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<h1> DEAR ENEMY </h1>
<h2> By Jean Webster </h2>
<hr />
<p><br/> <br/> STONE GATE, WORCESTER, MASSACHUSETTS,</p>
<p>December 27.</p>
<p>Dear Judy:</p>
<p>Your letter is here. I have read it twice, and with amazement. Do I
understand that Jervis has given you, for a Christmas present, the making
over of the John Grier Home into a model institution, and that you have
chosen me to disburse the money? Me—I, Sallie McBride, the head of
an orphan asylum! My poor people, have you lost your senses, or have you
become addicted to the use of opium, and is this the raving of two fevered
imaginations? I am exactly as well fitted to take care of one hundred
children as to become the curator of a zoo.</p>
<p>And you offer as bait an interesting Scotch doctor? My dear Judy,—likewise
my dear Jervis,—I see through you! I know exactly the kind of family
conference that has been held about the Pendleton fireside.</p>
<p>"Isn't it a pity that Sallie hasn't amounted to more since she left
college? She ought to be doing something useful instead of frittering her
time away in the petty social life of Worcester. Also [Jervis speaks] she
is getting interested in that confounded young Hallock, too good-looking
and fascinating and erratic; I never did like politicians. We must deflect
her mind with some uplifting and absorbing occupation until the danger is
past. Ha! I have it! We will put her in charge of the John Grier Home."
Oh, I can hear him as clearly as if I were there! On the occasion of my
last visit in your delectable household Jervis and I had a very solemn
conversation in regard to (1) marriage, (2) the low ideals of politicians,
(3) the frivolous, useless lives that society women lead.</p>
<p>Please tell your moral husband that I took his words deeply to heart, and
that ever since my return to Worcester I have been spending one afternoon
a week reading poetry with the inmates of the Female Inebriate Asylum. My
life is not so purposeless as it appears.</p>
<p>Also let me assure you that the politician is not dangerously imminent;
and that, anyway, he is a very desirable politician, even though his views
on tariff and single tax and trade-unionism do not exactly coincide with
Jervis's.</p>
<p>Your desire to dedicate my life to the public good is very sweet, but you
should look at it from the asylum's point of view.</p>
<p>Have you no pity for those poor defenseless little orphan children?</p>
<p>I have, if you haven't, and I respectfully decline the position which you
offer.</p>
<p>I shall be charmed, however, to accept your invitation to visit you in New
York, though I must acknowledge that I am not very excited over the list
of gaieties you have planned.</p>
<p>Please substitute for the New York Orphanage and the Foundling Hospital a
few theaters and operas and a dinner or so. I have two new evening gowns
and a blue and gold coat with a white fur collar.</p>
<p>I dash to pack them; so telegraph fast if you don't wish to see me for
myself alone, but only as a successor to Mrs. Lippett. Yours as ever,</p>
<p>Entirely frivolous,</p>
<p>And intending to remain so,</p>
<p>SALLIE McBRIDE.</p>
<p>P.S. Your invitation is especially seasonable. A charming young politician
named Gordon Hallock is to be in New York next week. I am sure you will
like him when you know him better. P.S. 2. Sallie taking her afternoon
walk as Judy would like to see her:</p>
<p>I ask you again, have you both gone mad?</p>
<p>THE JOHN GRIER HOME,</p>
<p>February 15.</p>
<p>Dear Judy:</p>
<p>We arrived in a snowstorm at eleven last night, Singapore and Jane and I.
It does not appear to be customary for superintendents of orphan asylums
to bring with them personal maids and Chinese chows. The night watchman
and housekeeper, who had waited up to receive me, were thrown into an
awful flutter. They had never seen the like of Sing, and thought that I
was introducing a wolf into the fold. I reassured them as to his
dogginess, and the watchman, after studying his black tongue, ventured a
witticism. He wanted to know if I fed him on huckleberry pie.</p>
<p>It was difficult to find accommodations for my family, Poor Sing was
dragged off whimpering to a strange woodshed, and given a piece of burlap.
Jane did not fare much better. There was not an extra bed in the building,
barring a five-foot crib in the hospital room. She, as you know,
approaches six. We tucked her in, and she spent the night folded up like a
jackknife. She has limped about today, looking like a decrepit letter S,
openly deploring this latest escapade on the part of her flighty mistress,
and longing for the time when we shall come to our senses, and return to
the parental fireside in Worcester.</p>
<p>I know that she is going to spoil all my chances of being popular with the
rest of the staff. Having her here is the silliest idea that was ever
conceived, but you know my family. I fought their objections step by step,
but they made their last stand on Jane. If I brought her along to see that
I ate nourishing food and didn't stay up all night, I might come—temporarily;
but if I refused to bring her—oh, dear me, I am not sure that I was
ever again to cross the threshold of Stone Gate! So here we are, and
neither of us very welcome, I am afraid.</p>
<p>I woke by a gong at six this morning, and lay for a time listening to the
racket that twenty-five little girls made in the lavatory over my head. It
appears that they do not get baths,—just face-washes,—but they
make as much splashing as twenty-five puppies in a pool. I rose and
dressed and explored a bit. You were wise in not having me come to look
the place over before I engaged.</p>
<p>While my little charges were at breakfast, it seemed a happy time to
introduce myself; so I sought the dining room. Horror piled on horror—those
bare drab walls and oil-cloth-covered tables with tin cups and plates and
wooden benches, and, by way of decoration, that one illuminated text, "The
Lord Will Provide"! The trustee who added that last touch must possess a
grim sense of humor.</p>
<p>Really, Judy, I never knew there was any spot in the world so entirely
ugly; and when I saw those rows and rows of pale, listless, blue-uniformed
children, the whole dismal business suddenly struck me with such a shock
that I almost collapsed. It seemed like an unachievable goal for one
person to bring sunshine to one hundred little faces when what they need
is a mother apiece.</p>
<p>I plunged into this thing lightly enough, partly because you were too
persuasive, and mostly, I honestly think, because that scurrilous Gordon
Hallock laughed so uproariously at the idea of my being able to manage an
asylum. Between you all you hypnotized me. And then of course, after I
began reading up on the subject and visiting all those seventeen
institutions, I got excited over orphans, and wanted to put my own ideas
into practice. But now I'm aghast at finding myself here; it's such a
stupendous undertaking. The future health and happiness of a hundred human
beings lie in my hands, to say nothing of their three or four hundred
children and thousand grandchildren. The thing's geometrically
progressive. It's awful. Who am I to undertake this job? Look, oh, look
for another superintendent!</p>
<p>Jane says dinner's ready. Having eaten two of your institution meals, the
thought of another doesn't excite me.</p>
<p>LATER.</p>
<p>The staff had mutton hash and spinach, with tapioca pudding for dessert.
What the children had I hate to consider.</p>
<p>I started to tell you about my first official speech at breakfast this
morning. It dealt with all the wonderful new changes that are to come to
the John Grier Home through the generosity of Mr. Jervis Pendleton, the
president of our board of trustees, and of Mrs. Pendleton, the dear "Aunt
Judy" of every little boy and girl here.</p>
<p>Please don't object to my featuring the Pendleton family so prominently. I
did it for political reasons. As the entire working staff of the
institution was present, I thought it a good opportunity to emphasize the
fact that all of these upsetting, innovations come straight from
headquarters, and not out of my excitable brain.</p>
<p>The children stopped eating and stared. The conspicuous color of my hair
and the frivolous tilt of my nose are evidently new attributes in a
superintendent. My colleagues also showed plainly that they consider me
too young and too inexperienced to be set in authority. I haven't seen
Jervis's wonderful Scotch doctor yet, but I assure you that he will have
to be VERY wonderful to make up for the rest of these people, especially
the kindergarten teacher. Miss Snaith and I clashed early on the subject
of fresh air; but I intend to get rid of this dreadful institution smell,
if I freeze every child into a little ice statue.</p>
<p>This being a sunny, sparkling, snowy afternoon, I ordered that dungeon of
a playroom closed and the children out of doors.</p>
<p>"She's chasin' us out," I heard one small urchin grumbling as he struggled
into a two-years-too-small overcoat.</p>
<p>They simply stood about the yard, all humped in their clothes, waiting
patiently to be allowed to come back in. No running or shouting or
coasting or snowballs. Think of it! These children don't know how to play.</p>
<p>STILL LATER.</p>
<p>I have already begun the congenial task of spending your money. I bought
eleven hot-water bottles this afternoon (every one that the village drug
store contained) likewise some woolen blankets and padded quilts. And the
windows are wide open in the babies' dormitory. Those poor little tots are
going to enjoy the perfectly new sensation of being able to breathe at
night.</p>
<p>There are a million things I want to grumble about, but it's half-past
ten, and Jane says I MUST go to bed.</p>
<p>Yours in command,</p>
<p>SALLIE McBRIDE.</p>
<p>P.S. Before turning in, I tiptoed through the corridor to make sure that
all was right, and what do you think I found? Miss Snaith softly closing
the windows in the babies' dormitory! Just as soon as I can find a
suitable position for her in an old ladies' home, I am going to discharge
that woman.</p>
<p>Jane takes the pen from my hand.</p>
<p>Good night.</p>
<p>THE JOHN GRIER HOME,</p>
<p>February 20.</p>
<p>Dear Judy:</p>
<p>Dr. Robin MacRae called this afternoon to make the acquaintance of the new
superintendent. Please invite him to dinner upon the occasion of his next
visit to New York, and see for yourself what your husband has done. Jervis
grossly misrepresented the facts when he led me to believe that one of the
chief advantages of my position would be the daily intercourse with a man
of Dr. MacRae's polish and brilliancy and scholarliness and charm.</p>
<p>He is tall and thinnish, with sandy hair and cold gray eyes. During the
hour he spent in my society (and I was very sprightly) no shadow of a
smile so much as lightened the straight line of his mouth. Can a shadow
lighten? Maybe not; but, anyway, what IS the matter with the man? Has he
committed some remorseful crime, or is his taciturnity due merely to his
natural Scotchness? He's as companionable as a granite tombstone!</p>
<p>Incidentally, our doctor didn't like me any more than I liked him. He
thinks I'm frivolous and inconsequential, and totally unfitted for this
position of trust. I dare say Jervis has had a letter from him by now
asking to have me removed.</p>
<p>In the matter of conversation we didn't hit it off in the least. He
discussed broadly and philosophically the evils of institutional care for
dependent children, while I lightly deplored the unbecoming coiffure that
prevails among our girls.</p>
<p>To prove my point, I had in Sadie Kate, my special errand orphan. Her hair
is strained back as tightly as though it had been done with a monkey
wrench, and is braided behind into two wiry little pigtails. Decidedly,
orphans' ears need to be softened. But Dr. Robin MacRae doesn't give a
hang whether their ears are becoming or not; what he cares about is their
stomachs. We also split upon the subject of red petticoats. I don't see
how any little girl can preserve any self-respect when dressed in a red
flannel petticoat an irregular inch longer than her blue checked gingham
dress; but he thinks that red petticoats are cheerful and warm and
hygienic. I foresee a warlike reign for the new superintendent.</p>
<p>In regard to the doctor, there is just one detail to be thankful for: he
is almost as new as I am, and he cannot instruct me in the traditions of
the asylum. I don't believe I COULD have worked with the old doctor, who,
judging from the specimens of his art that he left behind, knew as much
about babies as a veterinary surgeon.</p>
<p>In the matter of asylum etiquette, the entire staff has undertaken my
education. Even the cook this morning told me firmly that the John Grier
Home has corn meal mush on Wednesday nights.</p>
<p>Are you searching hard for another superintendent? I'll stay until she
comes, but please find her fast.</p>
<p>Yours,</p>
<p>With my mind made up,</p>
<p>SALLIE McBRIDE.</p>
<p>SUP'T'S OFFICE, JOHN GRIER HOME,</p>
<p>February 27.</p>
<p>Dear Gordon:</p>
<p>Are you still insulted because I wouldn't take your advice? Don't you know
that a reddish-haired person of Irish forebears, with a dash of Scotch,
can't be driven, but must be gently led? Had you been less obnoxiously
insistent, I should have listened sweetly, and been saved. As it is, I
frankly confess that I have spent the last five days in repenting our
quarrel. You were right, and I was wrong, and, as you see, I handsomely
acknowledge it. If I ever emerge from this present predicament, I shall in
the future be guided (almost always) by your judgment. Could any woman
make a more sweeping retraction than that?</p>
<p>The romantic glamour which Judy cast over this orphan asylum exists only
in her poetic imagination. The place is AWFUL. Words can't tell you how
dreary and dismal and smelly it is: long corridors, bare walls;
blue-uniformed, dough-faced little inmates that haven't the slightest
resemblance to human children. And oh, the dreadful institution smell! A
mingling of wet scrubbed floors, unaired rooms, and food for a hundred
people always steaming on the stove.</p>
<p>The asylum not only has to be made over, but every child as well, and it's
too herculean a task for such a selfish, luxurious, and lazy person as
Sallie McBride ever to have undertaken. I'm resigning the very first
moment that Judy can find a suitable successor, but that, I fear, will not
be immediately. She has gone off South, leaving me stranded, and of
course, after having promised, I can't simply abandon her asylum. But in
the meantime I assure you that I'm homesick.</p>
<p>Write me a cheering letter, and send a flower to brighten my private
drawing room. I inherited it, furnished, from Mrs. Lippett. The wall is
covered with a tapestry paper in brown and red; the furniture is
electric-blue plush, except the center table, which is gilt. Green
predominates in the carpet. If you presented some pink rosebuds, they
would complete the color scheme.</p>
<p>I really was obnoxious that last evening, but you are avenged.</p>
<p>Remorsefully yours,</p>
<p>SALLIE McBRIDE.</p>
<p>P.S. You needn't have been so grumpy about the Scotch doctor. The man is
everything dour that the word "Scotch" implies. I detest him on sight, and
he detests me. Oh, we're going to have a sweet time working together</p>
<p>THE JOHN GRIER HOME,</p>
<p>February 22.</p>
<p>My dear Gordon:</p>
<p>Your vigorous and expensive message is here. I know that you have plenty
of money, but that is no reason why you should waste it so frivolously.
When you feel so bursting with talk that only a hundred-word telegram will
relieve an explosion, at least turn it into a night lettergram. My orphans
can use the money if you don't need it.</p>
<p>Also, my dear sir, please use a trifle of common sense. Of course I can't
chuck the asylum in the casual manner you suggest. It wouldn't be fair to
Judy and Jervis. If you will pardon the statement, they have been my
friends for many more years than you, and I have no intention of letting
them go hang. I came up here in a spirit of—well, say adventure, and
I must see the venture through. You wouldn't like me if I were a short
sport. This doesn't mean, however, that I am sentencing myself for life; I
am in tending to resign just as soon as the opportunity comes. But really
I ought to feel somewhat gratified that the Pendletons were willing to
trust me with such a responsible post. Though you, my dear sir, do not
suspect it, I possess considerable executive ability, and more common
sense than is visible on the surface. If I chose to put my whole soul into
this enterprise, I could make the rippingest superintendent that any 111
orphans ever had.</p>
<p>I suppose you think that's funny? It's true. Judy and Jervis know it, and
that's why they asked me to come. So you see, when they have shown so much
confidence in me, I can't throw them over in quite the unceremonious
fashion you suggest. So long as I am here, I am going to accomplish just
as much as it is given one person to accomplish every twenty-four hours. I
am going to turn the place over to my successor with things moving fast in
the right direction.</p>
<p>But in the meantime please don't wash your hands of me under the belief
that I'm too busy to be homesick; for I'm not. I wake up every morning and
stare at Mrs. Lippett's wallpaper in a sort of daze, feeling as though
it's some bad dream, and I'm not really here. What on earth was I thinking
of to turn my back upon my nice cheerful own home and the good times that
by rights are mine? I frequently agree with your opinion of my sanity.</p>
<p>But why, may I ask, should you be making such a fuss? You wouldn't be
seeing me in any case. Worcester is quite as far from Washington as the
John Grier Home. And I will add, for your further comfort, that whereas
there is no man in the neighborhood of this asylum who admires red hair,
in Worcester there are several. Therefore, most difficult of men, please
be appeased. I didn't come entirely to spite you. I wanted an adventure in
life, and, oh dear! oh dear! I'm having it! PLEASE write soon, and cheer
me up. Yours in sackcloth,</p>
<p>SALLIE. THE JOHN GRIER HOME,</p>
<p>February 24. Dear Judy:</p>
<p>You tell Jervis that I am not hasty at forming judgments. I have a sweet,
sunny, unsuspicious nature, and I like everybody, almost. But no one could
like that Scotch doctor. He NEVER smiles.</p>
<p>He paid me another visit this afternoon. I invited him to accommodate
himself in one of Mrs. Lippett's electric-blue chairs, and then sat down
opposite to enjoy the harmony. He was dressed in a mustard-colored
homespun, with a dash of green and a glint of yellow in the weave, a
"heather mixture" calculated to add life to a dull Scotch moor. Purple
socks and a red tie, with an amethyst pin, completed the picture. Clearly,
your paragon of a doctor is not going to be of much assistance in pulling
up the esthetic tone of this establishment.</p>
<p>During the fifteen minutes of his call he succinctly outlined all the
changes he wishes to see accomplished in this institution. HE forsooth!
And what, may I ask, are the duties of a superintendent? Is she merely a
figurehead to take orders from the visiting physician?</p>
<p>It's up wi' the bonnets o' McBride and MacRae!</p>
<p>I am,</p>
<p>Indignantly yours, SALLIE.</p>
<p>THE JOHN GRIER HOME,</p>
<p>Monday.</p>
<p>Dear Dr. MacRae:</p>
<p>I am sending this note by Sadie Kate, as it seems impossible to reach you
by telephone. Is the person who calls herself Mrs. McGur-rk and hangs up
in the middle of a sentence your housekeeper? If she answers the telephone
often, I don't see how your patients have any patience left.</p>
<p>As you did not come this morning, per agreement, and the painters did
come, I was fain to choose a cheerful corn color to be placed upon the
walls of your new laboratory room. I trust there is nothing unhygienic
about corn color.</p>
<p>Also, if you can spare a moment this afternoon, kindly motor yourself to
Dr. Brice's on Water Street and look at the dentist's chair and
appurtenances which are to be had at half-price. If all of the pleasant
paraphernalia of his profession were here,—in a corner of your
laboratory,—Dr. Brice could finish his 111 new patients with much
more despatch than if we had to transport them separately to Water Street.
Don't you think that's a useful idea? It came to me in the middle of the
night, but as I never happened to buy a dentist's chair before, I'd
appreciate some professional advice. Yours truly,</p>
<p>S. McBRIDE.</p>
<p>THE JOHN GRIER HOME,</p>
<p>March 1.</p>
<p>Dear Judy:</p>
<p>Do stop sending me telegrams!</p>
<p>Of course I know that you want to know everything that is happening, and I
would send a daily bulletin, but I truly don't find a minute. I am so
tired when night comes that if it weren't for Jane's strict discipline, I
should go to bed with my clothes on.</p>
<p>Later, when we slip a little more into routine, and I can be sure that my
assistants are all running off their respective jobs, I shall be the
regularest correspondent you ever had.</p>
<p>It was five days ago, wasn't it, that I wrote? Things have been happening
in those five days. The MacRae and I have mapped out a plan of campaign,
and are stirring up this place to its sluggish depths. I like him less and
less, but we have declared a sort of working truce. And the man IS a
worker. I always thought I had sufficient energy myself, but when an
improvement is to be introduced, I toil along panting in his wake. He is
as stubborn and tenacious and bull-doggish as a Scotchman can be, but he
does understand babies; that is, he understands their physiological
aspects. He hasn't any more feeling for them personally than for so many
frogs that he might happen to be dissecting.</p>
<p>Do you remember Jervis's holding forth one evening for an hour or so about
our doctor's beautiful humanitarian ideals? C'EST A RIRE! The man merely
regards the J. G. H. as his own private laboratory, where he can try out
scientific experiments with no loving parents to object. I shouldn't be
surprised anyday to find him introducing scarlet fever cultures into the
babies' porridge in order to test a newly invented serum.</p>
<p>Of the house staff, the only two who strike me as really efficient are the
primary teacher and the furnace-man. You should see how the children run
to meet Miss Matthews and beg for caresses, and how painstakingly polite
they are to the other teachers. Children are quick to size up character. I
shall be very embarrassed if they are too polite to me.</p>
<p>Just as soon as I get my bearings a little, and know exactly what we need,
I am going to accomplish some widespread discharging. I should like to
begin with Miss Snaith; but I discover that she is the niece of one of our
most generous trustees, and isn't exactly dischargeable. She's a vague,
chinless, pale-eyed creature, who talks through her nose and breathes
through her mouth. She can't say anything decisively and then stop; her
sentences all trail off into incoherent murmurings. Every time I see the
woman I feel an almost uncontrollable desire to take her by the shoulders
and shake some decision into her. And Miss Snaith is the one who has had
entire supervision of the seventeen little tots aged from two to five!
But, anyway, even if I can't discharge her, I have reduced her to a
subordinate position without her being aware of the fact.</p>
<p>The doctor has found for me a charming girl who lives a few miles from
here and comes in every day to manage the kindergarten. She has big,
gentle, brown eyes, like a cow's, and motherly manners (she is just
nineteen), and the babies love her.</p>
<p>At the head of the nursery I have placed a jolly, comfortable middle-aged
woman who has reared five of her own and has a hand with bairns. Our
doctor also found her. You see, he is useful. She is technically under
Miss Snaith, but is usurping dictatorship in a satisfactory fashion. I can
now sleep at night without being afraid that my babies are being
inefficiently murdered.</p>
<p>You see, our reforms are getting started; and while I acquiesce with all
the intelligence at my command to our doctor's basic scientific upheavals,
still, they sometimes leave me cold. The problem that keeps churning and
churning in my mind is: How can I ever instil enough love and warmth and
sunshine into those bleak little lives? And I am not sure that the
doctor's science will accomplish that.</p>
<p>One of our most pressing INTELLIGENT needs just now is to get our records
into coherent form. The books have been most outrageously unkept. Mrs.
Lippett had a big black account book into which she jumbled any facts that
happened to drift her way as to the children's family, their conduct, and
their health. But for weeks at a time she didn't trouble to make an entry.
If any adopting family wants to know a child's parentage, half the time we
can't even tell where we got the child!</p>
<p>"Where did you come from, baby dear?"<br/>
"The blue sky opened, and I am here,"<br/></p>
<p>is an exact description of their arrival.</p>
<p>We need a field worker to travel about the country and pick up all the
hereditary statistics she can about our chicks. It will be an easy matter,
as most of them have relatives. What do you think of Janet Ware for the
job? You remember what a shark she was in economics; she simply battened
on tables and charts and surveys.</p>
<p>I have also to inform you that the John Grier Home is undergoing a very
searching physical examination, and it is the shocking truth that out of
the twenty-eight poor little rats so far examined only five are up to
specification. And the five have not been here long.</p>
<p>Do you remember the ugly green reception room on the first floor? I have
removed as much of its greenness as possible, and fitted it up as the
doctor's laboratory. It contains scales and drugs and, most professional
touch of all, a dentist's chair and one of those sweet grinding machines.
(Bought them second-hand from Doctor Brice in the village, who is putting
in, for the gratification of his own patients, white enamel and
nickel-plate.) That drilling machine is looked upon as an infernal engine,
and I as an infernal monster for instituting it. But every little victim
who is discharged FILLED may come to my room every day for a week and
receive two pieces of chocolate. Though our children are not conspicuously
brave, they are, we discover, fighters. Young Thomas Kehoe nearly bit the
doctor's thumb in two after kicking over a tableful of instruments. It
requires physical strength as well as skill to be dental adviser to the J.
G. H. . . . . . . . . . .</p>
<p>Interrupted here to show a benevolent lady over the institution. She asked
fifty irrelevant questions, took up an hour of my time, then finally wiped
away a tear and left a dollar for my "poor little charges."</p>
<p>So far, my poor little charges are not enthusiastic about these new
reforms. They don't care much for the sudden draft of fresh air that has
blown in upon them, or the deluge of water. I am shoving in two baths a
week, and as soon as we collect tubs enough and a few extra faucets, they
are going to get SEVEN.</p>
<p>But at least I have started one most popular reform. Our daily bill of
fare has been increased, a change deplored by the cook as causing trouble,
and deplored by the rest of the staff as causing an immoral increase in
expense. ECONOMY spelt in capitals has been the guiding principle of this
institution for so many years that it has become a religion. I assure my
timid co-workers twenty times a day that, owing to the generosity of our
president, the endowment has been exactly doubled, and that I have vast
sums besides from Mrs. Pendleton for necessary purposes like ice cream.
But they simply CAN'T get over the feeling that it is a wicked
extravagance to feed these children.</p>
<p>The doctor and I have been studying with care the menus of the past, and
we are filled with amazement at the mind that could have devised them.
Here is one of her frequently recurring dinners:</p>
<p>BOILED POTATOES BOILED RICE BLANC MANGE</p>
<p>It's a wonder to me that the children are anything more than one hundred
and eleven little lumps of starch.</p>
<p>Looking about this institution, one is moved to misquote Robert Browning.</p>
<p>"There may be heaven; there must be hell;<br/>
Meantime, there is the John Grier—well!"<br/>
S. McB.<br/></p>
<p>THE JOHN GRIER HOME,</p>
<p>Saturday.</p>
<p>Dear Judy:</p>
<p>Dr. Robin MacRae and I fought another battle yesterday over a very trivial
matter (in which I was right), and since then I have adopted for our
doctor a special pet name. "Good morning, Enemy!" was my greeting today,
at which he was quite solemnly annoyed. He says he does not wish to be
regarded as an enemy. He is not in the least antagonistic—so long as
I mold my policy upon his wishes!</p>
<p>We have two new children, Isador Gutschneider and Max Yog, given to us by
the Baptist Ladies' Aid Society. Where on earth do you suppose those
children picked up such a religion? I didn't want to take them, but the
poor ladies were very persuasive, and they pay the princely sum of four
dollars and fifty cents per week per child. This makes 113, which makes us
very crowded. I have half a dozen babies to give away. Find me some kind
families who want to adopt.</p>
<p>You know it's very embarrassing not to be able to remember offhand how
large your family is, but mine seems to vary from day to day, like the
stock market. I should like to keep it at about par. When a woman has more
than a hundred children, she can't give them the individual attention they
ought to have.</p>
<p>Monday.</p>
<p>This letter has been lying two days on my desk, and I haven't found the
time to stick on a stamp. But now I seem to have a free evening ahead, so
I will add a page or two more before starting it on a pleasant journey to
Florida.</p>
<p>I am just beginning to pick out individual faces among the children. It
seemed at first as though I could never learn them, they looked so
hopelessly cut out of one pattern, with those unspeakably ugly uniforms.
Now please don't write back that you want the children put into new
clothes immediately. I know you do; you've already told me five times. In
about a month I shall be ready to consider the question, but just now
their insides are more important than their outsides.</p>
<p>There is no doubt about it—orphans in the mass do not appeal to me.
I am beginning to be afraid that this famous mother instinct which we hear
so much about was left out of my character. Children as children are
dirty, spitty little things, and their noses all need wiping. Here and
there I pick out a naughty, mischievous little one that awakens a flicker
of interest; but for the most part they are just a composite blur of white
face and blue check.</p>
<p>With one exception, though. Sadie Kate Kilcoyne emerged from the mass the
first day, and bids fair to stay out for all time. She is my special
little errand girl, and she furnishes me with all my daily amusement. No
piece of mischief has been launched in this institution for the last eight
years that did not originate in her abnormal brain. This young person has,
to me, a most unusual history, though I understand it's common enough in
foundling circles. She was discovered eleven years ago on the bottom step
of a Thirty-ninth Street house, asleep in a pasteboard box labeled,
"Altman & Co."</p>
<p>"Sadie Kate Kilcoyne, aged five weeks. Be kind to her," was neatly printed
on the cover.</p>
<p>The policeman who picked her up took her to Bellevue where the foundlings
are pronounced, in the order of their arrival, "Catholic, Protestant,
Catholic, Protestant," with perfect impartiality. Our Sadie Kate, despite
her name and blue Irish eyes, was made a Protestant. And here she is
growing Irisher and Irisher every day, but, true to her christening,
protesting loudly against every detail of life.</p>
<p>Her two little black braids point in opposite directions; her little
monkey face is all screwed up with mischief; she is as active as a
terrier, and you have to keep her busy every moment. Her record of
badnesses occupies pages in the Doomsday Book. The last item reads:</p>
<p>"For stumping Maggie Geer to get a doorknob into her mouth—punishment,
the afternoon spent in bed, and crackers for supper."</p>
<p>It seems that Maggie Geer, fitted with a mouth of unusual stretching
capacity, got the doorknob in, but couldn't get it out. The doctor was
called, and cannily solved the problem with a buttered shoe-horn.
"Muckle-mouthed Meg," he has dubbed the patient ever since.</p>
<p>You can understand that my thoughts are anxiously occupied in filling
every crevice of Sadie Kate's existence.</p>
<p>There are a million subjects that I ought to consult with the president
about. I think it was very unkind of you and him to saddle me with your
orphan asylum and run off South to play. It would serve you right if I did
everything wrong. While you are traveling about in private cars, and
strolling in the moonlight on palm beaches, please think of me in the
drizzle of a New York March, taking care of 113 babies that by rights are
yours—and be grateful.</p>
<p>I remain (for a limited time),</p>
<p>S. McBRIDE.</p>
<p>SUP'T JOHN GRIER HOME.</p>
<p>Dear Enemy:</p>
<p>I am sending herewith (under separate cover) Sammy Speir, who got mislaid
when you paid your morning visit. Miss Snaith brought him to light after
you had gone. Please scrutinize his thumb. I never saw a felon, but I have
diagnosed it as such. Yours truly, S. McBRIDE.</p>
<p>SUP'T JOHN GRIER HOME,</p>
<p>March 6.</p>
<p>Dear Judy:</p>
<p>I don't know yet whether the children are going to love me or not, but
they DO love my dog. No creature so popular as Singapore ever entered
these gates. Every afternoon three boys who have been perfect in
deportment are allowed to brush and comb him, while three other good boys
may serve him with food and drink. But every Saturday morning the climax
of the week is reached, when three superlatively good boys give him a nice
lathery bath with hot water and flea soap. The privilege of serving as
Singapore's valet is going to be the only incentive I shall need for
maintaining discipline.</p>
<p>But isn't it pathetically unnatural for these youngsters to be living in
the country and never owning a pet? Especially when they, of all children,
do so need something to love. I am going to manage pets for them somehow,
if I have to spend our new endowment for a menagerie. Couldn't you bring
back some baby alligators and a pelican? Anything alive will be gratefully
received.</p>
<p>This should by rights be my first "Trustees' Day." I am deeply grateful to
Jervis for arranging a simple business meeting in New York, as we are not
yet on dress parade up here; but we are hoping by the first Wednesday in
April to have something visible to show. If all of the doctor's ideas, and
a few of my own, get themselves materialized, our trustees will open their
eyes a bit when we show them about.</p>
<p>I have just made out a chart for next week's meals, and posted it in the
kitchen in the sight of an aggrieved cook. Variety is a word hitherto not
found in the lexicon of the J.G.H. You would never dream all of the
delightful surprises we are going to have: brown bread, corn pone, graham
muffins, samp, rice pudding with LOTS of raisins, thick vegetable soup,
macaroni Italian fashion, polenta cakes with molasses, apple dumplings,
gingerbread—oh, an endless list! After our biggest girls have
assisted in the manufacture of such appetizing dainties, they will almost
be capable of keeping future husbands in love with them.</p>
<p>Oh, dear me! Here I am babbling these silly nothings when I have some real
news up my sleeve. We have a new worker, a gem of a worker.</p>
<p>Do you remember Betsy Kindred, 1910? She led the glee club and was
president of dramatics. I remember her perfectly; she always had lovely
clothes. Well, if you please, she lives only twelve miles from here. I ran
across her by chance yesterday morning as she was motoring through the
village; or, rather, she just escaped running across me.</p>
<p>I never spoke to her in my life, but we greeted each other like the oldest
friends. It pays to have conspicuous hair; she recognized me instantly. I
hopped upon the running board of her car and said:</p>
<p>"Betsy Kindred, 1910, you've got to come back to my orphan asylum and help
me catalogue my orphans."</p>
<p>And it astonished her so that she came. She's to be here four or five days
a week as temporary secretary, and somehow I must manage to keep her
permanently. She's the most useful person I ever saw. I am hoping that
orphans will become such a habit with her that she won't be able to give
them up. I think she might stay if we pay her a big enough salary. She
likes to be independent of her family, as do all of us in these degenerate
times.</p>
<p>In my growing zeal for cataloguing people, I should like to get our doctor
tabulated. If Jervis knows any gossip about him, write it to me, please;
the worse, the better. He called yesterday to lance a felon on Sammy
Speir's thumb, then ascended to my electric-blue parlor to give
instructions as to the dressing of thumbs. The duties of a superintendent
are manifold.</p>
<p>It was just teatime, so I casually asked him to stay, and he did! Not for
the pleasure of my society,—no, indeed,—but because Jane
appeared at the moment with a plate of toasted muffins. He hadn't had any
luncheon, it seems, and dinner was a long way ahead. Between muffins (he
ate the whole plateful) he saw fit to interrogate me as to my preparedness
for this position. Had I studied biology in college? How far had I gone in
chemistry? What did I know of sociology? Had I visited that model
institution at Hastings?</p>
<p>To all of which I responded affably and openly. Then I permitted myself a
question or two: just what sort of youthful training had been required to
produce such a model of logic, accuracy, dignity, and common sense as I
saw sitting before me? Through persistent prodding I elicited a few
forlorn facts, but all quite respectable. You'd think, from his reticence,
there'd been a hanging in the family. The MacRae PERE was born in
Scotland, and came to the States to occupy a chair at Johns Hopkins; son
Robin was shipped back to Auld Reekie for his education. His grandmother
was a M'Lachlan of Strathlachan (I am sure she sounds respectable), and
his vacations were spent in the Hielands a-chasing the deer.</p>
<p>So much could I gather; so much, and no more. Tell me, I beg, some gossip
about my enemy—something scandalous by preference.</p>
<p>Why, if he is such an awfully efficient person does he bury himself in
this remote locality? You would think an up-and-coming scientific man
would want a hospital at one elbow and a morgue at the other. Are you sure
that he didn't commit a crime and isn't hiding from the law?</p>
<p>I seem to have covered a lot of paper without telling you much. VIVE LA
BAGATELLE! Yours as usual,</p>
<p>SALLIE.</p>
<p>P.S. I am relieved on one point. Dr. MacRae does not pick out his own
clothes. He leaves all such unessential trifles to his housekeeper, Mrs.
Maggie McGurk.</p>
<p>Again, and irrevocably, good-by!</p>
<p>THE JOHN GRIER HOME,</p>
<p>Wednesday.</p>
<p>Dear Gordon:</p>
<p>Your roses and your letter cheered me for an entire morning, and it's the
first time I've approached cheerfulness since the fourteenth of February,
when I waved good-by to Worcester.</p>
<p>Words can't tell you how monotonously oppressive the daily round of
institution life gets to be. The only glimmer in the whole dull affair is
the fact that Betsy Kindred spends four days a week with us. Betsy and I
were in college together, and we do occasionally find something funny to
laugh about.</p>
<p>Yesterday we were having tea in my HIDEOUS parlor when we suddenly
determined to revolt against so much unnecessary ugliness. We called in
six sturdy and destructive orphans, a step-ladder, and a bucket of hot
water, and in two hours had every vestige of that tapestry paper off those
walls. You can't imagine what fun it is ripping paper off walls.</p>
<p>Two paperhangers are at work this moment hanging the best that our village
affords, while a German upholsterer is on his knees measuring my chairs
for chintz slip covers that will hide every inch of their plush
upholstery.</p>
<p>Please don't get nervous. This doesn't mean that I'm preparing to spend my
life in the asylum. It means only that I'm preparing a cheerful welcome
for my successor. I haven't dared tell Judy how dismal I find it, because
I don't want to cloud Florida; but when she returns to New York she will
find my official resignation waiting to meet her in the front hall.</p>
<p>I would write you a long letter in grateful payment for seven pages, but
two of my little dears are holding a fight under the window. I dash to
separate them.</p>
<p>Yours as ever,</p>
<p>S. McB.</p>
<p>THE JOHN GRIER HOME,</p>
<p>March 8.</p>
<p>My dear Judy:</p>
<p>I myself have bestowed a little present upon the John Grier Home—the
refurnishing of the superintendent's private parlor. I saw the first night
here that neither I nor any future occupant could be happy with Mrs.
Lippett's electric plush. You see, I am planning to make my successor
contented and willing to stay.</p>
<p>Betsy Kindred assisted in the rehabilitation of the Lippett's chamber of
horrors, and between us we have created a symphony in dull blue and gold.
