Tura, Assam. April 15, 1920.Dear Miss Turner,
Often have I wanted to write to thank you for your help to our Eleanor. She has frequently told us of many things you do
onto aid her, by advice, by sympathy, by love and example. We appreciate it greatly, and thank you deeply for it all. You can picture what it is to be on this side not able to advise or to know conditions until too late to help.Such friends as you give invaluable help
tto us parents at such times. It has filled our hearts with gratitude that so many of the Holyoke people were interested in and cared for Eleanor during her serious illness last year and again when she fell from the auto car. God bless you all.We try to pass on the kindness shown to ours there, in the many opportunities we have here. So we all are but links of a great chain binding all the peoples of the world together, all helping each other and each one hurt when any one falls to do his share. Your remark to Eleanor that teaching is wonderfully repaying, just meets my experience. As a teacher I was ever thinking this is for my pupils, whether I travelled, visited galleries of art works of machinery, manufactures, or studied Nature, there was ever the undercurrent of thot, for my pupils, whatever I saw. And these many years I have had the satisfaction of thinking of them scattered about the world doing the world's work in many spheres. Now it is the children who are taking up the duties of LIFE and one is so eager for them to be sure to decide aright. We are so thankful Eleanor has such tried friends as you and others at Mt. H.
What an influence you are exerting over the world in your many girls who go out yearly to take up work here and there! It is such a wonderful thot, such a glad thot, your influence ending only in ETERNITY, if indeed there be an end there. We see such wonderful spider webs here, great sheets of them, and it is very interesting to watch them for weeks together. An orange seed thrown thro one will make a tiny break wh. the spider hastens to repair. An orange peel thrown thro the web makes such a break as must bring dismay to the spider, but he hurries just the same to try to mend it. He succeeds wonderfully well, and yet he never gets it repaired so but that it shows.
I often wonder about the great mosaic of LIFE planned by the Creator. One of us fails to measure up to expectations; it is like a broken thread in the warp. Another commits a crime which is like an elephant stepping into the woof. If you have seen an elephant's track in the mud you will appreciate that! We had an elephant's foot give us as a present once; it weighed 112 lbs. Well, when any of us fails to do his part others have to fall into the breach and keep things going. If I
nfail here today, you feel it there, or some one in China or Sandwich Is. is hurt by it, and altho you may do your best to make good what I lack, it shows in the Divine plan, is that it?But I did not set out to preach! Letter writing is like talking, one comes to a sidepath which tempts her to wander thro the woods and see!
Indeed one would enjoy a deep dark woods today. Mercury above 90 and I am sitting with just pettycoat and short kimona on, dividing the time with a fan as I run the machine, as mistakes show. We are doing translation work, making books and papers year in and year out. If you have done any of it you know somewhat what it means. Our age has had such a superfluity of books and papers that few realize or stop to think of the work to make them! Especially the putting the Bible into a language so meager in expression as the Garo is. There are people who will say O, that is good enough let it go at that. But Eleanor's father is not that style; everything must be as nearly perfect as it is possible for man to make it, and he spends no end of time, spares himself not a bit to attain that end. We hope to be able by July to bind up all of the Old Test. thro Esther into one Vol. We have Psalms already bound alone. Then a long and a strong pull
lfor the reamining [sic] books. Hoping this has been your best year, and that the summer will bring needed relaxation, and again thanking you, I am very sincerely yours,Nettie Purssell Mason [Eleanor's mother]