III
I CAME TO MY own country as a stranger. There was disadvantage in this, for I had no friends to guide me, nor any who knew in any way what I needed or how to help me. Yet there was advantage too. I knew what I wanted to find and I had learned from my life among the Chinese to look for essentials — that is, for human quality. I had to determine that I would not judge by money alone. If the right place cost a great deal, I would find some way to pay for it. I was young, I was strong, I was well educated. With those three gifts, I could provide somehow for the child.
I learned a great deal in the next year. It took me in many directions indeed. I had a long list of schools and institutions and I asked for others as I went. Of that intensive search it would be useless to tell every detail, but for those who must make a similar search it may be useful to know certain things.
First of all, I learned not to judge an institution by its grounds and equipment. Some of the finest and most expensively equipped schools were the worst, so far as the children were concerned. I remember one such place. I had spent a whole day with the headmistress. She showed me every detail of the splendidly planned grounds and houses. The children were well fed and well cared for, obviously. She had a resident doctor and a resident psychologist. The attendants for the children were neat and pleasant. There were an excellent school building and a good exhibit of handcraft, done by the children. There was a department of music. Every effort, she assured me, was made to develop the children to the height of their potentiality. She herself was competent, brisk, not unkind. I tried to think of my little girl beside her and could not quite imagine warmth between them, but of course the headmistress would not have much to do with any individual child. So well impressed was I as the day went on that I was beginning to think of the fabulous annual fee and to plan how it could be found. Evening came, and I sat on the wide porch, still with the headmistress, waiting for the bus that was to take me away. Then something happened which undid all the day.
A car stopped and a group of young girls in their teens, all children in the school, mounted the steps and crossed the porch. They greeted the headmistress very properly and she returned their greeting. I saw her watching them sharply.
Suddenly she called to them, “Girls, stop!”
They stopped, half frightened.
The headmistress said in her clear, peremptory way, “How often have I told you to hold up your heads? Go back to the steps and walk across the porch again.”
They obeyed instantly while she watched.
When they had gone into the house she turned to me with a complacent explanatory air. “It is part of my work to teach the girls how to enter a room properly and how to leave it. Feeble-minded people always walk with their heads hanging — it’s characteristic. I have to break them of it.”
“Why?” I asked.
She shrugged her shoulders. “These girls all come of good families, people in society,” she explained. “The parents don’t want to be ashamed of taking them about.” She laughed half contemptuously. “Why, I even have to teach them how to hold a hand at bridge and look as though they were playing!”
“Why do you do it?” I asked.
“I have to make my living,” she said honestly enough.
We parted on that, but I knew that I would never send my child to her handsome institution. I wanted to find a man or woman who thought of the children first. Of course we must all live, but it is amazing how easy it is to find bread when one does not put it first.
That experience taught me thereafter to look for the right person at the head of the institution. I knew that the employees would be no better than the head, therefore the head must be the best. I ceased to look at equipment and housing. There must of course be space for play, and ample sunshine and fresh air. I rejected the extreme north country because the season outside was so short. My child had been used to a semi-tropical air and much outdoor play. But beyond space and a minimum of cleanliness and care, I began to look for the right people, people who were warm and human.
I might say here that since I was not resident in my own country I belonged to no state and therefore state institutions were not easily open to me. Moreover, they had long waiting lists, and though I visited them, most of them were overcrowded and the children lived in strict routine. Oh, how my heart suffered for those big rooms of children sitting dully on benches, waiting!
“What are they waiting for?” I asked my guide one day.
“They aren’t waiting for anything,” he replied in surprise. “They’re just sitting. That’s all they want to do.”
“How do you know they wouldn’t like to do something more?” I asked.
He evaded the question. “We get them all up a couple of times a day and make them walk around the building.”
But I know the children were really waiting. They were waiting for something pleasant to happen to them. Perhaps they did not know they were waiting, but they were. I know now that there is no mind so dim that it does not feel pain and pleasure. These, too, were human beings — that, I perceived, was the important thing to understand, and many of those who cared for them did not understand it. The children who never grow are human beings and they suffer as human beings, inarticulately but deeply nevertheless. The human creature is always more than an animal.
That is the one thing we must never forget. He is forever more than a beast. Though the mind has gone away, though he cannot speak or communicate with anyone, the human stuff is there, and he belongs to the human family.
I saw this wonderfully exemplified in one state institution. When I first visited the place it was an abode of horror. The children, some young in body, some old, were apparently without any minds whatever. The average mental age was estimated at less than one year. They were herded together like dogs. They wore baglike garments of rough calico or burlap. Their food was given to them on the floor and they snatched it up. No effort was made to teach them toilet habits. The floors were of cement and were hosed two or three times a day. The beds were pallets on the floor, and filthy. There were explanations, of course. I was told that these children could be taught nothing, that they merely existed until they died. Worst of all to me was that there was not one thing of beauty anywhere, nothing for the children to look at, no reason for them to lift their heads or put out their hands.
Some years later I went back again. I had heard there was a new man in charge, a young man who was different. I found that he was different, and because he was, he had made the whole institution different. It was as crowded as ever, but wholly changed. It was like a home. There were gay curtain at the windows and bright linoleum on the floors. In the various rooms the children had been segregated, babies were with babies, and older children with their own kind. There were chairs and benches and the children sat on them. There were flowers in the windows and toys on the floor. The children were decent and even wore pretty clothes, and they were all clean. The old sickening smell was gone. There was a dining room, and there were tables, on which were dishes and spoons and mugs.
“Are the children now of a higher grade?” I asked the young man.
“No,” he said, smiling, “many of them are the same children.”
“But I was told they could not be taught.”
“They can all be taught something,” he replied. “When they can’t manage alone, someone helps them.”