Really and truly, it's one of the loveliest rooms you've ever seen. The
sight of it will be an artistic education to any orphan. New paper on the
wall, new rugs on the floor (my own prized Persians expressed from
Worcester by an expostulating family). New casement curtains at my three
windows, revealing a wide and charming view, hitherto hidden by Nottingham
lace. A new big table, some lamps and books and a picture or so, and a
real open fire. She had closed the fireplace because it let in air.</p>
<p>I never realized what a difference artistic surroundings make in the peace
of one's soul. I sat last night and watched my fire throw nice highlights
on my new old fender, and purred with contentment. And I assure you it's
the first purr that has come from this cat since she entered the gates of
the John Grier Home.</p>
<p>But the refurnishing of the superintendent's parlor is the slightest of
our needs. The children's private apartments demand so much basic
attention that I can't decide where to begin. That dark north playroom is
a shocking scandal, but no more shocking than our hideous dining room or
our unventilated dormitories or our tubless lavatories.</p>
<p>If the institution is very saving, do you think it can ever afford to burn
down this smelly old original building, and put up instead some nice,
ventilated modern cottages? I cannot contemplate that wonderful
institution at Hastings without being filled with envy. It would be some
fun to run an asylum if you had a plant like that to work with. But,
anyway, when you get back to New York and are ready to consult the
architect about remodeling, please apply to me for suggestions. Among
other little details I want two hundred feet of sleeping porch running
along the outside of our dormitories.</p>
<p>You see, it's this way: our physical examination reveals the fact that
about half of our children are aenemic—aneamic—anaemic (Mercy!
what a word!), and a lot of them have tubercular ancestors, and more have
alcoholic. Their first need is oxygen rather than education. And if the
sickly ones need it, why wouldn't it be good for the well ones? I should
like to have every child, winter and summer, sleeping in the open air; but
I know that if I let fall such a bomb on the board of trustees, the whole
body would explode.</p>
<p>Speaking of trustees, I have met up with the Hon. Cyrus Wykoff, and I
really believe that I dislike him more than Dr. Robin MacRae or the
kindergarten teacher or the cook. I seem to have a genius for discovering
enemies!</p>
<p>Mr. Wykoff called on Wednesday last to look over the new superintendent.</p>
<p>Having lowered himself into my most comfortable armchair, he proceeded to
spend the day. He asked my father's business, and whether or not he was
well-to-do. I told him that my father manufactured overalls, and that,
even in these hard times, the demand for overalls was pretty steady.</p>
<p>He seemed relieved. He approves of the utilitarian aspect of overalls. He
had been afraid that I had come from the family of a minister or professor
or writer, a lot of high thinking and no common sense. Cyrus believes in
common sense.</p>
<p>And what had been my training for this position?</p>
<p>That, as you know, is a slightly embarrassing question. But I produced my
college education and a few lectures at the School of Philanthropy, also a
short residence in the college settlement (I didn't tell him that all I
had done there was to paint the back hall and stairs). Then I submitted
some social work among my father's employees and a few friendly visits to
the Home for Female Inebriates.</p>
<p>To all of which he grunted.</p>
<p>I added that I had lately made a study of the care of dependent children,
and casually mentioned my seventeen institutions.</p>
<p>He grunted again, and said he didn't take much stock in this new-fangled
scientific charity.</p>
<p>At this point Jane entered with a box of roses from the florist's. That
blessed Gordon Hallock sends me roses twice a week to brighten the rigors
of institution life.</p>
<p>Our trustee began an indignant investigation. He wished to know where I
got those flowers, and was visibly relieved when he learned that I had not
spent the institution's money for them. He next wished to know who Jane
might be. I had foreseen that question and decided to brazen it out.</p>
<p>"My maid," said I.</p>
<p>"Your what?" he bellowed, quite red in the face.</p>
<p>"My maid."</p>
<p>"What is she doing here?"</p>
<p>I amiably went into details. "She mends my clothes, blacks my boots, keeps
my bureau drawers in order, washes my hair."</p>
<p>I really thought the man would choke, so I charitably added that I paid
her wages out of my own private income, and paid five dollars and fifty
cents a week to the institution for her board; and that, though she was
big, she didn't eat much.</p>
<p>He allowed that I might make use of one of the orphans for all legitimate
service.</p>
<p>I explained—still polite, but growing bored—that Jane had been
in my service for many years, and was indispensable.</p>
<p>He finally took himself off, after telling me that he, for one, had never
found any fault with Mrs. Lippett. She was a common-sense Christian woman,
without many fancy ideas, but with plenty of good solid work in her. He
hoped that I would be wise enough to model my policy upon hers!</p>
<p>And what, my dear Judy, do you think of that?</p>
<p>The doctor dropped in a few minutes later, and I repeated the Hon. Cyrus's
conversation in detail. For the first time in the history of our
intercourse the doctor and I agreed.</p>
<p>"Mrs. Lippett indeed!" he growled. "The blethering auld gomerel! May the
Lord send him mair sense!"</p>
<p>When our doctor really becomes aroused, he drops into Scotch. My latest
pet name for him (behind his back) is Sandy.</p>
<p>Sadie Kate is sitting on the floor as I write, untangling sewing-silks and
winding them neatly for Jane, who is becoming quite attached to the little
imp.</p>
<p>"I am writing to your Aunt Judy," say I to Sadie Kate. "What message shall
I send from you?"</p>
<p>"I never heard of no Aunt Judy."</p>
<p>"She is the aunt of every good little girl in this school."</p>
<p>"Tell her to come and visit me and bring some candy," says Sadie Kate.</p>
<p>I say so, too.</p>
<p>My love to the president,</p>
<p>SALLIE.</p>
<p>March 13.</p>
<p>MRS. JUDY ABBOTT PENDLETON,</p>
<p>Dear Madam:</p>
<p>Your four letters, two telegrams, and three checks are at hand, and your
instructions shall be obeyed just as quickly as this overworked
superintendent can manage it.</p>
<p>I delegated the dining room job to Betsy Kindred. One hundred dollars did
I allow her for the rehabilitation of that dreary apartment. She accepted
the trust, picked out five likely orphans to assist in the mechanical
details, and closed the door.</p>
<p>For three days the children have been eating from the desks in the
schoolroom. I haven't an idea what Betsy is doing; but she has a lot
better taste than I, so there isn't much use in interfering.</p>
<p>It is such a heaven-sent relief to be able to leave something to somebody
else, and be sure it will be carried out! With all due respect to the age
and experience of the staff I found here, they are not very open to new
ideas. As the John Grier Home was planned by its noble founder in 1875, so
shall it be run today.</p>
<p>Incidentally, my dear Judy, your idea of a private dining room for the
superintendent, which I, being a social soul, at first scorned, has been
my salvation. When I am dead tired I dine alone, but in my live intervals
I invite an officer to share the meal; and in the expansive intimacy of
the dinner-table I get in my most effective strokes. When it becomes
desirable to plant the seeds of fresh air in the soul of Miss Snaith, I
invite her to dinner, and tactfully sandwich in a little oxygen between
her slices of pressed veal.</p>
<p>Pressed veal is our cook's idea of an acceptable PIECE DE RESISTANCE for a
dinner party. In another month I am going to face the subject of suitable
nourishment for the executive staff.</p>
<p>Meanwhile there are so many things more important than our own comfort
that we shall have to worry along on veal.</p>
<p>A terrible bumping has just occurred outside my door. One little cherub
seems to be kicking another little cherub downstairs. But I write on
undisturbed. If I am to spend my days among orphans, I must cultivate a
cheerful detachment.</p>
<p>Did you get Leonora Fenton's cards? She's marrying a medical missionary
and going to Siam to live! Did you ever hear of anything so absurd as
Leonora presiding over a missionary's menage? Do you suppose she will
entertain the heathen with skirt dances?</p>
<p>It isn't any absurder, though, than me in an orphan asylum, or you as a
conservative settled matron, or Marty Keene a social butterfly in Paris.
Do you suppose she goes to embassy balls in riding clothes, and what on
earth does she do about hair? It couldn't have grown so soon; she must
wear a wig. Isn't our class turning out some hilarious surprises?</p>
<p>The mail arrives. Excuse me while I read a nice fat letter from
Washington.</p>
<p>Not so nice; quite impertinent. Gordon can't get over the idea that it is
a joke, S. McB. in conjunction with one hundred and thirteen orphans. But
he wouldn't think it such a joke if he could try it for a few days. He
says he is going to drop off here on his next trip North and watch the
struggle. How would it be if I left him in charge while I dashed to New
York to accomplish some shopping? Our sheets are all worn out, and we
haven't more than two hundred and eleven blankets in the house.</p>
<p>Singapore, sole puppy of my heart and home, sends his respectful love. I
also, S. McB.</p>
<p>THE JOHN GRIER HOME,</p>
<p><br/></p>
<p>Friday. My dearest Judy:</p>
<p>You should see what your hundred dollars and Betsy Kindred did to that
dining room!</p>
<p>It's a dazzling dream of yellow paint. Being a north room, she thought to
brighten it; and she has. The walls are kalsomined buff, with a frieze of
little molly cottontails skurrying around the top. All of the woodwork—tables
and benches included—is a cheerful chrome yellow. Instead of
tablecloths, which we can't afford, we have linen runners, with stenciled
rabbits hopping along their length. Also yellow bowls, filled at present
with pussywillows, but looking forward to dandelions and cowslips and
buttercups. And new dishes, my dear—white, with yellow jonquils (we
think), though they may be roses; there is no botany expert in the house.
Most wonderful touch of all, we have NAPKINS, the first we have seen in
our whole lives. The children thought they were handkerchiefs and
ecstatically wiped their noses.</p>
<p>To honor the opening of the new room, we had ice-cream and cake for
dessert. It is such a pleasure to see these children anything but cowed
and apathetic, that I am offering prizes for boisterousness—to every
one but Sadie Kate. She drummed on the table with her knife and fork and
sang, "Welcome to dem golden halls."</p>
<p>You remember that illuminated text over the dining-room door—"The
Lord Will Provide." We've painted it out, and covered the spot with
rabbits. It's all very well to teach so easy a belief to normal children,
who have a proper family and roof behind them; but a person whose only
refuge in distress will be a park bench must learn a more militant creed
than that.</p>
<p>"The Lord has given you two hands and a brain and a big world to use them
in. Use them well, and you will be provided for; use them ill, and you
will want," is our motto, and that with reservations.</p>
<p>In the sorting process that has been going on I have got rid of eleven
children. That blessed State Charities Aid Association helped me dispose
of three little girls, all placed in very nice homes, and one to be
adopted legally if the family likes her. And the family will like her; I
saw to that. She was the prize child of the institution, obedient and
polite, with curly hair and affectionate ways, exactly the little girl
that every family needs. When a couple of adopting parents are choosing a
daughter, I stand by with my heart in my mouth, feeling as though I were
assisting in the inscrutable designs of Fate. Such a little thing turns
the balance! The child smiles, and a loving home is hers for life; she
sneezes, and it passes her by forever.</p>
<p>Three of our biggest boys have gone to work on farms, one of them out West
to a RANCH! Report has it that he is to become a cowboy and Indian fighter
and grizzly-bear hunter, though I believe in reality he is to engage in
the pastoral work of harvesting wheat. He marched off, a hero of romance,
followed by the wistful eyes of twenty-five adventurous lads, who turned
back with a sigh to the safely monotonous life of the J. G. H.</p>
<p>Five other children have been sent to their proper institutions. One of
them is deaf, one an epileptic, and the other three approaching idiocy.
None of them ought ever to have been accepted here. This as an educational
institution, and we can't waste our valuable plant in caring for
defectives.</p>
<p>Orphan asylums have gone out of style. What I am going to develop is a
boarding school for the physical, moral, and mental growth of children
whose parents have not been able to provide for their care.</p>
<p>"Orphans" is merely my generic term for the children; a good many of them
are not orphans in the least. They have one troublesome and tenacious
parent left who won't sign a surrender, so I can't place them out for
adoption. But those that are available would be far better off in loving
foster-homes than in the best institution that I can ever make. So I am
fitting them for adoption as quickly as possible, and searching for the
homes.</p>
<p>You ought to run across a lot of pleasant families in your travels; can't
you bully some of them into adopting children? Boys by preference. We've
got an awful lot of extra boys, and nobody wants them. Talk about
anti-feminism! It's nothing to the anti-masculinism that exists in the
breasts of adopting parents. I could place out a thousand dimpled little
girls with yellow hair, but a good live boy from nine to thirteen is a
drug on the market. There seems to be a general feeling that they track in
dirt and scratch up mahogany furniture.</p>
<p>Shouldn't you think that men's clubs might like to adopt boys, as a sort
of mascot? The boy could be boarded in a nice respectable family, and
drawn out by the different members on Saturday afternoons. They could take
him to ball games and the circus, and then return him when they had had
enough, just as you do with a library book. It would be very valuable
training for the bachelors. People are forever talking about the
desirability of training girls for motherhood. Why not institute a course
of training in fatherhood, and get the best men's clubs to take it up?
Will you please have Jervis agitate the matter at his various clubs, and
I'll have Gordon start the idea in Washington. They both belong to such a
lot of clubs that we ought to dispose of at least a dozen boys.</p>
<p>I remain,</p>
<p>The ever-distracted mother of 113.</p>
<p>S. McB.</p>
<p>THE JOHN GRIER HOME,</p>
<p>March 18.</p>
<p>Dear Judy:</p>
<p>I have been having a pleasant respite from the 113 cares of motherhood.</p>
<p>Yesterday who should drop down upon our peaceful village but Mr. Gordon
Hallock, on his way back to Washington to resume the cares of the nation.
At least he said it was on his way, but I notice from the map in the
primary room that it was one hundred miles out of his way.</p>
<p>And dear, but I was glad to see him! He is the first glimpse of the
outside world I have had since I was incarcerated in this asylum. And such
a lot of entertaining businesses he had to talk about! He knows the inside
of all the outside things you read in the newspapers; so far as I can make
out, he is the social center about which Washington revolves. I always
knew he would get on in politics, for he has a way with him; there's no
doubt about it.</p>
<p>You can't imagine how exhilarated and set-up I feel, as though I'd come
into my own again after a period of social ostracism. I must confess that
I get lonely for some one who talks my kind of nonsensical talk. Betsy
trots off home every week end, and the doctor is conversational enough,
but, oh, so horribly logical! Gordon somehow seems to stand for the life I
belong to,—of country clubs and motors and dancing and sport and
politeness,—a poor, foolish, silly life, if you will, but mine own.
And I have missed it. This serving society business is theoretically
admirable and compelling and interesting, but deadly stupid in its working
details. I am afraid I was never born to set the crooked straight.</p>
<p>I tried to show Gordon about and make him take an interest in the babies,
but he wouldn't glance at them. He thinks I came just to spite him, which,
of course, I did. Your siren call would never have lured me from the path
of frivolity had Gordon not been so unpleasantly hilarious at the idea of
my being able to manage an orphan asylum. I came here to show him that I
could; and now, when I can show him, the beast refuses to look.</p>
<p>I invited him to dinner, with a warning about the pressed veal; but he
said no, thanks, that I needed a change. So we went to Brantwood Inn and
had broiled lobster. I had positively forgotten that the creatures were
edible.</p>
<p>This morning at seven o'clock I was wakened by the furious ringing of the
telephone bell. It was Gordon at the station, about to resume his journey
to Washington. He was in quite a contrite mood about the asylum, and
apologized largely for refusing to look at my children. It was not that he
didn't like orphans, he said; it was just that he didn't like them in
juxtaposition to me. And to prove his good intentions, he would send them
a bag of peanuts.</p>
<p>I feel as fresh and revivified after my little fling as though I'd had a
real vacation. There's no doubt about it, an hour or so of exciting talk
is more of a tonic to me than a pint of iron and strychnine pills.</p>
<p>You owe me two letters, dear Madam. Pay them TOUT DE SUITE, or I lay down
my pen forever.</p>
<p>Yours, as usual,</p>
<p>S. McB.</p>
<p>Tuesday, 5 P.M. My dear Enemy:</p>
<p>I am told that during my absence this afternoon you paid us a call and dug
up a scandal. You claim that the children under Miss Snaith are not
receiving their due in the matter of cod-liver oil.</p>
<p>I am sorry if your medicinal orders have not been carried out, but you
must know that it is a difficult matter to introduce that abominably
smelling stuff into the inside of a squirming child. And poor Miss Snaith
is a very much overworked person. She has ten more children to care for
than should rightly fall into the lot of any single woman, and until we
find her another assistant, she has very little time for the fancy touches
you demand.</p>
<p>Also, my dear Enemy, she is very susceptible to abuse. When you feel in a
fighting mood, I wish you would expend your belligerence upon me. I don't
mind it; quite the contrary. But that poor lady has retired to her room in
a state of hysterics, leaving nine babies to be tucked into bed by
whomever it may concern.</p>
<p>If you have any powders that would be settling to her nerves, please send
them back by Sadie Kate.</p>
<p>Yours truly,</p>
<p>S. McBRIDE.</p>
<p>Wednesday Morning.</p>
<p>Dear Dr. MacRae:</p>
<p>I am not taking an unintelligent stand in the least; I am simply asking
that you come to me with all complaints, and not stir up my staff in any
such volcanic fashion as that of yesterday.</p>
<p>I endeavor to carry out all of your orders—of a medical nature—with
scrupulous care. In the present case there seems to have been some
negligence; I don't know what did become of those fourteen unadministered
bottles of cod-liver oil that you have made such a fuss about, but I shall
investigate.</p>
<p>And I cannot, for various reasons, pack off Miss Snaith in the summary
fashion you demand. She may be, in certain respects, inefficient; but she
is kind to the children, and with supervision will answer temporarily.</p>
<p>Yours truly,</p>
<p>S. McBRIDE.</p>
<p>Thursday.</p>
<p>Dear Enemy:</p>
<p>SOYEZ TRANQUILLE. I have issued orders, and in the future the children
shall receive all of the cod-liver oil that by rights is theirs. A wilfu'
man maun hae his way.</p>
<p>S. McB.</p>
<p>March 22.</p>
<p>Dear Judy:</p>
<p>Asylum life has looked up a trifle during the past few days—since
the great Cod-Liver Oil War has been raging. The first skirmish occurred
on Tuesday, and I unfortunately missed it, having accompanied four of my
children on a shopping trip to the village. I returned to find the asylum
teeming with hysterics. Our explosive doctor had paid us a visit.</p>
<p>Sandy has two passions in life: one is for cod-liver oil and the other for
spinach, neither popular in our nursery. Some time ago—before I
came, in fact—he had ordered cod-liver oil for all {aenemic} of the{
}—Heavens! there's that word again! {aneamic} —children, and
had given instructions as to its application to Miss Snaith. Yesterday, in
his suspicious Scotch fashion, he began nosing about to find out why the
poor little rats weren't fattening up as fast as he thought they ought,
and he un earthed a hideous scandal. They haven't received a whiff of
cod-liver oil for three whole weeks! At that point he exploded, and all
was joy and excitement and hysterics.</p>
<p>Betsy says that she had to send Sadie Kate to the laundry on an improvised
errand, as his language was not fit for orphan ears. By the time I got
home he had gone, and Miss Snaith had retired, weeping, to her room, and
the whereabouts of fourteen bottles of cod-liver oil was still
unexplained. He had accused her at the top of his voice of taking them
herself. Imagine Miss Snaith,—she who looks so innocent and chinless
and inoffensive—stealing cod-liver oil from these poor helpless
little orphans and guzzling it in private!</p>
<p>Her defense consisted in hysterical assertions that she loved the
children, and had done her duty as she saw it. She did not believe in
giving medicine to babies; she thought drugs bad for their poor little
stomachs. You can imagine Sandy! Oh, dear! oh, dear! To think I missed it!</p>
<p>Well, the tempest raged for three days, and Sadie Kate nearly ran her
little legs off carrying peppery messages back and forth between us and
the doctor. It is only under stress that I communicate with him by
telephone, as he has an interfering old termagant of a housekeeper who
"listens in" on the down-stairs switch. I don't wish the scandalous
secrets of the John Grier spread abroad. The doctor demanded Miss Snaith's
instant dismissal, and I refused. Of course she is a vague, unfocused,
inefficient old thing, but she does love the children, and with proper
supervision is fairly useful.</p>
<p>At least, in the light of her exalted family connections, I can't pack her
off in disgrace like a drunken cook. I am hoping in time to eliminate her
by a process of delicate suggestion; perhaps I can make her feel that her
health requires a winter in California. And also, no matter what the
doctor wants, so positive and dictatorial is his manner that just out of
self-respect one must take the other side. When he states that the world
is round, I instantly assert it to be triangular.</p>
<p>Finally, after three pleasantly exhilarating days, the whole business
settled itself. An apology (a very dilute one) was extracted from him for
being so unkind to the poor lady, and full confession, with promises for
the future, was drawn from her. It seems that she couldn't bear to make
the little dears take the stuff, but, for obvious reasons, she couldn't
bear to cross Dr. MacRae, so she hid the last fourteen bottles in a dark
corner of the cellar. Just how she was planning to dispose of her loot I
don't know. Can you pawn cod-liver oil?</p>
<p>LATER.</p>
<p>Peace negotiations had just ended this afternoon, and Sandy had made a
dignified exit, when the Hon. Cyrus Wykoff was announced. Two enemies in
the course of an hour are really too much!</p>
<p>The Hon. Cy was awfully impressed with the new dining room, especially
when he heard that Betsy had put on those rabbits with her own lily-white
hands. Stenciling rabbits on walls, he allows, is a fitting pursuit for a
woman, but an executive position like mine is a trifle out of her sphere.
He thinks it would be far wiser if Mr. Pendleton did not give me such free
scope in the spending of his money.</p>
<p>While we were still contemplating Betsy's mural flight, an awful crash
came from the pantry, and we found Gladiola Murphy weeping among the ruins
of five yellow plates. It is sufficiently shattering to my nerves to hear
these crashes when I am alone, but it is peculiarly shattering when
receiving a call from an unsympathetic trustee.</p>
<p>I shall cherish that set of dishes to the best of my ability, but if you
wish to see your gift in all its uncracked beauty, I should advise you to
hurry North, and visit the John Grier Home without delay.</p>
<p>Yours as ever,</p>
<p>SALLIE.</p>
<p>March 26. My dear Judy:</p>
<p>I have just been holding an interview with a woman who wants to take a
baby home to surprise her husband. I had a hard time convincing her that,
since he is to support the child, it might be a delicate attention to
consult him about its adoption. She argued stubbornly that it was none of
his business, seeing that the onerous work of washing and dressing and
training would fall upon her. I am really beginning to feel sorry for men.
Some of them seem to have very few rights.</p>
<p>Even our pugnacious doctor I suspect of being a victim of domestic
tyranny, and his housekeeper's at that. It is scandalous the way Maggie
McGurk neglects the poor man. I have had to put him in charge of an
orphan. Sadie Kate, with a very housewifely air, is this moment sitting
cross-legged on the hearth rug sewing buttons on his overcoat while he is
upstairs tending babies.</p>
<p>You would never believe it, but Sandy and I are growing quite confidential
in a dour Scotch fashion. It has become his habit, when homeward bound
after his professional calls, to chug up to our door about four in the
afternoon, and make the rounds of the house to make sure that we are not
developing cholera morbus or infanticide or anything catching, and then
present himself at four-thirty at my library door to talk over our mutual
problems.</p>
<p>Does he come to see me? Oh, no, indeed; he comes to get tea and toast and
marmalade. The man hath a lean and hungry look. His housekeeper doesn't
feed him enough. As soon as I get the upper hand of him a little more, I
am going to urge him on to revolt.</p>
<p>Meanwhile he is very grateful for something to eat, but oh, so funny in
his attempts at social grace! At first he would hold a cup of tea in one
hand, a plate of muffins in the other, and then search blankly for a third
hand to eat them with. Now he has solved the problem. He turns in his toes
and brings his knees together; then he folds his napkin into a long,
narrow wedge that fills the crack between them, thus forming a very
workable pseudo lap; after that he sits with tense muscles until the tea
is drunk. I suppose I ought to provide a table, but the spectacle of Sandy
with his toes turned in is the one gleam of amusement that my day affords.</p>
<p>The postman is just driving in with, I trust, a letter from you. Letters
make a very interesting break in the monotony of asylum life. If you wish
to keep this superintendent contented, you'd better write often.</p>
<p>. . . . . . . .</p>
<p>Mail received and contents noted.</p>
<p>Kindly convey my thanks to Jervis for three alligators in a swamp. He
shows rare artistic taste in the selection of his post cards. Your
seven-page illustrated letter from Miami arrives at the same time. I
should have known Jervis from the palm tree perfectly, even without the
label, as the tree has so much the more hair of the two. Also, I have a
polite bread-and-butter letter from my nice young man in Washington, and a
book from him, likewise a box of candy. The bag of peanuts for the kiddies
he has shipped by express. Did you ever know such assiduity?</p>
<p>Jimmie favors me with the news that he is coming to visit me as soon as
father can spare him from the factory. The poor boy does hate that factory
so! It isn't that he is lazy; he just simply isn't interested in overalls.
But father can't understand such a lack of taste. Having built up the
factory, he of course has developed a passion for overalls, which should
have been inherited by his eldest son. I find it awfully convenient to
have been born a daughter; I am not asked to like overalls, but am left
free to follow any morbid career I may choose, such as this.</p>
<p>To return to my mail: There arrives an advertisement from a wholesale
grocer, saying that he has exceptionally economical brands of oatmeal,
rice, flour, prunes, and dried apples that he packs specially for prisons
and charitable institutions. Sounds nutritious, doesn't it?</p>
<p>I also have letters from a couple of farmers, each of whom would like to
have a strong, husky boy of fourteen who is not afraid of work, their
object being to give him a good home. These good homes appear with great
frequency just as the spring planting is coming on. When we investigated
one of them last week, the village minister, in answer to our usual
question, "Does he own any property?" replied in a very guarded manner, "I
think he must own a corkscrew."</p>
<p>You would hardly credit some of the homes that we have investigated. We
found a very prosperous country family the other day, who lived huddled
together in three rooms in order to keep the rest of their handsome house
clean. The fourteen-year girl they wished to adopt, by way of a cheap
servant, was to sleep in the same tiny room with their own three children.
Their kitchen-dining-parlor apartment was more cluttered up and unaired
than any city tenement I ever saw, and the thermometer at eighty-four. One
could scarcely say they were living there; they were rather COOKING. You
may be sure they got no girl from us!</p>
<p>I have made one invariable rule—every other is flexible. No child is
to be placed out unless the proposed family can offer better advantages
than we can give. I mean than we are going to be able to give in the
course of a few months, when we get ourselves made over into a model
institution. I shall have to confess that at present we are still pretty
bad.</p>
<p>But anyway, I am very CHOOSEY in regard to homes, and I reject
three-fourths of those that offer.</p>
<p>LATER.</p>
<p>Gordon has made honorable amends to my children. His bag of peanuts is
here, made of burlap and three feet high.</p>
<p>Do you remember the dessert of peanuts and maple sugar they used to give
us at college? We turned up our noses, but ate. I am instituting it here,
and I assure you we don't turn up our noses. It is a pleasure to feed
children who have graduated from a course of Mrs. Lippett; they are
pathetically grateful for small blessings.</p>
<p>You can't complain that this letter is too short.</p>
<p>Yours,</p>
<p>On the verge of writer's cramp,</p>
<p>S. McB.</p>
<p>THE JOHN GRIER HOME,</p>
<p>Off and on, all day Friday.</p>
<p>Dear Judy:</p>
<p>You will be interested to hear that I have encountered another enemy—the
doctor's housekeeper. I had talked to the creature several times over the
telephone, and had noted that her voice was not distinguished by the soft,
low accents that mark the caste of "Vere de Vere"; but now I have seen
her. This morning, while returning from the village, I made a slight
detour, and passed our doctor's house. Sandy is evidently the result of
environment—olive green, with a mansard roof and the shades pulled
down. You would think he had just been holding a funeral.</p>
<p>I don't wonder that the amenities of life have somewhat escaped the poor
man. After studying the outside of his house, I was filled with curiosity
to see if the inside matched.</p>
<p>Having sneezed five times before breakfast this morning, I decided to go
in and consult him professionally. To be sure, he is a children's
specialist, but sneezes are common to all ages. So I boldly marched up the
steps and rang the bell.</p>
<p>Hark! What sound is that that breaks upon our revelry? The Hon. Cy's
voice, as I live, approaching up the stairs. I've letters to write, and I
can't be tormented by his blether, so I am rushing Jane to the door with
orders to look him firmly in the eye and tell him I am out.</p>
<p>. . . . . . . .</p>
<p>On with the dance! Let joy be unconfined. He's gone.</p>
<p>But those eight stars represent eight agonizing minutes spent in the dark
of my library closet. The Hon. Cy received Jane's communication with the
affable statement that he would sit down and wait. Whereupon he entered
and sat. But did Jane leave me to languish in the closet? No; she enticed
him to the nursery to see the AWFUL thing that Sadie Kate has done. The
Hon. Cy loves to see awful things, particularly when done by Sadie Kate. I
haven't an idea what scandal Jane is about to disclose; but no matter, he
has gone.</p>
<p>Where was I? Oh, yes; I had rung the doctor's bell.</p>
<p>The door was opened by a large, husky person with her sleeves rolled up.
She looked very businesslike, with a hawk's nose and cold gray eyes.</p>
<p>"Well?" said she, her tone implying that I was a vacuum-cleaning agent.</p>
<p>"Good morning." I smiled affably, and stepped inside. "Is this Mrs.
McGurk?"</p>
<p>"It is," said she. "An' ye'll be the new young woman in the orphan
asylum?"</p>
<p>"I am that," said I. "Is himself at home?"</p>
<p>"He is not," said she.</p>
<p>"But this is his office hour."</p>
<p>"He don't keep it regular'."</p>
<p>"He ought," said I, sternly. "Kindly tell him that Miss McBride called to
consult him, and ask him to look in at the John Grier Home this
afternoon."</p>
<p>"Ump'!" grunted Mrs. McGurk, and closed the door so promptly that she shut
in the hem of my skirt.</p>
<p>When I told the doctor this afternoon, he shrugged his shoulders, and
observed that that was Maggie's gracious way.</p>
<p>"And why do you put up with Maggie?" said I.</p>
<p>"And where would I find any one better?" said he. "Doing the work for a
lone man who comes as irregularly to meals as a twenty-four-hour day will
permit is no sinecure. She furnishes little sunshine in the home, but she
does manage to produce a hot dinner at nine o'clock at night."</p>
<p>Just the same, I am willing to wager that her hot dinners are neither
delicious nor well served. She's an inefficient, lazy old termagant, and I
know why she doesn't like me. She imagines that I want to steal away the
doctor and oust her from a comfortable position, something of a joke,
considering. But I am not undeceiving her; it will do the old thing good
to worry a little. She may cook him better dinners, and fatten him up a
trifle. I understand that fat men are good-natured.</p>
<p>TEN O'CLOCK.</p>
<p>I don't know what silly stuff I have been writing to you off and on all
day, between interruptions. It has got to be night at last, and I am too
tired to do so much as hold up my head. Your song tells the sad truth,
"There is no joy in life but sleep."</p>
<p>I bid you good night.</p>
<p>S. McB.</p>
<p>Isn't the English language absurd? Look at those forty monosyllables in a
row!</p>
<p>J. G. H.,</p>
<p>April 1.</p>
<p>Dear Judy:</p>
<p>I have placed out Isador Gutschneider. His new mother is a Swedish woman,
fat and smiling, with blue eyes and yellow hair. She chose him out of the
whole nurseryful of children because he was the brunettest baby there. She
has always loved brunettes, but in her most ambitious dreams has never
hoped to have one of her own. His name is going to be changed to Oscar
Carlson, after his new dead uncle.</p>
<p>My first trustees' meeting is to occur next Wednesday. I confess that I am
not looking forward to it with impatience—especially as an inaugural
address by me will be its chief feature. I wish our president were here to
back me up! But at least I am sure of one thing. I am never going to adopt
the Uriah Heepish attitude toward trustees that characterized Mrs.
Lippett's manners. I shall treat "first Wednesdays" as a pleasant social
diversion, my day at home, when the friends of the asylum gather for
discussion and relaxation; and I shall endeavor not to let our pleasures
discommode the orphans. You see how I have taken to heart the unhappy
experiences of that little Jerusha.</p>
<p>Your last letter has arrived, and no suggestion in it of traveling North.
Isn't it about time that you were turning your faces back toward Fifth
Avenue? Hame is hame, be 't ever sae hamely. Don't you marvel at the
Scotch that flows so readily from my pen? Since being acquent' wi' Sandy,
I hae gathered a muckle new vocabulary. The dinner gong! I leave you, to
devote a revivifying half-hour to mutton hash. We eat to live in the John
Grier Home.</p>
<p>SIX O'CLOCK.</p>
<p>The Hon. Cy has been calling again. He drops in with great frequency,
hoping to catch me IN DELICTU. How I do not like that man! He is a pink,
fat, puffy old thing, with a pink, fat, puffy soul. I was in a very
cheery, optimistic frame of mind before his arrival, but now I shall do
nothing but grumble for the rest of the day.</p>
<p>He deplores all of the useless innovations that I am endeavoring to
introduce, such as a cheerful playroom, prettier clothes, baths, and
better food and fresh air and play and fun and ice-cream and kisses. He
says that I will unfit these children to occupy the position in life that
God has called them to occupy.</p>
<p>At that my Irish blood came to the surface, and I told him that if God had
planned to make all of these 113 little children into useless, ignorant,
unhappy citizens, I was going to fool God! That we weren't educating them
out of their class in the least. We were educating them INTO their natural
class much more effectually than is done in the average family. We weren't
trying to force them into college if they hadn't any brains, as happens
with rich men's sons; and we weren't putting them to work at fourteen if
they were naturally ambitious, as happens with poor men's sons. We were
watching them closely and individually and discovering their level. If our
children showed an aptitude to become farm laborers and nurse-maids, we
were going to teach them to be the best possible farm laborers and
nurse-maids; and if they showed a tendency to become lawyers, we would
turn them into honest, intelligent, open-minded lawyers. (He's a lawyer
himself, but certainly not an open-minded one.)</p>
<p>He grunted when I had finished my remarks, and stirred his tea vigorously.
Whereupon I suggested that perhaps he needed another lump of sugar, and
dropped it in, and left him to absorb it.</p>
<p>The only way to deal with trustees is with a firm and steady hand. You
have to keep them in their places.</p>
<p>Oh, my dear! that smudge in the corner was caused by Singapore's black
tongue. He is trying to send you an affectionate kiss. Poor Sing thinks
he's a lap dog—isn't it a tragedy when people mistake their
vocations? I myself am not always certain that I was born an orphan asylum
superintendent.</p>
<p>Yours, til deth,</p>
<p>S. McB.</p>
<p>SUPERINTENDENT'S OFFICE, JOHN GRIER HOME,</p>
<p>April 4.</p>
<p>THE PENDLETON FAMILY,</p>
<p>Palm Beach, Florida.</p>
<p>Dear Sir and Madam:</p>
<p>I have weathered my first visitors' day, and made the trustees a beautiful
speech. Everybody said it was a beautiful speech—even my enemies.</p>
<p>Mr. Gordon Hallock's recent visit was exceptionally opportune; I gleaned
from him many suggestions as to how to carry an audience.</p>
<p>"Be funny."—I told about Sadie Kate and a few other cherubs that you
don't know.</p>
<p>"Keep it concrete and fitted to the intelligence of your audience."—I
watched the Hon. Cy, and never said a thing that he couldn't understand.</p>
<p>"Flatter your hearers."—I hinted delicately that all of these new
reforms were due to the wisdom and initiative of our peerless trustees.</p>
<p>"Give it a high moral tone, with a dash of pathos."—I dwelt upon the
parentless condition of these little wards of Society. And it was very
affecting—my enemy wiped away a tear!</p>
<p>Then I fed them up on chocolate and whipped cream and lemonade and tartar
sandwiches, and sent them home, expansive and beaming, but without any
appetite for dinner.</p>
<p>I dwell thus at length upon our triumph, in order to create in you a happy
frame of mind, before passing to the higeous calamity that so nearly
wrecked the occasion.</p>
<p>"Now follows the dim horror of my tale,<br/>
And I feel I'm growing gradually pale,<br/>
For, even at this day,<br/>
Though its smell has passed away,<br/>
When I venture to remember it, I quail!"<br/></p>
<p>You never heard of our little Tammas Kehoe, did you? I simply haven't
featured Tammas because he requires so much ink and time and vocabulary.
He's a spirited lad, and he follows his dad, a mighty hunter of old—that
sounds like more Bab Ballads, but it isn't; I made it up as I went along.</p>
<p>We can't break Tammas of his inherited predatory instincts. He shoots the
chickens with bows and arrows and lassoes the pigs and plays bull-fight
with the cows—and oh, is very destructive! But his crowning villainy
occurred an hour before the trustees' meeting, when we wanted to be so
clean and sweet and engaging.</p>
<p>It seems that he had stolen the rat trap from the oat bin, and had set it
up in the wood lot, and yesterday morning was so fortunate as to catch a
fine big skunk.</p>
<p>Singapore was the first to report the discovery. He returned to the house
and rolled on the rugs in a frenzy of remorse over his part of the
business. While our attention was occupied with Sing, Tammas was busily
skinning his prey in the seclusion of the woodshed. He buttoned the pelt
inside his jacket, conveyed it by a devious route through the length of
this building, and concealed it under his bed where he thought it wouldn't
be found.</p>
<p>Then he went—per schedule—to the basement to help freeze the
ice-cream for our guests. You notice that we omitted ice-cream from the
menu.</p>
<p>In the short time that remained we created all the counter-irritation that
was possible. Noah (negro furnace man) started smudge fires at intervals
about the grounds. Cook waved a shovelful of burning coffee through the
house. Betsy sprinkled the corridors with ammonia. Miss Snaith daintily
treated the rugs with violet water. I sent an emergency call to the doctor
who came and mixed a gigantic solution of chlorid of lime. But still,
above and beneath and through every other odor, the unlaid ghost of
Tammas's victim cried for vengeance.</p>
<p>The first business that came up at the meeting, was whether we should dig
a hole and bury, not only Tammas, but the whole main building. You can see
with what finesse I carried off the shocking event, when I tell you that
the Hon. Cy went home chuckling over a funny story, instead of grumbling
at the new superintendent's inability to manage boys.</p>
<p>We've our ain bit weird to dree!</p>
<p>As ever,</p>
<p>S. McBRIDE.</p>
<p>THE JOHN GRIER HOME,</p>
<p>Friday, likewise Saturday.</p>
<p>Dear Judy:</p>
<p>Singapore is still living in the carriage house, and receiving a daily
carbolic-scented bath from Tammas Kehoe. I am hoping that some day, in the
distant future, my darling will be fit to return.</p>
<p>You will be pleased to hear that I have instituted a new method of
spending your money. We are henceforth to buy a part of our shoes and
drygoods and drug store comestibles from local shops, at not quite such
low prices as the wholesale jobbers give, but still at a discount, and the
education that is being thrown in is worth the difference. The reason is
this: I have made the discovery that half of my children know nothing of
money or its purchasing power. They think that shoes and corn meal and
red-flannel petticoats and mutton stew and gingham shirts just float down
from the blue sky.</p>
<p>Last week I dropped a new green dollar bill out of my purse, and an
eight-year-old urchin picked it up and asked if he could keep that picture
of a bird. (American eagle in the center.) That child had never seen a
bill in his life! I began an investigation, and discovered that dozens of
children in this asylum have never bought anything or have ever seen
anybody buy anything. And we are planning to turn them out at sixteen into
a world governed entirely by the purchasing power of dollars and cents!
Good heavens! just think of it! They are not to lead sheltered lives with
somebody eternally looking after them; they have got to know how to get
the very most they can out of every penny they can manage to earn.</p>
<p>I pondered the question all one night, at intervals, and went to the
village at nine o'clock the next morning. I held conferences with seven
storekeepers; found four open-minded and helpful, two doubtful, and one
actively stupid. I have started with the four—drygoods, groceries,
shoes, and stationery. In return for somewhat large orders from us, they
are to turn themselves and their clerks into teachers for my children, who
are to go to the stores, inspect the stocks, and do their own purchasing
with real money.</p>
<p>For example, Jane needs a spool of blue sewing-silk and a yard of elastic;
so two little girls, intrusted with a silver quarter, trot hand in hand to
Mr. Meeker's. They match the silk with anxious care, and watch the clerk
jealously while he measures the elastic, to make sure that he doesn't
stretch it. Then they bring back six cents change, receive my thanks and
praise, and retire to the ranks tingling with a sense of achievement.</p>
<p>Isn't it pathetic? Ordinary children of ten or twelve automatically know
so many things that our little incubator chicks have never dreamed of. But
I have a variety of plans on foot. Just give me time, and you will see.
