A LETTER FROM KATE
"NEW YORK.
"DEAREST CAROLINA:--Great news! Three pieces of it. First, I have
turned Christian Scientist! Second, Rosemary Goddard is married to the
Honourable Lionel Spencer! Third, daddy is so tickled over all that you
have done, as you may have suspected from his letters lately, that he is
going down. He will take the car, and Noel and Mrs. Goddard, mother,
and I are coming, too! Don't bother about accommodations. We will
switch the car to a siding and live in it. We may all have to go to
Charleston and Jacksonville, so that you and Peachie and a handy man or
two had better get ready for a rip-roaring old time, for we are going to
make Rome howl. Noel wants to go to Ormond for the automobile races.
He has entered his machine. I named it for him,--'The White
Moth,'--don't you think that's a dandy name?
"Now to go back to the really important thing. I've wanted to be a
Scientist ever since I found out that it wasn't a drag-net to catch all
the cranks in the world, as I at first supposed. I found that out in
two ways. One, by knowing a lot of you who were not in the least
cranks. The other, by seeing what a lot of cranks there are left! Yet
all the time I was hating myself and struggling against the compelling
influence. Did you ever drag a cat across the carpet by the tail?
Well, that is just about the easy, gliding gait I used to reach
Christian Science!
"Still, you'll never guess who influenced me most. Not you nor that
heavenly Mrs. Goddard nor the wonderful cures I've seen. Nuh! Guess
again. Old Noel! Yes, sir. Old skeptical Noel! Brought up for a
Catholic, too. Wouldn't that freeze you? Well, think si to myself,
think si, 'if old Noel can see good in it, and he's the best all-round
sport, man of the world, and gentleman I know, it's time little Katie
got aboard.' So I just climbed on the raft without saying a word to
anybody, expecting everybody to raise Cain, but, to my astonishment,
daddy was as pleased as Punch, and he and mother go to church with me
every Sunday. What do you say to that?
"At the ball the Goddards gave for Rosemary just before she sailed, I
was doing a two-step with Noel, and I saw a dandy girl, whose gown
simply reeked of Paris, it was so delicious. She was dancing with a
corking looking man, and, as we stopped near them for me to get a better
look at her clothes, I heard her say, 'Are you going to communion at the
Mother Church?' and he said, 'I never miss it. It is the treat of my
whole year!' I looked at Noel and he looked at me.
"'Noel,' I said, 'Did I hear aright? They weren't betting on a
horse-race in cipher, were they?' 'No,' sez he, giggling, 'they were
not. They are Christian Scientists, and they are now talking about an
incorporeal God.' 'In a ballroom,' murmurs I to myself. 'Noel,' I
said, in a weak voice, 'Take me out and lay me softly under a pump and
bring me to. I am too young to go dotty without any warning.' But,
instead of that, we joined them and Noel introduced us to each other,
and we finished the two-step talking about how hard it was to change
from our old idea of a God who was so much like a man that we had to
flag Him and shout out our prayers to be sure to get His attention. I
used to feel as if I were on the floor of a convention, trying to catch
the Speaker's eye.
"But I want to ask you two things that I can't quite get up my nerve to
ask Mrs. Goddard. What did you do about praying while changing your
idea of a personal, corporeal God to one of spirit? Why, Carolina, I've
lost the combination! I feel as though I were praying through a
megaphone out of an open window. My prayers don't seem to strike
against anything. Will I get over this feeling in time? It is only
fair to state, however, that even this queer hit-or-miss method brings
answers which my most frantic screams for help and my most humble and
dependent clinging to the robe of my personal God never did. So you can
just bet that I'm going to stick to the new method, whether I ever
understand it or not, because it does deliver the goods. Am I right or
wrong? I want to know.
"Now, I did tackle Mrs. Goddard on this point. I feel a perfect wretch
to mention it, but the fact is, I simply cannot endure the name of Mrs.
Eddy! Every time they mention 'Science and Health' in church, they say,
'By Mary Baker G. Eddy.' Every time they give out a hymn that she
wrote, they say, 'By Mary Baker G. Eddy.' And every time they do it, my
blood boils and my face burns and I grab my hymn-book until--well, I
split a pair of gloves nearly every Sunday!
