me to play a little? When I've worked all the summer I deserve
two weeks. You are awfully dog-in-the-mangerish.
However--I love you still, Daddy, in spite of all your faults.
Judy
3rd October
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
Back at college and a Senior--also editor of the Monthly.
It doesn't seem possible, does it, that so sophisticated a person,
just four years ago, was an inmate of the John Grier Home?
We do arrive fast in America!
What do you think of this? A note from Master Jervie directed
to Lock Willow and forwarded here. He's sorry, but he finds that
he can't get up there this autumn; he has accepted an invitation
to go yachting with some friends. Hopes I've had a nice summer
and am enjoying the country.
And he knew all the time that I was with the McBrides, for Julia
told him so! You men ought to leave intrigue to women; you haven't
a light enough touch.
Julia has a trunkful of the most ravishing new clothes--an evening
gown of rainbow Liberty crepe that would be fitting raiment for the
angels in Paradise. And I thought that my own clothes this year
were unprecedentedly (is there such a word?) beautiful. I copied
Mrs. Paterson's wardrobe with the aid of a cheap dressmaker,
and though the gowns didn't turn out quite twins of the originals,
I was entirely happy until Julia unpacked. But now--I live to see Paris!
Dear Daddy, aren't you glad you're not a girl? I suppose you think
that the fuss we make over clothes is too absolutely silly? It is.
No doubt about it. But it's entirely your fault.
Did you ever hear about the learned Herr Professor who regarded
unnecessary adornment with contempt and favoured sensible,
utilitarian clothes for women? His wife, who was an obliging
creature, adopted `dress reform.' And what do you think he did?
He eloped with a chorus girl.
Yours ever,
Judy
PS. The chamber-maid in our corridor wears blue checked gingham aprons.
I am going to get her some brown ones instead, and sink the blue
ones in the bottom of the lake. I have a reminiscent chill every
time I look at them.
17th November
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
Such a blight has fallen over my literary career. I don't know
whether to tell you or not, but I would like some sympathy--
silent sympathy, please; don't re-open the wound by referring to it
in your next letter.
I've been writing a book, all last winter in the evenings, and all
the summer when I wasn't teaching Latin to my two stupid children.
I just finished it before college opened and sent it to a publisher.
He kept it two months, and I was certain he was going to take it;
but yesterday morning an express parcel came (thirty cents due)
and there it was back again with a letter from the publisher, a very nice,
fatherly letter--but frank! He said he saw from the address that I
was still at college, and if I would accept some advice, he would
suggest that I put all of my energy into my lessons and wait until I
graduated before beginning to write. He enclosed his reader's opinion.
Here it is:
`Plot highly improbable. Characterization exaggerated.
Conversation unnatural. A good deal of humour but not always
in the best of taste. Tell her to keep on trying, and in time
she may produce a real book.'
Not on the whole flattering, is it, Daddy? And I thought I was
making a notable addition to American literature. I did truly.
I was planning to surprise you by writing a great novel before
I graduated. I collected the material for it while I was at
Julia's last Christmas. But I dare say the editor is right.
Probably two weeks was not enough in which to observe the manners
and customs of a great city.
I took it walking with me yesterday afternoon, and when I came
to the gas house, I went in and asked the engineer if I might borrow
his furnace. He politely opened the door, and with my own hands
I chucked it in. I felt as though I had cremated my only child!
I went to bed last night utterly dejected; I thought I was never
going to amount to anything, and that you had thrown away your
money for nothing. But what do you think? I woke up this morning
with a beautiful new plot in my head, and I've been going about
all day planning my characters, just as happy as I could be.
No one can ever accuse me of being a pessimist! If I had a husband
and twelve children swallowed by an earthquake one day, I'd bob
up smilingly the next morning and commence to look for another set.