One of these days I'll be turning out some nearly normal youngsters.</p>
<p>LATER.</p>
<p>I've an empty evening ahead, so I'll settle to some further gossip with
you.</p>
<p>You remember the peanuts that Gordon Hallock sent? Well, I was so gracious
when I thanked him that it incited him to fresh effort. He apparently went
into a toy shop, and placed himself unreservedly in the hands of an
enterprising clerk. Yesterday two husky expressmen deposited in our front
hall a crate full of expensive furry animals built to be consumed by the
children of the rich. They are not exactly what I should have purchased
had I been the one to disburse such a fortune, but my babies find them
very huggable. The chicks are now taking to bed with them lions and
elephants and bears and giraffes. I don't know what the psychological
effect will be. Do you suppose when they grow up they will all join the
circus?</p>
<p>Oh, dear me, here is Miss Snaith, coming to pay a social call.</p>
<p>Good-by.</p>
<p>S.</p>
<p>P.S. The prodigal has returned. He sends his respectful regards, and three
wags of the tail.</p>
<p>THE JOHN GRIER HOME,</p>
<p>April 7. My dear Judy:</p>
<p>I have just been reading a pamphlet on manual training for girls, and
another on the proper diet for institutions—right proportions of
proteins, fats, starches, etc. In these days of scientific charity, when
every problem has been tabulated, you can run an institution by chart. I
don't see how Mrs. Lippett could have made all the mistakes she did,
assuming, of course,that she knew how to read. But there is one quite
important branch of institutional work that has not been touched upon, and
I myself am gathering data. Some day I shall issue a pamphlet on the
"Management and Control of Trustees."</p>
<p>I must tell you the joke about my enemy—not the Hon. Cy, but my
first, my original enemy. He has undertaken a new field of endeavor. He
says quite soberly (everything he does is sober; he has never smiled yet)
that he has been watching me closely since my arrival, and though I am
untrained and foolish and flippant (sic), he doesn't think that I am
really so superficial as I at first appeared. I have an almost masculine
ability of grasping the whole of a question and going straight to the
point.</p>
<p>Aren't men funny? When they want to pay you the greatest compliment in
their power, they naively tell you that you have a masculine mind. There
is one compliment, incidentally, that I shall never be paying him. I
cannot honestly say that he has a quickness of perception almost feminine.</p>
<p>So, though Sandy quite plainly sees my faults, still, he thinks that some
of them may be corrected; and he has determined to carry on my education
from the point where the college dropped it. A person in my position ought
to be well read in physiology, biology, psychology, sociology, and
eugenics; she should know the hereditary effects of insanity, idiocy, and
alcohol; should be able to administer the Binet test; and should
understand the nervous system of a frog. In pursuance whereof, he has
placed at my disposal his own scientific library of four thousand volumes.
He not only fetches in the books he wants me to read, but comes and asks
questions to make sure I haven't skipped.</p>
<p>We devoted last week to the life and letters of the Jukes family.
Margaret, the mother of criminals, six generations ago, founded a prolific
line, and her progeny, mostly in jail, now numbers some twelve hundred.
Moral: watch the children with a bad heredity so carefully that none of
them can ever have any excuse for growing up into Jukeses.</p>
<p>So now, as soon as we have finished our tea, Sandy and I get out the
Doomsday Book, and pore over its pages in an anxious search for alcoholic
parents. It's a cheerful little game to while away the twilight hour after
the day's work is done.</p>
<p>QUELLE VIE! Come home fast and take me out of it. I'm wearying for the
sight of you.</p>
<p>SALLIE. J. G. H.,</p>
<p>Thursday morning. My dear Pendleton Family:</p>
<p>I have received your letter, and I seize my pen to stop you. I don't wish
to be relieved. I take it back. I change my mind. The person you are
planning to send sounds like an exact twin of Miss Snaith. How can you ask
me to turn over my darling children to a kind, but ineffectual,
middle-aged lady without any chin? The very thought of it wrings a
mother's heart.</p>
<p>Do you imagine that such a woman can carry on this work even temporarily?
No! The manager of an institution like this has got to be young and husky
and energetic and forceful and efficient and red-haired and
sweet-tempered, like me. Of course I've been discontented,—anybody
would be with things in such a mess,—but it's what you socialists
call a holy discontent. And do you think that I am going to abandon all of
the beautiful reforms I have so painstakingly started? No! I am not to be
moved from this spot until you find a superintendent superior to Sallie
McBride.</p>
<p>That does not mean, though, that I am mortgaging myself forever. Just for
the present, until things get on their feet. While the face washing,
airing, reconstructing period lasts, I honestly believe you chose the
right person when you hit upon me. I LOVE to plan improvements and order
people about.</p>
<p>This is an awfully messy letter, but I'm dashing it off in three minutes
in order to catch you before you definitely engage that pleasant,
inefficient middle-aged person without a chin.</p>
<p>Please, kind lady and gentleman, don't do me out of me job! Let me stay a
few months longer. Just gimme a chance to show what I'm good for, and I
promise you won't never regret it.</p>
<p>S. McB.</p>
<p>J. G. H.,</p>
<p>Thursday afternoon.</p>
<p>Dear Judy:</p>
<p>I've composed a poem—a paean of victory.</p>
<p>Robin MacRae Smiled today.</p>
<p>It's the truth! S. McB.</p>
<p>THE JOHN GRIER HOME,</p>
<p>April 13.</p>
<p>Dear Judy:</p>
<p>I am gratified to learn that you were gratified to learn that I am going
to stay. I hadn't realized it, but I am really getting sort of attached to
orphans.</p>
<p>It's an awful disappointment that Jervis has business which will keep you
South so much longer. I am bursting with talk, and it is such a laborious
nuisance having to write everything I want to say.</p>
<p>Of course I am glad that we are to have the building remodeled, and I
think all of your ideas good, but I have a few extra good ones myself. It
will be nice to have the new gymnasium and sleeping-porches, but, oh, my
soul does long for cottages! The more I look into the internal workings of
an orphan asylum, the more I realize that the only type of asylum that can
compete with a private family is one on the cottage system. So long as the
family is the unit of society, children should be hardened early to family
life.</p>
<p>The problem that is keeping me awake at present is, What to do with the
children while we are being made over? It is hard to live in a house and
build it at the same time. How would it be if I rented a circus tent and
pitched it on the lawn?</p>
<p>Also, when we plunge into our alterations, I want a few guest rooms where
our children can come back when ill or out of work. The great secret of
our lasting influence in their lives will be our watchful care afterward.
What a terrible ALONE feeling it must give a person not to have a family
hovering in the background! With all my dozens of aunts and uncles and
mothers and fathers and cousins and brothers and sisters, I can't
visualize it. I'd be terrified and panting if I didn't have lots of cover
to run to. And for these forlorn little mites, somehow or other the John
Grier Home must supply their need. So, dear people, send me half a dozen
guest rooms, if you please.</p>
<p>Good-by, and I'm glad you didn't put in the other woman. The very
suggestion of somebody else taking over my own beautiful reforms before
they were even started, stirred up all the opposition in me. I'm afraid
I'm like Sandy—I canna think aught is dune richt except my ain hand
is in 't.</p>
<p>Yours, for the present,</p>
<p>SALLIE McBRIDE.</p>
<p>THE JOHN GRIER HOME,</p>
<p>Sunday.</p>
<p>Dear Gordon:</p>
<p>I know that I haven't written lately; you have a perfect right to grumble,
but oh dear! oh dear! you can't imagine what a busy person an orphan
asylum superintendent is. And all the writing energy I possess has to be
expended upon that voracious Judy Abbott Pendleton. If three days go by
without a letter she telegraphs to know if the asylum has burned; whereas,
if you—nice man—go letterless, you simply send us a present to
remind us of your existence. So, you see, it's distinctly to our advantage
to slight you often.</p>
<p>You will probably be annoyed when I tell you that I have promised to stay
on here. They finally did find a woman to take my place, but she wasn't at
all the right type and would have answered only temporarily. And, my dear
Gordon, it's true, when I faced saying good-by to this feverish planning
and activity, Worcester somehow looked rather colorless. I couldn't bear
to let my asylum go unless I was sure of substituting a life packed
equally full of sensation.</p>
<p>I know the alternative you will suggest, but please don't—just now.
I told you before that I must have a few months longer to make up my mind.
And in the meantime I like the feeling that I'm of use in the world.
There's something constructive and optimistic about working with children;
that is, if you look at it from my cheerful point of view, and not from
our Scotch doctor's. I've never seen anybody like that man; he's always
pessimistic and morbid and down. It's best not to be too intelligent about
insanity and dipsomania and all the other hereditary details. I am just
about ignorant enough to be light-hearted and effective in a place like
this.</p>
<p>The thought of all of these little lives expanding in every direction
eternally thrills me. There are so many possibilities in our child garden
for every kind of flower. It has been planted rather promiscuously, to be
sure, but though we undoubtedly shall gather a number of weeds, we are
also hoping for some rare and beautiful blossoms. Am I not growing
sentimental? It is due to hunger—and there goes the dinner-gong! We
are going to have a delicious meal: roast beef and creamed carrots and
beet greens, with rhubarb pie for dessert. Would you not like to dine with
me? I should love to have you.</p>
<p>Most cordially yours,</p>
<p>S. McB.</p>
<p>P.S. You should see the number of poor homeless cats that these children
want to adopt. We had four when I came, and they have all had kittens
since. I haven't taken an exact census, but I think the institution
possesses nineteen.</p>
<p>April 15. My dear Judy:</p>
<p>You'd like to make another slight donation to the J. G. H. out of the
excess of last month's allowance? BENE! Will you kindly have the following
inserted in all low-class metropolitan dailies:</p>
<p>Notice!<br/>
To Parents Planning to Abandon their Children:<br/>
Please do it before they have reached their third year.<br/></p>
<p>I can't think of any action on the part of abandoning parents that would
help us more effectually. This having to root up evil before you begin
planting good is slow, discouraging work.</p>
<p>We have one child here who has almost floored me; but I WILL NOT
acknowledge myself beaten by a child of five. He alternates between sullen
moroseness, when he won't speak a word, and the most violent outbursts of
temper, when he smashes everything within reach. He has been here only
three months, and in that time he has destroyed nearly every piece of
bric-a-brac in the institution—not, by the way, a great loss to art.</p>
<p>A month or so before I came he pulled the tablecloth from the officers'
table while the girl in charge was in the corridor sounding the gong. The
soup had already been served. You can imagine the mess! Mrs. Lippett half
killed the child on that occasion, but the killing did nothing to lessen
the temper, which was handed on to me intact.</p>
<p>His father was Italian and his mother Irish; he has red hair and freckles
from County Cork and the most beautiful brown eyes that ever came out of
Naples. After the father was stabbed in a fight and the mother had died of
alcoholism, the poor little chap by some chance or other got to us. I
suspect that he belongs in the Catholic Protectory. As for his manners—oh
dear! oh dear! They are what you would expect. He kicks and bites and
swears. I have dubbed him Punch.</p>
<p>Yesterday he was brought squirming and howling to my office, charged with
having knocked down a little girl and robbed her of her doll. Miss Snaith
plumped him into a chair behind me, and left him to grow quiet, while I
went on with my writing. I was suddenly startled by an awful crash. He had
pushed that big green jardiniere off the window-sill and broken it into
five hundred pieces. I jumped with a suddenness that swept the ink-bottle
to the floor, and when Punch saw that second catastrophe, he stopped
roaring with rage and threw back his head and roared with laughter. The
child is DIABOLICAL.</p>
<p>I have determined to try a new method of discipline that I don't believe
in the whole of his forlorn little life he has ever experienced. I am
going to see what praise and encouragement and love will do. So, instead
of scolding him about the jardiniere, I assumed that it was an accident. I
kissed him and told him not to feel bad; that I didn't mind in the least.
It shocked him into being quiet; he simply held his breath and stared
while I wiped away his tears and sopped up the ink.</p>
<p>The child just now is the biggest problem that the J. G. H. affords. He
needs the most patient, loving, individual care—a proper mother and
father, likewise some brothers and sisters and a grandmother. But I can't
place him in a respectable family until I make over his language and his
propensity to break things. I separated him from the other children, and
kept him in my room all the morning, Jane having removed to safe heights
all destructible OBJETS D'ART. Fortunately, he loves to draw, and he sat
on a rug for two hours, and occupied himself with colored pencils. He was
so surprised when I showed an interest in a red-and-green ferryboat, with
a yellow flag floating from the mast, that he became quite profanely
affable. Until then I couldn't get a word out of him.</p>
<p>In the afternoon Dr. MacRae dropped in and admired the ferryboat, while
Punch swelled with the pride of creation. Then, as a reward for being such
a good little boy, the doctor took him out in his automobile on a visit to
a country patient.</p>
<p>Punch was restored to the fold at five o'clock by a sadder and wiser
doctor. At a sedate country estate he had stoned the chickens, smashed a
cold frame, and swung the pet Angora cat by its tail. Then when the sweet
old lady tried to make him be kind to poor pussy, he told her to go to
hell.</p>
<p>I can't bear to consider what some of these children have seen and
experienced. It will take years of sunshine and happiness and love to
eradicate the dreadful memories that they have stored up in the far-back
corners of their little brains. And there are so many children and so few
of us that we can't hug them enough; we simply haven't arms or laps to go
around.</p>
<p>MAIS PARLONS D'AUTRES CHOSES! Those awful questions of heredity and
environment that the doctor broods over so constantly are getting into my
blood, too; and it's a vicious habit. If a person is to be of any use in a
place like this, she must see nothing but good in the world. Optimism is
the only wear for a social worker.</p>
<p>"'Tis the middle of night by the castle clock"—do you know where
that beautiful line of poetry comes from? "Cristabel," of English K.
Mercy! how I hated that course! You, being an English shark, liked it; but
I never understood a word that was said from the time I entered the
classroom till I left it. However, the remark with which I opened this
paragraph is true. It IS the middle of night by the mantelpiece clock, so
I'll wish you pleasant dreams. ADDIO!</p>
<p>SALLIE.</p>
<p>Tuesday.</p>
<p>Dear Enemy:</p>
<p>You doctored the whole house, then stalked past my library with your nose
in the air, while I was waiting tea with a plate of Scotch scones sitting
on the trivet, ordered expressly for you as a peace-offering.</p>
<p>If you are really hurt, I will read the Kallikak book; but I must tell you
that you are working me to death. It takes almost all of my energy to be
an effective superintendent, and this university extension course that you
are conducting I find wearing. You remember how indignant you were one day
last week because I confessed to having stayed up until one o'clock the
night before? Well, my dear man, if I were to accomplish all the vicarious
reading you require, I should sit up until morning every night.</p>
<p>However, bring it in. I usually manage half an hour of recreation after
dinner, and though I had wanted to glance at Wells's latest novel, I will
amuse myself instead with your feeble-minded family.</p>
<p>Life of late is unco steep. Obligingly yours,</p>
<p>S. McB.</p>
<p>THE JOHN GRIER HOME,</p>
<p>April 17.</p>
<p>Dear Gordon:</p>
<p>Thank you for the tulips, likewise the lilies of the valley. They are most
becoming to my blue Persian bowls.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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,</p>
<p>S. McBRIDE,</p>
<p>Sup't John Grier Home.</p>
<p>Friday.</p>
<p>Dear Man of Science:</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>We owe it to adopting parents not to saddle them with feeble-minded
offspring.</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>S. McB.</p>
<p>Dear Gordon:</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>You can't.</p>
<p>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:—</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>I would write a respectable letter, but it's teatime, and I see that a
guest approaches.</p>
<p>ADDIO! SALLIE.</p>
<p>P.S. Don't you know some one who would like to adopt a desirable baby boy
with seventeen nice new teeth?</p>
<p>April 20. My dear Judy:</p>
<p>One a penny, two a penny, hot cross buns! We've had a Good Friday present
of ten dozen, given by Mrs. De Peyster Lambert, a high church,
stained-glass-window soul whom I met at a tea a few days ago. (Who says
now that teas are a silly waste of time?) She asked me about my "precious
little waifs," and said I was doing a noble work and would be rewarded. I
saw buns in her eye, and sat down and talked to her for half an hour.</p>
<p>Now I shall go and thank her in person, and tell her with a great deal of
affecting detail how much those buns were appreciated by my precious
little waifs—omitting the account of how precious little Punch threw
his bun at Miss Snaith and plastered her neatly in the eye. I think, with
encouragement, Mrs. De Peyster Lambert can be developed into a cheerful
giver.</p>
<p>Oh, I'm growing into the most shocking beggar! My family don't dare to
visit me, because I demand BAKSHISH in such a brazen manner. I threatened
to remove father from my calling list unless he shipped immediately
sixty-five pairs of overalls for my prospective gardeners. A notice from
the freight office this morning asks me to remove two packing cases
consigned to them by the J. L. McBride Co. of Worcester; so I take it that
father desires to continue my acquaintance. Jimmie hasn't sent us anything
yet, and he's getting a huge salary. I write him frequently a pathetic
list of our needs.</p>
<p>But Gordon Hallock has learned the way to a mother's heart. I was so
pleasant about the peanuts and menagerie that now he sends a present of
some sort every few days, and I spend my entire time composing thank-you
letters that aren't exact copies of the ones I've sent before. Last week
we received a dozen big scarlet balls. The nursery is FULL of them; you
kick them before you as you walk. And yesterday there arrived a
half-bushel of frogs and ducks and fishes to float in the bathtubs.</p>
<p>Send, O best of trustees, the tubs in which to float them!</p>
<p>I am, as usual,</p>
<p>S. McBRIDE.</p>
<p>Tuesday. My dear Judy:</p>
<p>Spring must be lurking about somewhere; the birds are arriving from the
South. Isn't it time you followed their example?</p>
<p>Society note from the BIRD O' PASSAGE NEWS:</p>
<p>"Mr. and Mrs. First Robin have returned from a trip to Florida. It is
hoped that Mr. and Mrs. Jervis Pendleton will arrive shortly."</p>
<p>Even up here in our dilatory Dutchess County the breeze smells green. It
makes you want to be out and away, roaming the hills, or else down on your
knees grubbing in the dirt. Isn't it funny what farmering instincts the
budding spring awakens in even the most urban souls?</p>
<p>I have spent the morning making plans for little private gardens for every
child over nine. The big potato field is doomed. That is the only feasible
spot for sixty-two private gardens. It is near enough to be watched from
the north windows, and yet far enough away, so that their messing will not
injure our highly prized landscape lawn. Also the earth is rich, and they
have some chance of success. I don't want the poor little chicks to
scratch all summer, and then not turn up any treasure in the end. In order
to furnish an incentive, I shall announce that the institution will buy
their produce and pay in real money, though I foresee we shall be buried
under a mountain of radishes.</p>
<p>I do so want to develop self-reliance and initiative in these children,
two sturdy qualities in which they are conspicuously lacking (with the
exception of Sadie Kate and a few other bad ones). Children who have
spirit enough to be bad I consider very hopeful. It's those who are good
just from inertia that are discouraging.</p>
<p>The last few days have been spent mainly in charming the devil out of
Punch, an interesting task if I could devote my whole time to it. But with
one hundred and seven other little devils to charm away, my attention is
sorely deflected.</p>
<p>The awful thing about this life is that whatever I am doing, the other
things that I am not doing, but ought to be, keep tugging at my skirts.
There is no doubt but Punch's personal devil needs the whole attention of
a whole person,—preferably two persons,—so that they could
spell each other and get some rest.</p>
<p>Sadie Kate has just flown in from the nursery with news of a scarlet
goldfish (Gordon's gift) swallowed by one of our babies. Mercy! the number
of calamities that can occur in an orphan asylum!</p>
<p>9 P.M.</p>
<p>My children are in bed, and I've just had a thought. Wouldn't it be
heavenly if the hibernating system prevailed among the human young? There
would be some pleasure in running an asylum if one could just tuck the
little darlings into bed the first of October and keep them there until
the twenty-second of April.</p>
<p>I'm yours, as ever,</p>
<p>SALLIE.</p>
<p>April 24.</p>
<p>Dear Jervis Pendleton, Esq.:</p>
<p>This is to supplement a night telegram which I sent you ten minutes ago.
Fifty words not being enough to convey any idea of my emotions, I herewith
add a thousand.</p>
<p>As you will know by the time you receive this, I have discharged the
farmer, and he has refused to be discharged. Being twice the size of me, I
can't lug him to the gate and chuck him out. He wants a notification from
the president of the board of trustees written in vigorous language on
official paper in typewriting. So, dear president of the board of
trustees, kindly supply all of this at your earliest convenience.</p>
<p>Here follows the history of the case:</p>
<p>The winter season still being with us when I arrived and farming
activities at a low ebb, I have heretofore paid little attention to Robert
Sterry except to note on two occasions that his pigpens needed cleaning;
but today I sent for him to come and consult with me in regard to spring
planting.</p>
<p>Sterry came, as requested, and seated himself at ease in my office with
his hat upon his head. I suggested as tactfully as might be that he remove
it, an entirely necessary request, as little orphan boys were in and out
on errands, and "hats off in the house" is our first rule in masculine
deportment.</p>
<p>Sterry complied with my request, and stiffened himself to be against
whatever I might desire.</p>
<p>I proceeded to the subject in hand, namely, that the diet of the John
Grier Home in the year to come is to consist less exclusively of potatoes.
At which our farmer grunted in the manner of the Hon. Cyrus Wykoff, only
it was a less ethereal and gentlemanly grunt than a trustee permits
himself. I enumerated corn and beans and onions and peas and tomatoes and
beets and carrots and turnips as desirable substitutes.</p>
<p>Sterry observed that if potatoes and cabbages was good enough for him, he
guessed they was good enough for charity children.</p>
<p>I proceeded imperturbably to say that the two-acre potato field was to be
plowed and fertilized, and laid out into sixty individual gardens, the
boys assisting in the work.</p>
<p>At that Sterry exploded. The two-acre field was the most fertile and
valuable piece of earth on the whole place. He guessed if I was to break
that up into play gardens for the children to mess about in, I'd be
hearing about it pretty danged quick from the board of trustees. That
field was fitted for potatoes, it had always raised potatoes, and it was
going to continue to raise them just as long as he had anything to say
about it.</p>
<p>"You have nothing whatever to say about it," I amiably replied. "I have
decided that the two-acre field is the best plot to use for the children's
gardens, and you and the potatoes will have to give way."</p>
<p>Whereupon he rose in a storm of bucolic wrath, and said he'd be gol darned
if he'd have a lot of these danged city brats interfering with his work.</p>
<p>I explained—very calmly for a red-haired person with Irish forebears—that
this place was run for the exclusive benefit of these children; that the
children were not here to be exploited for the benefit of the place, a
philosophy which he did not grasp, though my fancy city language had a
slightly dampening effect. I added that what I required in a farmer was
the ability and patience to instruct the boys in gardening and simple
outdoor work; that I wished a man of large sympathies whose example would
be an inspiring influence to these children of the city streets.</p>
<p>Sterry, pacing about like a caged woodchuck, launched into a tirade about
silly Sunday-school notions, and, by a transition which I did not grasp,
passed to a review of the general subject of woman's suffrage. I gathered
that he is not in favor of the movement. I let him argue himself quiet,
then I handed him a check for his wages, and told him to vacate the tenant
house by twelve o'clock next Wednesday.</p>
<p>Sterry says he'll be danged if he will. (Excuse so many DANGEDS. It is the
creature's only adjective.) He was engaged to work for this institution by
the president of the board of trustees, and he will not move from that
house until the president of the board of trustees tells him to go. I
don't think poor Sterry realizes that since his arrival a new president
has come to the throne.</p>
<p>ALORS you have the story. I make no threats, but Sterry or McBride—take
your choice, dear sir.</p>
<p>I am also about to write to the head of the Massachusetts Agricultural
College, at Amherst, asking him to recommend a good, practical man with a
nice, efficient, cheerful wife, who will take the entire care of our
modest domain of seventeen acres, and who will be a man with the right
personality to place over our boys.</p>
<p>If we get the farming end of this institution into running shape, it ought
to furnish not only beans and onions for the table, but education for our
hands and brains.</p>
<p>I remain, sir, Yours most truly, S. McBRIDE, Superintendent of the John
Grier Home.</p>
<p>P.S. I think that Sterry will probably come back some night and throw
rocks through the windows. Shall I have them insured?</p>
<p>My dear Enemy:</p>
<p>You disappeared so quickly this afternoon that I had no chance to thank
you, but the echoes of that discharge penetrated as far as my library.
Also, I have viewed the debris. What on earth did you do to poor Sterry?
Watching the purposeful set of your shoulders as you strode toward the
carriage house, I was filled with sudden compunction. I did not want the
man murdered, merely reasoned with. I am afraid you were a little harsh.</p>
<p>However, your technic seems to have been effective. Report says that he
has telephoned for a moving wagon and that Mrs. Sterry is even now on her
hands and knees ripping up the parlor carpet.</p>
<p>For this relief much thanks.</p>
<p>SALLIE McBRIDE.</p>
<p>April 26.</p>
<p>Dear Jervis:</p>
<p>Your vigorous telegram was, after all, not needed. Dr. Robin MacRae, who
is a grand PAWKY mon when it comes to a fight, accomplished the business
with beautiful directness. I was so bubbling with rage that immediately
after writing to you I called up the doctor on the telephone, and
rehearsed the whole business over again. Now, our Sandy, whatever his
failings (and he has them), does have an uncommon supply of common sense.
He knows how useful those gardens are going to be, and how worse than
useless Sterry was. Also says he, "The superintendent's authority must be
upheld." (That, incidentally, is beautiful, coming from him.) But anyway,
those were his words. And he hung up the receiver, cranked up his car, and
flew up here at lawless speed. He marched straight to Sterry, impelled by
a fine Scotch rage, and he discharged the man with such vigor and
precision, that the carriage house window was shattered to fragments.</p>
<p>Since this morning at eleven, when Sterry's wagonload of furniture rumbled
out of the gates, a sweet peace has reigned over the J. G. H. A man from
the village is helping us out while we hopefully await the farmer of our
dreams.</p>
<p>I am sorry to have troubled you with our troubles. Tell Judy that she owes
me a letter, and won't hear from until she has paid it. Your ob'd't
servant,</p>
<p>S. McBRIDE.</p>
<p>Dear Judy:</p>
<p>In my letter of yesterday to Jervis I forgotted (Punch's word) to convey
to you our thanks for three tin bathtubs. The skyblue tub with poppies on
the side adds a particularly bright note to the nursery. I do love
presents for the babies that are too big to be swallowed.</p>
<p>You will be pleased to hear that our manual training is well under way.
The carpenter benches are being installed in the old primary room, and
until our schoolhouse gets its new addition, our primary class is meeting
on the front porch, in accordance with Miss Matthew's able suggestion.</p>
<p>The girls' sewing classes are also in progress. A circle of benches under
the copper beech tree accommodates the hand sewers, while the big girls
take turns at our three machines. Just as soon as they gain some
proficiency we will begin the glorious work of redressing the institution.
I know you think I'm slow, but it's really a task to accomplish one
hundred and eighty new frocks. And the girls will appreciate them so much
more if they do the work themselves.</p>
<p>I may also report that our hygiene system has risen to a high level. Dr.
MacRae has introduced morning and evening exercises, and a glass of milk
and a game of tag in the middle of school hours. He has instituted a
physiology class, and has separated the children into small groups, so
that they may come to his house, where he has a manikin that comes apart
and shows all its messy insides. They can now rattle off scientific truths
about their little digestions as fluently as Mother Goose rhymes. We are
really becoming too intelligent for recognition. You would never guess
that we were orphans to hear us talk; we are quite like Boston children.</p>
<p>2 P.M.</p>
<p>O Judy, such a calamity! Do you remember several weeks ago I told you
about placing out a nice little girl in a nice family home where I hoped
she would be adopted? It was a kind Christian family living in a pleasant
country village, the foster-father a deacon in the church. Hattie was a
sweet, obedient, housewifely little body, and it looked as though we had
exactly fitted them to each other. My dear, she was returned this morning
for STEALING. Scandal piled on scandal: SHE HAD STOLEN A COMMUNION CUP
FROM CHURCH!</p>
<p>Between her sobs and their accusations it took me half an hour to gather
the truth. It seems that the church they attend is very modern and
hygienic, like our doctor, and has introduced individual communion cups.
Poor little Hattie had never heard of communion in her life. In fact, she
wasn't very used to church, Sunday-school having always sufficed for her
simple religious needs. But in her new home she attended both, and one
day, to her pleased surprise, they served refreshments. But they skipped
her. She made no comment, however; she is used to being skipped.</p>
<p>But as they were starting home she saw that the little silver cup had been
casually left in the seat, and supposing that it was a souvenir that you
could take if you wished, she put it into her pocket.</p>
<p>It came to light two days later as the most treasured ornament of her
doll's-house. It seems that Hattie long ago saw a set of doll's dishes in
a toy shop window, and has ever since dreamed of possessing a set of her
own. The communion cup was not quite the same, but it answered. Now, if
our family had only had a little less religion and a little more sense,
they would have returned the cup, perfectly unharmed, and have marched
Hattie to the nearest toy shop and bought her some dishes. But instead,
they bundled the child and her belongings into the first train they could
catch, and shoved her in at our front door, proclaiming loudly that she
was a thief.</p>
<p>I am pleased to say that I gave that indignant deacon and his wife such a
thorough scolding as I am sure they have never listened to from the
pulpit. I borrowed some vigorous bits from Sandy's vocabulary, and sent
them home quite humbled. As for poor little Hattie, here she is back
again, after going out with such high hopes. It has an awfully bad moral
effect on a child to be returned to the asylum in disgrace, especially
when she wasn't aware of committing a crime. It gives her a feeling that
the world is full of unknown pitfalls, and makes her afraid to take a
step. I must bend all my energies now toward finding another set of
parents for her, and ones that haven't grown so old and settled and good
that they have entirely forgotten their own childhood.</p>
<p>Sunday.</p>
<p>I forgot to tell you that our new farmer is here, Turnfelt by name; and
his wife is a love, yellow hair and dimples. If she were an orphan, I
could place her in a minute. We can't let her go to waste. I have a
beautiful plan of building an addition to the farmer's cottage, and
establishing under her comfortable care a sort of brooding-house where we
can place our new little chicks, to make sure they haven't anything
contagious and to eliminate as much profanity as possible before turning
them loose among our other perfect chicks.</p>
<p>How does that strike you? It is very necessary in an institution as full
of noise and movement and stir as this to have some isolated spot where we
can put cases needing individual attention. Some of our children have
inherited nerves, and a period of quiet contemplation is indicated. Isn't
my vocabulary professional and scientific? Daily intercourse with Dr.
Robin MacRae is extremely educational.</p>
<p>Since Turnfelt came, you should see our pigs. They are so clean and pink
and unnatural that they don't recognize one another any more as they pass.</p>
<p>Our potato field is also unrecognizable. It has been divided with string
and pegs into as many squares as a checker-board, and every child has
staked out a claim. Seed catalogues form our only reading matter.</p>
<p>Noah has just returned from a trip to the village for the Sunday papers to
amuse his leisure. Noah is a very cultivated person; he not only reads
perfectly, but he wears tortoise-shell-rimmed spectacles while he does it.
He also brought from the post office a letter from you, written Friday
night. I am pained to note that you do not care for "Gosta Berling" and
that Jervis doesn't. The only comment I can make is, "What a shocking lack
of literary taste in the Pendleton family!"</p>
<p>Dr. MacRae has another doctor visiting him, a very melancholy gentleman
who is at the head of a private psychopathic institution, and thinks
there's no good in life. But I suppose this pessimistic view is natural if
you eat three meals a day with a tableful of melancholics. He goes up and
down the world looking for signs of degeneracy, and finds them everywhere.
I expected, after half an hour's conversation, that he would ask to look
down my throat to see if I had a cleft palate. Sandy's taste in friends
seems to resemble his taste in literature. Gracious! this is a letter!</p>
<p>Good-by.</p>
<p>SALLIE.</p>
<p>Thursday, May 2.</p>
<p>Dear Judy:</p>
<p>Such a bewildering whirl of events! The J. G. H. is breathless.
Incidentally, I am on the way toward solving my problem of what to do with
the children while the carpenters and plumbers and masons are here. Or,
rather, my precious brother has solved it for me.</p>
<p>This afternoon I went over my linen supply, and made the shocking
discovery that we have only sheets enough to change the children's beds
every two weeks, which, it appears, is our shiftless custom. While I was
still in the midst of my household gear, with a bunch of keys at my
girdle, looking like the chatelaine of a medieval chateau, who should be
ushered in but Jimmie?</p>
<p>Being extremely occupied, I dropped a slanting kiss on his nose, and sent
him off to look over the place in charge of my two oldest urchins. They
collected six friends and organized a baseball game. Jimmie came back
blown, but enthusiastic, and consented to prolong his visit over the week
end, though after the dinner I gave him he has decided to take his future
meals at the hotel. As we sat with our coffee before the fire, I confided
to him my anxiety as to what should be done with the chicks while their
new brooder is building. You know Jimmie. In one half a minute his plan
was formulated.</p>
<p>"Build an Adirondack camp on that little plateau up by the wood lot. You
can make three open shacks, each holding eight bunks, and move the
twenty-four oldest boys out there for the summer. It won't cost two
cents."</p>
<p>"Yes," I objected, "but it will cost more than two cents to engage a man
to look after them."</p>
<p>"Perfectly easy," said Jimmie, grandly. "I'll find you a college fellow
who'll be glad to come during the vacation for his board and a mere
pittance, only you'll have to set up more filling board than you gave me
tonight."</p>
<p>Dr. MacRae dropped in about nine o'clock, after visiting the hospital
ward. We've got three cases of whooping cough, but all isolated, and no
more coming. How those three got in is a mystery. It seems there is a
little bird that brings whooping cough to orphan asylums.</p>
<p>Jimmie fell upon him for backing in his camp scheme, and the doctor gave
it enthusiastically. They seized pencil and paper and drew up plans. And
before the evening was over, the last nail was hammered. Nothing would
satisfy those two men but to go to the telephone at ten o'clock and rouse
a poor carpenter from his sleep. He and some lumber are ordered for eight
in the morning.</p>
<p>I finally got rid of them at ten-thirty, still talking uprights and joists
and drainage and roof slants.</p>
<p>The excitement of Jimmie and coffee and all these building operations
induced me to sit down immediately and write a letter to you; but I think,
by your leave, I'll postpone further details to another time. Yours ever,</p>
<p>SALLIE.</p>
<p>Saturday.</p>
<p>Dear Enemy:</p>
<p>Will you be after dining with us at seven tonight? It's a real dinner
party; we're going to have ice-cream.</p>
<p>My brother has discovered a promising young man to take charge of the
boys,—maybe you know him,—Mr. Witherspoon, at the bank. I wish
to introduce him to asylum circles by easy steps, so PLEASE don't mention
insanity or epilepsy or alcoholism or any of your other favorite topics.</p>
<p>He is a gay young society leader, used to very fancy things to eat. Do you
suppose we can ever make him happy at the John Grier Home? Yours in
evident haste,</p>
<p>SALLIE McBRIDE.</p>
<p>Sunday.</p>
<p>Dear Judy:</p>
<p>Jimmie was back at eight Friday morning, and the doctor at a quarter past.
They and the carpenter and our new farmer and Noah and our two horses and
our eight biggest boys have been working ever since. Never were building
operations set going in faster time. I wish I had a dozen Jimmies on the
place, though I will say that my brother works faster if you catch him
before the first edge of his enthusiasm wears away. He would not be much
good at chiseling out a medieval cathedral.</p>
<p>He came back Saturday morning aglow with a new idea. He had met at the
hotel the night before a friend who belongs to his hunting club in Canada,
and who is cashier of our First (and only) National Bank.</p>
<p>"He's a bully good sport," said Jimmie, "and exactly the man you want to
camp out with those kids and lick 'em into shape. He'll be willing to come
for his board and forty dollars a month, because he's engaged to a girl in
Detroit and wants to save. I told him the food was rotten, but if he
kicked enough, you'd probably get a new cook."</p>
<p>"What's his name?" said I, with guarded interest.</p>
<p>"He's got a peach of a name. It's Percy de Forest Witherspoon."</p>
<p>I nearly had hysterics. Imagine a Percy de Forest Witherspoon in charge of
those twenty-four wild little savages!</p>
<p>But you know Jimmie when he has an idea. He had already invited Mr.
Witherspoon to dine with me on Saturday evening, and had ordered oysters
and squabs and ice-cream from the village caterer to help out my veal. It
ended by my giving a very formal dinner party, with Miss Matthews and
Betsy and the doctor included.</p>
<p>I almost asked the Hon. Cy and Miss Snaith. Ever since I have known those
two, I have felt that there ought to be a romance between them. Never have
I known two people who matched so perfectly. He's a widower with five
children. Don't you suppose it might be arranged? If he had a wife to take
up his attention, it might deflect him a little from us. I'd be getting
rid of them both at one stroke. It's to be considered among our future
improvements.</p>
<p>Anyway, we had our dinner. And during the course of the evening my anxiety
grew, not as to whether Percy would do for us, but as to whether we should
do for Percy. If I searched the world over, I never could find a young man
more calculated to win the affection of those boys. You know, just by
looking at him, that he does everything well, at least everything
vigorous. His literary and artistic accomplishments I suspect a bit, but
he rides and shoots and plays golf and football and sails a boat. He likes
to sleep out of doors and he likes boys. He has always wanted to know some
orphans; often read about 'em in books, he says, but never met any face to
face. Percy does seem too good to be true.</p>
<p>Before they left, Jimmie and the doctor hunted up a lantern, and in their
evening clothes conducted Mr. Witherspoon across a plowed field to inspect
his future dwelling.</p>
<p>And such a Sunday as we passed! I had absolutely to forbid their
carpentering. Those men would have put in a full day, quite irrespective
of the damage done to one hundred and four little moral natures. As it is,
they have just stood and looked at those shacks and handled their hammers,
and thought about where they would drive the first nail tomorrow morning.
The more I study men, the more I realize that they are nothing in the
world but boys grown too big to be spankable.</p>
<p>I am awfully worried as to how to feed Mr. Witherspoon. He looks as though
he had a frightfully healthy appetite, and he looks as though he couldn't
swallow his dinner unless he had on evening clothes. I've made Betsy send
home for a trunkful of evening gowns in order to keep up our social
standing. One thing is fortunate: he takes his luncheon at the hotel, and
I hear their luncheons are very filling.</p>
<p>Tell Jervis I am sorry he is not with us to drive a nail for the camp.
Here comes the Hon. Cy up the path. Heaven save us!</p>
<p>Ever your unfortunate,</p>
<p>S. McB.</p>
<p>THE JOHN GRIER HOME,</p>
<p>May 8.</p>
<p>Dear Judy:</p>
<p>Our camp is finished, our energetic brother has gone, and our twenty-four
boys have passed two healthful nights in the open. The three bark-covered
shacks add a pleasant rustic touch to the grounds. They are like those we
used to have in the Adirondacks, closed on three sides and open in the
front, and one larger than the rest to allow a private pavilion for Mr.
