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 sed hunting stories.
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.
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.
"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."
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.
Sunday.
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.
The Laird o' Cockpen he's proud and he's great; His mind is ta'en up wi' the things of the state.
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.
Someday soon something nice is going to happen;
Be a good little girl and take this hint: Swallow with a smile your cod-liver ile,
And the first thing you know you will have a peppermint.
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.
To be continued.
S. McB.
Monday.
Dear Judy:
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
The library, though not the most cheerful room I have ever seen, still, for a man's house, is not so bad— 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.
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 sing 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.
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.
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!
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?
With love, as usual,
SALLIE.
Dear Judy:
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.
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.
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.
Yours truly,
S. McBRIDE.
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?
Tuesday, 4:27 P.M.
Dear Judy:
Your telegram came two minutes ago by telephone.
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.
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.
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.
There's no use writing any more; I'll wait and talk.
ADDIO. SALLIE.
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.
Wednesday.
Dear Enemy:
Your brief and dignified note of yesterday is at hand. I have never known anybody whose literary style resembled so exactly his spoken word.
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.
I am leaving tomorrow afternoon to spend four days in New York.
Yours truly,
S. McBRIDE.
CHEZ THE PENDLETONS, New York. My dear Enemy:
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.
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.
I return to prison life next Monday at six o'clock.
Yours truly,
S. McBRIDE.
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.
THE JOHN GRIER HOME,
June 9.
Dear Judy:
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?
All the way back in the train, instead of occupying myself with two , 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.
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.
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.
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:
"Weel, weel, Miss Sallie McBride! I'm thinking it's ower time you came back to tak' the bit bairns off my hands."
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
Sandy accepted with flattering promptness. He likes to dine outside of the family vault.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
Punch has just been paying a social call, and during the course of it he lost three little tings an inch long. Sadie Kate recovered one of them from under the ase, 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 t and angleworms were not so portable. You never know what is going on in a perfectly respectable-looking child's pocket.
I had a beautiful visit in Casa Pendleton. Don't forget your promise to return it soon.
Yours as ever,
SALLIE.
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."
Tuesday.
Dear Enemy:
As I told you, I left an application for an accomplished nurse with the employment bureau of New York.
Wanted! A nurse maid with an ample lap suitable for the accommodation of seventeen babies at once.
She came this afternoon, and this is the fine figure of a woman that I drew!
We couldn't keep a baby from sliding off her lap unless we fastened him firmly with safety pins.
Please give Sadie Kate the magazine. I'll read it tonight and return it tomorrow.
Was there ever a more docile and obedient pupil than
S. McBRIDE?
Thursday. My dear Judy:
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.
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.
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 t or angleworms.
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.
"You don't furnish legal advice for nothing," say I to him. "Why should she furnish her trained services for nothing?"
"This is charitable work."
"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?"
"Fiddlesticks!" says he. "She's a woman, and her family ought to support her."
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.
Thursday night.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I warned them that they must not shrink from any profanity that might issue from his pretty baby lips.
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.
Friday.
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.
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 check, 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 eeping, 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.
Saturday.
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.
He and I have invented a new pastime: he talks Scotch, and I answer in Irish. Our conversations run like this:
"Good afthernoon to ye, docther. An' how's yer health the day?"
"Verra weel, verra weel. And how gas it wi' a' the bairns?"
"Shure, they're all av thim doin' foin."
"I'm gey glad to hear it. This saft weather is hard on folk. There's muckle sickness aboot the kintra."
"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?"
"Hoot, woman! I would na hae you fash yoursel', but a wee drap tea winna coom amiss."
"Whist! It's no thruble at all."
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.
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.
Yours as ever,
SALLIE.
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.
THE JOHN GRIER HOME,
Saturday.
Dear Gordon:
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!
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.
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?
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.
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 CHORES.
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.
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 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.
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.
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 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."
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.
I am at present,
S. McBRIDE,
Superintendent of the
John Grier Home.
Thursday.
Dear Enemy:
"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 as far removed as possible from the problems of the dependent child.
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.
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 Precox," 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 assemblage 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-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.
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 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.
"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. 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!
After five minutes' silent contemplation, Mrs. Livermore raised her eyes to mine.
"Yes, my dear, you need me."
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!
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.
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?"
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.
PLEASE discharge her before that day!
Yours,
SALLIE.
Friday.
Dear Judy:
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
Bairns are certain joy, but nae sma' care.
Yours ever,
SALLIE. P.S. Don't forget that you are coming to visit me next week.
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?
June 22. My dear Judy:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
Characters neatly remodeled. S. McBride.
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!
I sat and beamed upon my handiwork, for it's true, I've done it all through my frivolous example and the 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.
Good-by; and remember that we're expecting you on Friday.
SALLIE.
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.
Wednesday, June 24, 10 A.M. MRS. JERVIS PENDLETON.
Madam:
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?
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.
June 30. My dear Judy:
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.
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.
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.
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.
Your visit seems to have left me in a bry 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!
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.
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.
"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."
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.
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.
Good-by and come again.
SALLIE.
P.S. My children show a distressing tendency to draw out their entire bank accounts to buy candy.
Tuesday night. My dear Judy:
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.
When I asked for some parting medical instructions, he replied:
"Feed a cowld and hunger a colic and put nae faith in doctors."
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.
S. THE JOHN GRIER HOME,
Friday.
Dear Enemy:
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.
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.
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.
Do leave those insane people to their delusions, and come back to the John Grier Home, which needs you.
I am most fervent' Your friend and servant, S. McB.
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.
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