92 N. Walnut St.,
East Orange, N.J.
September 8, 1916.My dear Miss Turner,
May I tell you, at the end of a summer when I have thought gratefully again and again of the discipline and inspiration, how very much I appreciate the course in Physiology which you gave last year.
You opened such wide vistas for us all - this course seems Education itself. However poorly the "scientific method" was appreciated - apprehended - still it pursues one from laboratory to kitchen sink - and down the church aisle. Agonies over the kymograph are excellent for the spirit.
When the relentless 12.35 bell rang, despite our apparent speed in disappearing, in loud conversation, from Williston, we all departed with a great feeling of awe. To most of us the revelation of the divinity of the paramoecium was like a proclamation of the unity of Nature and God - a strange, unspoken new consciousness - developing slowly - and yet shining through the diagrams in Peabody and the tracings and the smoked drum. Why! we looked through a microscope into Eternity!
But - in virtue of my position as chief cook and bottle washer at home this summer - a little knowledge on the subject of food value has led to a desire for much more - so that we at least substitute lemon juice for vinegar, and omit the pickles and pepper.
There was much for which - and therefore we grasped it the better - we were not "held responsible", and perhaps we learned even more than you might imagine from our benighted blue books! My mother broke down completely this last spring, and - though my knowledge is so small - yet there was much comfort which I could give her in explaining why nerve cells became exhausted when the blood composition is poor. Doctors seem to have a very ineffective method - sometimes - of trying to cure with pills and operations alone. If they could only give their patients a little truth, instead of failing to explain the causes. But of course it seems a hopeless task to tell people why - and yet they clutch at explanations in a pitifully unrewarded fashion - and seem to blame heaven - or reproach - because they cannot understand.
Pardon me for this long monotonous chant - but though I am pathetically "on the outside looking in" - devoted particularly to subjects and predicates, prose rhythm in Milton, and comedy in Meredith - yet there is a healthy harvest from the seeds sown last year - and new plants are still appearing. You have seen many better crops, but I thank you very much for mine - I am extremely grateful for them.
Very sincerely yours,
Laura Baer.
Mount Holyoke, 1917.