Percy Witherspoon. An adjacent hut, less exposed to the weather, affords
extremely adequate bathing facilities, consisting of a faucet in the wall
and three watering-cans. Each camp has a bath master who stands on a stool
and sprinkles each little shiverer as he trots under. Since our trustees
WON'T give us enough bathtubs, we have to use our wits.</p>
<p>The three camps have organized into three tribes of Indians, each with a
chief of its own to answer for its conduct, Mr. Witherspoon high chief of
all, and Dr. MacRae the medicine man. They dedicated their lodges Tuesday
evening with appropriate tribal ceremonies. And though they politely
invited me to attend, I decided that it was a purely masculine affair, so
I declined to go, but sent refreshments, a very popular move. Betsy and I
walked as far as the baseball field in the course of the evening, and
caught a glimpse of the orgies. The braves were squatting in a circle
about a big fire, each decorated with a blanket from his bed and a rakish
band of feathers. (Our chickens seem very scant as to tail, but I have
asked no unpleasant questions.) The doctor, with a Navajo blanket about
his shoulders, was executing a war dance, while Jimmie and Mr. Witherspoon
beat on war drums—two of our copper kettles, now permanently dented.
Fancy Sandy! It's the first youthful glimmer I have ever caught in the
man.</p>
<p>After ten o'clock, when the braves were safely stowed for the night, the
three men came in and limply dropped into comfortable chairs in my
library, with the air of having made martyrs of themselves in the great
cause of charity. But they did not deceive me. They originated all that
tomfoolery for their own individual delectation.</p>
<p>So far Mr. Percy Witherspoon appears fairly happy. He is presiding at one
end of the officers' table under the special protection of Betsy, and I am
told that he instills considerable life into that sedate assemblage. I
have endeavored to run up their menu a trifle, and he accepts what is put
before him with a perfectly good appetite, irrespective of the absence of
such accustomed trifles as oysters and quail and soft-shell crabs.</p>
<p>There was no sign of a private sitting room that I could put at this young
man's disposal, but he himself has solved the difficulty by proposing to
occupy our new laboratory. So he spends his evenings with a book and a
pipe, comfortably stretched in the dentist's chair. There are not many
society men who would be willing to spend their evenings so harmlessly.
That girl in Detroit is a lucky young thing.</p>
<p>Mercy! An automobile full of people has just arrived to look over the
institution, and Betsy, who usually does the honors, not here. I fly.</p>
<p>ADDIO! SALLIE.</p>
<p>My dear Gordon:</p>
<p>This is not a letter,—I don't owe you one,—it's a receipt for
sixty-five pairs of roller skates.</p>
<p>Many thanks.</p>
<p>S. McB.</p>
<p>Friday.</p>
<p>Dear Enemy:</p>
<p>I hear that I missed a call today, but Jane delivered your message,
together with the "Genetic Philosophy of Education." She says that you
will call in a few days for my opinion of the book. Is it to be a written
or an oral examination?</p>
<p>And doesn't it ever occur to you that this education business is rather
one-sided? It often strikes me that Dr. Robin MacRae's mental attitude
would also be the better for some slight refurbishing. I will promise to
read your book, provided you read one of mine. I am sending herewith the
"Dolly Dialogues," and shall ask for an opinion in a day or so.</p>
<p>It's uphill work making a Scotch Presbyterian frivolous, but persistency
accomplishes wonders.</p>
<p>S. McB.</p>
<p>May 12. My dear, dear Judy:</p>
<p>Talk about floods in Ohio! Right here in Dutchess County we are the
consistency of a wet sponge. Rain for five days, and everything wrong with
this institution.</p>
<p>The babies have had croup, and we have been up o' nights with them. Cook
has given notice, and there's a dead rat in the walls. Our three camps
leaked, and in the early dawn, after the first cloudburst, twenty-four
bedraggled little Indians, wrapped in damp bedding, came shivering to the
door and begged for admission. Since then every clothesline, every
stair-railing has been covered with wet and smelly blankets that steam,
but won't dry. Mr. Percy de Forest Witherspoon has returned to the hotel
to wait until the sun comes out.</p>
<p>After being cooped up for four days with no exercise to speak of, the
children's badness is breaking out in red spots, like the measles. Betsy
and I have thought of every form of active and innocent occupation that
could be carried on in such a congested quarter as this: blind man's buff
and pillow fights and hide-and-go-seek, gymnastics in the dining room, and
bean-bags in the school room. (We broke two windows.) The boys played
leapfrog up and down the hall, and jarred all the plaster in the building.
We have cleaned energetically and furiously. All the woodwork has been
washed, and all of the floors polished. But despite everything, we have a
great deal of energy left, and we are getting to that point of nerves
where we want to punch one another.</p>
<p>Sadie Kate has been acting like a little deil—do they have feminine
deils? If not, Sadie Kate has originated the species. And this afternoon
Loretta Higgins had—well, I don't know whether it was a sort of fit
or just a temper. She lay down on the floor and howled for a solid hour,
and when any one tried to approach her, she thrashed about like a little
windmill and bit and kicked.</p>
<p>By the time the doctor came she had pretty well worn herself out. He
picked her up, limp and drooping, and carried her to a cot in the hospital
room; and after she was asleep he came down to my library and asked to
look at the archives.</p>
<p>Loretta is thirteen; in the three years she has been here she has had five
of these outbreaks, and has been punished good and hard for them. The
child's ancestral record is simple: "Mother died of alcoholic dementia,
Bloomingdale Asylum. Father unknown."</p>
<p>He studied the page long and frowningly and shook his head.</p>
<p>"With a heredity like that, is it right to punish the child for having a
shattered nervous system?"</p>
<p>"It is not," said I, firmly. "We will mend her shattered nervous system."</p>
<p>"If we can."</p>
<p>"We'll feed her up on cod-liver oil and sunshine, and find a nice kind
foster mother who will take pity on the poor little—"</p>
<p>But then my voice trailed off into nothing as I pictured Loretta's face,
with her hollow eyes and big nose and open mouth and no chin and stringy
hair and sticking-out ears. No foster mother in the world would love a
child who looked like that.</p>
<p>"Why, oh, why," I wailed, "doesn't the good Lord send orphan children with
blue eyes and curly hair and loving dispositions? I could place a million
of that sort in kind homes, but no one wants Loretta."</p>
<p>"I'm afraid the good Lord doesn't have anything to do with bringing our
Lorettas into the world. It is the devil who attends to them."</p>
<p>Poor Sandy! He gets awfully pessimistic about the future of the universe;
but I don't wonder, with such a cheerless life as he leads. He looked
today as though his own nervous system was shattered. He had been
splashing about in the rain since five this morning, when he was called to
a sick baby case. I made him sit down and have some tea, and we had a
nice, cheerful talk on drunkenness and idiocy and epilepsy and insanity.
He dislikes alcoholic parents, but he ties himself into a knot over insane
parents.</p>
<p>Privately, I don't believe there's one thing in heredity, provided you
snatch the babies away before their eyes are opened.</p>
<p>We've got the sunniest youngster here you ever saw; his mother and Aunt
Ruth and Uncle Silas all died insane, but he is as placid and unexcitable
as a cow.</p>
<p>Good-by, my dear. I am sorry this is not a more cheerful letter, though at
this moment nothing unpleasant seems to be happening. It's eleven o'clock,
and I have just stuck my head into the corridor, and all is quiet except
for two banging shutters and leaking eaves. I promised Jane I would go to
bed at ten. Good night, and joy be wi' ye baith!</p>
<p>SALLIE.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>May 16. Good morning, my dear Judy!</p>
<p>Three days of sunshine, and the J. G. H. is smiling.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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!</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Reproachfully yours,</p>
<p>SALLIE McBRIDE.</p>
<p>P.S. We have a child here whose father was lynched. Isn't that a piquant
detail to have in one's history?</p>
<p>Tuesday.</p>
<p>Dearest Judy:</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>"Sit there until I come back," I said, and went out and closed the door.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>"Mamie darling!" I cried in horror. "You haven't been here all this time?"</p>
<p>"Yes, ma'am," said Mamie; "you told me to wait until you came back."</p>
<p>That poor patient little thing was fairly swaying with weariness, but she
never uttered a whimper.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>LATER.</p>
<p>I wish you'd come back to New York. I've appointed you press agent for
this institution, and we need some of your floweriest writing immediately.
There are seven tots here crying to be adopted, and it's your business to
advertise them.</p>
<p>Little Gertrude is cross-eyed, but dear and affectionate and generous.
Can't you write her up so persuasively that some loving family will be
willing to take her even if she isn't beautiful? Her eyes can be operated
on when she's older; but if it were a cross disposition she had, no
surgeon in the world could remove that. The child knows there is something
missing, though she has never seen a live parent in her life. She holds up
her arms persuasively to every person who passes. Put in all the pathos
you are capable of, and see if you can't fetch her a mother and father.</p>
<p>Maybe you can get one of the New York papers to run a Sunday feature
article about a lot of different children. I'll send some photographs. You
remember what a lot of responses that "Smiling Joe" picture brought for
the Sea Breeze people? I can furnish equally taking portraits of Laughing
Lou and Gurgling Gertrude and Kicking Karl if you will just add the
literary touch.</p>
<p>And do find me some sports who are not afraid of heredity. This wanting
every child to come from one of the first families of Virginia is getting
tiresome.</p>
<p>Yours, as usual,</p>
<p>SALLIE.</p>
<p>Friday. My dear, dear Judy:</p>
<p>Such an upheaval! I've discharged the cook and the housekeeper, and in
delicate language conveyed the impression to our grammar teacher that she
needn't come back next year. But, oh, if I could only discharge the
Honorable Cy!</p>
<p>I must tell you what happened this morning. Our trustee, who has had a
dangerous illness, is now dangerously well again, and dropped in to pay a
neighborly call. Punch was occupying a rug on my library floor, virtuously
engaged with building blocks. I am separating him from the other
kindergarten children, and trying the Montessori method of a private rug
and no nervous distraction. I was flattering myself that it was working
well; his vocabulary of late has become almost prudish.</p>
<p>After half an hour's desultory visit, the Hon. Cy rose to go. As the door
closed behind him (I am at least thankful the child waited for that),
Punch raised his appealing brown eyes to mine and murmured, with a
confiding smile:</p>
<p>"Gee! ain't he got de hell of a mug?"</p>
<p>If you know a kind Christian family where I can place out a sweet little
five-year boy, please communicate at once with</p>
<p>S. McBRIDE,</p>
<p>Sup't John Grier Home.</p>
<p>Dear Pendletons:</p>
<p>I've never known anything like you two snails. You've only just reached
Washington, and I have had my suitcase packed for days, ready to spend a
rejuvenating week end CHEZ VOUS. Please hurry! I've languished in this
asylum atmosphere as long as humanely possible. I shall gasp and die if I
don't get a change.</p>
<p>Yours,</p>
<p>on the point of suffocation,</p>
<p>S. McB.</p>
<p>P.S. Drop a card to Gordon Hallock, telling him you are there. He will be
charmed to put himself and the Capitol at your disposal. I know that
Jervis doesn't like him, but Jervis ought to get over his baseless
prejudices against politicians. Who knows? I may be entering politics
myself some day.</p>
<p>My dear Judy:</p>
<p>We do receive the most amazing presents from our friends and benefactors.
Listen to this. Last week Mr. Wilton J. Leverett (I quote from his card)
ran over a broken bottle outside our gate, and came in to visit the
institution while his chauffeur was mending the tire. Betsy showed him
about. He took an intelligent interest in everything he saw, particularly
our new camps. That is an exhibit which appeals to men. He ended by
removing his coat, and playing baseball with two tribes of Indians. After
an hour and a half he suddenly looked at his watch, begged for a glass of
water, and bowed himself off.</p>
<p>We had entirely forgotten the episode until this afternoon, when the
expressman drove up to the door with a present for the John Grier Home
from the chemical laboratories of Wilton J. Leverett. It was a barrel—well,
anyway, a good sized keg—full of liquid green soap!</p>
<p>Did I tell you that the seeds for our garden came from Washington? A
polite present from Gordon Hallock and the U. S. Government. As an example
of what the past regime did not accomplish, Martin Schladerwitz, who has
spent three years on this pseudo farm, knew no more than to dig a grave
two feet deep and bury his lettuce seeds!</p>
<p>Oh, you can't imagine the number of fields in which we need making over;
but of course you, of all people, can imagine. Little by little I am
getting my eyes wide open, and things that just looked funny to me at
first, now—oh dear! It's very disillusionizing. Every funny thing
that comes up seems to have a little tragedy wrapped inside it.</p>
<p>Just at present we are paying anxious attention to our manners—not
orphan asylum manners, but dancing school manners. There is to be nothing
Uriah Heepish about our attitude toward the world. The little girls make
curtseys when they shake hands, and the boys remove caps and rise when a
lady stands, and push in chairs at the table. (Tommy Woolsey shot Sadie
Kate into her soup yesterday, to the glee of all observers except Sadie,
who is an independent young damsel and doesn't care for these useless
masculine attentions.) At first the boys were inclined to jeer, but after
observing the politeness of their hero, Percy de Forest Witherspoon, they
have come up to the mark like little gentlemen.</p>
<p>Punch is paying a call this morning. For the last half-hour, while I have
been busily scratching away to you, he has been established in the window
seat, quietly and undestructively engaged with colored pencils. Betsy, EN
PASSANT, just dropped a kiss upon his nose.</p>
<p>"Aw, gwan!" said Punch, blushing quite pink, and wiping off the caress
with a fine show of masculine indifference. But I notice he has resumed
work upon his red-and-green landscape with heightened ardor and an attempt
at whistling. We'll succeed yet in conquering that young man's temper.</p>
<p>Tuesday.</p>
<p>The doctor is in a very grumbly mood today. He called just as the children
were marching in to dinner, whereupon he marched, too, and sampled their
food, and, oh, my dear! the potatoes were scorched! And such a
clishmaclaver as that man made! It is the first time the potatoes ever
have been scorched, and you know that scorching sometimes happens in the
best of families. But you would think from Sandy's language that the cook
had scorched them on purpose, in accordance with my orders.</p>
<p>As I have told you before, I could do very nicely without Sandy.</p>
<p>Wednesday.</p>
<p>Yesterday being a wonderful sunny day, Betsy and I turned our backs upon
duty and motored to the very fancy home of some friends of hers, where we
had tea in an Italian garden. Punch and Sadie Kate had been SUCH good
children all day that at the last moment we telephoned for permission to
include them, too.</p>
<p>"Yes, indeed, do bring the little dears," was the enthusiastic response.</p>
<p>But the choice of Punch and Sadie Kate was a mistake. We ought to have
taken Mamie Prout, who has demonstrated her ability to sit. I shall spare
you the details of our visit; the climax was reached when Punch went
goldfishing in the bottom of the swimming pool. Our host pulled him out by
an agitated leg, and the child returned to the asylum swathed in that
gentleman's rose-colored bathrobe.</p>
<p>What do you think? Dr. Robin MacRae, in a contrite mood for having been so
intensely disagreeable yesterday, has just invited Betsy and me to take
supper in his olive-green house next Sunday evening at seven o'clock in
order to look at some microscopic slides. The entertainment, I believe, is
to consist of a scarlet-fever culture, some alcoholic tissue, and a
tubercular gland. These social attentions bore him excessively; but he
realizes that if he is to have free scope in applying his theories to the
institution he must be a little polite to its superintendent.</p>
<p>I have just read this letter over, and I must admit that it skips lightly
from topic to topic. But though it may not contain news of any great
moment, I trust you will realize that its writing has consumed every
vacant minute during the last three days. I am,</p>
<p>Most fully occupied,</p>
<p>SALLIE McBRIDE.</p>
<p>P.S. A blessed woman came this morning and said she would take a child for
the summer—one of the sickest, weakest, neediest babies I could give
her. She had just lost her husband, and wanted something HARD to do. Isn't
that really very touching?</p>
<p>Saturday afternoon.</p>
<p>Dear Judy and Jervis:</p>
<p>Brother Jimmie (we are very alliterative!), spurred on by sundry begging
letters from me, has at last sent us a present; but he picked it out
himself.</p>
<p>WE HAVE A MONKEY! His name is Java. The children no longer hear the school
bell ring. On the day the creature came, this entire institution formed in
line and filed past and shook his paw. Poor Sing's nose is out of joint. I
have to PAY to have him washed.</p>
<p>Sadie Kate is developing into my private secretary. I have her answer the
thank-you letters for the institution, and her literary style is making a
hit among our benefactors. She invariably calls out a second gift. I had
hitherto believed that the Kilcoyne family sprang from the wild west of
Ireland, but I begin to suspect that their source was nearer Blarney
Castle. You can see from the inclosed copy of the letter she sent to
Jimmie what a persuasive pen the young person has. I trust that in this
case at least, it will not bear the fruit that she suggests.</p>
<p>Dear Mr. Jimie</p>
<p>We thank you very much for the lovly monkey you give. We name him java
because that's a warm iland across the ocian where he was born up in a
nest like a bird only big the doctor told us.</p>
<p>The first day he come every boy and girl shook his hand and said good
morning java his hand feels funny he holds so tite. I was afraid to touch
him but now I let him sit on my shoulder and put his arms around my kneck
if he wants to. He makes a funny noise that sounds like swering and gets
mad when his tale is puled.</p>
<p>We love him dearly and we love you two.</p>
<p>The next time you have to give a present, please send an elifant. Well I
guess Ill stop.</p>
<p>Yours truly,</p>
<p>SADIE KATE KILCOYNE.</p>
<p>Percy de Forest Witherspoon is still faithful to his little followers,
though I am so afraid he will get tired that I urge him to take frequent
vacations. He has not only been faithful himself, but has brought in
recruits. He has large social connections in the neighborhood, and last
Saturday evening he introduced two friends, nice men who sat around the
campfire and swapped hunting stories.</p>
<p>One of them was just back from around the world, and told hair-raising
anecdotes of the head hunters of Sarawak, a narrow pink country on the top
of Borneo. My little braves pant to grow up and get to Sarawak, and go out
on the war-path after head hunters. Every encyclopedia in this institution
has been consulted, and there isn't a boy here who cannot tell you the
history, manners, climate, flora, and fungi of Borneo. I only wish Mr.
Witherspoon would introduce friends who had been head hunting in England,
France, and Germany, countries not quite so CHIC as Sarawak, but more
useful for general culture.</p>
<p>We have a new cook, the fourth since my reign began. I haven't bothered
you with my cooking troubles, but institutions don't escape any more than
families. The last is a negro woman, a big, fat, smiling,
chocolate-colored creature from Souf Ca'lina. And ever since she came on
honey dew we've fed! Her name is—what do you guess? SALLIE, if you
please. I suggested that she change it.</p>
<p>"Sho, Miss, I's had dat name Sallie longer'n you, an' I couldn't get used
nohow to answerin' up pert-like when you sings out `Mollie!' Seems like
Sallie jest b'longs to me."</p>
<p>So "Sallie" she remains; but at least there is no danger of our getting
our letters mixed, for her last name is nothing so plebeian as McBride.
It's Johnston-Washington, with a hyphen.</p>
<p>Sunday.</p>
<p>Our favorite game of late is finding pet names for Sandy. His austere
presence lends itself to caricature. We have just originated a new batch.
The "Laird o' Cockpen" is Percy's choice.</p>
<p>The Laird o' Cockpen he's proud and he's great; His mind is ta'en up wi'
the things of the state.</p>
<p>Miss Snaith disgustedly calls him "that man," and Betsy refers to him (in
his absence) as "Dr. Cod-Liver." My present favorite is "Macphairson Clon
Glocketty Angus McClan." But for real poetic feeling, Sadie Kate beats us
all. She calls him "Mister Someday Soon." I don't believe that the doctor
ever dropped into verse but once in his life, but every child in this
institution knows that one poem by heart.</p>
<p>Someday soon something nice is going to happen;</p>
<p>Be a good little girl and take this hint: Swallow with a smile your
cod-liver ile,</p>
<p>And the first thing you know you will have a peppermint.</p>
<p>It's this evening that Betsy and I attend his supper party, and I confess
that we are looking forward to seeing the interior of his gloomy mansion
with gleeful eagerness. He never talks about himself or his past or
anybody connected with himself. He appears to be an isolated figure
standing on a pedestal labeled S C I E N C E, without a glimmer of any
ordinary affections or emotions or human frailties except temper. Betsy
and I are simply eaten up with curiosity to know what sort of past he came
out of; but just let us get inside his house, and to our detective senses
it will tell its own story. So long as the portal was guarded by a fierce
McGurk, we had despaired of ever effecting an entrance; but now, behold!
The door has opened of its own accord.</p>
<p>To be continued.</p>
<p>S. McB.</p>
<p>Monday.</p>
<p>Dear Judy:</p>
<p>We attended the doctor's supper party last night, Betsy and Mr.
Witherspoon and I. It turned out a passably cheerful occasion, though I
will say that it began under heavy auspices.</p>
<p>His house on the inside is all that the outside promises. Never in my life
have I seen such an interior as that man's dining room. The walls and
carpets and lambrequins are a heavy dark green. A black marble mantelpiece
shelters a few smoking black coals. The furniture is as nearly black as
furniture comes. The decorations are two steel engravings in shiny black
frames—the "Monarch of the Glen," and the "Stag at Bay."</p>
<p>We tried hard to be light and sparkling, but it was like eating supper in
the family vault. Mrs. McGurk, in black alpaca with a black silk apron,
clumped around the table, passing cold, heavy things to eat, with a step
so firm that she rattled the silver in the sideboard drawers. Her nose was
up, and her mouth was down. She clearly does not approve of the master's
entertaining, and she wishes to discourage all guests from ever accepting
again.</p>
<p>Sandy sort of dimly knows that there is something the matter with his
house, and in order to brighten it up a bit in honor of his guests, he had
purchased flowers,—dozens of them,—the most exquisite pink
Killarney roses and red and yellow tulips. The McGurk had wedged them all
together as tight as they would fit into a peacock-blue jardiniere, and
plumped it down in the center of the table. The thing was as big as a
bushel-basket. Betsy and I nearly forgot our manners when we saw that
centerpiece; but the doctor seemed so innocently pleased at having
obtained a bright note in his dining room that we suppressed our amusement
and complimented him warmly upon his happy color scheme.</p>
<p>The moment supper was over, we hastened with relief to his own part of the
house, where the McGurk's influence does not penetrate. No one in a
cleaning capacity ever enters either his library or office or laboratory
except Llewelyn, a short, wiry, bow-legged Welshman, who combines to a
unique degree the qualities of chambermaid and chauffeur.</p>
<p>The library, though not the most cheerful room I have ever seen, still,
for a man's house, is not so bad—books all around from floor to
ceiling, with the overflow in piles on floor and table and mantelpiece;
half a dozen abysmal leather chairs and a rug or so, with another black
marble mantelpiece, but this time containing a crackling wood fire. By way
of bric-a-brac, he has a stuffed pelican and a crane with a frog in its
mouth, also a raccoon sitting on a log, and a varnished tarpon. A faint
suggestion of iodoform floats in the air.</p>
<p>The doctor made the coffee himself in a French machine, and we dismissed
his housekeeper from our spirits. He really did do his best to be a
thoughtful host and I have to report that the word "insanity" was not once
mentioned. It seems that Sandy, in his moments of relaxation, is a
fisherman. He and Percy began swapping stories of salmon and trout, and he
finally got out his case of fishing flies, and gallantly presented Betsy
and me with a "silver doctor" and a "Jack Scott" out of which to make
hatpins. Then the conversation wandered to sport on the Scotch moors, and
he told about one time when he was lost, and spent the night out in the
heather. There is no doubt about it, Sandy's heart is in the highlands.</p>
<p>I am afraid that Betsy and I have wronged him. Though it is hard to
relinquish the interesting idea, he may not, after all, have committed a
crime. We are now leaning to the belief that he was crossed in love.</p>
<p>It's really horrid of me to make fun of poor Sandy, for, despite his stern
bleakness of disposition, he's a pathetic figure of a man. Think of coming
home after an anxious day's round to eat a solitary dinner in that grim
dining room!</p>
<p>Do you suppose it would cheer him up a little if I should send my company
of artists to paint a frieze of rabbits around the wall?</p>
<p>With love, as usual,</p>
<p>SALLIE.</p>
<p>Dear Judy:</p>
<p>Aren't you ever coming back to New York? Please hurry! I need a new hat,
and am desirous of shopping for it on Fifth Avenue, not on Water Street.
Mrs. Gruby, our best milliner, does not believe in slavishly following
Paris Fashions; she originates her own styles. But three years ago, as a
great concession to convention, she did make a tour of the New York shops,
and is still creating models on the uplift of that visit.</p>
<p>Also, besides my own hat, I must buy 113 hats for my children, to say
nothing of shoes and knickerbockers and shirts and hair-ribbons and
stockings and garters. It's quite a task to keep a little family like mine
decently clothed.</p>
<p>Did you get that big letter I wrote you last week? You never had the grace
to mention it in yours of Thursday, and it was seventeen pages long, and
took me DAYS to write.</p>
<p>Yours truly,</p>
<p>S. McBRIDE.</p>
<p>P.S. Why don't you tell me some news about Gordon? Have you seen him, and
did he mention me? Is he running after any of those pretty Southern girls
that Washington is so full of? You know that I want to hear. Why must you
be so beastly uncommunicative?</p>
<p>Tuesday, 4:27 P.M.</p>
<p>Dear Judy:</p>
<p>Your telegram came two minutes ago by telephone.</p>
<p>Yes, thank you, I shall be delighted to arrive at 5:49 on Thursday
afternoon. And don't make any engagements for that evening, please, as I
intend to sit up until midnight talking John Grier gossip with you and the
president.</p>
<p>Friday and Saturday and Monday I shall have to devote to shopping. Oh,
yes, you're right; I already possess more clothes than any jailbird needs,
but when spring comes, I must have new plumage. As it is, I wear an
evening gown every night just to wear them out—no, not entirely
that; to make myself believe that I'm still an ordinary girl despite this
extraordinary life that you have pushed me into.</p>
<p>The Hon. Cy found me yesterday arrayed in a Nile-green crepe (Jane's
creation, though it looked Parisian). He was quite puzzled when he found I
wasn't going to a ball. I invited him to stay and dine with me, and he
accepted! We got on very affably. He expands over his dinner. Food appears
to agree with him. If there's any Bernard Shaw in New York just now, I
believe that I might spare a couple of hours Saturday afternoon for a
matinee. G. B. S.'s dialogue would afford such a life-giving contrast to
the Hon. Cy's.</p>
<p>There's no use writing any more; I'll wait and talk.</p>
<p>ADDIO. SALLIE.</p>
<p>P.S. Oh dear! just as I had begun to catch glimmerings of niceness in
Sandy, he broke out again and was ABOMINABLE. We unfortunately have five
cases of measles in this institution, and the man's manner suggests that
Miss Snaith and I gave the measles to the children on purpose to make him
trouble. There are many days when I should be willing to accept our
doctor's resignation.</p>
<p>Wednesday.</p>
<p>Dear Enemy:</p>
<p>Your brief and dignified note of yesterday is at hand. I have never known
anybody whose literary style resembled so exactly his spoken word.</p>
<p>And you will be greatly obliged if I will drop my absurd fashion of
calling you "Enemy"? I will drop my absurd fashion of calling you Enemy
just as soon as you drop your absurd fashion of getting angry and abusive
and insulting the moment any little thing goes wrong.</p>
<p>I am leaving tomorrow afternoon to spend four days in New York.</p>
<p>Yours truly,</p>
<p>S. McBRIDE.</p>
<p>CHEZ THE PENDLETONS, New York. My dear Enemy:</p>
<p>I trust that this note will find you in a more affable frame of mind than
when I saw you last. I emphatically repeat that it was not due to the
carelessness of the superintendent of our institution that those two new
cases of measles crept in, but rather to the unfortunate anatomy of our
old-fashioned building, which does not permit of the proper isolation of
contagious cases.</p>
<p>As you did not deign to visit us yesterday morning before I left, I could
not offer any parting suggestions. I therefore write to ask that you cast
your critical eye upon Mamie Prout. She is covered all over with little
red spots which may be measles, though I am hoping not. Mamie spots very
easily.</p>
<p>I return to prison life next Monday at six o'clock.</p>
<p>Yours truly,</p>
<p>S. McBRIDE.</p>
<p>P.S. I trust you will pardon my mentioning it, but you are not the kind of
doctor that I admire. I like them chubby and round and smiling.</p>
<p>THE JOHN GRIER HOME,</p>
<p>June 9.</p>
<p>Dear Judy:</p>
<p>You are an awful family for an impressionable young girl to visit. How can
you expect me to come back and settle down contentedly to institution life
after witnessing such a happy picture of domestic concord as the Pendleton
household presents?</p>
<p>All the way back in the train, instead of occupying myself with two
novels, four magazines, and one box of chocolates that your husband
thoughtfully provided, I spent the time in a mental review of the young
men of my acquaintance to see if I couldn't discover one as nice as
Jervis. I did! (A little nicer, I think.) From this day on he is the
marked-down victim, the destined prey.</p>
<p>I shall hate to give up the asylum after getting so excited over it, but
unless you are willing to move it to the capital, I don't see any
alternative.</p>
<p>The train was awfully late. We sat and smoked on a siding while two
accommodations and a freight dashed past. I think we must have broken
something, and had to tinker up our engine. The conductor was soothing,
but uncommunicative.</p>
<p>It was 7:30 when I descended, the only passenger, at our insignificant
station in the pitch darkness and RAIN, without an umbrella, and wearing
that precious new hat. No Turnfelt to meet me; not even a station hack. To
be sure, I hadn't telegraphed the exact time of my arrival, but, still, I
did feel rather neglected. I had sort of vaguely expected all ONE HUNDRED
AND THIRTEEN to be drawn up by the platform, scattering flowers and
singing songs of welcome. Just as I was telling the station man that I
would watch his telegraph instrument while he ran across to the corner
saloon and telephoned for a vehicle, there came whirling around the corner
two big searchlights aimed straight at me. They stopped nine inches before
running me down, and I heard Sandy's voice saying:</p>
<p>"Weel, weel, Miss Sallie McBride! I'm thinking it's ower time you came
back to tak' the bit bairns off my hands."</p>
<p>That man had come three times to meet me on the off chance of the train's
getting in some time. He tucked me and my new hat and bags and books and
chocolates all in under his waterproof flap, and we splashed off. Really,
I felt as if I was getting back home again, and quite sad at the thought
of ever having to leave. Mentally, you see, I had already resigned and
packed and gone. The mere idea that you are not in a place for the rest of
your life gives you an awfully unstable feeling. That's why trial
marriages would never work. You've got to feel you're in a thing
irrevocably and forever in order to buckle down and really put your whole
mind into making it a success.</p>
<p>It's astounding how much news can accrue in four days. Sandy just couldn't
talk fast enough to tell me everything I wanted to hear. Among other
items, I learned that Sadie Kate had spent two days in the infirmary, her
malady being, according to the doctor's diagnosis, half a jar of
gooseberry jam and Heaven knows how many doughnuts. Her work had been
changed during my absence to dishwashing in the officers' pantry, and the
juxtaposition of so many exotic luxuries was too much for her fragile
virtue.</p>
<p>Also, our colored cook Sallie and our colored useful man Noah have entered
upon a war of extermination. The original trouble was over a little matter
of kindling, augmented by a pail of hot water that Sallie threw out of the
window with, for a woman, unusual accuracy of aim. You can see what a rare
character the head of an orphan asylum must have. She has to combine the
qualities of a baby nurse and a police magistrate.</p>
<p>The doctor had told only the half when we reached the house, and as he had
not yet dined, owing to meeting me three times, I begged him to accept the
hospitality of the John Grier. I would get Betsy and Mr. Witherspoon, and
we would hold an executive meeting, and settle all our neglected
businesses.</p>
<p>Sandy accepted with flattering promptness. He likes to dine outside of the
family vault.</p>
<p>But Betsy, I found, had dashed home to greet a visiting grandparent, and
Percy was playing bridge in the village. It's seldom the young thing gets
out of an evening, and I'm glad for him to have a little cheerful
diversion.</p>
<p>So it ended in the doctor's and my dining tete-a-tete on a hastily
improvised dinner,—it was then close upon eight, and our normal
dinner hour is 6:30,—but it was such an improvised dinner as I am
sure Mrs. McGurk never served him. Sallie, wishing to impress me with her
invaluableness, did her absolutely Southern best. And after dinner we had
coffee before the fire in my comfortable blue library, while the wind
howled outside and the shutters banged.</p>
<p>We passed a most cordial and intimate evening. For the first time since
our acquaintance I struck a new note in the man. There really is something
attractive about him when you once come to know him. But the process of
knowing him requires time and tact. He's no' very gleg at the uptak. I've
never seen such a tantalizing inexplicable person. All the time I'm
talking to him I feel as though behind his straight line of a mouth and
his half-shut eyes there were banked fires smoldering inside. Are you sure
he hasn't committed a crime? He does manage to convey the delicious
feeling that he has.</p>
<p>And I must add that Sandy's not so bad a talker when he lets himself go.
He has the entire volume of Scotch literature at his tongue's end.</p>
<p>"Little kens the auld wife as she sits by the fire what the wind is doing
on Hurly-Burly-Swire," he observed as a specially fierce blast drove the
rain against the window. That sounds pat, doesn't it? I haven't, though,
the remotest idea what it means. And listen to this: between cups of
coffee (he drinks far too much coffee for a sensible medical man) he
casually let fall the news that his family knew the R. L. S. family
personally, and used to take supper at 17 Heriot Row! I tended him
assiduously for the rest of the evening in a Did you once see Shelley
plain, And did he stop and speak to you? frame of mind.</p>
<p>When I started this letter, I had no intention of filling it with a
description of the recently excavated charms of Robin MacRae; it's just by
way of remorseful apology. He was so nice and companionable last night
that I have been going about today feeling conscience-smitten at the
thought of how mercilessly I made fun of him to you and Jervis. I really
didn't mean quite all of the impolite things that I said. About once a
month the man is sweet and tractable and engaging.</p>
<p>Punch has just been paying a social call, and during the course of it he
lost three little toadlings an inch long. Sadie Kate recovered one of them
from under the bookcase, but the other two hopped away; and I'm so afraid
they've taken sanctuary in my bed! I do wish that mice and snakes and
toads and angleworms were not so portable. You never know what is going on
in a perfectly respectable-looking child's pocket.</p>
<p>I had a beautiful visit in Casa Pendleton. Don't forget your promise to
return it soon.</p>
<p>Yours as ever,</p>
<p>SALLIE.</p>
<p>P.S. I left a pair of pale-blue bedroom slippers under the bed. Will you
please have Mary wrap them up and mail them to me? And hold her hand while
she writes the address. She spelt my name on the place cards "Mackbird."</p>
<p>Tuesday.</p>
<p>Dear Enemy:</p>
<p>As I told you, I left an application for an accomplished nurse with the
employment bureau of New York.</p>
<p>Wanted! A nurse maid with an ample lap suitable for the accommodation of
seventeen babies at once.</p>
<p>She came this afternoon, and this is the fine figure of a woman that I
drew!</p>
<p>We couldn't keep a baby from sliding off her lap unless we fastened him
firmly with safety pins.</p>
<p>Please give Sadie Kate the magazine. I'll read it tonight and return it
tomorrow.</p>
<p>Was there ever a more docile and obedient pupil than</p>
<p>S. McBRIDE?</p>
<p>Thursday. My dear Judy:</p>
<p>I've been spending the last three days busily getting under way all those
latest innovations that we planned in New York. Your word is law. A public
cooky jar has been established.</p>
<p>Also, the eighty play boxes have been ordered. It is a wonderful idea,
having a private box for each child, where he can store up his treasures.
The ownership of a little personal property will help develop them into
responsible citizens. I ought to have thought of it myself, but for some
reason the idea didn't come. Poor Judy! You have inside knowledge of the
longings of their little hearts that I shall never be able to achieve, not
with all the sympathy I can muster.</p>
<p>We are doing our best to run this institution with as few discommoding
rules as possible, but in regard to those play boxes there is one point on
which I shall have to be firm. The children may not keep in them mice or
toads or angleworms.</p>
<p>I can't tell you how pleased I am that Betsy's salary is to be raised, and
that we are to keep her permanently. But the Hon. Cy Wykoff deprecates the
step. He has been making inquiries, and he finds that her people are
perfectly able to take care of her without any salary.</p>
<p>"You don't furnish legal advice for nothing," say I to him. "Why should
she furnish her trained services for nothing?"</p>
<p>"This is charitable work."</p>
<p>"Then work which is undertaken for your own good should be paid, but work
which is undertaken for the public good should not be paid?"</p>
<p>"Fiddlesticks!" says he. "She's a woman, and her family ought to support
her."</p>
<p>This opened up vistas of argument which I did not care to enter with the
Hon. Cy, so I asked him whether he thought it would be nicer to have a
real lawn or hay on the slope that leads to the gate. He likes to be
consulted, and I pamper him as much as possible in all unessential
details. You see, I am following Sandy's canny advice: "Trustees are like
fiddle-strings; they maunna be screwed ower tight. Humor the mon, but gang
your ain gait." Oh, the tact that this asylum is teaching me! I should
make a wonderful politician's wife.</p>
<p>Thursday night.</p>
<p>You will be interested to hear that I have temporarily placed out Punch
with two charming spinsters who have long been tottering on the brink of a
child. They finally came last week, and said they would like to try one
for a month to see what the sensation felt like.</p>
<p>They wanted, of course, a pretty ornament, dressed in pink and white and
descended from the Mayflower. I told them that any one could bring up a
daughter of the Mayflower to be an ornament to society, but the real feat
was to bring up a son of an Italian organ-grinder and an Irish
washerwoman. And I offered Punch. That Neapolitan heredity of his,
artistically speaking, may turn out a glorious mixture, if the right
environment comes along to choke out all the weeds.</p>
<p>I put it up to them as a sporting proposition, and they were game. They
have agreed to take him for one month and concentrate upon his remaking
all their years of conserved force, to the end that he may be fit for
adoption in some moral family. They both have a sense of humor and
ACCOMPLISHING characters, or I should never have dared to propose it. And
really I believe it's going to be the one way of taming our young
fire-eater. They will furnish the affection and caresses and attention
that in his whole abused little life he has never had.</p>
<p>They live in a fascinating old house with an Italian garden, and
furnishings selected from the whole round world. It does seem like
sacrilege to turn that destructive child loose in such a collection of
treasures. But he hasn't broken anything here for more than a month, and I
believe that the Italian in him will respond to all that beauty.</p>
<p>I warned them that they must not shrink from any profanity that might
issue from his pretty baby lips.</p>
<p>He departed last night in a very fancy automobile, and maybe I wasn't glad
to say good-by to our disreputable young man! He has absorbed just about
half of my energy.</p>
<p>Friday.</p>
<p>The pendant arrived this morning. Many thanks! But you really ought not to
have given me another; a hostess cannot be held accountable for all the
things that careless guests lose in her house. It is far too pretty for my
chain. I am thinking of having my nose pierced, Cingalese fashion, and
wearing my new jewel where it will really show.</p>
<p>I must tell you that our Percy is putting some good constructive work into
this asylum. He has founded the John Grier Bank, and has worked out all
the details in a very professional and businesslike fashion, entirely
incomprehensible to my non-mathematical mind. All of the older children
possess properly printed checkbooks, and they are each to be paid five
dollars a week for their services, such as going to school and
accomplishing housework. They are then to pay the institution (by check)
for their board and clothes, which will consume their five dollars. It
looks like a vicious circle, but it's really very educative; they will
comprehend the value of money before we dump them into a mercenary world.