Affectionately,
Judy
14th December
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
I dreamed the funniest dream last night. I thought I went into
a book store and the clerk brought me a new book named The Life
and Letters of Judy Abbott. I could see it perfectly plainly--
red cloth binding with a picture of the John Grier Home on the cover,
and my portrait for a frontispiece with, `Very truly yours, Judy Abbott,'
written below. But just as I was turning to the end to read the
inscription on my tombstone, I woke up. It was very annoying!
I almost found out whom I'm going to marry and when I'm going
to die.
Don't you think it would be interesting if you really could read the story
of your life--written perfectly truthfully by an omniscient author?
And suppose you could only read it on this condition: that you
would never forget it, but would have to go through life knowing
ahead of time exactly how everything you did would turn out,
and foreseeing to the exact hour the time when you would die.
How many people do you suppose would have the courage to read it
then? or how many could suppress their curiosity sufficiently
to escape from reading it, even at the price of having to live
without hope and without surprises?
Life is monotonous enough at best; you have to eat and sleep about
so often. But imagine how DEADLY monotonous it would be if nothing
unexpected could happen between meals. Mercy! Daddy, there's a blot,
but I'm on the third page and I can't begin a new sheet.
I'm going on with biology again this year--very interesting subject;
we're studying the alimentary system at present. You should see
how sweet a cross-section of the duodenum of a cat is under
the microscope.
Also we've arrived at philosophy--interesting but evanescent. I prefer
biology where you can pin the subject under discussion to a board.
There's another! And another! This pen is weeping copiously.
Please excuse its tears.
Do you believe in free will? I do--unreservedly. I don't agree
at all with the philosophers who think that every action is the
absolutely inevitable and automatic resultant of an aggregation
of remote causes. That's the most immoral doctrine I ever heard--
nobody would be to blame for anything. If a man believed in fatalism,
he would naturally just sit down and say, `The Lord's will be done,'
and continue to sit until he fell over dead.
I believe absolutely in my own free will and my own power to accomplish--
and that is the belief that moves mountains. You watch me become
a great author! I have four chapters of my new book finished
and five more drafted.
This is a very abstruse letter--does your head ache, Daddy?
I think we'll stop now and make some fudge. I'm sorry I can't
send you a piece; it will be unusually good, for we're going
to make it with real cream and three butter balls.
Yours affectionately,
Judy
PS. We're having fancy dancing in gymnasium class. You can see
by the accompanying picture how much we look like a real ballet.
The one at the end accomplishing a graceful pirouette is me--I mean
I.
26th December
My Dear, Dear, Daddy,
Haven't you any sense? Don't you KNOW that you mustn't give one girl
seventeen Christmas presents? I'm a Socialist, please remember;
do you wish to turn me into a Plutocrat?
Think how embarrassing it would be if we should ever quarrel!
I should have to engage a moving-van to return your gifts.
I am sorry that the necktie I sent was so wobbly; I knit it with my
own hands (as you doubtless discovered from internal evidence).
You will have to wear it on cold days and keep your coat buttoned
up tight.
Thank you, Daddy, a thousand times. I think you're the sweetest
man that ever lived--and the foolishest!
Judy
Here's a four-leaf clover from Camp McBride to bring you good luck
for the New Year.
9th January
Do you wish to do something, Daddy, that will ensure your
eternal salvation? There is a family here who are in awfully
desperate straits. A mother and father and four visible children--
the two older boys have disappeared into the world to make their
fortune and have not sent any of it back. The father worked in a
glass factory and got consumption--it's awfully unhealthy work--
and now has been sent away to a hospital. That took all their savings,
and the support of the family falls upon the oldest daughter,
who is twenty-four. She dressmakes for $1.50 a day (when she can
get it) and embroiders centrepieces in the evening. The mother
isn't very strong and is extremely ineffectual and pious.
She sits with her hands folded, a picture of patient resignation,
while the daughter kills herself with overwork and responsibility
and worry; she doesn't see how they are going to get through the
rest of the winter--and I don't either. One hundred dollars would
buy some coal and some shoes for three children so that they could
go to school, and give a little margin so that she needn't worry
herself to death when a few days pass and she doesn't get work.
