Dear Enemy

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.