Those who are particularly good in lessons or work will receive an extra
recompense. My head aches at the thought of the bookkeeping, but Percy
waves that aside as a mere bagatelle. It is to be accomplished by our
prize arithmeticians, and will train them for positions of trust. If
Jervis hears of any opening for bank officials, let me know; I shall have
a well-trained president, cashier, and paying teller ready to be placed by
this time next year.</p>
<p>Saturday.</p>
<p>Our doctor doesn't like to be called "Enemy." It hurts his feelings or his
dignity or something of the sort. But since I will persist, despite his
expostulations, he has finally retaliated with a nickname for me. He calls
me "Miss Sally Lunn," and is in a glow of pride at having achieved such an
imaginative flight.</p>
<p>He and I have invented a new pastime: he talks Scotch, and I answer in
Irish. Our conversations run like this:</p>
<p>"Good afthernoon to ye, docther. An' how's yer health the day?"</p>
<p>"Verra weel, verra weel. And how gas it wi' a' the bairns?"</p>
<p>"Shure, they're all av thim doin' foin."</p>
<p>"I'm gey glad to hear it. This saft weather is hard on folk. There's
muckle sickness aboot the kintra."</p>
<p>"Hiven be praised it has not lighted here! But sit down, docther, an' make
yersilf at home. Will ye be afther havin' a cup o' tay?"</p>
<p>"Hoot, woman! I would na hae you fash yoursel', but a wee drap tea winna
coom amiss."</p>
<p>"Whist! It's no thruble at all."</p>
<p>You may not think this a very dizzying excursion into frivolity; but I
assure you, for one of Sandy's dignity, it's positively riotous. The man
has been in a heavenly temper ever since I came back; not a single cross
word. I am beginning to think I may reform him as well as Punch.</p>
<p>This letter must be about long enough even for you. I've been writing it
bit by bit for three days, whenever I happened to pass my desk.</p>
<p>Yours as ever,</p>
<p>SALLIE.</p>
<p>P.S. I don't think much of your vaunted prescription for hair tonic.
Either the druggist didn't mix it right, or Jane didn't apply it with
discretion. I stuck to the pillow this morning.</p>
<p>THE JOHN GRIER HOME,</p>
<p>Saturday.</p>
<p>Dear Gordon:</p>
<p>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!</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Drowsiness overcame me at that point, and it's now two days later.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Wednesday.</p>
<p>What new branch of learning do you think I have introduced into my asylum?
Table manners!</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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:</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>I am at present,</p>
<p>S. McBRIDE,</p>
<p>Superintendent of the</p>
<p>John Grier Home.</p>
<p>Thursday.</p>
<p>Dear Enemy:</p>
<p>"Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in." Hasn't that a very
philosophical, detached, Lord of the Universe sound? It comes from
Thoreau, whom I am assiduously reading at present. As you see, I have
revolted against your literature and taken to my own again. The last two
evenings have been devoted to "Walden," a book as far removed as possible
from the problems of the dependent child.</p>
<p>Did you ever read old Henry David Thoreau? You really ought. I think you'd
find him a congenial soul. Listen to this: "Society is commonly too cheap.
We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new
value for each other. It would be better if there were but one habitation
to a square mile, as where I live." A pleasant, expansive, neebor-like man
he must have been! He minds me in some ways o' Sandy.</p>
<p>This is to tell you that we have a placing-out agent visiting us. She is
about to dispose of four chicks, one of them Thomas Kehoe. What do you
think? Ought we to risk it? The place she has in mind for him is a farm in
a no-license portion of Connecticut, where he will work hard for his
board, and live in the farmer's family. It sounds exactly the right thing,
and we can't keep him here forever; he'll have to be turned out some day
into a world full of whisky.</p>
<p>I'm sorry to tear you away from that cheerful work on "Dementia Precox,"
but I'd be most obliged if you'd drop in here toward eight o'clock for a
conference with the agent.</p>
<p>I am, as usual,</p>
<p>S. McBRIDE.</p>
<p>June 17. My dear Judy:</p>
<p>Betsy has perpetrated a most unconscionable trick upon a pair of adopting
parents. They have traveled East from Ohio in their touring car for the
dual purpose of seeing the country and picking up a daughter. They appear
to be the leading citizens of their town, whose name at the moment escapes
me; but it's a very important town. It has electric lights and gas, and
Mr. Leading Citizen owns the controlling interest in both plants. With a
wave of his hand he could plunge that entire town into darkness; but
fortunately he's a kind man, and won't do anything so harsh, not even if
they fail to reelect him mayor. He lives in a brick house with a slate
roof and two towers, and has a deer and fountain and lots of nice shade
trees in the yard. (He carries its photograph in his pocket.) They are
good-natured, generous, kind-hearted, smiling people, and a little fat;
you can see what desirable parents they would make.</p>
<p>Well, we had exactly the daughter of their dreams, only, as they came
without giving us notice, she was dressed in a flannellet nightgown, and
her face was dirty. They looked Caroline over, and were not impressed; but
they thanked us politely, and said they would bear her in mind. They
wanted to visit the New York Orphanage before deciding. We knew well that,
if they saw that superior assemblage of children, our poor little Caroline
would never have a chance.</p>
<p>Then Betsy rose to the emergency. She graciously invited them to motor
over to her house for tea that afternoon and inspect one of our little
wards who would be visiting her baby niece. Mr. and Mrs. Leading Citizen
do not know many people in the East, and they haven't been receiving the
invitations that they feel are their due; so they were quite innocently
pleased at the prospect of a little social diversion. The moment they had
retired to the hotel for luncheon, Betsy called up her car, and rushed
baby Caroline over to her house. She stuffed her into baby niece's best
pink-and-white embroidered frock, borrowed a hat of Irish lace, some pink
socks and white slippers, and set her picturesquely upon the green lawn
under a spreading beech tree. A white-aproned nurse (borrowed also from
baby niece) plied her with bread and milk and gaily colored toys. By the
time prospective parents arrived, our Caroline, full of food and
contentment, greeted them with cooes of delight. From the moment their
eyes fell upon her they were ravished with desire. Not a suspicion crossed
their unobservant minds that this sweet little rosebud was the child of
the morning. And so, a few formalities having been complied with, it
really looks as though baby Caroline would live in the Towers and grow
into a leading citizen.</p>
<p>I must really get to work, without any further delay, upon the burning
question of new clothes for our girls.</p>
<p>With the highest esteem, I am, D'r Ma'am, Y'r most ob'd't and h'mble
serv't,</p>
<p>SAL. McBRIDE.</p>
<p>June 19th. My dearest Judy:</p>
<p>Listen to the grandest innovation of all, and one that will delight your
heart.</p>
<p>NO MORE BLUE GINGHAM!</p>
<p>Feeling that this aristocratic neighborhood of country estates might
contain valuable food for our asylum, I have of late been moving in the
village social circles, and at a luncheon yesterday I dug out a beautiful
and charming widow who wears delectable, flowing gowns that she designs
herself. She confided to me that she would have loved to have been a
dressmaker, if she had only been born with a needle in her mouth instead
of a golden spoon. She says she never sees a pretty girl badly dressed but
she longs to take her in hand and make her over. Did you ever hear
anything so apropos? From the moment she opened her lips she was a marked
man.</p>
<p>"I can show you fifty-nine badly dressed girls," said I to her, "and you
have got to come back with me and plan their new clothes and make them
beautiful."</p>
<p>She expostulated; but in vain. I led her out to her automobile, shoved her
in, and murmured, "John Grier Home" to the chauffeur. The first inmate our
eyes fell upon was Sadie Kate, just fresh, I judge, from hugging the
molasses barrel; and a shocking spectacle she was for any esthetically
minded person. In addition to the stickiness, one stocking was coming
down, her pinafore was buttoned crookedly, and she had lost a hair-ribbon.
But—as always—completely at ease, she welcomed us with a
cheery grin, and offered the lady a sticky paw.</p>
<p>"Now," said I, in triumph, "you see how much we need you. What can you do
to make Sadie Kate beautiful?"</p>
<p>"Wash her," said Mrs. Livermore.</p>
<p>Sadie Kate was marched to my bathroom. When the scrubbing was finished and
the hair strained back and the stocking restored to seemly heights, I
returned her for a second inspection—a perfectly normal little
orphan. Mrs. Livermore turned her from side to side, and studied her long
and earnestly.</p>
<p>Sadie Kate by nature is a beauty, a wild, dark, Gypsyish little colleen.
She looks fresh from the wind-swept moors of Connemara. But, oh, we have
managed to rob her of her birthright with this awful institution uniform!</p>
<p>After five minutes' silent contemplation, Mrs. Livermore raised her eyes
to mine.</p>
<p>"Yes, my dear, you need me."</p>
<p>And then and there we formed our plans. She is to head the committee on C
L O T H E S. She is to choose three friends to help her. And they, with
the two dozen best sewers among the girls and our sewing-teacher and five
sewing machines, are going to make over the looks of this institution. And
the charity is all on our side. We are supplying Mrs. Livermore with the
profession that Providence robbed her of. Wasn't it clever of me to find
her? I woke this morning at dawn and crowed!</p>
<p>Lots more news,—I could run into a second volume,—but I am
going to send this letter to town by Mr. Witherspoon, who, in a very high
collar and the blackest of evening clothes, is on the point of departure
for a barn dance at the country club. I told him to pick out the nicest
girls he danced with to come and tell stories to my children.</p>
<p>It is dreadful, the scheming person I am getting to be. All the time I am
talking to any one, I am silently thinking, "What use can you be to my
asylum?"</p>
<p>There is grave danger that this present superintendent will become so
interested in her job that she will never want to leave. I sometimes
picture her a white-haired old lady, propelled about the building in a
wheeled chair, but still tenaciously superintending her fourth generation
of orphans.</p>
<p>PLEASE discharge her before that day!</p>
<p>Yours,</p>
<p>SALLIE.</p>
<p>Friday.</p>
<p>Dear Judy:</p>
<p>Yesterday morning, without the slightest warning, a station hack drove up
to the door and disgorged upon the steps two men, two little boys, a baby
girl, a rocking horse, and a Teddy bear, and then drove off!</p>
<p>The men were artists, and the little ones were children of another artist,
dead three weeks ago. They had brought the mites to us because they
thought "John Grier" sounded solid and respectable, and not like a public
institution. It had never entered their unbusinesslike heads that any
formality is necessary about placing a child in an asylum.</p>
<p>I explained that we were full, but they seemed so stranded and aghast,
that I told them to sit down while I advised them what to do. So the
chicks were sent to the nursery, with a recommendation of bread and milk,
while I listened to their history. Those artists had a fatally literary
touch, or maybe it was just the sound of the baby girl's laugh, but,
anyway, before they had finished, the babes were ours.</p>
<p>Never have I seen a sunnier creature than the little Allegra (we don't
often get such fancy names or such fancy children). She is three years
old, is lisping funny baby talk and bubbling with laughter. The tragedy
she has just emerged from has never touched her. But Don and Clifford,
sturdy little lads of five and seven, are already solemn-eyed and
frightened at the hardness of life.</p>
<p>Their mother was a kindergarten teacher who married an artist on a capital
of enthusiasm and a few tubes of paint. His friends say that he had
talent, but of course he had to throw it away to pay the milkman. They
lived in a haphazard fashion in a rickety old studio, cooking behind
screens, the babies sleeping on shelves.</p>
<p>But there seems to have been a very happy side to it—a great deal of
love and many friends, all more or less poor, but artistic and congenial
and high-thinking. The little lads, in their gentleness and fineness, show
that phase of their upbringing. They have an air which many of my
children, despite all the good manners I can pour into them, will forever
lack.</p>
<p>The mother died in the hospital a few days after Allegra's birth, and the
father struggled on for two years, caring for his brood and painting like
mad—advertisements, anything—to keep a roof over their heads.</p>
<p>He died in St. Vincent's three weeks ago,—overwork, worry,
pneumonia. His friends rallied about the babies, sold such of the studio
fittings as had escaped pawning, paid off the debts, and looked about for
the best asylum they could find. And, Heaven save them! they hit upon us!</p>
<p>Well, I kept the two artists for luncheon,—nice creatures in soft
hats and Windsor ties, and looking pretty frayed themselves,—and
then started them back to New York with the promise that I would give the
little family my most parental attention.</p>
<p>So here they are, one little mite in the nursery, two in the kindergarten
room, four big packing cases full of canvases in the cellar, and a trunk
in the store room with the letters of their father and mother. And a look
in their faces, an intangible spiritual SOMETHING, that is their heritage.</p>
<p>I can't get them out of my mind. All night long I was planning their
future. The boys are easy. They have already been graduated from college,
Mr. Pendleton assisting, and are pursuing honorable business careers. But
Allegra I don't know about; I can't think what to wish for the child. Of
course the normal thing to wish for any sweet little girl is that two kind
foster parents will come along to take the place of the real parents that
Fate has robbed her of. But in this case it would be cruel to steal her
away from her brothers. Their love for the baby is pitiful. You see, they
have brought her up. The only time I ever hear them laugh is when she has
done something funny.</p>
<p>The poor little fellows miss their father horribly. I found Don, the
five-year-old one, sobbing in his crib last night because he couldn't say
good night to "daddy."</p>
<p>But Allegra is true to her name, the happiest young miss of three I have
ever seen. The poor father managed well by her, and she, little ingrate,
has already forgotten that she has lost him.</p>
<p>Whatever can I do with these little ones? I think and think and think
about them. I can't place them out, and it does seem too awful to bring
them up here; for as good as we are going to be when we get ourselves made
over, still, after all, we are an institution, and our inmates are just
little incubator chicks. They don't get the individual, fussy care that
only an old hen can give.</p>
<p>There is a lot of interesting news that I might have been telling you, but
my new little family has driven everything out of my mind.</p>
<p>Bairns are certain joy, but nae sma' care.</p>
<p>Yours ever,</p>
<p>SALLIE. P.S. Don't forget that you are coming to visit me next week.</p>
<p>P.S. II. The doctor, who is ordinarily so scientific and unsentimental,
has fallen in love with Allegra. He didn't so much as glance at her
tonsils; he simply picked her up in his arms and hugged her. Oh, she is a
little witch! Whatever is to become of her?</p>
<p>June 22. My dear Judy:</p>
<p>I may report that you need no longer worry as to our inadequate fire
protection. The doctor and Mr. Witherspoon have been giving the matter
their gravest attention, and no game yet devised has proved so
entertaining and destructive as our fire drill.</p>
<p>The children all retire to their beds and plunge into alert slumber. Fire
alarm sounds. They spring up and into their shoes, snatch the top blanket
from their beds, wrap it around their imaginary nightclothes, fall into
line, and trot to the hall and stairs.</p>
<p>Our seventeen little tots in the nursery are each in charge of an Indian,
and are bundled out, shrieking with delight. The remaining Indians, so
long as there is no danger of the roof falling, devote themselves to
salvage. On the occasion of our first drill, Percy in command, the
contents of a dozen clothes lockers were dumped into sheets and hurled out
of the windows. I usurped dictatorship just in time to keep the pillows
and mattresses from following. We spent hours resorting those clothes,
while Percy and the doctor, having lost all interest strolled up to the
camp with their pipes.</p>
<p>Our future drills are to be a touch less realistic. However, I am pleased
to tell you that, under the able direction of Fire Chief Witherspoon, we
emptied the building in six minutes and twenty-eight seconds.</p>
<p>That baby Allegra has fairy blood in her veins. Never did this institution
harbor such a child, barring one that Jervis and I know of. She has
completely subjugated the doctor. Instead of going about his visits like a
sober medical man, he comes down to my library hand in hand with Allegra,
and for half an hour at a time crawls about on a rug, pretending he's a
horse, while the bonnie wee lassie sits on his back and kicks. You know, I
am thinking of putting a card in the paper:</p>
<p>Characters neatly remodeled. S. McBride.</p>
<p>Sandy dropped in two nights ago to have a bit of conversation with Betsy
and me, and he was FRIVOLOUS. He made three jokes, and he sat down at the
piano and sang some old Scotch, "My luve's like a red, red rose," and
"Come under my plaidie," and "Wha's at the window? Wha? Wha?" not in the
least educational, and then danced a few steps of the strathspey!</p>
<p>I sat and beamed upon my handiwork, for it's true, I've done it all
through my frivolous example and the books I've given him and the
introducing of such lightsome companions as Jimmie and Percy and Gordon
Hallock. If I have a few more months in which to work, I shall get the man
human. He has given up purple ties, and at my tactful suggestion has
adopted a suit of gray. You have no idea how it sets him off. He will be
quite distinguished looking as soon as I can make him stop carrying bulgy
things in his pockets.</p>
<p>Good-by; and remember that we're expecting you on Friday.</p>
<p>SALLIE.</p>
<p>P.S. Here is a picture of Allegra, taken by Mr. Witherspoon. Isn't she a
love? Her present clothes do not enhance her beauty, but in the course of
a few weeks she will move into a pink smocked frock.</p>
<p>Wednesday, June 24, 10 A.M. MRS. JERVIS PENDLETON.</p>
<p>Madam:</p>
<p>Your letter is at hand, stating that you cannot visit me on Friday per
promise, because your husband has business that keeps him in town. What
clishmaclaver is this! Has it come to such a pass that you can't leave him
for two days?</p>
<p>I did not let 113 babies interfere with my visit to you, and I see no
reason why you should let one husband interfere with your visit to me. I
shall meet the Berkshire express on Friday as agreed. S. McBRIDE.</p>
<p>June 30. My dear Judy:</p>
<p>That was a very flying visit you paid us; but for all small favors we are
grateful. I am awfully pleased that you were so delighted with the way
things are going, and I can't wait for Jervis and the architect to get up
here and really begin a fundamental ripping-up.</p>
<p>You know, I had the queerest feeling all the time that you were here. I
can't make it seem true that you, my dear, wonderful Judy, were actually
brought up in this institution, and know from the bitter inside what these
little tots need. Sometimes the tragedy of your childhood fills me with an
anger that makes me want to roll up my sleeves and fight the whole world
and force it into making itself over into a place more fit for children to
live in. That Scotch-Irish ancestry of mine seems to have deposited a
tremendous amount of FIGHT in my character.</p>
<p>If you had started me with a modern asylum, equipped with nice, clean,
hygienic cottages and everything in running order, I couldn't have stood
the monotony of its perfect clockwork. It's the sight of so many things
crying to be done that makes it possible for me to stay. Sometimes, I must
confess, I wake up in the morning and listen to these institution noises,
and sniff this institution air, and long for the happy, carefree life that
by rights is mine.</p>
<p>You my dear witch, cast a spell over me, and I came. But often in the
night watches your spell wears thin, and I start the day with the burning
decision to run away from the John Grier Home. But I postpone starting
until after breakfast. And as I issue into the corridor, one of these
pathetic tots runs to meet me, and shyly slips a warm, crumpled little
fist into my hand, and looks up with wide baby eyes, mutely asking for a
little petting, and I snatch him up and hug him. And then, as I look over
his shoulder at the other forlorn little mites, I long to take all 113
into my arms and love them into happiness. There is something hypnotic
about this working with children. Struggle as you may, it gets you in the
end.</p>
<p>Your visit seems to have left me in a broadly philosophical frame of mind;
but I really have one or two bits of news that I might convey. The new
frocks are marching along, and, oh, but they are going to be sweet! Mrs.
Livermore was entranced with those parti-colored bales of cotton cloth you
sent,—you should see our workroom, with it all scattered about,—and
when I think of sixty little girls, attired in pink and blue and yellow
and lavender, romping upon our lawn of a sunny day, I feel that we should
have a supply of smoked eye glasses to offer visitors. Of course you know
that some of those brilliant fabrics are going to be very fadeable and
impractical. But Mrs. Livermore is as bad as you—she doesn't give a
hang. She'll make a second and a third set if necessary. DOWN WITH CHECKED
GINGHAM!</p>
<p>I am glad you liked our doctor. Of course we reserve the right to say
anything about him we choose, but our feelings would be awfully hurt if
anybody else should make fun of him.</p>
<p>He and I are still superintending each other's reading. Last week he
appeared with Herbert Spencer's "System of Synthetic Philosophy" for me to
glance at. I gratefully accepted it, and gave him in return the "Diary of
Marie Bashkirtseff." Do you remember in college how we used to enrich our
daily speech with quotations from Marie? Well, Sandy took her home and
read her painstakingly and thoughtfully.</p>
<p>"Yes," he acknowledged today when he came to report, "it is a truthful
record of a certain kind of morbid, egotistical personality that
unfortunately does exist. But I can't understand why you care to read it;
for, thank God! Sally Lunn, you and Bash haven't anything in common."</p>
<p>That's the nearest to a compliment he ever came, and I feel extremely
flattered. As to poor Marie, he refers to her as "Bash" because he can't
pronounce her name, and is too disdainful to try.</p>
<p>We have a child here, the daughter of a chorus girl, and she is a
conceited, selfish, vain, posing, morbid, lying little minx, but she has
eyelashes! Sandy has taken the most violent dislike to that child. And
since reading poor Marie's diary, he has found a new comprehensive
adjective for summing up all of her distressing qualities. He calls her
BASHY, and dismisses her.</p>
<p>Good-by and come again.</p>
<p>SALLIE.</p>
<p>P.S. My children show a distressing tendency to draw out their entire bank
accounts to buy candy.</p>
<p>Tuesday night. My dear Judy:</p>
<p>What do you think Sandy has done now? He has gone off on a pleasure trip
to that psychopathic institution whose head alienist visited us a month or
so ago. Did you ever know anything like the man? He is fascinated by
insane people, and can't let them alone.</p>
<p>When I asked for some parting medical instructions, he replied:</p>
<p>"Feed a cowld and hunger a colic and put nae faith in doctors."</p>
<p>With that advice, and a few bottles of cod-liver oil we are left to our
own devices. I feel very free and adventurous. Perhaps you had better run
up here again, as there's no telling what joyous upheaval I may accomplish
when out from under Sandy's dampening influence.</p>
<p>S. THE JOHN GRIER HOME,</p>
<p>Friday.</p>
<p>Dear Enemy:</p>
<p>Here I stay lashed to the mast, while you run about the country disporting
yourself with insane people. And just as I was thinking that I had nicely
cured you of this morbid predilection for psychopathic institutions! It's
very disappointing. You had seemed almost human of late.</p>
<p>May I ask how long you are intending to stay? You had permission to go for
two days, and you've already been away four.</p>
<p>Charlie Martin fell out of a cherry tree yesterday and cut his head open,
and we were driven to calling in a foreign doctor. Five stitches. Patient
doing well. But we don't like to depend on strangers. I wouldn't say a
word if you were away on legitimate business, but you know very well that,
after associating with melancholics for a week, you will come back home in
a dreadful state of gloom, dead sure that humanity is going to the dogs;
and upon me will fall the burden of getting you decently cheerful again.</p>
<p>Do leave those insane people to their delusions, and come back to the John
Grier Home, which needs you.</p>
<p>I am most fervent' Your friend and servant, S. McB.</p>
<p>P.S. Don't you admire that poetical ending? It was borrowed from Robert
Burns, whose works I am reading assiduously as a compliment to a Scotch
friend.</p>
<p>July 6.</p>
<p>Dear Judy:</p>
<p>That doctor man is still away. No word; just disappeared into space. I
don't know whether he is ever coming back or not, but we seem to be
running very happily without him.</p>
<p>I lunched yesterday CHEZ the two kind ladies who have taken our Punch to
their hearts. The young man seems to be very much at home. He took me by
the hand, and did the honors of the garden, presenting me with the
bluebell of my choice. At luncheon the English butler lifted him into his
chair and tied on his bib with as much manner as though he were serving a
prince of the blood. The butler has lately come from the household of the
Earl of Durham, Punch from a cellar in Houston Street. It was a very
uplifting spectacle.</p>
<p>My hostesses entertained me afterward with excerpts from their table
conversations of the last two weeks. (I wonder the butler hasn't given
notice; he looked like a respectable man.) If nothing more comes of it, at
least Punch has furnished them with funny stories for the rest of their
lives. One of them is even thinking of writing a book. "At least," says
she, wiping hysterical tears from her eyes, "we have lived!"</p>
<p>The Hon. Cy dropped in at 6:30 last night, and found me in an evening
gown, starting for a dinner at Mrs. Livermore's house. He mildly observed
that Mrs. Lippett did not aspire to be a society leader, but saved her
energy for her work. You know I'm not vindictive, but I never look at that
man without wishing he were at the bottom of the duck pond, securely
anchored to a rock.</p>
<p>Otherwise he'd pop up and float.</p>
<p>Singapore respectfully salutes you, and is very glad that you can't see
him as he now appears. A shocking calamity has befallen his good looks.
Some bad child—and I don't think she's a boy—has clipped that
poor beastie in spots, until he looks like a mangy, moth-eaten
checkerboard. No one can imagine who did it. Sadie Kate is very handy with
the scissors, but she is also handy with an alibi! During the time when
the clipping presumably occurred, she was occupying a stool in the corner
of the schoolroom with her face to the wall, as twenty-eight children can
testify. However, it has become Sadie Kate's daily duty to treat those
spots with your hair tonic.</p>
<p>I am, as usual,</p>
<p>SALLIE.</p>
<p>P.S. This is a recent portrait of the Hon. Cy drawn from life. The man, in
some respects, is a fascinating talker; he makes gestures with his nose.</p>
<p>Thursday evening.</p>
<p>Dear Judy:</p>
<p>Sandy is back after a ten-days' absence,—no explanations,—and
plunged deep into gloom. He resents our amiable efforts to cheer him up,
and will have nothing to do with any of us except baby Allegra. He took
her to his house for supper tonight and never brought her back until
half-past seven, a scandalous hour for a young miss of three. I don't know
what to make of our doctor; he grows more incomprehensible every day.</p>
<p>But Percy, now, is an open-minded, confiding young man. He has just been
making a dinner call (he is very punctilious in all social matters), and
our entire conversation was devoted to the girl in Detroit. He is lonely
and likes to talk about her; and the wonderful things he says! I hope that
Miss Detroit is worthy of all this fine affection, but I'm afraid. He
fetched out a leather case from the innermost recesses of his waistcoat
and, reverently unwrapping two layers of tissue-paper, showed me the
photograph of a silly little thing, all eyes and earrings and fuzzy hair.
I did my best to appear congratulatory, but my heart shut up out of pity
for the poor boy's future.</p>
<p>Isn't it funny how the nicest men often choose the worst wives, and the
nicest women the worst husbands? Their very niceness, I suppose, makes
them blind and unsuspicious.</p>
<p>You know, the most interesting pursuit in the world is studying character.
I believe I was meant to be a novelist; people fascinate me—until I
know them thoroughly. Percy and the doctor form a most engaging contrast.
You always know at any moment what that nice young man is thinking about;
he is written like a primer in big type and one-syllable words. But the
doctor! He might as well be written in Chinese so far as legibility goes.
You have heard of people with a dual nature; well, Sandy possesses a
triple one. Usually he's scientific and as hard as granite, but
occasionally I suspect him of being quite a sentimental person underneath
his official casing. For days at a time he will be patient and kind and
helpful, and I begin to like him; then without any warning an untamed wild
man swells up from the innermost depths, and—oh, dear! the
creature's impossible.</p>
<p>I always suspect that sometime in the past he has suffered a terrible
hurt, and that he is still brooding over the memory of it. All the time he
is talking you have the uncomfortable feeling that in the far back corners
of his mind he is thinking something else. But this may be merely my
romantic interpretation of an uncommonly bad temper. In any case, he's
baffling.</p>
<p>We have been waiting for a week for a fine windy afternoon, and this is
it. My children are enjoying "kite-day," a leaf taken from Japan. All of
the big-enough boys and most of the girls are spread over "Knowltop" (that
high, rocky sheep pasture which joins us on the east) flying kites made by
themselves.</p>
<p>I had a dreadful time coaxing the crusty old gentleman who owns the estate
into granting permission. He doesn't like orphans, he says, and if he once
lets them get a start in his grounds, the place will be infested with them
forever. You would think, to hear him talk, that orphans were a pernicious
kind of beetle.</p>
<p>But after half an hour's persuasive talking on my part, he grudgingly made
us free of his sheep pasture for two hours, provided we didn't step foot
into the cow pasture over the lane, and came home promptly when our time
was up. To insure the sanctity of his cow pasture, Mr. Knowltop has sent
his gardener and chauffeur and two grooms to patrol its boundaries while
the flying is on. The children are still at it, and are having a wonderful
adventure racing over that windy height and getting tangled up in one
another's strings. When they come panting back they are to have a surprise
in the shape of ginger cookies and lemonade.</p>
<p>These pitiful little youngsters with their old faces! It's a difficult
task to make them young, but I believe I'm accomplishing it. And it really
is fun to feel you're doing something positive for the good of the world.
If I don't fight hard against it, you'll be accomplishing your purpose of
turning me into a useful person. The social excitements of Worcester
almost seem tame before the engrossing interest of 113 live, warm,
wriggling little orphans.</p>
<p>Yours with love,</p>
<p>SALLIE.</p>
<p>P.S. I believe, to be accurate, that it's 107 children I possess this
afternoon.</p>
<p>Dear Judy:</p>
<p>This being Sunday and a beautiful blossoming day, with a warm wind
blowing, I sat at my window with the "Hygiene of the Nervous System"
(Sandy's latest contribution to my mental needs) open in my lap, and my
eyes on the prospect without. "Thank Heaven!" thought I, "that this
institution was so commandingly placed that at least we can look out over
the cast-iron wall which shuts us in."</p>
<p>I was feeling very cooped-up and imprisoned and like an orphan myself; so
I decided that my own nervous system required fresh air and exercise and
adventure. Straight before me ran that white ribbon of road that dips into
the valley and up over the hills on the other side. Ever since I came I
have longed to follow it to the top and find out what lies beyond those
hills. Poor Judy! I dare say that very same longing enveloped your
childhood. If any one of my little chicks ever stands by the window and
looks across the valley to the hills and asks, "What's over there?" I
shall telephone for a motor car.</p>
<p>But today my chicks were all piously engaged with their little souls, I
the only wanderer at heart. I changed my silken Sunday gown for homespun,
planning meanwhile a means to get to the top of those hills.</p>
<p>Then I went to the telephone and brazenly called up 505.</p>
<p>"Good afternoon, Mrs. McGurk," said I, very sweet. "May I be speaking with
Dr. MacRae?"</p>
<p>"Howld the wire," said she, very short.</p>
<p>"Afternoon, Doctor," said I to him. "Have ye, by chance, any dying
patients who live on the top o' the hills beyant?"</p>
<p>"I have not, thank the Lord!"</p>
<p>"'Tis a pity," said I, disappointed. "And what are ye afther doin' with
yerself the day?"</p>
<p>"I am reading the `Origin of Species.'"</p>
<p>"Shut it up; it's not fit for Sunday. And tell me now, is yer motor car
iled and ready to go?"</p>
<p>"It is at your disposal. Are you wanting me to take some orphans for a
ride?"</p>
<p>"Just one who's sufferin' from a nervous system. She's taken a fixed idea
that she must get to the top o' the hills."</p>
<p>"My car is a grand climber. In fifteen minutes—"</p>
<p>"Wait!" said I. "Bring with ye a frying pan that's a decent size for two.
There's nothing in my kitchen smaller than a cart wheel. And ask Mrs.
McGurk can ye stay out for supper."</p>
<p>So I packed in a basket a jar of bacon and some eggs and muffins and
ginger cookies, with hot coffee in the thermos bottle, and was waiting on
the steps when Sandy chugged up with his automobile and frying pan.</p>
<p>We really had a beautiful adventure, and he enjoyed the sensation of
running away exactly as much as I. Not once did I let him mention
insanity. I made him look at the wide stretches of meadow and the lines of
pollard willows backed by billowing hills, and sniff the air, and listen
to the cawing crows and the tinkle of cowbells and the gurgling of the
river. And we talked—oh, about a million things far removed from our
asylum. I made him throw away the idea that he is a scientist, and pretend
to be a boy. You will scarcely credit the assertion, but he succeeded—more
or less. He did pull off one or two really boyish pranks. Sandy is not yet
out of his thirties and, mercy! that is too early to be grown up.</p>
<p>We camped on a bluff overlooking our view, gathered some driftwood, built
a fire, and cooked the NICEST supper—a sprinkling of burnt stick in
our fried eggs, but charcoal's healthy. Then, when Sandy had finished his
pipe and "the sun was setting in its wonted west," we packed up and
coasted back home.</p>
<p>He says it was the nicest afternoon he has had in years, and, poor deluded
man of science, I actually believe it's true. His olive green home is so
uncomfortable and dreary and uninspiring that I don't wonder he drowns his
troubles in books. Just as soon as I can find a nice comfortable house
mother to put in charge, I am going to plot for the dismissal of Maggie
McGurk, though I foresee that she will be even harder than Sterry to pry
from her moorings.</p>
<p>Please don't draw the conclusion that I am becoming unduly interested in
our bad-tempered doctor, for I'm not. It's just that he leads such a
comfortless life that I sometimes long to pat him on the head and tell him
to cheer up; the world's full of sunshine, and some of it's for him—just
as I long to comfort my hundred and seven orphans; so much and no more.</p>
<p>I am sure that I had some real news to tell you, but it has completely
gone out of my head. The rush of fresh air has made me sleepy. It's
half-past nine, and I bid you good night.</p>
<p>S.</p>
<p>P.S. Gordon Hallock has evaporated into thin air. Not a word for three
weeks; no candy or stuffed animals or tokimentoes of any description. What
on earth do you suppose has become of that attentive young man?</p>
<p>July 13.</p>
<p>Dearest Judy:</p>
<p>Hark to the glad tidings!</p>
<p>This being the thirty-first day of Punch's month, I telephoned to his two
patronesses, as nominated in the bond, to arrange for his return. I was
met by an indignant refusal. Give up their sweet little volcano just as
they are getting it trained not to belch forth fire? They are outraged
that I can make such an ungrateful request. Punch has accepted their
invitation to spend the summer.</p>
<p>The dressmaking is still going on. You should hear the machines whir and
the tongues clatter in the sewing room. Our most cowed, apathetic,
spiritless little orphan cheers up and takes an interest in life when she
hears that she is to possess three perfectly private dresses of her own,
and each a different color, chosen by herself. And you should see how it
encourages their sewing ability. Even the little ten-year-olds are
bursting into seamstresses. I wish I could devise an equally effective way
to make them take an interest in cooking. But our kitchen is extremely
uneducative. You know how hampering it is to one's enthusiasm to have to
prepare a bushel of potatoes at once.</p>
<p>I think you've heard me mention the fact that I should like to divide up
my kiddies into ten nice little families, with a nice comfortable house
mother over each? If we just had ten picturesque cottages to put them in,
with flowers in the front yard and rabbits and kittens and puppies and
chickens in the back, we should be a perfectly presentable institution,
and wouldn't be ashamed to have these charity experts come visiting us.</p>
<p>Thursday.</p>
<p>I started this letter three days ago, was interrupted to talk to a
potential philanthropist (fifty tickets to the circus), and have not had
time to pick up my pen since. Betsy has been in Philadelphia for three
days, being a bridesmaid for a miserable cousin. I hope that no more of
her family are thinking of getting married, for it's most upsetting to the
J. G. H.</p>
<p>While there, she investigated a family who had applied for a child. Of
course we haven't a proper investigating plant, but once in a while, when
a family drops right into our arms, we do like to put the business
through. As a usual thing, we work with the State Charities' Aid
Association. They have a lot of trained agents traveling about the State,
keeping in touch with families who are willing to take children, and with
asylums that have them to give. Since they are willing to work for us,
there is no slightest use in our going to the expense of peddling our own
babies. And I do want to place out as many as are available, for I firmly
believe that a private home is the best thing for the child, provided, of
course, that we are very fussy about the character of the homes we choose.
I don't require rich foster parents, but I do require kind, loving,
intelligent parents. This time I think Betsy has landed a gem of a family.
The child is not yet delivered or the papers signed, and of course there
is always danger that they may give a sudden flop, and splash back into
the water.</p>
<p>Ask Jervis if he ever heard of J. F. Bretland of Philadelphia. He seems to
move in financial circles. The first I ever heard of him was a letter
addressed to the "Supt. John Grier Home, Dear Sir,"—a curt,
typewritten, businesslike letter, from an AWFULLY businesslike lawyer,
saying that his wife had determined to adopt a baby girl of attractive
appearance and good health between the ages of two and three years. The
child must be an orphan of American stock, with unimpeachable heredity,
and no relatives to interfere. Could I furnish one as required and oblige,
yours truly, J. F. Bretland?</p>
<p>By way of reference he mentioned "Bradstreets." Did you ever hear of
anything so funny? You would think he was opening a charge account at a
nursery, and inclosing an order from our seed catalogue.</p>
<p>We began our usual investigation by mailing a reference blank to a
clergyman in Germantown, where the J. F. B.'s reside.</p>
<p>Does he own any property?</p>
<p>Does he pay his bills?</p>
<p>Is he kind to animals?</p>
<p>Does he attend church?</p>
<p>Does he quarrel with his wife? And a dozen other impertinent questions.</p>
<p>We evidently picked a clergyman with a sense of humor. Instead of
answering in laborious detail, he wrote up and down and across the sheet,
"I wish they'd adopt me!"</p>
<p>This looked promising, so B. Kindred obligingly dashed out to Germantown
as soon as the wedding breakfast was over. She is developing the most
phenomenal detective instinct. In the course of a social call she can
absorb from the chairs and tables a family's entire moral history.</p>
<p>She returned from Germantown bursting with enthusiastic details.</p>
<p>Mr. J. F. Bretland is a wealthy and influential citizen, cordially loved
by his friends and deeply hated by his enemies (discharged employees, who
do not hesitate to say that he is a HAR-RD man). He is a little shaky in
his attendance at church, but his wife seems regular, and he gives money.</p>
<p>She is a charming, kindly, cultivated gentlewoman, just out of a
sanatorium after a year of nervous prostration. The doctor says that what
she needs is some strong interest in life, and advises adopting a child.
She has always longed to do it, but her hard husband has stubbornly
refused. But finally, as always, it is the gentle, persistent wife who has
triumphed, and hard husband has been forced to give in. Waiving his own
natural preference for a boy, he wrote, as above, the usual request for a
blue-eyed girl.</p>
<p>Mrs. Bretland, with the firm intention of taking a child, has been reading
up for years, and there is no detail of infant dietetics that she does not
know. She has a sunny nursery, with a southwestern exposure, all ready.
