[Some paragraph marks added for ease of reading.]Mar. 13
Not doing any church today. I've ironed this morning and read the Transcript between times. I wasn't out yesterday when they were on sale so this is a borrowed paper, else I'd send you the account of Josephine Peabody Marks' play which has just been the one chosen out of 615 competing dramas for the $1500 prize offered by the Memorial Theatre in Stratford. It's to be produced May 5 over there. Of course it's said to be fine, and for my own ideas, seems to me she's a real poet. There is some over two columns about it in the paper - theme the Piper of Hamlin. If they can manage to get enough children and have the right kind of a piper's spell it ought to be both interesting and very attractive. The children are returned by the piper in the play. But it's quite exciting to be sure - her mother and sister right across the street. Wonder how many really big people competed.
Helen Bodwell came down from Andover yesterday to get my advice (ahem!) about graduate work. She wasn't any great biological light, but in spite of teaching five more more years in the grades she's kept up her interest and desire to teach biology which is rather interesting. I commended her plan to take courses rather than try research! She now thinks of Woods Hole this summer and the Columbia bunch of institutions next year.
Emma Longfellow's cousin & daughter called Friday evening, which same I greatly appreciated, for they live way in town. This rather elderly cousin is a woman of parts, unless I mistake, married to a no-account M.D.
But let me tell you of the Yerxa tea. I came home so as to array myself calmly and went at a proper time up the street. The door silently swung open from within, of course. It's a most elegant house, with big hospitable rooms and a fine hall. I wanted to look about but of course couldn't. When I came downstairs I happened to be at the tail of a procession so of course I had to talk with Miss Yerxa & Mrs. Cabot until somebody else came. Miss Y- is a dark handsome creature of perhaps 40 - "so glad to find a neighbor" - I expect to go to dinner at least weekly. It's rather surprising not to go today! Mrs. Cabot is tall, fair, rather gay and the society star decidedly. Both I think are former special students in Harvard Annex. Of course they asked about my work - and were vastly surprised to hear about it. I felt quite overcome, considering how little I'm doing, and yet I'm obliged to confess there was some fun in it.
Then I met Mrs. Briggs, who is a dear, a friendly woman with lovely brown eyes. Couldn't seem to get away from her for I knew nobody to call up and couldn't leave her alone. Finally one Mrs. Peabody appeared, a fair thing in a grand blue chiffon velvet gown, who talked (1) of her pair of horses (2) of her children's pony (3) of her electric run-about - not ostentatiously but naturally. Don't seem able to find out who she is - but she's somebody. Then after other little happenings I went to say farewell and met Miss Coes just coming, and also charming Mrs. Thorpe, one of the Longfellow daughters. This being my only glimpse of the inner Cambridge workings, I found it very interesting. Mrs. Briggs is the nice human one.
I blew up Dr. Porter mildly, and just don't know what to think. He was nice enough - but he thinks that instrument capable of fine work and I dont, except by some happy chance. Yesterday it performed better by reason of one change he suggested which makes better clamping - the mechanic put certain grooves in for me. Now I have proper respect for Dr. Porter's wisdom - he's wise in instruments as well as in physiology - and I'm inexperienced - but he owned up he hadn't done fine work with this thing and every feller who has has used most carefully exact apparatus. I'm getting more used to his spasmodic irritability - it's what lost him Dr. Cannon's professorship and made it necessary for them to create a new dep't for him. He isn't cross all the time by any means - but he is at times, and he's unreasonable. Probably having heard quite a few things in various ways, and seeing more, I'll go as far the other way as I have in blaming myself altogether when he came down on me. Of course I deserved a lot of it but not all, and it's not easy to discriminate, particularly when his kind of criticism was so new to me.
I've worked with various people I've had no use for e.g. at Northfield - Alice Wilcox - even Dr. Lillie at Chicago, but not his mixture. Now he knows enough to make it worth while to hang on, unless I get too mad. If he had given me, as he should have, something respectably workable, I could go on more by myself, but there's no way of getting on with his appliances except by frequent conference with him, and I don't enjoy 'em often. He's done the same thing by other people - and then half-way boasts that he finally had to do the work himself - that the women of 'em wept, and seem to have to weep every time they see him! Now he ought to be ashamed of not having selected his problems better or trained his students better so they could work alone.
Teachers are rare in this world, honey - and Dr. Porter isn't one, except by rare spells. And yet, given some new people in demonstration he can respond to the stimulus and be delightful - and say such valuable things. Of course the Cannon episode made him bitter - and it crops out at all sorts of times. Moral: make a careful effort not to fall into similar errors! I tell you, honey, if ever you catch me getting so I rub all my companions the wrong way you tell me about it! It's another case of Keith-i-ness. Just now I feel to grit my teeth and hang on to this bone! If only I could manage someway next year to see people enough it would be easier to keep a balance - the chemistry just saves my life this semester. Next year would be straight physiol - except for the variety of Dr. Cannon's seminar - which same was dandy yesterday. Dr. Tolin gave one paper. Oh, honey - his facial paralysis came from the cutting of the nerve when a cancer was taken out four or five years ago. The nurse who is with Mrs. Howes told me quite a bit about him from her having helped bring in two of his wife's babies. He's self-educated - a Chicago product - and a delight at home as in lab. The Mr. Bloor who works with him - a Ph.D. aspirant from Toronto - is the same type, I think. I wish I could meet these wives, somehow - I'd like to so much. Now I don't seem to care about going out to Dr. Porter's farm as he says periodically he's going to ask me to in the spring - except for the country of it and the seeing of the shop. I'm sorry for his wife - but perhaps he saves his irritability for his lab. Knowledge of the world is very interesting, honey.
Wrote to see if Grace Townsend knows anything about Rye or Gloucester regions. I don't think Hampton is a place to stay, honey - nor any other place that I can think of near Newburyport much as I'd like to be near you. I'm sure there are places near Gloucester if only I can find 'em.
Haven't heard from the fellowship yet. Applied for the Baltimore one. I can do it in half an hour now - write a letter at the first draft! And feel like a fool! Of course there's no chance at that. And I stiffened my back and asked Dr. Porter to write me a letter! You'd think to hear him ask periodically about the Boston one that he had helped me all he could - perhaps he did. I must be a trial to him - he tells me how far along he'd be if he were doing this work. Of course I'm slow - but what does he expect - "humming-birds"? And yet he's so nice by spells! Oh, darn.
The post-cards came and they're certainly interesting. I'll save 'em for you, honey.
This afternoon I'm going to hear Maurice Richardson lecture on Abdominal Emergencies. I want to look at that man. Wheeler, Castle and others are going to give some dandy Sunday lectures at the Bussey - wh. will be helpful in my cramming process. I've done quite a bit this last week. I wish I could work every evening, but about half of 'em I'm too dead sleepy. Now last night I kept at it well until eleven.
Goodbye, honey - I'm hoping you're having a good-time. Wish I knew where you are. You didn't mention how long you planned to stay in Leipzig.
Did I tell you that Wellesley societies are given up? Or rather made over into non-secret, open membership (to certain rank) affairs? That utilizes the houses, and is supposed to perpetuate and advance the literary side.