Cathedral P.O., Madras, India,
June 25th, 1925.
Dear Miss Turner,
Your letter of May 12th made me very happy. You are such a brick in the way you take time and trouble over us little folk scattered over the world. Each letter of yours stimulate me to greater effort to be loyal to my own who are now distributed all over South India. Therea re now fourteen of mine who have taken their degrees and all except two of them are teaching in Mission and government high schools in So. India. One of the two assisted me last year and will be married next month; the other is back now helping me.
I've had a great time trying to decide what work to give her. She will do the Intermediate Botany anyway; and I have decided now to give her the lectures in the Intermediate Zoölogy. There will be twenty-four in the first year class and I will share the lab work with her. That means that I can have the physiology back again. I haven't had it for the last two years because each time it was the one thing someone else was qualified to relieve me of, and I needed relief! This arrangement seems to me a good one for I can have my beloved physiology and still have some contact with my beloved beginners by taking a half of the big lab section. Then, too, Thaiammal will be a great help in the many jobs that arrise in connection with keeping the new labs in order.
Oh, the new building is going to be such a joy! We shall probably not be able to begin work in it the first week because it is still full of workmen, but we shall be in it soon! It is a beautiful thing, Miss Turner. My lab tables seem to me to be very nice. They are this shape but there isn't quite so great a tapering as I have indicated.
Each accommodates four students and beside each knee space is a microscope cupboard and two drawers. Since each will be used by two different students, everyone can have one drawer as a locker and I'll keep all the keys locked in a little key cupboard on the wall, to be open during lab hours. Keys never come back if they are allowed to wander loose! There are lots of sinks, and heaps of store-space both in the labs and in store rooms. There is a big light, airy museum room, & a lovely reading room. The plant physiology labs are truly glorious, but it remains to be seen how many mistakes I have made, everywhere. I do wish you could see my child for yourself.
Now, about this dysentery & my furlough. I wrote you about the former from the hills. Besides I had told D. Elizabeth to send that first letter about it on to you. Didn't she do it? I think I told you that the examination at the end of March was negative with regard to amoebic cysts, but I think I shall have another made soon to be doubly sure. My insides behaved very well all summer. I am so thankful that I am not to be barred from rice & curry & other hot things which are always offered in Indian houses & which Europeans, too, have frequently. Since I've come down there has been a little trouble again with excessive flatulence & I expect that I shall have to resort to wearing one of those pesky woollen cholera bands, or flannel knickers. These "chills" that chase one in the tropics are subtle things & they cause a lot of trouble. My Danish doctor couldn't say enough against the open chemises that ladies wear nowadays. He thinks much of their internal trouble (intestines & kidneys & bladder) comes from chills acquired because of that exposure. But it is a beastly hot country to be wearing anything else in!
I shall be entitled to a furlough in '26, April. But I want very much to spend the year '26-'27 in the country, to see Indian home life at close quarters, really get somewhere with the language, and to see something of other types of mission work. The college thoroughly approves the plan. It will only be a question of when I shall take the year. I want it then, so that after my year of study at home in '27-'28 I could come straight back to college with academic freshness. But it may not be wise to wait that extra year. I shall not decide the question just yet but will see whether I hold my own physically this year. So I might meet you in Stockholm after all! Would you visit Denmark with me?
Oh, there goes the mail bell & there's so much I want to say yet! So you are going to live in Brigham! I always did think it a crime that you weren't in one of the dormitories, though I should love to have you back in your own apartment when I come. I hope you will like it this year. Please tell me again about your work. I don't ever know how one "does basal metabolisms." Perhaps I shall find out when I get into physiology again this year.
Much love to you, Miss Turner dear,
from Eleanor.