Het "John Grier Home
When twenty-three-year-old Sallie McBride receives a letter from her friend Judy requesting she take over as directress of the John Grier Home, an orphanage housing one hundred children, she responds with perfectly justified horror. She is wholly unsuited for the job, she insists, as qualified for managing a hundred orphans as she would be 'for the position of keeper in a zoological garden.' Yet somehow, through some conspiracy of matchmaking friends and a snowstorm that leaves her no choice but to stay, Sallie finds herself installed in the draughty old building with nothing but her wit and stubbornness to see her through. What follows is a delightfully combative education in responsibility. Sallie battles crumbling infrastructure, cantankerous staff, deeply ingrained institutional dysfunction, and, most challenging of all, one hundred children who have long since learned that kindness is temporary and abandonment is permanent. Her evolution from horrified newcomer to something approaching a real guardian makes for precisely the kind of warm, funny, deeply satisfying narrative that defined early 20th-century American women's fiction. The humor lands sharp, the emotional moments earn their weight, and Sallie's voice remains irresistibly alive across every page.
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“The more I study men, the more I realize that they are nothing in the world but boys grown too big to be spankable.””
— Jean Webster
“Good manners are not merely snobbish ornaments, as Mrs. Lippett's regime appeared to believe. They mean self-discipline and thought for others, and my children have got to learn them.””
— Jean Webster
“Aren't men funny? When they want to pay you the greatest compliment in their power, they naively tell you that you have a masculine mind. There is one compliment, incidentally, that I shall never be paying him. I cannot honestly say that he has a quickness of perception almost feminine.””
— Jean Webster
“The awful thing about a vacation is that the moment it begins your happiness is already clouded by its approaching end.””
— Jean Webster
“I stood alone in the winter twilight, and I took a deep breath of clear cold air, and I felt beautifully, wonderfully, electrically free””
— Jean Webster
“We all have a collection of memories that we would happily lose, but somehow those are just the ones that insist upon sticking.””
— Jean Webster
“The Lord has given you two hands and a brain and a big world to use them in. Use them well, and you will be provided for; use them ill, and you will want,””
— Jean Webster
“It's nice to look forward to, isn't it”
— Jean Webster
“You remember that illuminated text over the dining-room door--"The Lord Will Provide." We've painted it out, and covered the spot with rabbits. It's all very well to teach so easy a belief to normal children, who have a proper family and roof behind them; but a person whose only refuge in distress will be a park bench must learn a more militant creed than that.””
— Jean Webster
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Webster, Jean. Het "John Grier Home. Lex, lex-books.com/book/het-john-grier-home-3303c880-d1ca-4379-b8bf-2c9948852c25.Webster, J. (n.d.). Het "John Grier Home. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/het-john-grier-home-3303c880-d1ca-4379-b8bf-2c9948852c25Webster, Jean. Het "John Grier Home. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/het-john-grier-home-3303c880-d1ca-4379-b8bf-2c9948852c25.