"The conceit of that woman! Suppose she has given the world a new
religion,--why not let us show our gratitude spontaneously. Why need
she say such conceited, sacrilegious things in her book? She throws hot
air at herself indirectly in every chapter. It reminds me of a page in
Roosevelt's 'Alone in Cubia.' I counted sixty-three I's on one page in
that book, until I felt like the little boy who said to his father,
after an evening of war experiences, 'Papa, couldn't you get any one to
help you put down the rebellion?'
"I don't believe, unless my feeling changes, that I shall ever join the
church while its by-laws remain as they are. I will work for the cause,
and be diligent and faithful and studious, but I disapprove of a church
being such a close corporation and for one finite, human being to
possess such power as Mrs. Eddy holds, and holds with such pertinacity
and deliberate love of power.
"When I said some of this to Mrs. Goddard, she said that she never
chemicalized over Mrs. Eddy the way great numbers did, but she said you
had a claim at one time, and I want to know if you are over it. I feel
like a brute to have to admit it even to you, for of course I am
grateful and appreciative and all that. But if you call what I feel
'chemicalizing,' I can only say that I can hear myself sizzling like a
bottle of Apollinaris whenever I come across the name of Eddy, and
realize how she holds the power of a female Pope.
"I told Noel about it, but he doesn't feel it at all. Never did. But
he understands how intensely I suffer from it, and he said if I didn't
mind my eye, I'd blow off a tire right in church. And once, when he
took me and saw me getting red in the face, he said, 'Now sit tight, old
girl!' and I nearly laughed aloud.
"Now let me tell you my first demonstration. I am so happy over it I am
going to do something to celebrate it, and that's another thing I want
to consult you about.
"Yesterday Noel and I were out in the White Moth, and every time I know
I am going out in the thing I read in 'Science and Health' about
accidents, and declare the truth, so that my mind will be filled with a
preventive. It comforts me a great deal and is the only thing that
enables me to enjoy an automobile ride in New York, for, with the danger
of blowing up and other people's bad driving and frightened horses and
the absolute recklessness of pedestrians, you take, if not your life, at
least your enjoyment of life, in your hand whenever you get into a
machine.
"Noel is the most careful chauffeur I ever saw, and we were just
trundling along out in the Bronx, when, without a word of warning, a
little bit of a boy jumped from a crowd of children and stumbled right
in front of us. I saw him fall, and to my dying day I never shall
forget the sight of his little white, upturned face as he disappeared
under the machine. We ran right squarely over him!
"I stood up and screamed out: 'You said accidents could not happen! You
promised! You promised! We have not hurt that baby! He is alive! He is
not hurt! He is not even run over!' And by that time we had both
jumped down and run back, and a big crowd was gathering. Talk about
treating audibly! I was screeching at the top of my voice. Yet still
there lay the child apparently dead. I picked him up in my arms and sat
down in the mud with him, still, as Noel declares, talking aloud. Oh,
Carolina, I never shall forget the sight of his little hands! So dirty,
but so _little_! And his little limp body,--I feel as if I had it in my
lap still. The crowd kept getting bigger, and some policemen came, and
suddenly, with a scream I never can forget even in my dreams, the
child's mother rushed up. She raised her fist to strike me in the face,
and I thought I was done for, when suddenly the child's eyes opened, and
something made me say: 'Here is your baby, little woman. He is not hurt
at all!' She fairly snatched him from me and began to feel him all
over, but she could find no broken bones. She was crying and laughing
and kissing him, and I still kept telling her that he was unhurt. Just
then the police got through with Noel, and he insisted on putting mother
and child and a policeman in the tonneau and taking them to the nearest
hospital to have the child examined. We did so, and, if you will
believe it, there wasn't a scratch on him. He either fainted from fright
or we stunned him, the doctor said.
"Two of the surgeons came out and examined the machine, and they found
that there is only a foot of space between the lowest part of the car
and the ground.
"'It is the most miraculous escape I ever saw,' said one of them, 'to
run over a five-year-old boy and not even scratch him. To make the
story quite complete you ought to claim to be Christian Scientists.
That is the sort of game they always play on a credulous public.'
