-car. They inquired with great particularity how much it was
costing, and when they heard that it was the same, no matter how much
you ate, they drew deep breaths and settled quietly and steadily to the
task of not allowing their host to be cheated. The railroad made nothing
on that party, and all the tables around stopped eating to stare. One
traveler asked the doctor if it was a boarding school he had in charge;
so you can see how the manners and bearing of our lads have picked up.
I don't wish to boast, but no one would ever have asked such a question
concerning seven of Mrs. Lippett's youngsters. "Are they bound for a
reformatory?" would have been the natural question after observing the
table manners of her offspring.
My little band tumbled in toward ten o'clock, excitedly babbling a
mess of statistics about reciprocating compound engines and watertight
bulkheads, devil-fish and sky-scrapers and birds of paradise. I thought
I should never get them to bed. And, oh, but they had had a glorious
day! I do wish I could manage breaks in the routine oftener. It gives
them a new outlook on life and makes them more like normal children.
Wasn't it really nice of Sandy? But you should have seen that man's
behavior when I tried to thank him. He waved me aside in the middle of
a sentence, and growlingly asked Miss Snaith if she couldn't economize a
little on carbolic acid. The house smelt like a hospital.
I must tell you that Punch is back with us again, entirely renovated as
to manners. I am looking for a family to adopt him.
I had hoped those two intelligent spinsters would see their way to
keeping him forever, but they want to travel, and they feel he's too
consuming of their liberty. I inclose a sketch in colored chalk of your
steamer, which he has just completed. There is some doubt as to the
direction in which it is going; it looks as though it might progress
backward and end in Brooklyn. Owing to the loss of my blue pencil, our
flag has had to adopt the Italian colors.
The three figures on the bridge are you and Jervis and the baby. I am
pained to note that you carry your daughter by the back of her neck, as
if she were a kitten. That is not the way we handle babies in the J. G.
H. nursery. Please also note that the artist has given Jervis his full
due in the matter of legs. When I asked Punch what had become of the
captain, he said that the captain was inside, putting coal on the fire.
Punch was terribly impressed, as well he might be, when he heard that
your steamer burned three hundred wagonloads a day, and he naturally
supposed that all hands had been piped to the stokehole.