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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.
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.
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.
Most cordially yours,
S. McB.
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.
Information prepared by the Project Gutenberg legal advisor 62
April 15. My dear Judy:
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:
Notice! To Parents Planning to Abandon their Children: Please do it before
they have reached their third year.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Information prepared by the Project Gutenberg legal advisor 63
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Information prepared by the Project Gutenberg legal advisor 64
lady tried to make him be kind to poor pussy, he told her to go to hell.
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.
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.
"'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
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