Dear Enemy [49]
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 book 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,
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 book 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,