Dear Friends:
Today opens a new chapter in our Household. I have as many misgivings as any of you as to how successful it will be. I only know that all of the loyal Householders will go valiantly along together, after the sudden loss of our leader, as she would have us do. And I know, too, that while any one of the 400 applicants might have done as well as or better than I as editor, not a one of us, regardless of talent or endeavor, could ever make a successor of the column without the continued support of all of you; without your help, your co-operation and your sympathy. For it is your column, not any editors. That is what makes it different from any others of its class. It has an unequaled spirit of friendliness and intimacy.
I don't know how I happened to be chosen from among so many. I know I wanted earnestly to have the chance to try. My husband and I began to take this paper when our children were not much more than babes in arms, because we wanted a paper that we could keep on taking after the children learned to read. We could not bear the thought of exposing their innocent minds to a paper where the headlines of crime and scandal overwhelmed all other news. We chose this paper as one that presented all the news in a wholesome manner, properly balanced in importance.
Came to Know Faith
Of course, it was not long after we began getting the paper before I found Faith's fascinating column, and from then on I did not miss an issue up to the day of her death. Having followed it so regularly, I felt bitterly broken at that abrupt tragedy. Like so many of the rest of you, I offered my services, not because I felt that I could take charge and swing the work with a grand gesture, but because the work needed to go on. Who ever took hold would need to start with a real desire to serve and grow into it. It was a magnificent tribute to the value of the Household that so many were willing to make the necessary sacrifices to help.
By some fate or other, the choice fell on me. I felt then that it would have been a relief not to have won! The magnitude of the task fairly staggered me. It began to look like an impossible sacrifice of privacy. It was with fear and trembling that I went in to the office for an all-day conference with the editor and the staff. But I met there such a cordial, friendly, helpful spirit, and found so many brave and cheerful letters that had come to the Household since Faith's death that it was like coming into the "shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land." I want to tell all of you that our paper is the product of exceptionally fine ideas. We can be proud to have a part in it. I came away from my first conference humble, for the work is vast; proud, because the service is great, and unafraid because you are with me.
It Is "Our" Column
Every one needs a means of self-expression. Artists use sculpture, paintings, music, and poetry; scientists use the laboratory. Some of us build bridges, houses and roads; some raise choice live stock and crops; some of us make homes out of houses and rear families Every one, I say, needs some means of expression This column is ours. I am going to pour myself into it, my hopes and ambitions, problems and achievements, even as I want you to do yours. You may write under a real or assumed name, but you can be perfectly free. We can in our column discuss big or little things, commonplace or noble, ridiculous, or sublime. I want to get acquainted with you and have you feel acquainted with me. I want to tell you, as the days go by, about my husband and little children, our new house, our garden and poultry, our work and play, so that you may know that I am really one of you, with the same mistakes and struggles and triumphs the rest of you had when you were at my stage in life, or will have when you reach that stage.
If something any of us write strikes an answering chord in your heart, please tell us while the reaction is warm within you. It is your chance to express yourself. Send in suggestions that have helped you, even though they seem trivial. They may be important to some of the rest of us. Ask for help in any household matter, even though you would be too timid to ask for it anywhere else Our circle is so big that you can surely find help even for the most unusual needs. Write to me freely and often. It will help and encourage me, and it will show me that, for Faiths sake, you are going to stand by until we get under way again. It will be in a way your tribute to Faith.
If There are Delays
If any of you have written since her death, or even shortly before that time, and have had no acknowledgment either through the paper or personal letter, please be patient just a little longer. Some of the material that I found among the Household mail will be a little out of season now, but I believe we will use it all any way, for this time, and, when we get straightened around, we will be more careful to get material printed in a timely order I will use all materials as fast as I can find room for it. If you are at all anxious about your inquiries, feel perfectly free to write again. there is a chance that some of the material will be overlooked when there is so much of it to be sorted at one time.
We must never forget that it was Faith's extraordinary personality that built the department into what it is. Without her scope of interest, her abundance of experience and her generosity of heart, it could not have become so great Now that she has gone, our loyalty and our gratitude induce us to "carry on," so that the glow of her life, which tinged may lives so richly, may linger and for a long time color our horizon.
A successor to Faith can only hope, in the beginning, to assume the routine office duties of the Household; work over the accumulated mail, sort and arrange the inquiries and helps But as we gradually grow accustomed to the change, and as I come, more and more into contact with all of your lives, I trust that I will be able to make a little place for myself in your hearts, and become, as Faith was, your counselor and friend.