You are the richest man I know. Don't you suppose you could spare
one hundred dollars? That girl deserves help a lot more than I
ever did. I wouldn't ask it except for the girl; I don't care
much what happens to the mother--she is such a jelly-fish.
The way people are for ever rolling their eyes to heaven and saying,
`Perhaps it's all for the best,' when they are perfectly dead sure
it's not, makes me enraged. Humility or resignation or whatever
you choose to call it, is simply impotent inertia. I'm for a more
militant religion!
We are getting the most dreadful lessons in philosophy--all of
Schopenhauer for tomorrow. The professor doesn't seem to realize
that we are taking any other subject. He's a queer old duck;
he goes about with his head in the clouds and blinks dazedly
when occasionally he strikes solid earth. He tries to lighten
his lectures with an occasional witticism--and we do our best
to smile, but I assure you his jokes are no laughing matter.
He spends his entire time between classes in trying to figure
out whether matter really exists or whether he only thinks it exists.
I'm sure my sewing girl hasn't any doubt but that it exists!
Where do you think my new novel is? In the waste-basket. I can
see myself that it's no good on earth, and when a loving author
realizes that, what WOULD be the judgment of a critical public?
Later
I address you, Daddy, from a bed of pain. For two days I've
been laid up with swollen tonsils; I can just swallow hot milk,
and that is all. `What were your parents thinking of not to have
those tonsils out when you were a baby?' the doctor wished to know.
I'm sure I haven't an idea, but I doubt if they were thinking much
about me.
Yours,
J. A.
Next morning
I just read this over before sealing it. I don't know WHY I cast
such a misty atmosphere over life. I hasten to assure you that I
am young and happy and exuberant; and I trust you are the same.
Youth has nothing to do with birthdays, only with ALIVEDNESS of spirit,
so even if your hair is grey, Daddy, you can still be a boy.
Affectionately,
Judy
12th Jan.
Dear Mr. Philanthropist,
Your cheque for my family came yesterday. Thank you so much!
I cut gymnasium and took it down to them right after luncheon,
and you should have seen the girl's face! She was so surprised
and happy and relieved that she looked almost young; and she's only
twenty-four. Isn't it pitiful?
Anyway, she feels now as though all the good things were coming together.
She has steady work ahead for two months--someone's getting married,
and there's a trousseau to make.
`Thank the good Lord!' cried the mother, when she grasped the fact
that that small piece of paper was one hundred dollars.
`It wasn't the good Lord at all,' said I, `it was Daddy-Long-Legs.'
(Mr. Smith, I called you.)
`But it was the good Lord who put it in his mind,' said she.
`Not at all! I put it in his mind myself,' said I.
But anyway, Daddy, I trust the good Lord will reward you suitably.
You deserve ten thousand years out of purgatory.
Yours most gratefully,
Judy Abbott
15th Feb.
May it please Your Most Excellent Majesty:
This morning I did eat my breakfast upon a cold turkey pie
and a goose, and I did send for a cup of tee (a china drink)
of which I had never drank before.
Don't be nervous, Daddy--I haven't lost my mind; I'm merely quoting
Sam'l Pepys. We're reading him in connection with English History,
original sources. Sallie and Julia and I converse now in the language
of 1660. Listen to this:
`I went to Charing Cross to see Major Harrison hanged,
drawn and quartered: he looking as cheerful as any man could
do in that condition.' And this: `Dined with my lady who is
in handsome mourning for her brother who died yesterday of spotted fever.'
Seems a little early to commence entertaining, doesn't it? A friend
of Pepys devised a very cunning manner whereby the king might pay
his debts out of the sale to poor people of old decayed provisions.
What do you, a reformer, think of that? I don't believe we're so bad
today as the newspapers make out.
Samuel was as excited about his clothes as any girl; he spent
five times as much on dress as his wife--that appears to have
