Dear Enemy Part 11

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.

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.

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.

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,

S. McBRIDE,

Sup't John Grier Home.

Friday.

Dear Man of Science:

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?

We owe it to adopting parents not to saddle them with feeble-minded offspring.

You know, I'm tempted to ask you to prescribe a.r.s.enic 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?

S. McB.

Dear Gordon:

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?

You can't.

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:--

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.

I would write a respectable letter, but it's teatime, and I see that a guest approaches.

ADDIO!

SALLIE.

P.S. Don't you know some one who would like to adopt a desirable baby boy with seventeen nice new teeth?

April 20. My dear Judy:

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-gla.s.s-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 n.o.ble work and would be rewarded. I saw buns in her eye, and sat down and talked to her for half an hour.

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.

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.

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 b.a.l.l.s. 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.

Send, O best of trustees, the tubs in which to float them!

I am, as usual,

S. McBRIDE.

Tuesday. My dear Judy:

Spring must be lurking about somewhere; the birds are arriving from the South. Isn't it time you followed their example?

Society note from the BIRD O' Pa.s.sAGE NEWS:

"Mr. and Mrs. First Robin have returned from a trip to Florida. It is hoped that Mr. and Mrs. Jervis Pendleton will arrive shortly."

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?

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 inst.i.tution will buy their produce and pay in real money, though I foresee we shall be buried under a mountain of radishes.

I do so want to develop self-reliance and initiative in these children, two st.u.r.dy 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.

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.

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.

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!

9 P.M.

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.

I'm yours, as ever,

SALLIE.