Daddy-Long-Legs and Dear Enemy (33 page)

“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.”

“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.”

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 to-day 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.

Privately, I don't believe there's one thing in heredity, provided you snatch the babies away before their eyes are opened. 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.

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!

SALLIE.

 

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 pink-eye.

 

 

May 16.

Three days of sunshine, and the J. G. H. is smiling.

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 cloud-bursts from the plateau on which they stand to the corn-field below. The Indians have resumed savage life, and their chief is back at his post.

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.

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 ginger-bread 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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

Reproachfully yours,
SALLIE MCBRIDE.

 

P.S. We have a child here whose father was lynched. Isn't that a piquant detail to have in one's history?

Tuesday.

What shall we do? Mamie Prout does not like prunes. This antipathy to a cheap and healthful food-stuff 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 noon-day hour with us and overlooks the morals of our charges. About one o'clock to-day 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.

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?

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.

“Sit there until I come back,” I said, and went out and closed the door.

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.

Returning at tea-time, 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.

“Mamie darling!” I cried in horror. “You haven't been here all this time?”

“Yes, ma'am,” said Mamie; “you told me to wait until you came back.”

That poor patient little thing was fairly swaying with weariness, but she never uttered a whimper.

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.

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.

Later.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Yours, as usual,
SALLIE.

 

 

Friday.

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!

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
²⁹
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.

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:

“Gee! ain't he got de hell of a mug?”

If you know a kind Christian family where I can place out a sweet little five-year boy, please communicate at once with

S. MCBRIDE,
Sup't John Grier Home.

 

 

I've never known anything like you two snails. You've only just reached Washington, and I have had my suit-case packed for days, ready to spend a rejuvenating week-end
chez vous.
Please hurry! I've languished in this asylum atmosphere as long as is humanely possible. I shall gasp and die if I don't get a change.

Yours,
on the point of suffocation,
S. McB.

 

 

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.

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 base-ball 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.

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!

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 régime 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!

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.

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 courtesies 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.