The Johns Hopkins Hospital August 7, 1917.
Lady dear,
It is good to have your letter. You are the salt of the earth. I wish you'd realize it.
Yes, I'll be glad when you get settled in the faculty house, & there is no more prospect of moving. The heat is so hard on your spirit, I know from past summers. It has been warm here, but the patients have not minded it much. You see they are southerners. But the children have suffered fearfully, & their lives are snuffed out easily. It goes to my heart to hear them cry at night, and in the daytime when they trudge by the clinic over the hot & dusty walk. They are not responsible for their lot in life. That's what makes their suffering more pathetic than that of any other person.
You ask about my vacation plans. I expect to leave here Aug. 18 & return Sept. 17th. I shall spend last two weeks in August at home. Mary must get a bit of a change, & it is quite impossible to fill her place by a stranger. Mother is so hard to get along with. Father & Augustus & I had planned to go up to N.Y. state for the first two weeks in September, but father as usual is yielding to mother's selfishness in not wanting him out of her sight. It is the greatest cross of my life to see him wearing himself out & making her worse because he refuses to recognize her mental condition & care for her properly. I shall stay at home the entire month if father will not leave. However that is immaterial. Were it not for him I should not take a vacation this year. I feel as keen & fit as I did a year ago. Hard, engrossing work is the greatest tonic in the world for me. The minute I stop I begin to get neurotic, have backaches & feel "all in." Worse than that I get depressed and hard to live with. This summer I've been running [?] 15 beds straight with some very satisfying results. For example I've got on her feet a woman of 55 who stayed in bed for 8 years just to be waited on. She is the worst I ever had. But it looks as if she had some of the selfishness knocked out of her. I am a strong believer in the individual's power to rise above the limitations of the body & constitutional make up. The modern tendency is to remove one's responsibility to God and the world by the group idea, economic conditions, heredity & even the climate. Are we lazy? then it is the heat or we are tired or overworked. Are we selfish & do we sin against ourselves, our offspring & other people? It is not our fault. Society is to blame for tempting us. Our maternal uncle did the same & we inherit it. How comfortable to be back in the arms of constitutional make up & enjoy ourself in being cussed. I have been listening to a brilliant Fifth Avenue preacher who has been suppplying here for the last five Sundays. His name is Robert Watson & he holds out at the Scotch Presby. Church in N.Y.C. Go and hear him sometime. He has all the right enthusiasm of the true Celt.
Ruby is doing well. Expects to be home by Sept. 1st, tho' will take her nurse. It will be about 2 yrs before she reeducates that foot to its old day's work.
Here's my love to you,