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.
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
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.