And a closet full of surreptitiously gathered dolls! She has made the
clothes for them herself,—she showed them to Betsy with the greatest
pride,—so you can understand the necessity for a girl.</p>
<p>She has just heard of an excellent English trained nurse that she can
secure, but she isn't sure but that it would be better to start with a
French nurse, so that the child can learn the language before her vocal
cords are set. Also, she was extremely interested when she heard that
Betsy was a college woman. She couldn't make up her mind whether to send
the baby to college or not. What was Betsy's honest opinion? If the child
were Betsy's own daughter, would Betsy send her to college?</p>
<p>All this would be funny if it weren't so pathetic; but really I can't get
away from the picture of that poor lonely woman sewing those doll clothes
for the little unknown girl that she wasn't sure she could have. She lost
her own two babies years ago, or, rather, she never had them; they were
never alive.</p>
<p>You can see what a good home it's going to be. There's lots of love
waiting for the little mite, and that is better than all the wealth which,
in this case, goes along.</p>
<p>But the problem now is to find the child, and that isn't easy. The J. F.
Bretlands are so abominably explicit in their requirements. I have just
the baby boy to give them; but with that closetful of dolls, he is
impossible. Little Florence won't do—one tenacious parent living.
I've a wide variety of foreigners with liquid brown eyes—won't do at
all. Mrs. Bretland is a blonde, and daughter must resemble her. I have
several sweet little mites with unspeakable heredity, but the Bretlands
want six generations of church-attending grandparents, with a colonial
governor at the top. Also I have a darling little curly-headed girl (and
curls are getting rarer and rarer), but illegitimate. And that seems to be
an unsurmountable barrier in the eyes of adopting parents, though, as a
matter of fact, it makes no slightest difference in the child. However,
she won't do. The Bretlands hold out sternly for a marriage certificate.</p>
<p>There remains just one child out of all these one hundred and seven that
appears available. Our little Sophie's father and mother were killed in a
railroad accident, and the only reason she wasn't killed was because they
had just left her in a hospital to get an abscess cut out of her throat.
She comes from good common American stock, irreproachable and
uninteresting in every way. She's a washed-out, spiritless, whiney little
thing. The doctor has been pouring her full of his favorite cod-liver oil
and spinach, but he can't get any cheerfulness into her.</p>
<p>However, individual love and care does accomplish wonders in institution
children, and she may bloom into something rare and beautiful after a few
months' transplanting. So I yesterday wrote a glowing account of her
immaculate family history to J. F. Bretland, offering to deliver her in
Germantown.</p>
<p>This morning I received a telegram from J. F. B. Not at all! He does not
purpose to buy any daughter sight unseen. He will come and inspect the
child in person at three o'clock on Wednesday next.</p>
<p>Oh dear, if he shouldn't like her! We are now bending all our energies
toward enhancing that child's beauty-like a pup bound for the dog show. Do
you think it would be awfully immoral if I rouged her cheeks a suspicion?
She is too young to pick up the habit.</p>
<p>Heavens! what a letter! A million pages written without a break. You can
see where my heart is. I'm as excited over little Sophie's settling in
life as though she were my own darling daughter.</p>
<p>Respectful regards to the president.</p>
<p>SAL. McB.</p>
<p>Dear Gordon:</p>
<p>That was an obnoxious, beastly, low-down trick not to send me a cheering
line for four weeks just because, in a period of abnormal stress I once
let you go for three. I had really begun to be worried for fear you'd
tumbled into the Potomac. My chicks would miss you dreadfully; they love
their uncle Gordon. Please remember that you promised to send them a
donkey.</p>
<p>Please also remember that I'm a busier person than you. It's a lot harder
to run the John Grier Home than the House of Representatives. Besides, you
have more efficient people to help.</p>
<p>This isn't a letter; it's an indignant remonstrance. I'll write tomorrow—or
the next day.</p>
<p>S.</p>
<p>P.S. On reading your letter over again I am slightly mollified, but dinna
think I believe a' your saft words. I ken weel ye only flatter when ye
speak sae fair.</p>
<p>July 17.</p>
<p>Dear Judy:</p>
<p>I have a history to recount.</p>
<p>This, please remember, is Wednesday next. So at half-past two o'clock our
little Sophie was bathed and brushed and clothed in fine linen, and put in
charge of a trusty orphan, with anxious instructions to keep her clean.</p>
<p>At three-thirty to the minute—never have I known a human being so
disconcertingly businesslike as J. F. Bretland—an automobile of
expensive foreign design rolled up to the steps of this imposing chateau.
A square-shouldered, square-jawed personage, with a chopped-off mustache
and a manner that inclines one to hurry, presented himself three minutes
later at my library door. He greeted me briskly as "Miss McKosh." I gently
corrected him, and he changed to "Miss McKim." I indicated my most
soothing armchair, and invited him to take some light refreshment after
his journey. He accepted a glass of water (I admire a temperate parent),
and evinced an impatient desire to be done with the business. So I rang
the bell and ordered the little Sophie to be brought down.</p>
<p>"Hold on, Miss McGee!" said he to me. "I'd rather see her in her own
environment. I will go with you to the playroom or corral or wherever you
keep your youngsters."</p>
<p>So I led him to the nursery, where thirteen or fourteen mites in gingham
rompers were tumbling about on mattresses on the floor. Sophie, alone in
the glory of feminine petticoats, was ensconced in the blue-ginghamed arms
of a very bored orphan. She was squirming and fighting to get down, and
her feminine petticoats were tightly wound about her neck. I took her in
my arms, smoothed her clothes, wiped her nose, and invited her to look at
the gentleman.</p>
<p>That child's whole future hung upon five minutes of sunniness, and instead
of a single smile, she WHINED!</p>
<p>Mr. Bretland shook her hand in a very gingerly fashion and chirruped to
her as you might to a pup. Sophie took not the slightest notice of him,
but turned her back, and buried her face in my neck. He shrugged his
shoulders, supposed that they could take her on trial. She might suit his
wife; he himself didn't want one, anyway. And we turned to go out.</p>
<p>Then who should come toddling straight across his path but that little
sunbeam Allegra! Exactly in front of him she staggered, threw her arms
about like a windmill, and plumped down on all fours. He hopped aside with
great agility to avoid stepping on her, and then picked her up and set her
on her feet. She clasped her arms about his leg, and looked up at him with
a gurgling laugh.</p>
<p>"Daddy! Frow baby up!"</p>
<p>He is the first man, barring the doctor, whom the child has seen for
weeks, and evidently he resembles somewhat her almost forgotten father.</p>
<p>J. F. Bretland picked her up and tossed her in the air as handily as
though it were a daily occurrence, while she ecstatically shrieked her
delight. Then when he showed signs of lowering her, she grasped him by an
ear and a nose, and drummed a tattoo on his stomach with both feet. No one
could ever accuse Allegra of lacking vitality!</p>
<p>J. F. disentangled himself from her endearments, and emerged, rumpled as
to hair, but with a firm-set jaw. He set her on her feet, but retained her
little doubled-up fist.</p>
<p>"This is the kid for me," he said. "I don't believe I need to look any
further."</p>
<p>I explained that we couldn't separate little Allegra from her brothers;
but the more I objected, the stubborner his jaw became. We went back to
the library, and argued about it for half an hour.</p>
<p>He liked her heredity, he liked her looks, he liked her spirit, he liked
HER. If he was going to have a daughter foisted on him, he wanted one with
some ginger. He'd be hanged if he'd take that other whimpering little
thing. It wasn't natural. But if I gave him Allegra, he would bring her up
as his own child, and see that she was provided for for the rest of her
life. Did I have any right to cut her out from all that just for a lot of
sentimental nonsense? The family was already broken up; the best I could
do for them now was to provide for them individually. "Take all three,"
said I, quite brazenly.</p>
<p>But, no, he couldn't consider that; his wife was an invalid, and one child
was all that she could manage.</p>
<p>Well, I was in a dreadful quandary. It seemed such a chance for the child,
and yet it did seem so cruel to separate her from those two adoring little
brothers. I knew that if the Bretlands adopted her legally, they would do
their best to break all ties with the past, and the child was still so
tiny she would forget her brothers as quickly as she had her father.</p>
<p>Then I thought about you, Judy, and of how bitter you have always been
because, when that family wanted to adopt you, the asylum wouldn't let you
go. You have always said that you might have had a home, too, like other
children, but that Mrs. Lippett stole it away from you. Was I perhaps
stealing little Allegra's home from her? With the two boys it would be
different; they could be educated and turned out to shift for themselves.
But to a girl a home like this would mean everything. Ever since baby
Allegra came to us, she has seemed to me just such another child as baby
Judy must have been. She has ability and spirit. We must somehow furnish
her with opportunity. She, too, deserves her share of the world's beauty
and good—as much as nature has fitted her to appreciate. And could
any asylum ever give her that? I stood and thought and thought while Mr.
Bretland impatiently paced the floor.</p>
<p>"You have those boys down and let me talk to them," Mr. Bretland insisted.
"If they have a spark of generosity, they'll be glad to let her go."</p>
<p>I sent for them, but my heart was a solid lump of lead. They were still
missing their father; it seemed merciless to snatch away that darling baby
sister, too.</p>
<p>They came hand in hand, sturdy, fine little chaps, and stood solemnly at
attention, with big, wondering eyes fixed on the strange gentleman.</p>
<p>"Come here, boys. I want to talk to you." He took each by a hand. "In the
house I live in we haven't any little baby, so my wife and I decided to
come here, where there are so many babies without fathers and mothers, and
take one home to be ours. She will have a beautiful house to live in, and
lots of toys to play with, and she will be happy all her life—much
happier than she could ever be here. I know that you will be very glad to
hear that I have chosen your little sister."</p>
<p>"And won't we ever see her any more?" asked Clifford.</p>
<p>"Oh, yes, sometimes."</p>
<p>Clifford looked from me to Mr. Bretland, and two big tears began rolling
down his cheeks. He jerked his hand away and came and hurled himself into
my arms.</p>
<p>"Don't let him have her! Please! Please! Send him away!"</p>
<p>"Take them all!" I begged.</p>
<p>But he's a hard man.</p>
<p>"I didn't come for an entire asylum," said he, shortly.</p>
<p>By this time Don was sobbing on the other side. And then who should inject
himself into the hubbub but Dr. MacRae, with baby Allegra in his arms!</p>
<p>I introduced them, and explained. Mr. Bretland reached for the baby, and
Sandy held her tight.</p>
<p>"Quite impossible," said Sandy, shortly. "Miss McBride will tell you that
it's one of the rules of this institution never to separate a family."</p>
<p>"Miss McBride has already decided," said J. F. B., stiffly. "We have fully
discussed the question."</p>
<p>"You must be mistaken," said Sandy, becoming his Scotchest, and turning to
me. "You surely had no intention of performing any such cruelty as this?"</p>
<p>Here was the decision of Solomon all over again, with two of the
stubbornest men that the good Lord ever made wresting poor little Allegra
limb from limb.</p>
<p>I despatched the three chicks back to the nursery and returned to the
fray. We argued loud and hotly, until finally J. F. B. echoed my own
frequent query of the last five months: "Who is the head of this asylum,
the superintendent or the visiting physician?"</p>
<p>I was furious with the doctor for placing me in such a position before
that man, but I couldn't quarrel with him in public; so I had ultimately
to tell Mr. Bretland with finality and flatness, that Allegra was out of
the question. Would he not reconsider Sophie?</p>
<p>No, he'd be darned if he'd reconsider Sophie. Allegra or nobody. He hoped
that I realized that I had weakly allowed the child's entire future to be
ruined. And with that parting shot he backed to the door. "Miss MacRae,
Dr. McBride, good afternoon." He achieved two formal bows and withdrew.</p>
<p>And the moment the door closed Sandy and I fought it out. He said that any
person who claimed to have any modern, humane views on the subject of
child-care ought to be ashamed to have considered for even a moment the
question of breaking up such a family. And I accused him of keeping her
for the purely selfish reason that he was fond of the child and didn't
wish to lose her.</p>
<p>(And that, I believe, is the truth.) Oh, we had the battle of our career,
and he finally took himself off with a stiffness and politeness that
excelled J. F. B.'s.</p>
<p>Between the two of them I feel as limp as though I'd been run through our
new mangling machine. And then Betsy came home, and reviled me for
throwing away the choicest family we have ever discovered!</p>
<p>So this is the end of our week of feverish activity; and both Sophie and
Allegra are, after all, to be institution children. Oh dear! oh dear!
Please remove Sandy from the staff, and send me, instead, a German, a
Frenchman, a Chinaman, if you choose—anything but a Scotchman.</p>
<p>Yours wearily,</p>
<p>SALLIE.</p>
<p>P.S. I dare say that Sandy is also passing a busy evening in writing to
have me removed. I won't object if you wish to do it. I am tired of
institutions.</p>
<p>Dear Gordon:</p>
<p>You are a captious, caviling, carping, crabbed, contentious, cantankerous
chap. Hoot mon! an' why shouldna I drap into Scotch gin I choose? An' I
with a Mac in my name.</p>
<p>Of course the John Grier will be delighted to welcome you on Thursday
next, not only for the donkey, but for your sweet sunny presence as well.
I was planning to write you a mile-long letter to make up for past
deficiencies, but wha's the use? I'll be seeing you the morn's morn, an'
unco gude will be the sight o' you for sair een.</p>
<p>Dinna fash yoursel, Laddie, because o'my language. My forebears were from
the Hielands.</p>
<p>McBRIDE.</p>
<p>Dear Judy:</p>
<p>All's well with the John Grier—except for a broken tooth, a sprained
wrist, a badly scratched knee, and one case of pinkeye. Betsy and I are
being polite, but cool, toward the doctor. The annoying thing is that he
is rather cool, too. And he seems to be under the impression that the drop
in temperature is all on his side. He goes about his business in a
scientific, impersonal way, entirely courteous, but somewhat detached.</p>
<p>However, the doctor is not disturbing us very extensively at present. We
are about to receive a visit from a far more fascinating person than
Sandy. The House of Representatives again rests from its labors, and
Gordon enjoys a vacation, two days of which he is planning to spend at the
Brantwood Inn.</p>
<p>I am delighted to hear that you have had enough seaside, and are
considering our neighborhood for the rest of the summer. There are several
spacious estates to be had within a few miles of the John Grier, and it
will be a nice change for Jervis to come home only at week ends. After a
pleasantly occupied absence, you will each have some new ideas to add to
the common stock.</p>
<p>I can't add any further philosophy just now on the subject of married
life, having to refresh my memory on the Monroe Doctrine and one or two
other political topics.</p>
<p>I am looking eagerly forward to August and three months with you.</p>
<p>As ever,</p>
<p>SALLIE.</p>
<p>Friday.</p>
<p>Dear Enemy:</p>
<p>It's very forgiving of me to invite you to dinner after that volcanic
explosion of last week. However, please come. You remember our
philanthropic friend, Mr. Hallock, who sent us the peanuts and goldfish
and other indigestible trifles? He will be with us tonight, so this is
your chance to turn the stream of his benevolence into more hygienic
channels.</p>
<p>We dine at seven.</p>
<p>As ever,</p>
<p>SALLIE McBRIDE.</p>
<p>Dear Enemy:</p>
<p>You should have lived in the days when each man inhabited a separate cave
on a separate mountain.</p>
<p>S. McBRIDE.</p>
<p>Friday, 6:30.</p>
<p>Dear Judy:</p>
<p>Gordon is here, and a reformed man so far as his attitude toward my asylum
goes. He has discovered the world-old truth that the way to a mother's
heart is through praise of her children, and he had nothing but praise for
all 107 of mine. Even in the case of Loretta Higgins he found something
pleasant to say. He thinks it nice that she isn't cross-eyed.</p>
<p>He went shopping with me in the village this afternoon, and was very
helpful about picking out hair-ribbons for a couple of dozen little girls.
He begged to choose Sadie Kate's himself, and after many hesitations he
hit upon orange satin for one braid and emerald green for the other.</p>
<p>While we were immersed in this business I became aware of a neighboring
customer, ostensibly engaged with hooks and eyes, but straining every ear
to listen to our nonsense.</p>
<p>She was so dressed up in a picture hat, a spotted veil, a feather boa, and
a NOUVEAU ART parasol that I never dreamed she was any acquaintance of
mine till I happened to catch her eye with a familiar malicious gleam in
it. She bowed stiffly, and disapprovingly; and I nodded back. Mrs. Maggie
McGurk in her company clothes!</p>
<p>That is a pleasanter expression than she really has. Her smile is due to a
slip of the pen.</p>
<p>Poor Mrs. McGurk can't understand any possible intellectual interest in a
man. She suspects me of wanting to marry every single one that I meet. At
first she thought I wanted to snatch away her doctor; but now, after
seeing me with Gordon, she considers me a bigamous monster who wants them
both.</p>
<p>Good-by; some guests approach.</p>
<p>11:30 P.M.</p>
<p>I have just been giving a dinner for Gordon, with Betsy and Mrs. Livermore
and Mr. Witherspoon as guests. I graciously included the doctor, but he
curtly declined on the ground that he wasn't in a social mood. Our Sandy
does not let politeness interfere with truth!</p>
<p>There is no doubt about it, Gordon is the most presentable man that ever
breathed. He is so good looking and easy and gracious and witty, and his
manners are so impeccable—Oh, he would make a wonderfully decorative
husband! But after all, I suppose you do live with a husband. You don't
just show him off at dinners and teas.</p>
<p>He was exceptionally nice tonight. Betsy and Mrs. Livermore both fell in
love with him—and I just a trifle. He entertained us with a speech
in his best public manner, apropos of Java's welfare. We have been having
a dreadful time finding a sleeping place for that monkey, and Gordon
proved with incontestable logic that, since he was presented to us by
Jimmie, and Jimmie is Percy's friend, he should sleep with Percy. Gordon
is a natural talker, and an audience affects him like champagne. He can
argue with as much emotional earnestness on the subject of a monkey as on
the greatest hero that ever bled for his country.</p>
<p>I felt tears coming to my eyes when he described Java's loneliness as he
watched out the night in our furnace cellar, and pictured his brothers at
play in the far-off tropical jungle.</p>
<p>A man who can talk like that has a future before him. I haven't a doubt
but that I shall be voting for him for President in another twenty years.</p>
<p>We all had a beautiful time, and entirely forgot—for a space of
three hours—that 107 orphans slumbered about us. Much as I love the
little dears, it is pleasant to get away from them once in a while.</p>
<p>My guests left at ten, and it must be midnight by now. (This is the eighth
day, and my clock has stopped again; Jane forgets to wind it as regularly
as Friday comes around.) However, I know it's late; and as a woman, it's
my duty to try for beauty sleep, especially with an eligible young suitor
at hand.</p>
<p>I'll finish tomorrow. Good night.</p>
<p>Saturday.</p>
<p>Gordon spent this morning playing with my asylum and planning some
intelligent presents to be sent later. He thinks that three neatly painted
totem poles would add to the attractiveness of our Indian camps. He is
also going to make us a present of three dozen pink rompers for the
babies. Pink is a color that is very popular with the superintendent of
this asylum, who is deadly tired of blue! Our generous friend is likewise
amusing himself with the idea of a couple of donkeys and saddles and a
little red cart. Isn't it nice that Gordon's father provided for him so
amply, and that he is such a charitably inclined young man? He is at
present lunching with Percy at the hotel, and, I trust, imbibing fresh
ideas in the field of philanthropy.</p>
<p>Perhaps you think I haven't enjoyed this interruption to the monotony of
institution life! You can say all you please, my dear Mrs. Pendleton,
about how well I am managing your asylum, but, just the same, it isn't
natural for me to be so stationary. I very frequently need a change. That
is why Gordon, with his bubbling optimism and boyish spirits, is so
exhilarating especially as a contrast to too much doctor.</p>
<p>Sunday morning.</p>
<p>I must tell you the end of Gordon's visit. His intention had been to leave
at four, but in an evil moment I begged him to stay over till 9:30, and
yesterday afternoon he and Singapore and I took a long 'cross-country
walk, far out of sight of the towers of this asylum, and stopped at a
pretty little roadside inn, where we had a satisfying supper of ham and
eggs and cabbage. Sing stuffed so disgracefully that he has been languid
ever since.</p>
<p>The walk and all was fun, and a very grateful change from this monotonous
life I lead. It would have kept me pleasant and contented for weeks if
something most unpleasant hadn't happened later. We had a beautiful,
sunny, carefree afternoon, and I'm sorry to have had it spoiled. We came
back very unromantically in the trolley car, and reached the J. G. H.
before nine, just in good time for him to run on to the station and catch
his train. So I didn't ask him to come in, but politely wished him a
pleasant journey at the porte-cochere.</p>
<p>A car was standing at the side of the drive, in the shadow of the house. I
recognized it, and thought the doctor was inside with Mr. Witherspoon.
(They frequently spend their evenings together in the laboratory.) Well,
Gordon, at the moment of parting, was seized with an unfortunate impulse
to ask me to abandon the management of this asylum, and take over the
management of a private house instead.</p>
<p>Did you ever know anything like the man? He had the whole afternoon and
miles of empty meadow in which to discuss the question, but instead he
must choose our door mat!</p>
<p>I don't know just what I did say. I tried to turn it off lightly and hurry
him to his train. But he refused to be turned off lightly. He braced
himself against a post and insisted upon arguing it out. I knew that he
was missing his train, and that every window in this institution was open.
A man never has the slightest thought of possible overhearers. It is
always the woman who thinks of convention.</p>
<p>Being in a nervous twitter to get rid of him, I suppose I was pretty
abrupt and tactless. He began to get angry, and then by some unlucky
chance his eye fell on that car. He recognized it, too, and, being in a
savage mood, he began making fun of the doctor. "Old Goggle-eyes" he
called him, and "Scatchy," and oh, the awfullest lot of unmannerly, silly
things!</p>
<p>I was assuring him with convincing earnestness that I didn't care a rap
about the doctor, that I thought he was just as funny and impossible as he
could be, when suddenly the doctor rose out of his car and walked up to
us.</p>
<p>I could have evaporated from the earth very comfortably at that moment!</p>
<p>Sandy was quite clearly angry, as well he might be, after the things he'd
heard, but he was entirely cold and collected. Gordon was hot, and
bursting with imaginary wrongs. I was aghast at this perfectly foolish and
unnecessary muddle that had suddenly arisen out of nothing. Sandy
apologized to me with unimpeachable politeness for inadvertently
overhearing, and then turned to Gordon and stiffly invited him to get into
his car and ride to the station.</p>
<p>I begged him not to go. I didn't wish to be the cause of any silly quarrel
between them. But without paying the slightest attention to me, they
climbed into the car, and whirled away, leaving me placidly standing on
the door mat.</p>
<p>I came in and went to bed, and lay awake for hours, expecting to hear—I
don't know what kind of explosion. It is now eleven o'clock, and the
doctor hasn't appeared. I don't know how on earth I shall meet him when he
does. I fancy I shall hide in the clothes closet.</p>
<p>Did you ever know anything as unnecessary and stupid as this whole
situation? I suppose now I've quarreled with Gordon,—and I
positively don't know over what,—and of course my relations with the
doctor are going to be terribly awkward. I said horrid things about him,—you
know the silly way I talk,—things I didn't mean in the least.</p>
<p>I wish it were yesterday at this time. I would make Gordon go at four.</p>
<p>SALLIE.</p>
<p>Sunday afternoon.</p>
<p>Dear Dr. MacRae:</p>
<p>That was a horrid, stupid, silly business last night. But by this time you
must know me well enough to realize that I never mean the foolish things I
say. My tongue has no slightest connection with my brain; it just runs
along by itself. I must seem to you very ungrateful for all the help you
have given me in this unaccustomed work and for the patience you have
(occasionally) shown.</p>
<p>I do appreciate the fact that I could never have run this asylum by myself
without your responsible presence in the background. And though once in a
while, as you yourself must acknowledge, you have been pretty impatient
and bad tempered and difficult, still I have never held it up against you,
and I really didn't mean any of the ill-mannered things I said last night.
Please forgive me for being rude. I should hate very much to lose your
friendship. And we are friends, are we not? I like to think so.</p>
<p>S. McB.</p>
<p>Dear Judy:</p>
<p>I am sure I haven't an idea whether or not the doctor and I have made up
our differences. I sent him a polite note of apology, which he received in
abysmal silence. He didn't come near us until this afternoon, and he
hasn't by the blink of an eyelash referred to our unfortunate contretemps.
We talked exclusively about an ichthyol salve that will remove eczema from
a baby's scalp; then, Sadie Kate being present, the conversation turned to
cats. It seems that the doctor's Maltese cat has four kittens, and Sadie
Kate will not be silenced until she has seen them. Before I knew what was
happening I found myself making an engagement to take her to see those
miserable kittens at four o'clock tomorrow afternoon.</p>
<p>Whereupon the doctor, with an indifferently polite bow, took himself off.
And that apparently is the end.</p>
<p>Your Sunday note arrives, and I am delighted to hear that you have taken
the house. It will be beautiful having you for a neighbor for so long. Our
improvements ought to march along, with you and the president at our
elbow. But it does seem as though, you ought to get out here before August
7. Are you sure that city air is good for you just now? I have never known
so devoted a wife.</p>
<p>My respects to the president.</p>
<p>S. McB.</p>
<p>July 22.</p>
<p>Dear Judy:</p>
<p>Please listen to this!</p>
<p>At four o'clock I took Sadie Kate to the doctor's house to look at those
cats. But Freddy Howland just twenty minutes before had fallen downstairs,
so the doctor was at the Howland house occupying himself with Freddy's
collarbone. He had left word for us to sit down and wait, that he would be
back shortly.</p>
<p>Mrs. McGurk ushered us into the library; and then, not to leave us alone,
came in herself on a pretense of polishing the brass. I don't know what
she thought we'd do! Run off with the pelican perhaps.</p>
<p>I settled down to an article about the Chinese situation in the Century,
and Sadie Kate roamed about at large examining everything she found, like
a curious little mongoose.</p>
<p>She commenced with his stuffed flamingo and wanted to know what made it so
tall and what made it so red. Did it always eat frogs, and had it hurt its
other foot? She ticks off questions with the steady persistency of an
eight-day clock.</p>
<p>I buried myself in my article and left Mrs. McGurk to deal with Sadie.
Finally, after she had worked half-way around the room, she came to a
portrait of a little girl occupying a leather frame in the center of the
doctor's writing desk—a child with a queer elf-like beauty,
resembling very strangely our little Allegra. This photograph might have
been a portrait of Allegra grown five years older. I had noticed the
picture the night we took supper with the doctor, and had meant to ask
which of his little patients she was. Happily I didn't!</p>
<p>"Who's that?" said Sadie Kate, pouncing upon it.</p>
<p>"It's the docthor's little gurrl."</p>
<p>"Where is she?"</p>
<p>"Shure, she's far away wit' her gran'ma."</p>
<p>"Where'd he get her?"</p>
<p>"His wife give her to him."</p>
<p>I emerged from my book with electric suddenness.</p>
<p>"His wife!" I cried.</p>
<p>The next instant I was furious with myself for having spoken, but I was so
completely taken off my guard. Mrs. McGurk straightened up and became
volubly conversational at once.</p>
<p>"And didn't he never tell you about his wife? She went insane six years
ago. It got so it weren't safe to keep her in the house, and he had to put
her away. It near killed him. I never seen a lady more beautiful than her.
I guess he didn't so much as smile for a year. It's funny he never told
you nothing, and you such a friend!"</p>
<p>"Naturally it's not a subject he cares to talk about," said I dryly, and I
asked her what kind of brass polish she used.</p>
<p>Sadie Kate and I went out to the garage and hunted up the kittens
ourselves; and we mercifully got away before the doctor came back.</p>
<p>But will you tell me what this means? Didn't Jervis know he was married?
It's the queerest thing I ever heard. I do think, as the McGurk suggests,
that Sandy might casually have dropped the information that he had a wife
in an insane asylum.</p>
<p>But of course it must be a terrible tragedy and I suppose he can't bring
himself to talk about it. I see now why he's so morbid over the question
of heredity—I dare say he fears for the little girl. When I think of
all the jokes I've made on the subject, I'm aghast at how I must have hurt
him, and angry with myself and angry with him.</p>
<p>I feel as though I never wanted to see the man again. Mercy! did you ever
know such a muddle as we are getting ourselves into?</p>
<p>Yours, SALLIE.</p>
<p>P.S. Tom McCoomb has pushed Mamie Prout into the box of mortar that the
masons use. She's parboiled. I've sent for the doctor.</p>
<p>July 24. My dear Madam:</p>
<p>I have a shocking scandal to report about the superintendent of the John
Grier Home. Don't let it get into the newspapers, please. I can picture
the spicy details of the investigation prior to her removal by the
"Cruelty."</p>
<p>I was sitting in the sunshine by my open window this morning reading a
sweet book on the Froebel theory of child culture—never lose your
temper, always speak kindly to the little ones. Though they may appear
bad, they are not so in reality. It is either that they are not feeling
well or have nothing interesting to do. Never punish; simply deflect their
attention. I was entertaining a very loving, uplifted attitude toward all
this young life about me when my attention was attracted by a group of
little boys beneath the window.</p>
<p>"Aw—John—don't hurt it!"</p>
<p>"Let it go!"</p>
<p>"Kill it quick!"</p>
<p>And above their remonstrances rose the agonized squealing of some animal
in pain. I dropped Froebel and, running downstairs, burst upon them from
the side door. They saw me coming, and scattered right and left, revealing
Johnnie Cobden engaged in torturing a mouse. I will spare you the grisly
details. I called to one of the boys to come and drown the creature quick!
John I seized by the collar; and dragged him squirming and kicking in at
the kitchen door. He is a big, hulking boy of thirteen, and he fought like
a little tiger, holding on to posts and doorjambs as we passed. Ordinarily
I doubt if I could have handled him, but that one sixteenth Irish that I
possess was all on top, and I was fighting mad. We burst into the kitchen,
and I hastily looked about for a means of chastisement. The pancake turner
was the first utensil that met my eyes. I seized it and beat that child
with all my strength, until I had reduced him to a cowering, whimpering
mendicant for mercy, instead of the fighting little bully he had been four
minutes before.</p>
<p>And then who should suddenly burst into the midst of this explosion but
Dr. MacRae! His face was blank with astonishment. He strode over and took
the pancake turner out of my hand and set the boy on his feet. Johnnie got
behind him and clung! I was so angry that I really couldn't talk. It was
all I could do not to cry.</p>
<p>"Come, we will take him up to the office," was all the doctor said. And we
marched out, Johnnie keeping as far from me as possible and limping
conspicuously. We left him in the outer office, and went into my library
and shut the door.</p>
<p>"What in the world has the child done?" he asked.</p>
<p>At that I simply laid my head down on the table and began to cry! I was
utterly exhausted both emotionally and physically. It had taken all the
strength I possessed to make the pancake turner effective.</p>
<p>I sobbed out all the bloody details, and he told me not to think about it;
the mouse was dead now. Then he got me some water to drink, and told me to
keep on crying till I was tired; it would do me good. I am not sure that
he didn't pat me on the head! Anyway, it was his best professional manner.
I have watched him administer the same treatment a dozen times to
hysterical orphans. And this was the first time in a week that we had
spoken beyond the formality of "good morning"!</p>
<p>Well, as soon as I had got to the stage where I could sit up and laugh,
intermittently dabbing my eyes with a wad of handkerchief, we began a
review of Johnnie's case. The boy has a morbid heredity, and may be
slightly defective, says Sandy. We must deal with the fact as we would
with any other disease. Even normal boys are often cruel. A child's moral
sense is undeveloped at thirteen.</p>
<p>Then he suggested that I bathe my eyes with hot water and resume my
dignity. Which I did. And we had Johnnie in. He stood—by preference—through
the entire interview. The doctor talked to him, oh, so sensibly and kindly
and humanely! John put up the plea that the mouse was a pest and ought to
be killed. The doctor replied that the welfare of the human race demanded
the sacrifice of many animals for its own good, not for revenge, but that
the sacrifice must be carried out with the least possible hurt to the
animal. He explained about the mouse's nervous system, and how the poor
little creature had no means of defense. It was a cowardly thing to hurt
it wantonly. He told John to try to develop imagination enough to look at
things from the other person's point of view, even if the other person was
only a mouse. Then he went to the bookcase and took down my copy of Burns,
and told the boy what a great poet he was, and how all Scotchmen loved his
memory.</p>
<p>"And this is what he wrote about a mouse," said Sandy, turning to the
"Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, timorous beastie," which he read and explained to
the lad as only a Scotchman could.</p>
<p>Johnnie departed penitent, and Sandy redirected his professional attention
to me. He said I was tired and in need of a change. Why not go to the
Adirondacks for a week? He and Betsy and Mr. Witherspoon would make
themselves into a committee to run the asylum.</p>
<p>You know, that's exactly what I was longing to do! I need a shifting of
ideas and some pine-scented air. My family opened the camp last week, and
think I'm awful not to join them. They won't understand that when you
accept a position like this you can't casually toss it aside whenever you
feel like it. But for a few days I can easily manage. My asylum is wound
up like an eight-day clock, and will run until a week from next Monday at
4 P.M., when my train will return me. Then I shall be comfortably settled
again before you arrive, and with no errant fancies in my brain.</p>
<p>Meanwhile Master John is in a happily chastened frame of mind and body.
And I rather suspect that Sandy's moralizing had the more force because it
was preceded by my pancake turner! But one thing I know—Suzanne
Estelle is terrified whenever I step into her kitchen. I casually picked
up the potato-masher this morning while I was commenting upon last night's
over-salty soup, and she ran to cover behind the woodshed door.</p>
<p>Tomorrow at nine I set out on my travels, after preparing the way with
five telegrams. And, oh! you can't imagine how I'm looking forward to
being a gay, carefree young thing again—to canoeing on the lake and
tramping in the woods and dancing at the clubhouse. I was in a state of
delirium all night long at the prospect. Really, I hadn't realized how
mortally tired I had become of all this asylum scenery.</p>
<p>"What you need," said Sandy to me, "is to get away for a little and sow
some wild oats."</p>
<p>That diagnosis was positively clairvoyant. I can't think of anything in
the world I'd rather do than sow a few wild oats. I'll come back with
fresh energy, ready to welcome you and a busy summer.</p>
<p>As ever,</p>
<p>SALLIE.</p>
<p>P.S. Jimmie and Gordon are both going to be up there. How I wish you could
join us! A husband is very discommoding.</p>
<p>CAMP McBRIDE,</p>
<p>July 29.</p>
<p>Dear Judy:</p>
<p>This is to tell you that the mountains are higher than usual, the woods
greener, and the lake bluer.</p>
<p>People seem late about coming up this year. The Harrimans' camp is the
only other one at our end of the lake that is open. The clubhouse is very
scantily supplied with dancing men, but we have as house guest an obliging
young politician who likes to dance, so I am not discommoded by the
general scarcity.</p>
<p>The affairs of the nation and the rearing of orphans are alike delegated
to the background while we paddle about among the lily pads of this
delectable lake. I look forward with reluctance to 7:56 next Monday
morning, when I turn my back on the mountains. The awful thing about a
vacation is that the moment it begins your happiness is already clouded by
its approaching end.</p>
<p>I hear a voice on the veranda asking if Sallie is to be found within or
without.</p>
<p>ADDIO! S.</p>
<p>August 3.</p>
<p>Dear Judy:</p>
<p>Back at the John Grier, reshouldering the burdens of the coming
generation. What should meet my eyes upon entering these grounds but John
Cobden, of pancake turner memory, wearing a badge upon his sleeve. I
turned it to me and read "S. P. C. A." in letters of gold! The doctor,
during my absence, has formed a local branch of the Cruelty to Animals,
and made Johnnie its president.</p>
<p>I hear that yesterday he stopped the workmen on the foundation for the new
farm cottage and scolded them severely for whipping their horses up the
incline! None of all this strikes any one but me as funny.</p>
<p>There's a lot of news, but with you due in four days, why bother to write?
Just one delicious bit I am saving for the end.</p>
<p>So hold your breath. You are going to receive a thrill on page 4. You
should hear Sadie Kate squeal! Jane is cutting her hair.</p>
<p>Instead of wearing it in two tight braids like this—our little
colleen will in the future look like this—</p>
<p>"Them pigtails got on my nerves," says Jane.</p>
<p>You can see how much more stylish and becoming the present coiffure is. I
think somebody will be wanting to adopt her. Only Sadie Kate is such an
independent, manly little creature; she is eminently fitted by nature to
shift for herself. I must save adopting parents for the helpless ones.</p>
<p>You should see our new clothes! I can't wait for this assemblage of
rosebuds to burst upon you. And you should have seen those blue ginghamed
eyes brighten when the new frocks were actually given out—three for
each girl, all different colors, and all perfectly private personal
property, with the owner's indelible name inside the collar. Mrs.
Lippett's lazy system of having each child draw from the wash a
promiscuous dress each week, was an insult to feminine nature.</p>
<p>Sadie Kate is squealing like a baby pig. I must go to see if Jane has by
mistake clipped off an ear.</p>
<p>Jane hasn't. Sadie's excellent ears are still intact. She is just
squealing on principle; the way one does in a dentist's chair, under the
belief that it is going to hurt the next instant.</p>
<p>I really can't think of anything else to write except my news,—so
here it is,—and I hope you'll like it.</p>
<p>I am engaged to be married.</p>
<p>My love to you both.</p>
<p>S. McB.</p>
<p>THE JOHN GRIER HOME,</p>
<p>November 15.</p>
<p>Dear Judy:</p>
<p>Betsy and I are just back from a GIRO in our new motor car. It undoubtedly
does add to the pleasure of institution life. The car of its own accord
turned up Long Ridge Road, and stopped before the gates of Shadywell. The
chains were up, and the shutters battened down, and the place looked
closed and gloomy and rain-soaked. It wore a sort of fall of the House of
Usher air, and didn't in the least resemble the cheerful house that used
to greet me hospitably of an afternoon.</p>
<p>I hate to have our nice summer ended. It seems as though a section of my
life was shut away behind me, and the unknown future was pressing awfully
close. Positively, I'd like to postpone that wedding another six months,
but I'm afraid poor Gordon would make too dreadful a fuss. Don't think I'm
getting wobbly, for I'm not. It's just that somehow I need more time to
think about it, and March is getting nearer every day. I know absolutely
that I'm doing the most sensible thing. Everybody, man or woman, is the
better for being nicely and appropriately and cheerfully married. But oh
dear! oh dear! I do hate upheavals, and this is going to be such a
world-without-end upheaval! Sometimes when the day's work is over, and I'm
tired, I haven't the spirit to rise and meet it.</p>
<p>And now especially since you've bought Shadywell, and are going to be here
every summer, I resent having to leave. Next year, when I'm far away, I'll
be consumed with homesickness, thinking of all the busy, happy times at
the John Grier, with you and Betsy and Percy and our grumbly Scotchman
working away cheerfully without me. How can anything ever make up to a
mother for the loss of 107 children?</p>
<p>I trust that Judy, junior, stood the journey into town without upsetting
her usual poise. I am sending her a bit giftie, made partly by myself and
chiefly by Jane. But two rows, I must inform you, were done by the doctor.
