Dear Enemy Part 20

Visited our little feeble-minded Loretta Higgins (pardon the reference; I know you don't like me to mention the feeble-minded), who is being boarded out in a nice comfortable family, where she is learning to work.

Came back to tea and a conference with the doctor about sending a child with tubercular glands to a sanatorium. Read an article on cottage VERSUS congregate system for housing dependent children. (We do need cottages! I wish you'd send us a few for a Christmas present.) And now at nine o'clock I'm sleepily beginning a letter to you. Do you know many young society girls who can point to such a useful day as that?

Oh, I forgot to say that I stole ten minutes from my accounts this morning to install a new cook. Our Sallie Was.h.i.+ngton-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 inst.i.tution than its superintendent, and so Sallie Was.h.i.+ngton-Johnston is no more.

When I asked the new cook her name, she replied, "Ma name is Suzanne Estelle, but ma friends call me Pet." Pet cooked the dinner tonight, but I must say that she lacks Sallie's delicate touch. I am awfully disappointed that you didn't visit us while Sallie was still here. You would have taken away an exalted opinion of my housekeeping.

Drowsiness overcame me at that point, and it's now two days later.

Poor neglected Gordon! It has just occurred to me that you never got thanked for the modeling clay which came two weeks ago, and it was such an unusually intelligent present that I should have telegraphed my appreciation. When I opened the box and saw all that nice messy putty stuff, I sat down on the spot and created a statue of Singapore. The children love it; and it is very good to have the handicraft side of their training encouraged.

After a careful study of American history, I have determined that nothing is so valuable to a future president as an early obligatory unescapable performance of Ch.o.r.eS.

Therefore I have divided the daily work of this inst.i.tution 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 a.s.sails me, I recall the dreary picture of Florence Henty, who polished the bra.s.s doork.n.o.bs of this inst.i.tution for seven years--and I sternly shove the children on.

I get angry every time I think of Mrs Lippett. She had exactly the point of view of a Tammany politician--no slightest sense of service to society. Her only interest in the John Grier Home was to get a living out of it.

Wednesday.

What new branch of learning do you think I have introduced into my asylum? Table manners!

I never had any idea that it was such a lot of trouble to teach children how to eat and drink. Their favorite method is to put their mouths down to their mugs and lap their milk like kittens. Good manners are not merely sn.o.bbish ornaments, as Mrs. Lippett's regime appeared to believe.

They mean self-discipline and thought for others, and my children have got to learn them.

That woman never allowed them to talk at their meals, and I am having the most dreadful time getting any conversation out of them above a frightened whisper. So I have inst.i.tuted the custom of the entire staff, myself included, sitting with them at the table, and directing the talk along cheerful and improving lines.

Also I have established a small, very strict training table, where the little dears, in relays, undergo a week of steady badgering. Our uplifting table conversations run like this:

"Yes, Tom, Napoleon Bonaparte was a very great man--elbows off the table. He possessed a tremendous power of concentrating his mind on whatever he wanted to have; and that is the way to accomplish--don't s.n.a.t.c.h, Susan; ask politely for the bread, and Carrie will pa.s.s it to you.--But he was an example of the fact that selfish thought just for oneself, without considering the lives of others, will come to disaster in the--Tom! Keep your mouth shut when you chew--and after the battle of Waterloo--let Sadie's cooky alone--his fall was all the greater because--Sadie Kate, you may leave the table. It makes no difference what he did. Under no provocation does a lady slap a gentleman."

Two more days have pa.s.sed; 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.

I am at present,

S. McBRIDE,

Superintendent of the

John Grier Home.

Thursday.

Dear Enemy:

"Time is but the stream I go a-fis.h.i.+ng in." Hasn't that a very philosophical, detached, Lord of the Universe sound? It comes from Th.o.r.eau, whom I am a.s.siduously 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.

Did you ever read old Henry David Th.o.r.eau? 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.

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.

I'm sorry to tear you away from that cheerful work on "Dementia Prec.o.x,"

but I'd be most obliged if you'd drop in here toward eight o'clock for a conference with the agent.

I am, as usual,

S. McBRIDE.

June 17. My dear Judy:

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.

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 a.s.semblage of children, our poor little Caroline would never have a chance.

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-ap.r.o.ned 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 un.o.bservant 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.

I must really get to work, without any further delay, upon the burning question of new clothes for our girls.

With the highest esteem, I am, D'r Ma'am, Y'r most ob'd't and h'mble serv't,

SAL. McBRIDE.

June 19th. My dearest Judy:

Listen to the grandest innovation of all, and one that will delight your heart.

NO MORE BLUE GINGHAM!

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.

"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."

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 mola.s.ses 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 b.u.t.toned 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.

"Now," said I, in triumph, "you see how much we need you. What can you do to make Sadie Kate beautiful?"

"Wash her," said Mrs. Livermore.

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.

Sadie Kate by nature is a beauty, a wild, dark, Gypsyish little colleen.