Click here to Download Dear Enemy PDF Book by Jean Webster Language English having PDF Size 1.7 MB and No of Pages 116.
Your letter is here. I have read it twice, and with amazement. Do I understand that Jervis has given you, for a Christmas present, the making over of the John Grier Home into a model institution, and that you have chosen me to disburse the money? Me—I, Sallie McBride, the head of an orphan asylum!
Dear Enemy PDF Book by Jean Webster
| Name of Book | Dear Enemy |
| PDF Size | 1.7 MB |
| No of Pages | 116 |
| Language | English |
| Buy Book From Amazon | |
About Book – Dear Enemy PDF Book
My poor people, have you lost your senses, or have you become addicted to the use of opium, and is this the raving of two fevered imaginations? I am exactly as well fitted to take care of one hundred children as to become the curator of a zoo. And you offer as bait an interesting Scotch doctor?
My dear Judy,—likewise my dear Jervis,—I see through you! I know exactly the kind of family conference that has been held about the Pendleton fireside. “Isn’t it a pity that Sallie hasn’t amounted to more since she left college? She ought to be doing something useful instead of frittering her time away in the petty social life of Worcester.
| Click here to Download Dear Enemy PDF Book |
eflect her mind with some uplifting and absorbing occupation until the danger is past. Ha! I have it! We will put her in charge of the John Grier Home.”
Oh, I can hear him as clearly as if I were there! On the occasion of my last visit in your delectable household Jervis and I had a very solemn conversation in regard to (1) marriage, (2) the low ideals of politicians, (3) the frivolous, useless lives that society women lead.
For More PDF Book Click Below Links….!!!
The Damnation of Theron Ware PDF
The Arabian Nights Entertainments PDF
Please tell your moral husband that I took his words deeply to heart, and that ever since my return to Worcester I have been spending one afternoon a week reading poetry with the inmates of the Female Inebriate Asylum. My life is not so purposeless as it appears.
Also let me assure you that the politician is not dangerously imminent; and that, anyway, he is a very desirable politician, even though his views on tariff and single tax and trade unionism do not exactly coincide with Jervis’s. Your desire to dedicate my life to the public good is very sweet, but you should look at it from the asylum’s point of view.
Have you no pity for those poor defenseless little orphan children? I have, if you haven’t, and I respectfully decline the position which you offer. I shall be charmed, however, to accept your invitation to visit you in New York, though I must acknowledge that I am not very excited over the list of gaieties you have planned. Dear Enemy PDF Book
Please substitute for the New York Orphanage and the Foundling Hospital a few theaters and operas and a dinner or so. I have two new evening gowns and a blue and gold coat with a white fur collar. Betsy Kindred assisted in the rehabilitation of the Lippett’s chamber of horrors, and between us we have created a symphony in dull blue and gold.
Really and truly, it’s one of the loveliest rooms you’ve ever seen. The sight of it will be an artistic education to any orphan. New paper on the wall, new rugs on the floor (my own prized Persians expressed from Worcester by an expostulating family.
New casement curtains at my three windows, revealing a wide and charming view, hitherto hidden by Nottingham lace. A new big table, some lamps and books and a picture or so, and a real open fire. She had closed the fireplace because it let in air. I never realized what a difference artistic surroundings make in the peace of one’s soul. Dear Enemy PDF Book
I sat last night and watched my fire throw nice highlights on my new old fender, and purred with contentment. And I assure you it’s the first purr that has come from this cat since she entered the gates of the John Grier Home. But the refurnishing of the superintendent’s parlor is the slightest of our needs.
The children’s private apartments demand so much basic attention that I can’t decide where to begin. That dark north playroom is a shocking scandal, but no more shocking than our hideous dining room or our unventilated dormitories or our tubless lavatories.
If the institution is very saving, do you think it can ever afford to burn down this smelly old original building, and put up instead some nice, ventilated modern cottages? I cannot contemplate that wonderful institution at Hastings without being filled with envy. Dear Enemy PDF Book
It would be some fun to run an asylum if you had a plant like that to work with. But, anyway, when you get back to New York and are ready to consult the architect about remodeling, please apply to me for suggestions. Among other little details I want two hundred feet of sleeping porch running along the outside of our dormitories.
You see, it’s this way: our physical examination reveals the fact that about half of our children are aenemic—{aneamic}{anaemic} (Mercy! what a word!), and a lot of them have tubercular ancestors, and more have alcoholic. Their first need is oxygen rather than education. And if the sickly ones need it, why wouldn’t it be good for the well ones?
I should like to have every child, winter and summer, sleeping in the open air; but I know that if I let fall such a bomb on the board of trustees, the whole body would explode. Speaking of trustees, I have met up with the Hon. Cyrus Wykoff, and I really believe that I dislike him more than Dr. Robin MacRae or the kindergarten teacher or the cook. Dear Enemy PDF Book Download
I seem to have a genius for discovering enemies! Mr. Wykoff called on Wednesday last to look over the new superintendent. Having lowered himself into my most comfortable armchair, he proceeded to spend the day. He asked my father’s business, and whether or not he was well-to-do.
