Dear Enemy

This is an awfully messy letter, but I'm dashing it off in three minutes

in order to catch you before you definitely engage that pleasant,

inefficient middle-aged person without a chin.

Please, kind lady and gentleman, don't do me out of me job! Let me stay

a few months longer. Just gimme a chance to show what I'm good for, and

I promise you won't never regret it.

S. McB.

J. G. H.,

Thursday afternoon.

Dear Judy:

I've composed a poem--a paean of victory.

Robin MacRae Smiled today.

It's the truth! S. McB.

THE JOHN GRIER HOME,

April 13.

Dear Judy:

I am gratified to learn that you were gratified to learn that I am going

to stay. I hadn't realized it, but I am really getting sort of attached

to orphans.

It's an awful disappointment that Jervis has business which will keep

you South so much longer. I am bursting with talk, and it is such a

laborious nuisance having to write everything I want to say.

Of course I am glad that we are to have the building remodeled, and I

think all of your ideas good, but I have a few extra good ones myself.

It will be nice to have the new gymnasium and sleeping-porches, but,

oh, my soul does long for cottages! The more I look into the internal

workings of an orphan asylum, the more I realize that the only type

of asylum that can compete with a private family is one on the cottage

system. So long as the family is the unit of society, children should be

hardened early to family life.

The problem that is keeping me awake at present is, What to do with the

children while we are being made over? It is hard to live in a house and

build it at the same time. How would it be if I rented a circus tent and

pitched it on the lawn?

Also, when we plunge into our alterations, I want a few guest rooms

where our children can come back when ill or out of work. The great

secret of our lasting influence in their lives will be our watchful care

afterward. What a terrible ALONE feeling it must give a person not to

have a family hovering in the background! With all my dozens of aunts

and uncles and mothers and fathers and cousins and brothers and sisters,

I can't visualize it. I'd be terrified and panting if I didn't have lots

of cover to run to. And for these forlorn little mites, somehow or other

the John Grier Home must supply their need. So, dear people, send me

half a dozen guest rooms, if you please.