Sixty Apples a Day?

headmistressmcgonagall:

“Sometime after Spencer had passed away Katharine fell into a deep depression.  She seemed distant and had become a bit more eccentric.  She wasn’t herself you know.  She had made up this game where she believed she was doing good by stealing children from what she called “idiot parents”. Of course it was a horrible thing for her to do but she enjoyed it a great deal.  She used to say that it was better the child be left to raise it’s self then to be raised by a “nincompoop”.  She said it gave the kid character.  I asked her how she could do this without being arrested and she said, ‘There’s a method to it my dear. First I stake out my prey. Then I pretend as though something on a shelf has caught my eye and once the parent looks away, boom! I grab the child and run!  By the time those coppers have arrived I’m already gone.’  It sounds very unbelievable but knowing Kate it was probably true.  She was in great shape for a woman her age…as well as any woman not her age.” — Lauren Bacall, “By Myself and Then Some”

(via headmistressmcgonagall)