One only gradually plumbs the depths of Sandy's nature. After a
ten-months' acquaintance with the man, I discover that he knows how to
knit, an accomplishment he picked up in his boyhood from an old shepherd
on the Scotch moors.</p>
<p>He dropped in three days ago and stayed for tea, really in almost his old
friendly mood. But he has since stiffened up again to the same man of
granite we knew all summer. I've given up trying to make him out. I
suppose, however, that any one might be expected to be a bit down with a
wife in an insane asylum. I wish he'd talk about it once. It's awful
having such a shadow hovering in the background of your thoughts and never
coming out into plain sight.</p>
<p>I know that this letter doesn't contain a word of the kind of news that
you like to hear. But it's that beastly twilight hour of a damp November
day, and I'm in a beastly uncheerful mood. I'm awfully afraid that I am
developing into a temperamental person, and Heaven knows Gordon can supply
all the temperament that one family needs! I don't know where we'll land
if I don't preserve my sensibly stolid, cheerful nature.</p>
<p>Have you really decided to go South with Jervis? I appreciate your feeling
(to a slight extent) about not wanting to be separated from a husband; but
it does seem sort of hazardous to me to move so young a daughter to the
tropics.</p>
<p>The children are playing blind man's buff in the lower corridor. I think
I'll have a romp with them, and try to be in a more affable mood before
resuming my pen.</p>
<p>A BIENTOT! SALLIE.</p>
<p>P.S. These November nights are pretty cold, and we are getting ready to
move the camps indoors. Our Indians are very pampered young savages at
present, with a double supply of blankets and hot-water bottles. I shall
hate to see the camps go; they have done a lot for us. Our lads will be as
tough as Canadian trappers when they come in.</p>
<p>November 20.</p>
<p>Dear Judy:</p>
<p>Your motherly solicitude is sweet, but I didn't mean what I said.</p>
<p>Of course it's perfectly safe to convey Judy, junior, to the temperately
tropical lands that are washed by the Caribbean. She'll thrive as long as
you don't set her absolutely on top of the equator. And your bungalow,
shaded by palms and fanned by sea breezes, with an ice machine in the back
yard and an English doctor across the bay, sounds made for the rearing of
babies.</p>
<p>My objections were all due to the selfish fact that I and the John Grier
are going to be lonely without you this winter. I really think it's
entrancing to have a husband who engages in such picturesque pursuits as
financing tropical railroads and developing asphalt lakes and rubber
groves and mahogany forests. I wish that Gordon would take to life in
those picturesque countries; I'd be more thrilled by the romantic
possibilities of the future. Washington seems awfully commonplace compared
with Honduras and Nicaragua and the islands of the Caribbean.</p>
<p>I'll be down to wave good-by.</p>
<p>ADDIO! SALLIE.</p>
<p>November 24.</p>
<p>Dear Gordon:</p>
<p>Judy has gone back to town, and is sailing next week for Jamaica, where
she is to make her headquarters while Jervis cruises about adjacent waters
on these entertaining new ventures of his. Couldn't you engage in traffic
in the South Seas? I think I'd feel pleasanter about leaving my asylum if
you had something romantic and adventurous to offer instead. And think how
beautiful you'd be in those white linen clothes! I really believe I might
be able to stay in love with a man quite permanently if he always dressed
in white.</p>
<p>You can't imagine how I miss Judy. Her absence leaves a dreadful hole in
my afternoons. Can't you run up for a week end soon? I think the sight of
you would be very cheering, and I'm feeling awfully down of late. You
know, my dear Gordon, I like you much better when you're right here before
my eyes than when I merely think about you from a distance. I believe you
must have a sort of hypnotic influence. Occasionally, after you've been
away a long time, your spell wears a little thin. But when I see you, it
all comes back. You've been away now a long, long time; so, please come
fast and bewitch me over again!</p>
<p>S.</p>
<p>December 2.</p>
<p>Dear Judy:</p>
<p>Do you remember in college, when you and I used to plan our favorite
futures, how we were forever turning our faces southward? And now to think
it has really come true, and you are there, coasting around those tropical
isles! Did you ever have such a thrill in the whole of your life, barring
one or two connected with Jervis, as when you came up on deck in the early
dawn and found yourself riding at anchor in the harbor of Kingston, with
the water so blue and the palms so green and the beach so white?</p>
<p>I remember when I first woke in that harbor. I felt like a heroine of
grand opera surrounded by untruly beautiful painted scenery. Nothing in my
four trips to Europe ever thrilled me like the queer sights and tastes and
smells of those three warm weeks seven years ago. And ever since, I've
panted to get back. When I stop to think about it, I can hardly bring
myself to swallow our unexciting meals; I wish to be dining on curries and
tamales and mangos. Isn't it funny? You'd think I must have a dash of
Creole or Spanish or some warm blood in me somewhere, but I'm nothing on
earth but a chilly mixture of English and Irish and Scotch. Perhaps that
is why I hear the South calling. "The palm dreams of the pine, and the
pine of the palm."</p>
<p>After seeing you off, I turned back to New York with an awful
wander-thirst gnawing at my vitals. I, too, wanted to be starting off on
my travels in a new blue hat and a new blue suit with a big bunch of
violets in my hand. For five minutes I would cheerfully have said good-by
forever to poor dear Gordon in return for the wide world to wander in. I
suppose you are thinking they are not entirely incompatible—Gordon
and the wide world—but I don't seem able to get your point of view
about husbands. I see marriage as a man must, a good, sensible workaday
institution; but awfully curbing to one's liberty. Somehow, after you're
married forever, life has lost its feeling of adventure. There aren't any
romantic possibilities waiting to surprise you around each corner.</p>
<p>The disgraceful truth is that one man doesn't seem quite enough for me. I
like the variety of sensation that you get only from a variety of men. I'm
afraid I've spent too flirtatious a youth, and it isn't easy for me to
settle.</p>
<p>I seem to have a very wandering pen. To return: I saw you off, and took
the ferry back to New York with a horribly empty feeling. After our
intimate, gossipy three months together, it seems a terrible task to tell
you my troubles in tones that will reach to the bottom of the continent.
My ferry slid right under the nose of your steamer, and I could see you
and Jervis plainly leaning on the rail. I waved frantically, but you never
blinked an eyelash. Your gaze was fixed in homesick contemplation upon the
top of the Woolworth Building.</p>
<p>Back in New York, I took myself to a department store to accomplish a few
trifles in the way of shopping. As I was entering through their revolving
doors, who should be revolving in the other direction but Helen Brooks! We
had a terrible time meeting, as I tried to go back out, and she tried to
come back in; I thought we should revolve eternally. But we finally got
together and shook hands, and she obligingly helped me choose fifteen
dozen pairs of stockings and fifty caps and sweaters and two hundred union
suits, and then we gossiped all the way up to Fifty-second Street, where
we had luncheon at the Women's University Club.</p>
<p>I always liked Helen. She's not spectacular, but steady and dependable.
Will you ever forget the way she took hold of that senior pageant
committee and whipped it into shape after Mildred had made such a mess of
it? How would she do here as a successor to me? I am filled with jealousy
at the thought of a successor, but I suppose I must face it.</p>
<p>"When did you last see Judy Abbott?" was Helen's first question.</p>
<p>"Fifteen minutes ago," said I. "She has just set sail for the Spanish main
with a husband and daughter and nurse and maid and valet and dog."</p>
<p>"Has she a nice husband?"</p>
<p>"None better."</p>
<p>"And does she still like him?"</p>
<p>"Never saw a happier marriage."</p>
<p>It struck me that Helen looked a trifle bleak, and I suddenly remembered
all that gossip that Marty Keene told us last summer; so I hastily changed
the conversation to a perfectly safe subject like orphans.</p>
<p>But later she told me the whole story herself in as detached and
impersonal a way as though she were discussing the characters in a book.
She has been living alone in the city, hardly seeing any one, and she
seemed low in spirits and glad to talk. Poor Helen appears to have made an
awful mess of her life. I don't know any one who has covered so much
ground in such a short space of time. Since her graduation she has been
married, has had a baby and lost him, divorced her husband, quarreled with
her family, and come to the city to earn her own living. She is reading
manuscript for a publishing house.</p>
<p>There seems to have been no reason for her divorce from the ordinary point
of view; the marriage just simply didn't work. They weren't friends. If he
had been a woman, she wouldn't have wasted half an hour talking with him.
If she had been a man, he would have said: "Glad to see you. How are you?"
and gone on. And yet they MARRIED. Isn't it dreadful how blind this sex
business can make people?</p>
<p>She was brought up on the theory that a woman's only legitimate profession
is homemaking. When she finished college, she was naturally eager to start
on her career, and Henry presented himself. Her family scanned him
closely, and found him perfect in every respect—good family, good
morals, good financial position, good looking. Helen was in love with him.
She had a big wedding and lots of new clothes and dozens of embroidered
towels. Everything looked propitious.</p>
<p>But as they began to get acquainted, they didn't like the same books or
jokes or people or amusements. He was expansive and social and hilarious,
and she wasn't. First they bored, and then they irritated, each other. Her
orderliness made him impatient, and his disorderliness drove her wild. She
would spend a day getting closets and bureau drawers in order, and in five
minutes he would stir them into chaos. He would leave his clothes about
for her to pick up, and his towels in a messy heap on the bathroom floor,
and he never scrubbed out the tub. And she, on her side, was awfully
unresponsive and irritating,—she realized it fully,—she got to
the point where she wouldn't laugh at his jokes.</p>
<p>I suppose most old-fashioned, orthodox people would think it awful to
break up a marriage on such innocent grounds. It seemed so to me at first;
but as she went on piling up detail on detail each trivial in itself, but
making a mountainous total, I agreed with Helen that it was awful to keep
it going. It wasn't really a marriage; it was a mistake.</p>
<p>So one morning at breakfast, when the subject of what they should do for
the summer came up, she said quite casually that she thought she would go
West and get a residence in some State where you could get a divorce for a
respectable cause; and for the first time in months he agreed with her.</p>
<p>You can imagine the outraged feelings of her Victorian family. In all the
seven generations of their sojourn in America they have never had anything
like this to record in the family Bible. It all comes from sending her to
college and letting her read such dreadful modern people as Ellen Key and
Bernard Shaw.</p>
<p>"If he had only got drunk and dragged me about by the hair," Helen wailed,
"it would have been legitimate; but because we didn't actually throw
things at each other, no one could see any reason for a divorce."</p>
<p>The pathetic part of the whole business is that both she and Henry were
admirably fitted to make some one else happy. They just simply didn't
match each other; and when two people don't match, all the ceremonies in
the world can't marry them.</p>
<p>Saturday morning.</p>
<p>I meant to get this letter off two days ago; and here I am with volumes
written, but nothing mailed.</p>
<p>We've just had one of those miserable deceiving nights—cold and
frosty when you go to bed, and warm and lifeless when you wake in the
dark, smothered under a mountain of blankets. By the time I had removed my
own extra covers and plumped up my pillow and settled comfortably, I
thought of those fourteen bundled-up babies in the fresh-air nursery.
Their so-called night nurse sleeps like a top the whole night through.
(Her name is next on the list to be expunged.) So I roused myself again,
and made a little blanket removing tour, and by the time I had finished I
was forever awake. It is not often that I pass a NUIT BLANCHE; but when I
do, I settle world problems. Isn't it funny how much keener your mind is
when you are lying awake in the dark?</p>
<p>I began thinking about Helen Brooks, and I planned her whole life over
again. I don't know why her miserable story has taken such a hold over me.
It's a disheartening subject for an engaged girl to contemplate. I keep
saying to myself, what if Gordon and I, when we really get acquainted,
should change our minds about liking each other? The fear grips my heart
and wrings it dry. But I am marrying him for no reason in the world except
affection. I'm not particularly ambitious. Neither his position nor his
money ever tempted me in the least. And certainly I am not doing it to
find my life work, for in order to marry I am having to give up the work
that I love. I really do love this work. I go about planning and planning
their baby futures, feeling that I'm constructing the nation. Whatever
becomes of me in after life, I am sure I'll be the more capable for having
had this tremendous experience. And it IS a tremendous experience, the
nearness to humanity that an asylum brings. I am learning so many new
things every day that when each Saturday night comes I look back on the
Sallie of last Saturday night, amazed at her ignorance.</p>
<p>You know I am developing a funny old characteristic; I am getting to hate
change. I don't like the prospect of having my life disrupted. I used to
love the excitement of volcanoes, but now a high level plateau is my
choice in landscape. I am very comfortable where I am. My desk and closet
and bureau drawers are organized to suit me; and, oh, I dread unspeakably
the thought of the upheaval that is going to happen to me next year!
Please don't imagine that I don't care for Gordon quite as much as any man
has a right to be cared for. It isn't that I like him any the less, but I
am getting to like orphans the more.</p>
<p>I just met our medical adviser a few minutes ago as he was emerging from
the nursery—Allegra is the only person in the institution who is
favored by his austere social attentions. He paused in passing to make a
polite comment upon the sudden change in the weather, and to express the
hope that I would remember him to Mrs. Pendleton when I wrote.</p>
<p>This is a miserable letter to send off on its travels, with scarcely a
word of the kind of news that you like to hear. But our bare little orphan
asylum up in the hills must seem awfully far away from the palms and
orange groves and lizards and tarantulas that you are enjoying.</p>
<p>Have a good time, and don't forget the John Grier Home</p>
<p>and</p>
<p>SALLIE.</p>
<p>December 11.</p>
<p>Dear Judy:</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>BOW! WOW!</p>
<p>That's a bark from Sing. I told him I was writing to you, and he responded
instantly.</p>
<p>We both send love.</p>
<p>Yours,</p>
<p>SALLIE. THE JOHN GRIER HOME,</p>
<p>Saturday.</p>
<p>Dear Enemy:</p>
<p>You were so terribly gruff last night when I tried to thank you for giving
my boys such a wonderful day that I didn't have a chance to express half
of the appreciation I felt.</p>
<p>What on earth is the matter with you, Sandy? You used to be a tolerably
nice man—in spots, but these last three or four months you have only
been nice to other people, never to me. We have had from the first a long
series of misunderstandings and foolish contretemps, but after each one we
seemed to reach a solider basis of understanding, until I had thought our
friendship was on a pretty firm foundation, capable of withstanding any
reasonable shock.</p>
<p>And then came that unfortunate evening last June when you overheard some
foolish impolitenesses, which I did not in the slightest degree mean; and
from then on you faded into the distance. Really, I have felt terribly bad
about it, and have wanted to apologize, but your manner has not been
inviting of confidence. It isn't that I have any excuse or explanation to
offer; I haven't. You know how foolish and silly I am on occasions, but
you will just have to realize that though I'm flippant and foolish and
trivial on top, I am pretty solid inside; and you've got to forgive the
silly part. The Pendletons knew that long ago, or they wouldn't have sent
me up here. I have tried hard to pull off an honest job, partly because I
wanted to justify their judgment, partly because I was really interested
in giving the poor little kiddies their share of happiness, but mostly, I
actually believe, because I wanted to show you that your first derogatory
opinion of me was ill founded. Won't you please expunge that unfortunate
fifteen minutes at the porte-cochere last June, and remember instead the
fifteen hours I spent reading the Kallikak Family?</p>
<p>I would like to feel that we're friends again.</p>
<p>SALLIE McBRIDE.</p>
<p>THE JOHN GRIER HOME,</p>
<p>Sunday.</p>
<p>Dear Dr. MacRae:</p>
<p>I am in receipt of your calling card with an eleven-word answer to my
letter on the back. I didn't mean to annoy you by my attentions. What you
think and how you behave are really matters of extreme indifference to me.
Be just as impolite as you choose.</p>
<p>S. McB.</p>
<p>December 14.</p>
<p>Dear Judy:</p>
<p>PLEASE pepper your letters with stamps, inside and out. I have thirty
collectors in the family. Since you have taken to travel, every day about
post time an eager group gathers at the gate, waiting to snatch any
letters of foreign design, and by the time the letters reach me they are
almost in shreds through the tenacity of rival snatchers. Tell Jervis to
send us some more of those purple pine trees from Honduras; likewise some
green parrots from Guatemala. I could use a pint of them!</p>
<p>Isn't it wonderful to have got these apathetic little things so
enthusiastic? My children are getting to be almost like real children. B
dormitory started a pillow fight last night of its own accord; and though
it was very wearing to our scant supply of linen, I stood by and beamed,
and even tossed a pillow myself.</p>
<p>Last Saturday those two desirable friends of Percy's spent the whole
afternoon playing with my boys. They brought up three rifles, and each man
took the lead of a camp of Indians, and passed the afternoon in a bottle
shooting contest, with a prize for the winning camp. They brought the
prize with them—an atrocious head of an Indian painted on leather.
Dreadful taste; but the men thought it lovely, so I admired it with all
the ardor I could assume.</p>
<p>When they had finished, I warmed them up with cookies and hot chocolate,
and I really think the men enjoyed it as much as the boys; they
undoubtedly enjoyed it more than I did. I couldn't help being in a
feminine twitter all the time the firing was going on for fear somebody
would shoot somebody else. But I know that I can't keep twenty-four
Indians tied to my apron strings, and I never could find in the whole wide
world three nicer men to take an interest in them.</p>
<p>Just think of all that healthy, exuberant volunteer service going to waste
under the asylum's nose! I suppose the neighborhood is full of plenty more
of it, and I am going to make it my business to dig it out.</p>
<p>What I want most are about eight nice, pretty, sensible young women to
come up here one night a week, and sit before the fire and tell stories
while the chicks pop corn. I do so want to contrive a little individual
petting for my babies. You see, Judy, I am remembering your own childhood,
and am trying hard to fill in the gaps.</p>
<p>The trustees' meeting last week went beautifully. The new women are most
helpful, and only the nice men came. I am happy to announce that the Hon.
Cy Wykoff is visiting his married daughter in Scranton. I wish she would
invite father to live with her permanently.</p>
<p>Wednesday.</p>
<p>I am in the most childish temper with the doctor, and for no very definite
reason. He keeps along his even, unemotional way without paying the
slightest attention to anything or anybody. I have swallowed more slights
during these last few months than in the whole of my life before, and I'm
developing the most shockingly revengeful nature. I spend all my spare
time planning situations in which he will be terribly hurt and in need of
my help, and in which I, with the utmost callousness, will shrug my
shoulders and turn away. I am growing into a person entirely foreign to
the sweet, sunny young thing you used to know.</p>
<p>Evening.</p>
<p>Do you realize that I am an authority on the care of dependent children?
Tomorrow I and other authorities visit officially the Hebrew Sheltering
Guardian Society's Orphan Asylum at Pleasantville. (All that's its name!)
It's a terribly difficult and roundabout journey from this point,
involving a daybreak start and two trains and an automobile. But if I'm to
be an authority, I must live up to the title. I'm keen about looking over
other institutions and gleaning as many ideas as possible against our own
alterations next year. And this Pleasantville asylum is an architectural
model.</p>
<p>I acknowledge now, upon sober reflection, that we were wise to postpone
extensive building operations until next summer. Of course I was
disappointed, because it meant that I won't be the center of the
ripping-up, and I do so love to be the center of ripping-ups! But, anyway,
you'll take my advice, even though I'm no longer an official head? The two
building details we did accomplish are very promising. Our new laundry
grows better and better; it has removed from us that steamy smell so dear
to asylums. The farmer's cottage will finally be ready for occupancy next
week. All it now lacks is a coat of paint and some doorknobs.</p>
<p>But, oh dear! oh dear! another bubble has burst! Mrs Turnfelt, for all her
comfortable figure and sunny smile, hates to have children messing about.
They make her nervous. And as for Turnfelt himself, though industrious and
methodical and an excellent gardener, still, his mental processes are not
quite what I had hoped for. When he first came, I made him free of the
library. He began at the case nearest the door, which contains
thirty-seven volumes of Pansy's works. Finally, after he had spent four
months on Pansy, I suggested a change, and sent him home with "Huckleberry
Finn." But he brought it back in a few days, and shook his head. He says
that after reading Pansy, anything else seems tame. I am afraid I shall
have to look about for some one a little more up-and-coming. But at least,
compared with Sterry, Turnfelt is a scholard!</p>
<p>And speaking of Sterry, he paid us a social call a few days ago, in quite
a chastened frame of mind. It seems that the "rich city feller" whose
estate he has been managing no longer needs his services; and Sterry has
graciously consented to return to us and let the children have gardens if
they wish. I kindly, but convincingly, declined his offer.</p>
<p>Friday.</p>
<p>I came back from Pleasantville last night with a heart full of envy.
Please, Mr. President, I want some gray stucco cottages, with Luca della
Robbia figures baked into the front. They have nearly 700 children there,
and all sizable youngsters. Of course that makes a very different problem
from my hundred and seven, ranging from babyhood up. But I borrowed from
their superintendent several very fancy ideas. I'm dividing my chicks into
big and little sisters and brothers, each big one to have a little one to
love and help and fight for. Big sister Sadie Kate has to see that little
sister Gladiola always has her hair neatly combed and her stockings pulled
up and knows her lessons and gets a touch of petting and her share of
candy—very pleasant for Gladiola, but especially developing for
Sadie Kate.</p>
<p>Also I am going to start among our older children a limited form of
self-government such as we had in college. That will help fit them to go
out into the world and govern themselves when they get there. This shoving
children into the world at the age of sixteen seems terribly merciless.
Five of my children are ready to be shoved, but I can't bring myself to do
it. I keep remembering my own irresponsible silly young self, and
wondering what would have happened to me had I been turned out to work at
the age of sixteen!</p>
<p>I must leave you now to write an interesting letter to my politician in
Washington, and it's hard work. What have I to say that will interest a
politician? I can't do anything any more but babble about babies, and he
wouldn't care if every baby was swept from the face of the earth. Oh, yes,
he would, too! I'm afraid I'm slandering him. Babies—at least boy
babies—grow into voters.</p>
<p>Good-by,</p>
<p>SALLIE.</p>
<p>Dearest Judy:</p>
<p>If you expect a cheerful letter from me the day, don't read this.</p>
<p>The life of man is a wintry road. Fog, snow, rain, slush, drizzle, cold—such
weather! such weather! And you in dear Jamaica with the sunshine and the
orange blossoms!</p>
<p>We've got whooping cough, and you can hear us whoop when you get off the
train two miles away. We don't know how we got it—just one of the
pleasures of institution life. Cook has left,—in the night,—what
the Scotch call a "moonlight flitting." I don't know how she got her trunk
away, but it's gone. The kitchen fire went with her. The pipes are frozen.
The plumbers are here, and the kitchen floor is all ripped up. One of our
horses has the spavin. And, to crown all, our cheery, resourceful Percy is
down, down, down in the depths of despair. We have not been quite certain
for three days past whether we could keep him from suicide. The girl in
Detroit,—I knew she was a heartless little minx,—without so
much as going through the formality of sending back his ring, has gone and
married herself to a man and a couple of automobiles and a yacht. It is
the best thing that could ever have happened to Percy, but it will be a
long, long time before he realizes it.</p>
<p>We have our twenty-four Indians back in the house with us. I was sorry to
have to bring them in, but the shacks were scarcely planned for winter
quarters. I have stowed them away very comfortably, however, thanks to the
spacious iron verandas surrounding our new fire-escape. It was a happy
idea of Jervis's having them glassed in for sleeping porches. The babies'
sun parlor is a wonderful addition to our nursery. We can fairly see the
little tots bloom under the influence of that extra air and sunshine.</p>
<p>With the return of the Indians to civilized life, Percy's occupation was
ended, and he was supposed to remove himself to the hotel. But he didn't
want to remove himself. He has got used to orphans, he says, and he would
miss not seeing them about. I think the truth is that he is feeling so
miserable over his wrecked engagement that he is afraid to be alone. He
needs something to occupy every waking moment out of banking hours. And
goodness knows we're glad enough to keep him! He has been wonderful with
those youngsters, and they need a man's influence.</p>
<p>But what on earth to do with the man? As you discovered last summer, this
spacious chateau does not contain a superabundance of guest rooms. He has
finally fitted himself into the doctor's laboratory, and the medicines
have moved themselves to a closet down the hall. He and the doctor fixed
it up between them, and if they are willing to be mutually inconvenienced,
I have no fault to find.</p>
<p>Mercy! I've just looked at the calendar, and it's the eighteenth, with
Christmas only a week away. However shall we finish all our plans in a
week? The chicks are making presents for one another, and something like a
thousand secrets have been whispered in my ear.</p>
<p>Snow last night. The boys have spent the morning in the woods, gathering
evergreens and drawing them home on sleds; and twenty girls are spending
the afternoon in the laundry, winding wreaths for the windows. I don't
know how we are going to do our washing this week. We were planning to
keep the Christmas tree a secret, but fully fifty children have been
boosted up to the carriage house window to take a peep at it, and I am
afraid the news has spread among the remaining fifty.</p>
<p>At your insistence, we have sedulously fostered the Santa Claus myth, but
it doesn't meet with much credence. "Why didn't he ever come before?" was
Sadie Kate's skeptical question. But Santa Claus is undoubtedly coming
this time. I asked the doctor, out of politeness, to play the chief role
at our Christmas tree; and being certain ahead of time that he was going
to refuse, I had already engaged Percy as an understudy. But there is no
counting on a Scotchman. Sandy accepted with unprecedented graciousness,
and I had privately to unengage Percy!</p>
<p>Tuesday.</p>
<p>Isn't it funny, the way some inconsequential people have of pouring out
whatever happens to be churning about in their minds at the moment? They
seem to have no residue of small talk, and are never able to dismiss a
crisis in order to discuss the weather.</p>
<p>This is apropos of a call I received today. A woman had come to deliver
her sister's child—sister in a sanatorium for tuberculosis; we to
keep the child until the mother is cured, though I fear, from what I hear,
that will never be. But, anyway, all the arrangements had been made, and
the woman had merely to hand in the little girl and retire. But having a
couple of hours between trains, she intimated a desire to look about, so I
showed her the kindergarten rooms and the little crib that Lily will
occupy, and our yellow dining room, with its frieze of bunnies, in order
that she might report as many cheerful details as possible to the poor
mother. After this, as she seemed tired, I socially asked her to walk into
my parlor and have a cup of tea. Doctor MacRae, being at hand and in a
hungry mood (a rare state for him; he now condescends to a cup of tea with
the officers of this institution about twice a month), came, too, and we
had a little party.</p>
<p>The woman seemed to feel that the burden of entertainment rested upon her,
and by way of making conversation, she told us that her husband had fallen
in love with the girl who sold tickets at a moving picture show (a
painted, yellow-haired thing who chewed gum like a cow, was her
description of the enchantress), and he spent all of his money on the
girl, and never came home except when he was drunk. Then he smashed the
furniture something awful. An easel, with her mother's picture on it, that
she had had since before she was married, he had thrown down just for the
pleasure of hearing it crash. And finally she had just got too tired to
live, so she drank a bottle of swamp root because somebody had told her it
was poison if you took it all at once. But it didn't kill her; it only
made her sick. And he came back, and said he would choke her if she ever
tried that on him again; so she guessed he must still care something for
her. All this quite casually while she stirred her tea.</p>
<p>I tried to think of something to say, but it was a social exigency that
left me dumb. But Sandy rose to the occasion like a gentleman. He talked
to her beautifully and sanely, and sent her away actually uplifted. Our
Sandy, when he tries, can be exceptionally nice, particularly to people
who have no claim upon him. I suppose it is a matter of professional
etiquette—part of a doctor's business to heal the spirit as well as
the body. Most spirits appear to need it in this world. My caller has left
me needing it. I have been wondering ever since what I should do if I
married a man who deserted me for a chewing gum girl, and who came home
and smashed the bric-a-brac. I suppose, judging from the theaters this
winter, that it is a thing that might happen to any one, particularly in
the best society.</p>
<p>You ought to be thankful you've got Jervis. There is something awfully
certain about a man like him. The longer I live, the surer I am that
character is the only thing that counts. But how on earth can you ever
tell? Men are so good at talking! Good-by, and a merry Christmas to Jervis
and both Judies.</p>
<p>S. McB.</p>
<p>P.S. It would be a pleasant attention if you would answer my letters a
little more promptly.</p>
<p>JOHN GRIER HOME,</p>
<p>December 29.</p>
<p>Dear Judy:</p>
<p>Sadie Kate has spent the week composing a Christmas letter to you, and it
leaves nothing for me to tell. Oh, we've had a wonderful time! Besides all
the presents and games and fancy things to eat, we have had hayrides and
skating parties and candy pulls. I don't know whether these pampered
little orphans will ever settle down again into normal children.</p>
<p>Many thanks for my six gifts. I like them all, particularly the picture of
Judy, junior; the tooth adds a pleasant touch to her smile.</p>
<p>You'll be glad to hear that I've placed out Hattie Heaphy in a minister's
family, and a dear family they are. They never blinked an eyelash when I
told them about the communion cup. They've given her to themselves for a
Christmas present, and she went off so happily, clinging to her new
father's hand!</p>
<p>I won't write more now, because fifty children are writing thank-you
letters, and poor Aunt Judy will be buried beneath her mail when this
week's steamer gets in.</p>
<p>My love to the Pendletons.</p>
<p>S. McB.</p>
<p>P.S. Singapore ends his love to Togo, and is sorry he bit him on the ear.</p>
<p>JOHN GRIER HOME,</p>
<p>December 30.</p>
<p>O DEAR, Gordon, I have been reading the most upsetting book!</p>
<p>I tried to talk some French the other day, and not making out very well,
decided that I had better take my French in hand if I didn't want to lose
it entirely. That Scotch doctor of ours has mercifully abandoned my
scientific education, so I have a little time at my own disposal. By some
unlucky chance I began with "Numa Roumestan," by Daudet. It is a terribly
disturbing book for a girl to read who is engaged to a politician. Read
it, Gordon dear, and assiduously train your character away from Numa's.
It's the story of a politician who is disquietingly fascinating (like
you). Who is adored by all who know him (like you). Who has a most
persuasive way of talking and makes wonderful speeches (again like you).
He is worshiped by everybody, and they all say to his wife, "What a happy
life you must lead, knowing so intimately that wonderful man!"</p>
<p>But he wasn't very wonderful when he came home to her—only when he
had an audience and applause. He would drink with every casual
acquaintance, and be gay and bubbling and expansive; and then return
morose and sullen and down. "Joie de rue, douleur de maison," is the
burden of the book.</p>
<p>I read it till twelve last night, and honestly I didn't sleep for being
scared. I know you'll be angry, but really and truly, Gordon dear, there's
just a touch too much truth in it for my entire amusement. I didn't mean
ever to refer again to that unhappy matter of August 20,—we talked
it all out at the time,—but you know perfectly that you need a bit
of watching. And I don't like the idea. I want to have a feeling of
absolute confidence and stability about the man I marry. I never could
live in a state of anxious waiting for him to come home.</p>
<p>Read "Numa" for yourself, and you'll see the woman's point of view. I'm
not patient or meek or long-suffering in any way, and I'm a little afraid
of what I'm capable of doing if I have the provocation. My heart has to be
in a thing in order to make it work, and, oh, I do so want our marriage to
work!</p>
<p>Please forgive me for writing all this. I don't mean that I really think
you'll be a "joy of the street, and sorrow of the home." It's just that I
didn't sleep last night, and I feel sort of hollow behind the eyes.</p>
<p>May the year that's coming bring good counsel and happiness and
tranquillity to both of us!</p>
<p>As ever,</p>
<p>S.</p>
<p>January 1.</p>
<p>Dear Judy:</p>
<p>Something terribly sort of queer has happened, and positively I don't know
whether it did happen or whether I dreamed it. I'll tell you from the
beginning, and I think it might be as well if you burned this letter; it's
not quite proper for Jervis's eyes.</p>
<p>You remember my telling you the case of Thomas Kehoe, whom we placed out
last June? He had an alcoholic heredity on both sides, and as a baby seems
to have been fattened on beer instead of milk. He entered the John Grier
at the age of nine, and twice, according to his record in the Doomsday
Book, he managed to get himself intoxicated, once on beer stolen from some
workmen, and once (and thoroughly) on cooking brandy. You can see with
what misgivings we placed him out. But we warned the family (hard-working
temperate farming people) and hoped for the best.</p>
<p>Yesterday the family telegraphed that they could keep him no longer. Would
I please meet him on the six o'clock train? Turnfelt met the six o'clock
train. No boy. I sent a night message telling of his non-arrival and
asking for particulars.</p>
<p>I stayed up later than usual last night putting my desk in order and—sort
of making up my mind to face the New Year. Toward twelve I suddenly
realized that the hour was late and that I was very tired. I had begun
getting ready for bed when I was startled by a banging on the front door.
I stuck my head out of the window and demanded who was there.</p>
<p>"Tommy Kehoe," said a very shaky voice.</p>
<p>I went down and opened the door, and that lad, sixteen years old, tumbled
in, dead drunk. Thank Heaven! Percy Witherspoon was within call, and not
away off in the Indian camp.</p>
<p>I roused him, and together we conveyed Thomas to our guest room, the only
decently isolated spot in the building. Then I telephoned for the doctor,
who, I am afraid, had already had a long day. He came, and we put in a
pretty terrible night. It developed afterward that the boy had brought
along with his luggage a bottle of liniment belonging to his employer. It
was made half of alcohol and half of witch hazel; and Thomas had refreshed
his journey with this!</p>
<p>He was in such shape that positively I didn't think we'd pull him through—and
I hoped we wouldn't. If I were a physician, I'd let such cases gently slip
away for the good of society; but you should have seen Sandy work! That
terrible lifesaving instinct of his was aroused, and he fought with every
inch of energy he possessed.</p>
<p>I made black coffee, and helped all I could, but the details were pretty
messy, and I left the two men to deal with him alone and went back to my
room. But I didn't attempt to go to bed; I was afraid they might be
wanting me again. Toward four o'clock Sandy came to my library with word
that the boy was asleep and that Percy had moved up a cot and would sleep
in his room the rest of the night. Poor Sandy looked sort of ashen and
haggard and done with life. As I looked at him, I thought about how
desperately he worked to save others, and never saved himself, and about
that dismal home of his, with never a touch of cheer, and the horrible
tragedy in the background of his life. All the rancor I've been saving up
seemed to vanish, and a wave of sympathy swept over me. I stretched my
hand out to him; he stretched his out to me. And suddenly—I don't
know—something electric happened. In another moment we were in each
other's arms. He loosened my hands, and put me down in the big armchair.</p>
<p>"My God! Sallie, do you think I'm made of iron?" he said and walked out. I
went to sleep in the chair, and when I woke the sun was shining in my eyes
and Jane was standing over me in amazed consternation.</p>
<p>This morning at eleven he came back, looked me coldly in the eye without
so much as the flicker of an eyelash, and told me that Thomas was to have
hot milk every two hours and that the spots in Maggie Peters's throat must
be watched.</p>
<p>Here we are back on our old standing, and positively I don't know but what
I dreamed that one minute in the night!</p>
<p>But it would be a piquant situation, wouldn't it, if Sandy and I should
discover that we were falling in love with each other, he with a perfectly
good wife in the insane asylum and I with an outraged fiance in
Washington? I don't know but what the wisest thing for me to do is to
resign at once and take myself home, where I can placidly settle down to a
few months of embroidering "S McB" on table-cloths, like any other
respectable engaged girl.</p>
<p>I repeat very firmly that this letter isn't for Jervis's consumption. Tear
it into little pieces and scatter them in the Caribbean.</p>
<p>S.</p>
<p>January 3.</p>
<p>Dear Gordon:</p>
<p>You are right to be annoyed. I know I'm not a satisfactory love letter
writer. I have only to glance at the published correspondence of Elizabeth
Barrett and Robert Browning to realize that the warmth of my style is not
up to standard. But you know already—you have known a long time—that
I am not a very emotional person. I suppose I might write a lot of such
things as: "Every waking moment you are in my thoughts." "My dear boy, I
only live when you are near." But it wouldn't be absolutely true. You
don't fill all my thoughts; 107 orphans do that. And I really am quite
comfortably alive whether you are here or not. I have to be natural. You
surely don't want me to pretend more desolation than I feel. But I do love
to see you,—you know that perfectly,—and I am disappointed
when you can't come. I fully appreciate all your charming qualities, but,
my dear boy, I CAN'T be sentimental on paper. I am always thinking about
the hotel chambermaid who reads the letters you casually leave on your
bureau. You needn't expostulate that you carry them next your heart, for I
know perfectly well that you don't.</p>
<p>Forgive me for that last letter if it hurt your feelings. Since I came to
this asylum I am extremely touchy on the subject of drink. You would be,
too, if you had seen what I have seen. Several of my chicks are the sad
result of alcoholic parents, and they are never going to have a fair
chance all their lives. You can't look about a place like this without
"aye keeping up a terrible thinking."</p>
<p>You are right, I am afraid, about its being a woman's trick to make a
great show of forgiving a man, and then never letting him hear the end of
it. Well, Gordon, I positively don't know what the word "forgiving" means.
It can't include "forgetting," for that is a physiological process, and
does not result from an act of the will. We all have a collection of
memories that we would happily lose, but somehow those are just the ones
that insist upon sticking. If "forgiving" means promising never to speak
of a thing again, I can doubtless manage that. But it isn't always the
wisest way to shut an unpleasant memory inside you. It grows and grows,
and runs all through you like a poison.</p>
<p>Oh dear! I really didn't mean to be saying all this. I try to be the
cheerful, carefree (and somewhat light-headed) Sallie you like best; but
I've come in touch with a great deal of REALNESS during this last year,
and I'm afraid I've grown into a very different person from the girl you
fell in love with. I'm no longer a gay young thing playing with life. I
know it pretty thoroughly now, and that means that I can't be always
laughing.</p>
<p>I know this is another beastly uncheerful letter,—as bad as the
last, and maybe worse,—but if you knew what we've just been through!
A boy—sixteen—of unspeakable heredity has nearly poisoned
himself with a disgusting mixture of alcohol and witch hazel. We have been
working three days over him, and are just sure now that he is going to
recuperate sufficiently to do it again! "It's a gude warld, but they're
ill that's in 't."</p>
<p>Please excuse that Scotch—it slipped out. Please excuse everything.</p>
<p>SALLIE.</p>
<p>January 11.</p>
<p>Dear Judy:</p>
<p>I hope my two cablegrams didn't give you too terrible a shock. I would
have waited to let the first news come by letter, with a chance for
details, but I was so afraid you might hear it in some indirect way. The
whole thing is dreadful enough, but no lives were lost, and only one
serious accident. We can't help shuddering at the thought of how much
worse it might have been, with over a hundred sleeping children in this
firetrap of a building. That new fire escape was absolutely useless. The
wind was blowing toward it, and the flames simply enveloped it. We saved
them all by the center stairs—but I'll begin at the beginning, and
tell the whole story.</p>
<p>It had rained all day Friday, thanks to a merciful Providence, and the
roofs were thoroughly soaked. Toward night it began to freeze, and the
rain turned to sleet. By ten o'clock, when I went to bed the wind was
blowing a terrible gale from the northwest, and everything loose about the
building was banging and rattling. About two o'clock I suddenly started
wide awake, with a bright light in my eyes. I jumped out of bed and ran to
the window. The carriage house was a mass of flames, and a shower of
sparks was sweeping over our eastern wing. I ran to the bathroom and
leaned out of the window. I could see that the roof over the nursery was
already blazing in half a dozen places.</p>
<p>Well, my dear, my heart just simply didn't beat for as much as a minute. I
thought of those seventeen babies up under that roof, and I couldn't
swallow. I finally managed to get my shaking knees to work again, and I
dashed back to the hall, grabbing my automobile coat as I ran.</p>
<p>I drummed on Betsy's and Miss Matthews' and Miss Snaith's doors, just as
Mr. Witherspoon, who had also been wakened by the light, came tumbling
upstairs three steps at a time, struggling into an overcoat as he ran.</p>
<p>"Get all the children down to the dining room, babies first," I gasped.
