To honor the opening of the new room, we had ice-cream and cake for
dessert. It is such a pleasure to see these children anything but cowed
and apathetic, that I am offering prizes for boisterousness--to every
one but Sadie Kate. She drummed on the table with her knife and fork and
sang, "Welcome to dem golden halls."
You remember that illuminated text over the dining-room door--"The Lord
Will Provide." We've painted it out, and covered the spot with rabbits.
It's all very well to teach so easy a belief to normal children, who
have a proper family and roof behind them; but a person whose only
refuge in distress will be a park bench must learn a more militant creed
than that.
"The Lord has given you two hands and a brain and a big world to use
them in. Use them well, and you will be provided for; use them ill, and
you will want," is our motto, and that with reservations.
In the sorting process that has been going on I have got rid of eleven
children. That blessed State Charities Aid Association helped me dispose
of three little girls, all placed in very nice homes, and one to be
adopted legally if the family likes her. And the family will like her;
I saw to that. She was the prize child of the institution, obedient and
polite, with curly hair and affectionate ways, exactly the little girl
that every family needs. When a couple of adopting parents are choosing
a daughter, I stand by with my heart in my mouth, feeling as though I
were assisting in the inscrutable designs of Fate. Such a little thing
turns the balance! The child smiles, and a loving home is hers for life;
she sneezes, and it passes her by forever.
Three of our biggest boys have gone to work on farms, one of them out
West to a RANCH! Report has it that he is to become a cowboy and Indian
fighter and grizzly-bear hunter, though I believe in reality he is to
engage in the pastoral work of harvesting wheat. He marched off, a hero
of romance, followed by the wistful eyes of twenty-five adventurous
lads, who turned back with a sigh to the safely monotonous life of the
J. G. H.
Five other children have been sent to their proper institutions. One of
them is deaf, one an epileptic, and the other three approaching
idiocy. None of them ought ever to have been accepted here. This as an
educational institution, and we can't waste our valuable plant in caring
for defectives.
Orphan asylums have gone out of style. What I am going to develop is a
boarding school for the physical, moral, and mental growth of children
whose parents have not been able to provide for their care.