le feeble-minded Loretta Higgins (pardon the reference;
I know you don't like me to mention the feeble-minded), who is being
boarded out in a nice comfortable family, where she is learning to work.
Came back to tea and a conference with the doctor about sending a child
with tubercular glands to a sanatorium. Read an article on cottage
VERSUS congregate system for housing dependent children. (We do need
cottages! I wish you'd send us a few for a Christmas present.) And now
at nine o'clock I'm sleepily beginning a letter to you. Do you know many
young society girls who can point to such a useful day as that?

Oh, I forgot to say that I stole ten minutes from my accounts this
morning to install a new cook. Our Sallie Washington-Johnston, who
cooked fit for the angels had a dreadful, dreadful temper and terrorized
poor Noah, our super-excellent furnace man, to the point of giving
notice. We couldn't spare Noah. He's more useful to the institution than
its superintendent, and so Sallie Washington-Johnston is no more.

When I asked the new cook her name, she replied, "Ma name is Suzanne
Estelle, but ma friends call me Pet." Pet cooked the dinner tonight,
but I must say that she lacks Sallie's delicate touch. I am awfully
disappointed that you didn't visit us while Sallie was still here. You
would have taken away an exalted opinion of my housekeeping.

Drowsiness overcame me at that point, and it's now two days later.

Poor neglected Gordon! It has just occurred to me that you never got
thanked for the modeling clay which came two weeks ago, and it was
such an unusually intelligent present that I should have telegraphed my
appreciation. When I opened the box and saw all that nice messy putty
stuff, I sat down on the spot and created a statue of Singapore. The
children love it; and it is very good to have the handicraft side of
their training encouraged.

After a careful study of American history, I have determined that
nothing is so valuable to a future president as an early obligatory
unescapable performance of CHORES.

Therefore I have divided the daily work of this institution into a
hundred parcels, and the children rotate weekly through a succession of
unaccustomed tasks. Of course they do everything badly, for just as they
learn how, they progress to something new. It would be infinitely easier
for us to follow Mrs. Lippett's immoral custom of keeping each child
sentenced for life to a well-learned routine; but wh