I told him that my father manufactured overalls, and that, even in these hard times, the demand for overalls was pretty steady. He seemed relieved. He approves of the utilitarian aspect of overalls. He had been afraid that I had come from the family of a minister or professor or writer, a lot of high thinking and no common sense.
Cyrus believes in common sense. And what had been my training for this position? That, as you know, is a slightly embarrassing question. But I produced my college education and a few lectures at the School of Philanthropy, also a short residence in the college settlement (I didn’t tell him that all I had done there was to paint the back hall and stairs. Dear Enemy PDF Book Download
Then I submitted some social work among my father’s employees and a few friendly visits to the Home for Female Inebriates. 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. Dear Enemy PDF Book Download
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. I have determined to try a new method of discipline that I don’t believe in the whole of his forlorn little life he has ever experienced. I am going to see what praise and encouragement and love will do. So, instead of scolding him about the jardiniere, I assumed that it was an accident.
I kissed him and told him not to feel bad; that I didn’t mind in the least. It shocked him into being quiet; he simply held his breath and stared while I wiped away his tears and sopped up the ink. The child just now is the biggest problem that the J. G. H. affords. Dear Enemy PDF Book Free
He needs the most patient, loving, individual care—a proper mother and father, likewise some brothers and sisters and a grandmother. But I can’t place him in a respectable family until I make over his language and his propensity to break things.
I separated him from the other children, and kept him in my room all the morning, Jane having removed to safe heights all destructible OBJETS D’ART. Fortunately, he loves to draw, and he sat on a rug for two hours, and occupied himself with colored pencils.
He was so surprised when I showed an interest in a red-and-green ferryboat, with a yellow flag floating from the mast, that he became quite profanely affable. Until then I couldn’t get a word out of him. In the afternoon Dr. MacRae dropped in and admired the ferryboat, while Punch swelled with the pride of creation. Dear Enemy PDF Book Free
Then, as a reward for being such a good little boy, the doctor took him out in his automobile on a visit to a country patient. Punch was restored to the fold at five o’clock by a sadder and wiser doctor. At a sedate country estate he had stoned the chickens, smashed a cold frame, and swung the pet Angora cat by its tail.
Then when the sweet old lady tried to make him be kind to poor pussy, he told her to go to hell. This is to supplement a night telegram which I sent you ten minutes ago. Fifty words not being enough to convey any idea of my emotions, I herewith add a thousand.
As you will know by the time you receive this, I have discharged the farmer, and he has refused to be discharged. Being twice the size of me, I can’t lug him to the gate and chuck him out. He wants a notification from the president of the board of trustees written in vigorous language on official paper in typewriting. Dear Enemy PDF Book Free
So, dear president of the board of trustees, kindly supply all of this at your earliest convenience. Here follows the history of the case: The winter season still being with us when I arrived and farming activities at a low ebb, I have heretofore paid little attention to Robert Sterry except to note on two occasions that his pigpens needed cleaning.
But today I sent for him to come and consult with me in regard to spring planting. Sterry came, as requested, and seated himself at ease in my office with his hat upon his head. I suggested as tactfully as might be that he remove it, an entirely necessary request, as little orphan boys were in and out on errands.
And “hats off in the house” is our first rule in masculine deportment. Sterry complied with my request, and stiffened himself to be against whatever I might desire. I proceeded to the subject in hand, namely, that the diet of the John Grier Home in the year to come is to consist less exclusively of potatoes. Dear Enemy PDF Book Free
At which our farmer grunted in the manner of the Hon. Cyrus Wykoff, only it was a less ethereal and gentlemanly grunt than a trustee permits himself. I enumerated corn and beans and onions and peas and tomatoes and beets and carrots and turnips as desirable substitutes.
Percy de Forest Witherspoon is still faithful to his little followers, though I am so afraid he will get tired that I urge him to take frequent vacations. He has not only been faithful himself, but has brought in recruits. He has large social connections in the neighborhood, and last Saturday evening he introduced two friends.
Nice men who sat around the campfire and swapped hunting stories. One of them was just back from around the world, and told hair-raising anecdotes of the head hunters of Sarawak, a narrow pink country on the top of Borneo. My little braves pant to grow up and get to Sarawak, and go out on the war-path after head hunters. Dear Enemy PDF Book Free
Every encyclopedia in this institution has been consulted, and there isn’t a boy here who cannot tell you the history, manners, climate, flora, and fungi of Borneo. I only wish Mr. Witherspoon would introduce friends who had been head hunting in England, France, and Germany, countries not quite so CHIC as Sarawak, but more useful for general culture.
We have a new cook, the fourth since my reign began. I haven’t bothered you with my cooking troubles, but institutions don’t escape any more than families. The last is a negro woman, a big, fat, smiling, chocolate-colored creature from Souf Ca’lina. And ever since she came on honey dew we’ve fed! Her name is—what do you guess? SALLIE, if you please. I suggested that she change it.