"'We are both Christian Scientists,' said Noel, in his most polite
manner, 'and I am deeply impressed with your involuntary tribute to its
efficacy in case of accident.'
"Between you and me, I don't believe that doctor got his mouth together
again without help.
"Well, we had the greatest time when we got back. First, we took every
child on the scene--and I believe there must have been a hundred--to an
ice-cream saloon and treated them. And while they were waiting their
turns, Noel filled the White Moth with them and gave them a ride. I
never had so much fun in my life. I went home with the mother, with a
quart of ice-cream in each hand, and got her to tell me the story of her
life. Poor soul! She has nine children, but she loves each one as if it
were her all. Noel and I are both going to do something for that child.
His name is Dewey Dolan.
"When it was all over, and we were sneaking along back streets to get
home without being seen, for we were both sights, and the Moth will have
to be done over, I began to think of the way I had acted, and I have
made Noel promise never to take me out again unless I have my Amityville
tag on, so that, if I go crazy out loud again, they will know where I
have escaped from.
"But Noel, dear old thing, confessed that he was declaring the truth no
less, only in a quieter way, and we both firmly believe that our little
knowledge of Science and our understanding, incomplete though it is, are
what turned that calamity into a blessing, for a blessing I am
determined to crown it.
"What do you think of my idea? You know how I have always been carried
away over children,--how their sufferings and deaths have almost turned
me into an infidel,--how the carelessness of parents and nurses has
almost driven me insane,--well, if they can be protected by Christian
Science thought and healed by mind, why not hasten the day by
establishing a Christian Science kindergarten, and, if it succeeds, by a
series of them? There must be plenty of kindergartners among Scientists
who would welcome a combination of their work, and in the crowded
tenement districts it would be a boon. But, oh, how carefully we must
go, for the poor will only allow themselves to be helped in their own
blind way. Tell me if you think there is any hope for the philanthropic
end of it. I am going to open one for the children of ready-made
Scientists in my own house,--you know I studied kindergartning, and I
have ten already promised. I shall have no trouble about assistants for
my Fifth Avenue school. But the other place is the one my heart is in.
Tell me what you think of that.
"Rosemary is coming back here to live. Her husband is a Christian
Scientist, and has gone into business in New York, so I know she will
help me, but, oh, Carolina, you will never know how I miss you! New
York is not the same place since you left it. You have such a way of
dominating every spot you are in by your own personality. Does this hot
air sound natural from Kate Howard?
"I am crazy--fairly daffy--over your success in the turpentine, and
daddy goes around swelling out his chest and strutting like a turkey
gobbler. Why, Carolina, do you realize that you will not only make
yourself rich and anybody you choose to let into the game, but that you
will be opening up by force, so to speak, with your Educational
Turpentine Corner, an industry which will revolutionize the entire
turpentine pine country? It is a big project, my dear, to have emanated
from the brain of a woman. But, oh, won't the papers fairly eat you
raw!
"I will attend to all the commissions you sent and bring the stuff down
in the car. A good many of us want newer and finer editions of 'Science
and Health,' and, if you utterly refuse to make presents of them for the
good of the cause, we will sell our old books at whatever you think your
friends can afford to pay. I agree with you that it is better to make
them pay something for them.
"Rawlins, our butler, and two of the footmen go regularly to the
Christian Science church, and Rawlins has been healed of intemperance
through Mrs. Goddard's butler. Perkins says he owes his conversion to
the day Gladys Yancey walked across the floor for Noel's doll. So you
see we all had a hand in the work you started, and a little leaven is
leavening the whole lump.
"Oh, Carolina, you know how discontented and fractious I used to be?
Well, it is all gone,--all the fear, the dread of the unknown, the
unhappiness, and the temper, and I am happy for the first time in my
life!
"But now good-bye, my dearest friend. I am bringing some dandy glad
rags with which to astonish the natives. Tell Peachie that I go to
every sale I hear of, and that I am bringing her and Flower some of the
dearest little inexpensive remnants they ever saw. Bless those girls!
It sorta makes my old heart ache to think they haven't the clothes they
need to set off their good looks.
"Again good-bye. Best love to Cousin Lois and yourself from all of us.
And I am as ever your slave. KATE."