"I'll turn in the alarm."</p>
<p>He dashed on up to the third floor while I ran to the telephone—and
oh, I thought I'd never get Central! She was sound asleep.</p>
<p>"The John Grier Home is burning! Turn in the fire alarm and rouse the
village. Give me 505," I said.</p>
<p>In one second I had the doctor. Maybe I wasn't glad to hear his cool,
unexcited voice!</p>
<p>"We're on fire!" I cried. "Come quick, and bring all the men you can!"</p>
<p>"I'll be there in fifteen minutes. Fill the bathtubs with water and put in
blankets." And he hung up.</p>
<p>I dashed back to the hall. Betsy was ringing our fire bell, and Percy had
already routed out his Indian tribes in dormitories B and C.</p>
<p>Our first thought was not to stop the fire, but to get the children to a
place of safety. We began in G, and went from crib to crib, snatching a
baby and a blanket, and rushing them to the door, and handing them out to
the Indians, who lugged them downstairs. Both G and F were full of smoke,
and the children so dead asleep that we couldn't rouse them to a walking
state.</p>
<p>Many times during the next hour did I thank Providence—and Percy
Witherspoon—for those vociferous fire drills we have suffered
weekly. The twenty-four oldest boys, under his direction, never lost their
heads for a second. They divided into four tribes, and sprang to their
posts like little soldiers.</p>
<p>Two tribes helped in the work of clearing the dormitories and keeping the
terrified children in order. One tribe worked the hose from the cupola
tank until the firemen came, and the rest devoted themselves to salvage.
They spread sheets on the floor, dumped the contents of lockers and bureau
drawers into them, and bundled them down the stairs. All of the extra
clothes were saved except those the children had actually been wearing the
day before, and most of the staff's things. But clothes, bedding—everything
belonging to G and F went. The rooms were too full of smoke to make it
safe to enter after we had got out the last child.</p>
<p>By the time the doctor arrived with Luellen and two neighbors he had
picked up, we were marching the last dormitory down to the kitchen, the
most remote corner from the fire. The poor chicks were mainly barefooted
and wrapped in blankets. We told them to bring their clothes when we
wakened them, but in their fright they thought only of getting out.</p>
<p>By this time the halls were so full of smoke we could scarcely breathe. It
looked as though the whole building would go, though the wind was blowing
away from my west wing.</p>
<p>Another automobile full of retainers from Knowltop came up almost
immediately, and they all fell to fighting the fire. The regular fire
department didn't come for ten minutes after that. You see, they have only
horses, and we are three miles out, and the roads pretty bad. It was a
dreadful night, cold and sleety, and such a wind blowing that you could
scarcely stand up. The men climbed out on the roof, and worked in their
stocking feet to keep from slipping off. They beat out the sparks with wet
blankets, and chopped, and squirted that tankful of water, and behaved
like heroes.</p>
<p>The doctor meanwhile took charge of the children. Our first thought was to
get them away to a place of safety, for if the whole building should go,
we couldn't march them out of doors into that awful wind, with only their
night clothes and blankets for protection. By this time several more
automobiles full of men had come, and we requisitioned the cars.</p>
<p>Knowltop had providentially been opened for the week end in order to
entertain a house party in honor of the old gentleman's sixty-seventh
birthday. He was one of the first to arrive, and he put his entire place
at our disposal. It was the nearest refuge, and we accepted it
instantaneously. We bundled our twenty littlest tots into cars, and ran
them down to the house. The guests, who were excitedly dressing in order
to come to the fire, received the chicks and tucked them away into their
own beds. This pretty well filled up all the available house room, but Mr.
Reimer (Mr. Knowltop's family name) has just built a big new stucco barn,
with a garage hitched to it, all nicely heated, and ready for us.</p>
<p>After the babies were disposed of in the house, those helpful guests got
to work and fixed the barn to receive the next older kiddies. They covered
the floor with hay, and spread blankets and carriage robes over it, and
bedded down thirty of the children in rows like little calves. Miss
Matthews and a nurse went with them, administered hot milk all around, and
within half an hour the tots were sleeping as peacefully as in their
little cribs.</p>
<p>But meanwhile we at the house were having sensations. The doctor's first
question upon arrival had been:</p>
<p>"You've counted the children? You know they're all here?"</p>
<p>"We've made certain that every dormitory was empty before we left it," I
replied.</p>
<p>You see, they couldn't be counted in that confusion. Twenty or so of the
boys were still in the dormitories, working under Percy Witherspoon to
save clothing and furniture, and the older girls were sorting over bushels
of shoes and trying to fit them to the little ones, who were running about
underfoot and wailing dismally.</p>
<p>Well, after we had loaded and despatched about seven car loads of
children, the doctor suddenly called out:</p>
<p>"Where's Allegra?"</p>
<p>There was a horrified silence. No one had seen her. And then Miss Snaith
stood up and SHRIEKED. Betsy took her by the shoulders, and shook her into
coherence.</p>
<p>It seems that she had thought Allegra was coming down with a cough, and in
order to get her out of the cold, had moved her crib from the fresh air
nursery into the store room—and then forgotten it.</p>
<p>Well, my dear, you know where the store room is! We simply stared at one
another with white faces. By this time the whole east wing was gutted and
the third-floor stairs in flames. There didn't seem a chance that the
child was still alive. The doctor was the first to move. He snatched up a
wet blanket that was lying in a soppy pile on the floor of the hall and
sprang for the stairs. We yelled to him to come back. It simply looked
like suicide; but he kept on, and disappeared into the smoke. I dashed
outside and shouted to the firemen on the roof. The store room window was
too little for a man to go through, and they hadn't opened it for fear of
creating a draft.</p>
<p>I can't describe what happened in the next agonizing ten minutes. The
third-floor stairs fell in with a crash and a burst of flame about five
seconds after the doctor passed over them. We had given him up for lost
when a shout went up from the crowd on the lawn, and he appeared for an
instant at one of those dormer windows in the attic, and called for the
firemen to put up a ladder. Then he disappeared, and it seemed to us that
they'd never get that ladder in place; but they finally did, and two men
went up. The opening of the window had created a draft, and they were
almost overpowered by the volume of smoke that burst out at the top. After
an eternity the doctor appeared again with a white bundle in his arms. He
passed it out to the men, and then he staggered back and dropped out of
sight!</p>
<p>I don't know what happened for the next few minutes; I turned away and
shut my eyes. Somehow or other they got him out and halfway down the
ladder, and then they let him slip. You see, he was unconscious from all
the smoke he'd swallowed, and the ladder was slippery with ice and
terribly wobbly. Anyway, when I looked again he was lying in a heap on the
ground, with the crowd all running, and somebody yelling to give him air.
They thought at first he was dead. But Dr. Metcalf from the village
examined him, and said his leg was broken, and two ribs, and that aside
from that he seemed whole. He was still unconscious when they put him on
two of the baby mattresses that had been thrown out of the windows and
laid him in the wagon that brought the ladders and started him home.</p>
<p>And the rest of us, left behind, kept right on with the work as though
nothing had happened. The queer thing about a calamity like this is that
there is so much to be done on every side that you don't have a moment to
think, and you don't get any of your values straightened out until
afterward. The doctor, without a moment's hesitation, had risked his life
to save Allegra. It was the bravest thing I ever saw, and yet the whole
business occupied only fifteen minutes out of that dreadful night. At the
time, it was just an incident.</p>
<p>And he saved Allegra. She came out of that blanket with rumpled hair and a
look of pleased surprise at the new game of peek-a-boo. She was smiling!
The child's escape was little short of a miracle. The fire had started
within three feet of her wall, but owing to the direction of the wind, it
had worked away from her. If Miss Snaith had believed a little more in
fresh air and had left the window open, the fire would have eaten back.
But fortunately Miss Snaith does not believe in fresh air, and no such
thing happened. If Allegra had gone, I never should have forgiven myself
for not letting the Bretlands take her, and I know that Sandy wouldn't.</p>
<p>Despite all the loss, I can't be anything but happy when I think of the
two horrible tragedies that have been averted. For seven minutes, while
the doctor was penned in that blazing third floor, I lived through the
agony of believing them both gone, and I start awake in the night
trembling with horror.</p>
<p>But I'll try to tell you the rest. The firemen and the volunteers—particularly
the chauffeur and stablemen from Knowltop—worked all night in an
absolute frenzy. Our newest negro cook, who is a heroine in her own right,
went out and started the laundry fire and made up a boilerful of coffee.
It was her own idea. The non-combatants served it to the firemen when they
relieved one another for a few minutes' rest, and it helped.</p>
<p>We got the remainder of the children off to various hospitable houses,
except the older boys, who worked all night as well as any one. It was
absolutely inspiring to see the way this entire township turned out and
helped. People who haven't appeared to know that the asylum existed came
in the middle of the night and put their whole houses at our disposal.
They took the children in, gave them hot baths and hot soup, and tucked
them into bed. And so far as I can make out, not one of my one hundred and
seven chicks is any the worse for hopping about on drenched floors in
their bare feet, not even the whooping cough cases.</p>
<p>It was broad daylight before the fire was sufficiently under control to
let us know just what we had saved. I will report that my wing is entirely
intact, though a little smoky, and the main corridor is pretty nearly all
right up to the center staircase; after that everything is charred and
drenched. The east wing is a blackened, roofless shell. Your hated Ward F,
dear Judy, is gone forever. I wish that you could obliterate it from your
mind as absolutely as it is obliterated from the earth. Both in substance
and in spirit the old John Grier is done for.</p>
<p>I must tell you something funny. I never saw so many funny things in my
life as happened through that night. When everybody there was in extreme
negligee, most of the men in pajamas and ulsters, and all of them without
collars, the Hon. Cyrus Wykoff put in a tardy appearance, arrayed as for
an afternoon tea. He wore a pearl scarf pin and white spats! But he really
was extremely helpful. He put his entire house at our disposal, and I
turned over to him Miss Snaith in a state of hysterics; and her nerves so
fully occupied him that he didn't get in our way the whole night through.</p>
<p>I can't write any more details now; I've never been so rushed in the whole
of my life. I'll just assure you that there's no slightest reason for you
to cut your trip short. Five trustees were on the spot early Saturday
morning, and we are all working like mad to get affairs into some
semblance of order. Our asylum at the present moment is scattered over the
entire township; but don't be unduly anxious. We know where all the
children are. None of them is permanently mislaid. I didn't know that
perfect strangers could be so kind. My opinion of the human race has gone
up.</p>
<p>I haven't seen the doctor. They telegraphed to New York for a surgeon, who
set his leg. The break was pretty bad, and will take time. They don't
think there are any internal injuries, though he is awfully battered up.
As soon as we are allowed to see him I will send more detailed
particulars. I really must stop if I am to catch tomorrow's steamer.</p>
<p>Good-by. Don't worry. There are a dozen silver linings to this cloud that
I'll write about tomorrow.</p>
<p>SALLIE.</p>
<p>Good heavens! here comes an automobile with J. F. Bretland in it!</p>
<p>THE JOHN GRIER HOME,</p>
<p>January 14.</p>
<p>Dear Judy:</p>
<p>Listen to this! J. F. Bretland read about our fire in a New York paper (I
will say that the metropolitan press made the most of details), and he
posted up here in a twitter of anxiety. His first question as he tumbled
across our blackened threshold was,</p>
<p>"Is Allegra safe?"</p>
<p>"Yes," said I.</p>
<p>"Thank God!" he cried, and dropped into a chair. "This is no place for
children," he said severely, "and I have come to take her home. I want the
boys, too," he added hastily before I had a chance to speak. "My wife and
I have talked it over, and we have decided that since we are going to the
trouble of starting a nursery, we might as well run it for three as for
one."</p>
<p>I led him up to my library, where our little family has been domiciled
since the fire, and ten minutes later, when I was called down to confer
with the trustees, I left J. F. Bretland with his new daughter on his knee
and a son leaning against each arm, the proudest father in the United
States.</p>
<p>So, you see, our fire has accomplished one thing: those three children are
settled for life. It is almost worth the loss.</p>
<p>But I don't believe I told you how the fire started. There are so many
things I haven't told you that my arm aches at the thought of writing them
all. Sterry, we have since discovered, was spending the week end as our
guest. After a bibulous evening passed at "Jack's Place," he returned to
our carriage house, climbed in through a window, lighted a candle, made
himself comfortable, and dropped asleep. He must have forgotten to put out
the candle; anyway, the fire happened, and Sterry just escaped with his
life. He is now in the town hospital, bathed in sweet oil, and painfully
regretting his share in our troubles.</p>
<p>I am pleased to learn that our insurance was pretty adequate, so the money
loss won't be so tremendous, after all. As for other kinds of loss, there
aren't any! Actually, nothing but gain so far as I can make out, barring,
of course, our poor smashed-up doctor. Everybody has been wonderful; I
didn't know that so much charity and kindness existed in the human race.
Did I ever say anything against trustees? I take it back. Four of them
posted up from New York the morning after the fire, and all of the local
people have been wonderful. Even the Hon. Cy has been so occupied in
remaking the morals of the five orphans quartered upon him that he hasn't
caused any trouble at all.</p>
<p>The fire occurred early Saturday morning, and Sunday the ministers in all
the churches called for volunteers to accept in their houses one or two
children as guests for three weeks, until the asylum could get its plant
into working order again.</p>
<p>It was inspiring to see the response. Every child was disposed of within
half an hour. And consider what that means for the future: every one of
those families is going to take a personal interest in this asylum from
now on. Also, consider what it means for the children. They are finding
out how a real family lives, and this is the first time that dozens of
them have ever crossed the threshold of a private house.</p>
<p>As for more permanent plans to take us through the winter, listen to all
this. The country club has a caddies' clubhouse which they don't use in
winter and which they have politely put at our disposal. It joins our land
on the back, and we are fitting it up for fourteen children, with Miss
Matthews in charge. Our dining room and kitchen still being intact, they
will come here for meals and school, returning home at night all the
better for half a mile walk. "The Pavilion on the Links" we are calling
it.</p>
<p>Then that nice motherly Mrs. Wilson, next door to the doctor's,—she
who has been so efficient with our little Loretta,—has agreed to
take in five more at four dollars a week each. I am leaving with her some
of the most promising older girls who have shown housekeeping instincts,
and would like to learn cooking on a decently small scale. Mrs. Wilson and
her husband are such a wonderful couple, thrifty and industrious and
simple and loving, I think it would do the girls good to observe them. A
training class in wifehood!</p>
<p>I told you about the Knowltop people on the east of us, who took in
forty-seven youngsters the night of the fire, and how their entire house
party turned themselves into emergency nursemaids? We relieved them of
thirty-six the next day, but they still have eleven. Did I ever call Mr.
Knowltop a crusty old curmudgeon? I take it back. I beg his pardon. He's a
sweet lamb. Now, in the time of our need, what do you think that blessed
man has done? He has fitted up an empty tenant house on the estate for our
babies, has himself engaged an English trained baby nurse to take charge,
and furnishes them with the superior milk from his own model dairy. He
says he has been wondering for years what to do with that milk. He can't
afford to sell it, because he loses four cents on every quart!</p>
<p>The twelve older girls from dormitory A I am putting into the farmer's new
cottage. The poor Turnfelts, who had occupied it just two days, are being
shoved on into the village. But they wouldn't be any good in looking after
the children, and I need their room. Three or four of these girls have
been returned from foster homes as intractable, and they require pretty
efficient supervision. So what do you think I've done? Telegraphed to
Helen Brooks to chuck the publishers and take charge of my girls instead.
You know she will be wonderful with them. She accepted provisionally. Poor
Helen has had enough of this irrevocable contract business; she wants
everything in life to be on trial!</p>
<p>For the older boys something particularly nice has happened; we have
received a gift of gratitude from J. F. Bretland. He went down to thank
the doctor for Allegra. They had a long talk about the needs of the
institution, and J. F. B. came back and gave me a check for $3000 to build
the Indian camps on a substantial scale. He and Percy and the village
architect have drawn up plans, and in two weeks, we hope, the tribes will
move into winter quarters.</p>
<p>What does it matter if my one hundred and seven children have been burned
out, since they live in such a kind-hearted world as this?</p>
<p>Friday.</p>
<p>I suppose you are wondering why I don't vouchsafe some details about the
doctor's condition. I can't give any first-hand information, since he
won't see me. However, he has seen everybody except me—Betsy,
Allegra, Mrs. Livermore, Mr. Bretland, Percy, various trustees. They all
report that he is progressing as comfortably as could be expected with two
broken ribs and a fractured fibula. That, I believe, is the professional
name of the particular leg bone he broke. He doesn't like to have a fuss
made over him, and he won't pose gracefully as a hero. I myself, as
grateful head of this institution, called on several different occasions
to present my official thanks, but I was invariably met at the door with
word that he was sleeping and did not wish to be disturbed. The first two
times I believed Mrs. McGurk; after that—well, I know our doctor! So
when it came time to send our little maid to prattle her unconscious
good-bys to the man who had saved her life, I despatched her in charge of
Betsy.</p>
<p>I haven't an idea what is the matter with the man. He was friendly enough
last week, but now, if I want an opinion from him, I have to send Percy to
extract it. I do think that he might see me as the superintendent of the
asylum, even if he doesn't wish our acquaintance to be on a personal
basis. There is no doubt about it, our Sandy is Scotch!</p>
<p>LATER.</p>
<p>It is going to require a fortune in stamps to get this letter to Jamaica,
but I do want you to know all the news, and we have never had so many
exhilarating things happen since 1876, when we were founded. This fire has
given us such a shock that we are going to be more alive for years to
come. I believe that every institution ought to be burned to the ground
every twenty-five years in order to get rid of old-fashioned equipment and
obsolete ideas. I am superlatively glad now that we didn't spend Jervis's
money last summer; it would have been intensively tragic to have had that
burn. I don't mind so much about John Grier's, since he made it in a
patent medicine which, I hear, contained opium.</p>
<p>As to the remnant of us that the fire left behind, it is already boarded
up and covered with tar-paper, and we are living along quite comfortably
in our portion of a house. It affords sufficient room for the staff and
the children's dining room and kitchen, and more permanent plans can be
made later.</p>
<p>Do you perceive what has happened to us? The good Lord has heard my
prayer, and the John Grier Home is a cottage institution!</p>
<p>I am,</p>
<p>The busiest person north of the equator,</p>
<p>S. McBRIDE.</p>
<p>THE JOHN GRIER HOME,</p>
<p>January 16.</p>
<p>Dear Gordon:</p>
<p>Please, please behave yourself, and don't make things harder than they
are. It's absolutely out of the question for me to give up the asylum this
instant. You ought to realize that I can't abandon my chicks just when
they are so terribly in need of me. Neither am I ready to drop this
blasted philanthropy. (You can see how your language looks in my
handwriting!)</p>
<p>You have no cause to worry. I am not overworking. I am enjoying it; never
was so busy and happy in my life. The papers made the fire out much more
lurid than it really was. That picture of me leaping from the roof with a
baby under each arm was overdrawn. One or two of the children have sore
throats, and our poor doctor is in a plaster cast. But we're all alive,
thank Heaven! and are going to pull through without permanent scars.</p>
<p>I can't write details now; I'm simply rushed to death. And don't come—please!
Later, when things have settled just a little, you and I must have a talk
about you and me, but I want time to think about it first.</p>
<p>S.</p>
<p>January 21.</p>
<p>Dear Judy:</p>
<p>Helen Brooks is taking hold of those fourteen fractious girls in a most
masterly fashion. The job is quite the toughest I had to offer, and she
likes it. I think she is going to be a valuable addition to our staff.</p>
<p>And I forgot to tell you about Punch. When the fire occurred, those two
nice women who kept him all summer were on the point of catching a train
for California—and they simply tucked him under their arms, along
with their luggage, and carried him off. So Punch spends the winter in
Pasadena and I rather fancy he is theirs for good. Do you wonder that I am
in an exalted mood over all these happenings?</p>
<p>LATER.</p>
<p>Poor bereaved Percy has just been spending the evening with me, because I
am supposed to understand his troubles. Why must I be supposed to
understand everybody's troubles? It's awfully wearing to be pouring out
sympathy from an empty heart. The poor boy at present is pretty low, but I
rather suspect—with Betsy's aid—that he will pull through. He
is just on the edge of falling in love with Betsy, but he doesn't know it.
He's in the stage now where he's sort of enjoying his troubles. He feels
himself a tragic hero, a man who has suffered deeply. But I notice that
when Betsy is about, he offers cheerful assistance in whatever work is
toward.</p>
<p>Gordon telegraphed today that he is coming tomorrow. I am dreading the
interview, for I know we are going to have an altercation. He wrote the
day after the fire and begged me to "chuck the asylum" and get married
immediately, and now he's coming to argue it out. I can't make him
understand that a job involving the happiness of one hundred or so
children can't be chucked with such charming insouciance. I tried my best
to keep him away, but, like the rest of his sex, he's stubborn. Oh dear, I
don't know what's ahead of us! I wish I could glance into next year for a
moment.</p>
<p>The doctor is still in his plaster cast, but I hear is doing well, after a
grumbly fashion. He is able to sit up a little every day and to receive a
carefully selected list of visitors. Mrs. McGurk sorts them out at the
door, and repudiates the ones she doesn't like.</p>
<p>Good-by. I'd write some more, but I'm so sleepy that my eyes are shutting
on me. (The idiom is Sadie Kate's.) I must go to bed and get some sleep
against the one hundred and seven troubles of tomorrow.</p>
<p>With love to the Pendletons,</p>
<p>S. McB.</p>
<p>January 22.</p>
<p>Dear Judy:</p>
<p>This letter has nothing to do with the John Grier Home. It's merely from
Sallie McBride.</p>
<p>Do you remember when we read Huxley's letters our senior year? That book
contained a phrase which has stuck in my memory ever since: "There is
always a Cape Horn in one's life that one either weathers or wrecks
oneself on." It's terribly true; and the trouble is that you can't always
recognize your Cape Horn when you see it. The sailing is sometimes pretty
foggy, and you're wrecked before you know it.</p>
<p>I've been realizing of late that I have reached the Cape Horn of my own
life. I entered upon my engagement to Gordon honestly and hopefully, but
little by little I've grown doubtful of the outcome. The girl he loves is
not the ME I want to be. It's the ME I've been trying to grow away from
all this last year. I'm not sure she ever really existed. Gordon just
imagined she did. Anyway, she doesn't exist any more, and the only fair
course both to him and to myself was to end it.</p>
<p>We no longer have any interests in common; we are not friends. He doesn't
comprehend it; he thinks that I am making it up, that all I have to do is
to take an interest in his life, and everything will turn out happily. Of
course I do take an interest when he's with me. I talk about the things he
wants to talk about, and he doesn't know that there's a whole part of me—the
biggest part of me—that simply doesn't meet him at any point. I
pretend when I am with him. I am not myself, and if we were to live
together in constant daily intercourse, I'd have to keep on pretending all
my life. He wants me to watch his face and smile when he smiles and frown
when he frowns. He can't realize that I'm an individual just as much as he
is.</p>
<p>I have social accomplishments. I dress well, I'm spectacular, I would be
an ideal hostess in a politician's household—and that's why he likes
me.</p>
<p>Anyway, I suddenly saw with awful distinctness that if I kept on I'd be in
a few years where Helen Brooks is. She's a far better model of married
life for me to contemplate just this moment than you, dear Judy. I think
that such a spectacle as you and Jervis is a menace to society. You look
so happy and peaceful and companionable that you induce a defenseless
onlooker to rush off and snap up the first man she meets—and he's
always the wrong man.</p>
<p>Anyway, Gordon and I have quarreled definitely and finally. I should
rather have ended without a quarrel, but considering his temperament,—and
mine, too, I must confess,—we had to go off in a big smoky
explosion. He came yesterday afternoon, after I'd written him not to come,
and we went walking over Knowltop. For three and a half hours we paced
back and forth over that windy moor and discussed ourselves to the
bottommost recesses of our beings. No one can ever say the break came
through misunderstanding each other!</p>
<p>It ended by Gordon's going, never to return. As I stood there at the end
and watched him drop out of sight over the brow of the hill, and realized
that I was free and alone and my own master well, Judy, such a sense of
joyous relief, of freedom, swept over me! I can't tell you; I don't
believe any happily married person could ever realize how wonderfully,
beautifully ALONE I felt. I wanted to throw my arms out and embrace the
whole waiting world that belonged suddenly to me. Oh, it is such a relief
to have it settled! I faced the truth the night of the fire when I saw the
old John Grier go, and realized that a new John Grier would be built in
its place and that I wouldn't be here to do it. A horrible jealousy
clutched at my heart. I couldn't give it up, and during those agonizing
moments while I thought we had lost our doctor, I realized what his life
meant, and how much more significant than Gordon's. And I knew then that I
couldn't desert him. I had to go on and carry out all of the plans we made
together.</p>
<p>I don't seem to be telling you anything but a mess of words, I am so full
of such a mess of crowding emotions. I want to talk and talk and talk
myself into coherence. But, anyway, I stood alone in the winter twilight,
and I took a deep breath of clear cold air, and I felt beautifully,
wonderfully, electrically free.</p>
<p>And then I ran and leaped and skipped down the hill and across the
pastures toward our iron confines, and I sang to myself. Oh, it was a
scandalous proceeding, when, according to all precedent, I should have
gone trailing home with a broken wing. I never gave one thought to poor
Gordon, who was carrying a broken, bruised, betrayed heart to the railroad
station.</p>
<p>As I entered the house I was greeted by the joyous clatter of the children
trooping to their supper. They were suddenly MINE, and lately, as my doom
became more and more imminent, they had seemed fading away into little
strangers. I seized the three nearest and hugged them hard. I have
suddenly found such new life and exuberance, I feel as though I had been
released from prison and were free. I feel,—oh, I'll stop,—I
just want you to know the truth. Don't show Jervis this letter, but tell
him what's in it in a decently subdued and mournful fashion.</p>
<p>It's midnight now, and I'm going to try to go to sleep. It's wonderful not
to be going to marry some one you don't want to marry. I'm glad of all
these children's needs, I'm glad of Helen Brooks, and, yes, of the fire,
and everything that has made me see clearly. There's never been a divorce
in my family, and they would have hated it.</p>
<p>I know I'm horribly egotistical and selfish; I ought to be thinking of
poor Gordon's broken heart. But really it would just be a pose if I
pretended to be very sorrowful. He'll find some one else with just as
conspicuous hair as mine, who will make just as effective a hostess, and
who won't be bothered by any of these damned modern ideas about public
service and woman's mission and all the rest of the tomfoolery the modern
generation of women is addicted to. (I paraphrase, and soften our young
man's heartbroken utterances.)</p>
<p>Good-by, dear people. How I wish I could stand with you on your beach and
look across the blue, blue sea! I salute the Spanish main.</p>
<p>ADDIO! SALLIE.</p>
<p>January 27.</p>
<p>Dear Dr. MacRae:</p>
<p>I wonder if this note will be so fortunate as to find you awake? Perhaps
you are not aware that I have called four times to offer thanks and
consolation in my best bed-side manner? I am touched by the news that Mrs.
McGurk's time is entirely occupied in taking in flowers and jelly and
chicken broth, donated by the adoring ladies of the parish to the
ungracious hero in a plaster cast. I know that you find a cap of homespun
more comfortable than a halo, but I really do think that you might have
regarded me in a different light from the hysterical ladies in question.
You and I used to be friends (intermittently), and though there are one or
two details in our past intercourse that might better be expunged, still I
don't see why we should let them upset our entire relationship. Can't we
be sensible and expunge them?</p>
<p>The fire has brought out such a lot of unexpected kindliness and charity,
I wish it might bring out a little from you. You see, Sandy, I know you
well. You may pose to the world as being gruff and curt and ungracious and
scientific and inhuman and S C O T C H, but you can't fool me. My newly
trained psychological eye has been upon you for ten months, and I have
applied the Binet test. You are really kind and sympathetic and wise and
forgiving and big, so please be at home the next time I come to see you,
and we will perform a surgical operation upon Time and amputate five
months.</p>
<p>Do you remember the Sunday afternoon we ran away, and what a nice time we
had? It is now the day after that.</p>
<p>SALLIE McBRIDE.</p>
<p>P.S. If I condescend to call upon you again, please condescend to see me,
for I assure you I won't try more than once! Also, I assure you that I
won't drip tears on your counterpane or try to kiss your hand, as I hear
one admiring lady did.</p>
<p>THE JOHN GRIER HOME,</p>
<p>Thursday.</p>
<p>Dear Enemy:</p>
<p>You see, I'm feeling very friendly toward you this moment. When I call you
"MacRae" I don't like you, and when I call you "Enemy" I do.</p>
<p>Sadie Kate delivered your note (as an afterthought). And it's a very
creditable production for a left-handed man; I thought at first glance it
was from Punch.</p>
<p>You may expect me tomorrow at four, and mind you're awake! I'm glad that
you think we're friends. Really, I feel that I've got back something quite
precious which I had carelessly mislaid.</p>
<p>S. McB.</p>
<p>P.S. Java caught cold the night of the fire and he has the toothache. He
sits and holds his cheek like a poor little kiddie.</p>
<p>Thursday, January 29.</p>
<p>Dear Judy:</p>
<p>Those must have been ten terribly incoherent pages I dashed off to you
last week. Did you respect my command to destroy that letter? I should not
care to have it appear in my collected correspondence. I know that my
state of mind is disgraceful, shocking, scandalous, but one really can't
help the way one feels. It is usually considered a pleasant sensation to
be engaged, but, oh, it is nothing compared with the wonderful
untrammeled, joyous, free sensation of being unengaged! I have had a
terribly unstable feeling these last few months, and now at last I am
settled. No one ever looked forward to spinsterhood more thankfully than
I.</p>
<p>Our fire, I have come to believe, was providential. It was sent from
heaven to clear the way for a new John Grier. We are already deep in plans
for cottages. I favor gray stucco, Betsy leans to brick, and Percy,
half-timber. I don't know what our poor doctor would prefer; olive green
with a mansard roof appears to be his taste.</p>
<p>With ten different kitchens to practice in, won't our children learn how
to cook! I am already looking about for ten loving house mothers to put in
charge. I think, in fact, I'll search for eleven, in order to have one for
Sandy. He's as pathetically in need of a little mothering as any, of the
chicks.</p>
<p>It must be pretty dispiriting to come home every night to the
ministrations of Mrs. McGur-rk.</p>
<p>How I do not like that woman! She has with complacent firmness told me
four different times that the dochther was ashleep and not wantin' to be
disturbed. I haven't set eyes on him yet, and I have just about finished
being polite. However, I waive judgment until tomorrow at four, when I am
to pay a short, unexciting call of half an hour. He made the appointment
himself, and if she tells me again that he is ashleep, I shall give her a
gentle push and tip her over (she's very fat and unstable) and, planting a
foot firmly on her stomach, pursue my way tranquilly in and up. Luellen,
formerly chauffeur, chambermaid, and gardener, is now also trained nurse.
I am eager to see how he looks in a white cap and apron.</p>
<p>The mail has just come, with a letter from Mrs. Bretland, telling how
happy they are to have the children. She inclosed their first photograph—all
packed in a governess cart, with Clifford proudly holding the reins, and a
groom at the pony's head. How is that for three late inmates of the John
Grier Home?</p>
<p>It's all very inspiring when I think of their futures, but a trifle sad
when I remember their poor father, and how he worked himself to death for
those three chicks who are going to forget him. The Bretlands will do
their best to accomplish that. They are jealous of any outside influence
and want to make the babies wholly theirs. After all, I think the natural
way is best—for each family to produce its own children, and keep
them.</p>
<p>Friday.</p>
<p>I saw the doctor today. He's a pathetic sight, consisting mostly of
bandages. Somehow or other we got our misunderstandings all made up. Isn't
it dreadful the way two human beings, both endowed with fair powers of
speech, can manage to convey nothing of their psychological processes to
each other?</p>
<p>I haven't understood his mental attitude from the first, and he even yet
doesn't understand mine. This grim reticence that we Northern people
struggle so hard to maintain! I don't know after all but that the
excitable Southern safety valve method is the best.</p>
<p>But, Judy, such a dreadful thing—do you remember last year when he
visited that psychopathic institution, and stayed ten days, and I made
such a silly fuss about it? Oh, my dear, the impossible things I do! He
went to attend his wife's funeral. She died there in the institution. Mrs.
McGurk knew it all the time, and might have added it to the rest of her
news, but she didn't.</p>
<p>He told me all about her, very sweetly. The poor man for years and years
has undergone a terrible strain, and I fancy her death is a blessed
relief. He confesses that he knew at the time of his marriage that he
ought not to marry her, he knew all about her nervous instability; but he
thought, being a doctor, that he could overcome it, and she was beautiful!
He gave up his city practice and came to the country on her account. And
then after the little girl's birth she went all to pieces, and he had to
"put her away," to use Mrs. McGurk's phrase. The child is six now, a
sweet, lovely little thing to look at, but, I judge from what he said,
quite abnormal. He has a trained nurse with her always. Just think of all
that tragedy looming over our poor patient good doctor, for he is patient,
despite being the most impatient man that ever lived!</p>
<p>Thank Jervis for his letter. He's a dear man, and I'm glad to see him
getting his deserts. What fun we are going to have when you get back to
Shadywell, and we lay our plans for a new John Grier! I feel as though I
had spent this past year learning, and am now just ready to begin. We'll
turn this into the nicest orphan asylum that ever lived. I'm so absurdly
happy at the prospect that I start in the morning with a spring, and go
about my various businesses singing inside.</p>
<p>The John Grier Home sends its blessing to the two best friends it ever
had!</p>
<p>ADDIO! SALLIE. THE JOHN GRIER HOME,</p>
<p>Saturday at half-past six in the morning!</p>
<p>My dearest Enemy:</p>
<p>"Some day soon something nice is going to happen."</p>
<p>Weren't you surprised when you woke up this morning and remembered the
truth? I was! I couldn't think for about two minutes what made me so
happy.</p>
<p>It's not light yet, but I'm wide awake and excited and having to write to
you. I shall despatch this note by the first to-be-trusted little orphan
who appears, and it will go up on your breakfast tray along with your
oatmeal.</p>
<p>I shall follow VERY PROMPTLY at four o'clock this afternoon. Do you think
Mrs. McGurk will ever countenance the scandal if I stay two hours, and no
orphan for a chaperon?</p>
<p>It was in all good faith, Sandy, that I promised not to kiss your hand or
drip tears on the counterpane, but I'm afraid I did both—or worse!
Positively, I didn't suspect how much I cared for you till I crossed the
threshold and saw you propped up against the pillows, all covered with
bandages, and your hair singed off. You are a sight! If I love you now,
when fully one third of you is plaster of Paris and surgical dressing, you
can imagine how I'm going to love you when it's all you!</p>
<p>But my dear, dear Robin, what a foolish man you are! How should I ever
have dreamed all those months that you were caring for me when you acted
so abominably S C O T C H? With most men, behavior like yours would not be
considered a mark of affection. I wish you had just given me a glimmering
of an idea of the truth, and maybe you would have saved us both a few
heartaches.</p>
<p>But we mustn't be looking back; we must look forward and be grateful. The
two happiest things in life are going to be ours, a FRIENDLY marriage and
work that we love.</p>
<p>Yesterday, after leaving you, I walked back to the asylum sort of dazed. I
wanted to get by myself and THINK, but instead of being by myself, I had
to have Betsy and Percy and Mrs. Livermore for dinner (already invited)
and then go down and talk to the children. Friday night-social evening.
They had a lot of new records for the victrola, given by Mrs. Livermore,
and I had to sit politely and listen to them. And, my dear—you'll
think this funny—the last thing they played was "John Anderson, my
jo John," and suddenly I found myself crying! I had to snatch up the
earnest orphan and hug her hard, with my head buried in her shoulder, to
keep them all from seeing.</p>
<p>John Anderson, my jo John,<br/>
We clamb the hill thegither,<br/>
And monie a canty day, John,<br/>
We've had wi' ane anither;<br/>
Now we maun totter down, John,<br/>
But hand in hand we'll go,<br/>
And sleep thegither at the foot,<br/>
John Anderson, my jo.<br/></p>
<p>I wonder, when we are old and bent and tottery, can you and I look back,
with no regrets, on monie a canty day we've had wi' ane anither? It's nice
to look forward to, isn't it—a life of work and play and little
daily adventures side by side with somebody you love? I'm not afraid of
the future any more. I don't mind growing old with you, Sandy. "Time is
but the stream I go a-fishing in."</p>
<p>The reason I've grown to love these orphans is because they need me so,
and that's the reason—at least one of the reasons—I've grown
to love you. You're a pathetic figure of a man, my dear, and since you
won't make yourself comfortable, you must be MADE comfortable.</p>
<p>We'll build a house on the hillside just beyond the asylum—how does
a yellow Italian villa strike you, or preferably a pink one? Anyway, it
won't be green. And it won't have a mansard roof. And we'll have a big
cheerful living room, all fireplace and windows and view, and no McGURK.
Poor old thing! won't she be in a temper and cook you a dreadful dinner
when she hears the news! But we won't tell her for a long, long time—or
anybody else. It's too scandalous a proceeding right on top of my own
broken engagement. I wrote to Judy last night, and with unprecedented
self-control I never let fall so much as a hint. I'm growing Scotch
mysel'!</p>
<p>Perhaps I didn't tell you the exact truth, Sandy, when I said I hadn't
known how much I cared. I think it came to me the night the John Grier
burned. When you were up under that blazing roof, and for the half hour
that followed, when we didn't know whether or not you would live, I can't
tell you what agonies I went through. It seemed to me, if you did go, that
I would never get over it all my life; that somehow to have let the best
friend I ever had pass away with a dreadful chasm of misunderstanding
between us—well—I couldn't wait for the moment when I should
be allowed to see you and talk out all that I have been shutting inside me
for five months. And then—you know that you gave strict orders to
keep me out; and it hurt me dreadfully. How should I suspect that you
really wanted to see me more than any of the others, and that it was just
that terrible Scotch moral sense that was holding you back? You are a very
good actor, Sandy. But, my dear, if ever in our lives again we have the
tiniest little cloud of a misunderstanding, let's promise not to shut it
up inside ourselves, but to TALK.</p>
<p>Last night, after they all got off,—early, I am pleased to say,
since the chicks no longer live at home,—I came upstairs and
finished my letter to Judy, and then I looked at the telephone and
struggled with temptation. I wanted to call up 505 and say good night to
you. But I didn't dare. I'm still quite respectably bashful! So, as the
next best thing to talking with you, I got out Burns and read him for an
hour. I dropped asleep with all those Scotch love songs running in my
head, and here I am at daybreak writing them to you.</p>
<p>Good-by, Robin lad, I lo'e you weel.</p>
<p>SALLIE. </p>
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