[Some paragraph breaks added for ease of reading.]The Women's Christian College,
Cathedral P.O., Madras, India,
August 17th, 1924.Dear Miss Turner,
Your good letter came yesterday, and as usual stirred up in me a turmoil of thoughts, relating alike to past, present and future. Were it not for your letters I think I should quite forget that there was such a thing as progressive scientific thinking. It is such a temptation here to let oneself slump into the narrow horizon set by the University curriculum in science; and there is simply no time at all for investigation. When we get into our new building, as we hope to next July, I shall probably have an assistant, and then there may be time and also facilities for carrying on.
Although you didn't mean to be discouraging, your letter does make me acutely aware of what a back number [member?] I shall be when I return. The year I was at Wellesley I was very fortunate in having the help of Dr. Pulling who teaches Plant Physiology there, and through contact with him I began to realize what you emphasize now - the great need of physics and chemistry and mathematics as a groundwork for any biological work. How I have cursed myself since I left college, Miss Turner, for the way I flung away my opportunities in chemistry and physics! You perhaps remember my agonies over chemistry at the end of my sophomore year. They really were not caused by stupidity but by my own slackness through the first part of the year until I found myself floundering with no foundation. And I was not much better in physics as a senior! I don't believe you run into slackers very much in your courses, for you stimulate everyone to want to work; but if you do see girls who have a fair amount of intellect just wasting their opportunities and getting through on bluff and 11th hour cramming, tell them for me, please, how bitterly they will regret it afterwards. Truly zoölogy and physiology were the only courses into which I put my best effort; when I did well in English or Lit it was not because I had worked, but because it came easily, and I'm thoroughly ashamed of my career in those and every other department in which my name appeared.
Well, this is quite a confessional, but it will make you realize that although I have "taken" both physics and chemistry, I know very little about them. In Organic at Wellesley I worked and there I did get fairly keen about it and have some idea of what folks are talking about in that field. As to your suggestion that I might do some physical chemistry here before I go, I'm grateful, and will do whatever I can tho' I fear that won't be much. It will depend somewhat on what kind of a person comes to fill our chemistry position here. If it's a young thing like me she may not be able to help me much. There is a very good English chemist at the Men's Christian College here who would undoubtedly be willing to help me, even though I couldn't go over there to his lectures and lab.
I'm greatly torn between desire and duty for that furlough. At present my B.A. courses, that is the last two years, include only systematic Zoölogy. We have to go into minute detail of every group, and as you may imagine, it has meant much digging on my part. I feel as though I ought to do such a course as Wilson's Invertebrate at Columbia and a stiff vertebrate course in order to be better able to teach this stuff, but it seems a crime to waste a furlough year in work of that sort. Each year has been easier than the last, and possibly by 1926 I'll decide that I can do without it, but I don't know. Edith Coon and I have great hopes that in the reorganizing of the University that is now taking place here, there may also be a reorganizing of courses that will bring us more up-to-date. And if I can possibly manage it I shall put in a strong plea for physiology to be offered in the B.A. as well as in the Intermediate. It will be of much more use to these girls.
I was delighted to hear about Krogh at Copenhagen - but I hope he stays there until I come! I see a good deal of my Danish friends here and could gather quite a lot of Danish before starting, I think. Judging from their accounts my furlough salary would comfortably cover expenses in Denmark, which Edith Coon says it does not do in the U.S.A. The Danish educational standards seem to be much higher than ours so that I should probably find myself quite at the bottom of things but I'm sure it would be worth the candle. Where is it in England that physiology is so good? Cambridge is where I should like to go if it should turn out to be England. I've liked the Cambridge products whom I know here better than the Oxford ones.
Will you be working with Porter at Harvard? I hope you'll tell me what you're doing. I have wished much that I could do more study of metabolism in this climate. There are lots of things that I don't understand that are attributed to climate. Last year I was put on a small committee of Madras educational women to investigate the subject of diet in boarding schools. It was mighty interesting. You'd be amazed at the way tiny children manage to exist without a scrap of milk or egg in their diet. It's wicked - but to all our protests comes the reply - "We can't afford them". In one little school that I visited the children were living entirely on rice and seasonings. When I inquired of the headmistress why she didn't ever substitute dhal (a kind of lentil) or ragi (a very nutritious and cheap cereal) for some of the rice, I gathered the impression that it was a bit too much of a bother and that the children were happier with the rice because they were "filled". And she confessed to me that the school was actually making money on the children's fees, which amounted to an anna (two cents) a day! At that point I found it rather hard to be polite!
By now my mother and father must be in the U.S.A. There has not been time for me to hear since London. They are going to live in Atlantic City from Sept. to June, but they will visit my sister Julia, (Mrs. Fred Bodington) in Little Compton, R.I. for a bit. I wish you might meet them sometime. My mother is sweet, Miss Turner; you would love her. All the time I'm appreciating them tremendously, and yet quite unable to let them know it.
It's now Monday evening. I've just come in from a violent basket-ball game with the girls and am dripping. This last week has been beastly hot, but cooler weather will come in October. I'm working at the Tamil language in all my spare moments, expecting to take the first exam in November. Most missionaries are given from twelve to eighteen months entirely free for language study, but because our work is all in English we are given no time at all, and if we want it we squeeze it in on the side. Tamil is not a language that one can pick up as easily as French or German. But it's very interetsing - especially as it throws light on the thinking of South India.
Much love to you, kidlets, Miss Turner,
Eleanor.Miss Wild was here for a very few days last month. It was good to see someone from Holyoke. I hope she'll be able to tell you something about us here - letters are bound to be so feeble for giving impressions.
Yes, I read Page's "Letters" last summer. I don't know when I've been so thrilled over anything. A brilliant crippled Englishman had urged me to read them, saying, "This book will make you proud of your country, as it has made me proud of mine." And so it did. Yet my years here could also make me shudder with him (Page) over some of the American crudeness.