"'Tis the middle of night by the castle clock"--do you know where that
beautiful line of poetry comes from? "Cristabel," of English K. Mercy!
how I hated that course! You, being an English shark, liked it; but
I never understood a word that was said from the time I entered the
classroom till I left it. However, the remark with which I opened this
paragraph is true. It IS the middle of night by the mantelpiece clock,
so I'll wish you pleasant dreams. ADDIO!
SALLIE.
Tuesday.
Dear Enemy:
You doctored the whole house, then stalked past my library with your
nose in the air, while I was waiting tea with a plate of Scotch scones
sitting on the trivet, ordered expressly for you as a peace-offering.
If you are really hurt, I will read the Kallikak book; but I must tell
you that you are working me to death. It takes almost all of my energy
to be an effective superintendent, and this university extension course
that you are conducting I find wearing. You remember how indignant you
were one day last week because I confessed to having stayed up until one
o'clock the night before? Well, my dear man, if I were to accomplish all
the vicarious reading you require, I should sit up until morning every
night.
However, bring it in. I usually manage half an hour of recreation after
dinner, and though I had wanted to glance at Wells's latest novel, I
will amuse myself instead with your feeble-minded family.
Life of late is unco steep. Obligingly yours,
S. McB.
THE JOHN GRIER HOME,
April 17.
Dear Gordon:
Thank you for the tulips, likewise the lilies of the valley. They are
most becoming to my blue Persian bowls.
Have you ever heard of the Kallikaks? Get the book and read them up.
They are a two-branch family in New Jersey, I think, though their
real name and origin is artfully concealed. But, anyway,--and this is
true,--six generations ago a young gentleman, called for convenience
Martin Kallikak, got drunk one night and temporarily eloped with a
feeble-minded barmaid, thus founding a long line of feeble-minded
Kallikaks,--drunkards, gamblers, prostitutes, horse thieves,--a scourge
to New Jersey and surrounding States.
Martin later straightened up, married a normal woman, and founded a
second line of proper Kallikaks,--judges, doctors, farmers, professors,
politicians,--a credit to their country. And there the two branches
still are, flourishing side by side. You can see what a blessing it
would have been to New Jersey if something drastic had happened to that
feeble-minded barmaid in her infancy.
It seems that feeblemindedness is a very hereditary quality, and
science isn't able to overcome it. No operation has been discovered for
introducing brains into the head of a child who didn't start with them.
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.