Dear Enemy [48]
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
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