Kodaikanal, Pulney Hills, South India,
May 27th, 1924.You dear Miss Turner,
I wish you had any idea of how good it felt to get your nice letter. The combination of that and the unexpected copy of the Faculty Play from you brought the same rush of gratitude and love and sense of unworthiness that came to me when you came with me to that doctor in Holyoke: and when you took the trouble to come to my room in Safford after my pneumonia spell, to counsel me on my future activities. Folks have always been, and are still being, so good to me. At those times when I feel most despairing of ever deserving it, I can only hope that somehow, some day, I may be able to pass some of it on to another person or persons.
You wrote to me once, when I was so torn between medicine and teaching, that teaching was "wonderfully repaying." At that time I could only guess at what you meant. But I think these two-and-a-half years here are beginning to open my vision to the possibilities of it. Probably the predominant feeling which closed the year was a s[...]iting of conscience that so often I have allowed the second best to pass for the best in my own efforts; and that I have failed to make the most of opportunitites in the cases of individual students. Often these faults have been due to sheer physical weariness and lack of hours in the day (or night!), but, alas! not always. However, there is the comfort that each year has been better than the preceding in those repects; and there have been some very bright spots this year - such as when one of my last year's girls came back and talked, very nicely, to our Natural Science Association; and when I went to visit the high school physiology class that one of my own Intermediate girls was teaching, and afterwards had her to tea with me and we talked as man to man, without that teacher-student chasm that I have felt so keenly here, about teaching, and college, and life in general. The having once sensed that feeling of clean and affectionate freedom and understanding with one of the girls, will, I believe, hearten me for all time in my relations with the others. The change in my idea of their ideas & those of India in general since my arrival in 1921 is very great; but it only makes me realize what a very long way I have yet to go in order really to understand their background and processes of thinking. I resent with you your friend's speaking of "we Chinese." There are very, very few of those Europeans who have won the love and confidence of Indians who would presume to speak of "we Indians," I am sure; and even those, I should guess, would leave it for their Indian friends to say for them.
June 8th
It looks as tho' this letter might never reach its destination! We are now sitting before a cozy wood fire on a crisply cool Sunday evening. We are five - Olive Sarber of Gary, Indiana, M. A. from Chicago, my colleague in Philosophy & Psychology; Doris Hitchcock with B.A. Honours in History from the University in London, my colleage in History [and] Principal of one of the large Girls' High Schools of Madras; Helen Greenfield of St. Andrews University, Scotland; and Margaret McDowall with her medical degree from Edinburgh [and] Surgeon in the first woman's hospital in Madras; and myself. It's a jolly and interesting bunch.
Mother and Father have gone to bed. They are seldom up after 8 P.M.! The 6th was Father's 80th birthday and we had such a nice celebration. I had asked in four families of friends, three American and one Danish, all of whom had children. Mother and I had worked out a series of very brief biographical sketches arranged in decades and had distributed them to the eight oldest of the children. I pinned papers with the decades on, '44-54, '54-64, etc. on each. We had a gorgeous cake with 80 candles and a huge one in the middle "to grow on." I brought it in unlighted, followed by the line of children. The youngest, aged five, said her wee say, and with a lighted candle she lighted ten of the candles, passing the taper on to the next. Each in turn did the same, the children in their excitement counting and in unison as each group of candles added its light to the others. They were so sweet and natural. After the 80th was lighted we all joined hands around it and sang a song to the tune of Yankee Doodle, of which the chorus ended
"Eighty candles burning - but
The big one's left to grow on!"After the last verse we all blew out the candles and then I lighted the big one which we left burning for the rest of the afternoon. It was really ever so pretty and father was greatly pleased.
We go down on the 24th and mother and father sail from Colombo on the 26th. It looks as tho' they would settle in Hillsdale, Michigan, because there is a cheap missionary house going begging there. It's very disappointing that they couldn't get one somewhere in the East because Julia is well-established in her home in Little Compton, R.I., and it would make the leave-taking at this end so much easier if there were the certainty that they were going to be near the rest of the family at that end. It's hard to believe that there is only a fornight left. Alas, the summer has not accomplished what I had hoped by way of getting acquainted We've had too many people living with us to make that easy.
June 10th.
This is positively the last installment! I write you so seldom that when I do get started I want to go on forever. I so wonder where you have decided to go next year. It is nice that you cna have the year, and I do hope that your previous work can be used as a starting point. Who is to carry on in your place - Hazeltine? Plans are simmering in my mind for study during my furlough, which will be in either '26 or '27. I'd like to do it abroad - at least some of it - and I'm most attracted to Copenhagen. Do you know anything about Zoölogy and Physiology there? I've not heard about the latter, but the Zoölogy sounds good to me, and I like Danish standards and ideals - of education, democracy and life in general. It's all a pipe-dream, of course, but it's nice to hope. Do you suppose there would be any possibility of a fellowship from Holyoke, to be used either in the U.S.A. or abroad? Alas, I've no Phi Bet' record behind me, but perhaps they would overlook things other than Zoölogy!
This summer I've had the privilege of being in a class led by a Dave, Dr. Larsen, who is probably the first missionary in India, for the study of Hindu philosophy. I'm glad I'm in a country where the people have centuries of thought and philosophy behind them, instead of among primitive people. It is illuminating to find how similar we are in our fundamental searchings and questionings; and alarming to our Christian complacency to realize that many of one's Hindu friends seem to be more Christian than many Christians. It makes one scurry around to find what, after all, there is in Christianity that can justify one's once-strong conviction that Christ is the way for all people. I can't say that I'm assured yet, but it helps to know that others who have fought the same difficulty are still very sympathetic with Hindu thought and yet strengthened in their conviction that it is only Christ who can satisfy their deepest searchings of these sincere thinkers. The naturalness with which they turn to and speak of matters religious is amazing and shaming to one accustomed to treat such subjects with our wetern reserve or banter. We have much that is fine to learn from India, surely.
Goodbye for now, Miss Turner. May you have a splendid summer, wherever you are. I hope it is in the nicest out-of-door place you can find, and how I should like to spend a part of it with you! I must stop and prepare a report for South India for the meeting of the International Federation of University Women in Stockholm.
Very much love to you, always,
Eleanor.