I must say, however, that when I think about you, my imagination
has very little to work upon. There are just three things that
I know:
I. You are tall.
II. You are rich.
III. You hate girls.
I suppose I might call you Dear Mr. Girl-Hater. Only that's rather
insulting to me. Or Dear Mr. Rich-Man, but that's insulting
to you, as though money were the only important thing about you.
Besides, being rich is such a very external quality. Maybe you
won't stay rich all your life; lots of very clever men get smashed
up in Wall Street. But at least you will stay tall all your life!
So I've decided to call you Dear Daddy-Long-Legs. I hope you won't mind.
It's just a private pet name we won't tell Mrs. Lippett.
The ten o'clock bell is going to ring in two minutes. Our day is
divided into sections by bells. We eat and sleep and study by bells.
It's very enlivening; I feel like a fire horse all of the time.
There it goes! Lights out. Good night.
Observe with what precision I obey rules--due to my training
in the John Grier Home.
Yours most respectfully,
Jerusha Abbott
To Mr. Daddy-Long-Legs Smith
1st October
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
I love college and I love you for sending me--I'm very, very happy,
and so excited every moment of the time that I can scarcely sleep.
You can't imagine how different it is from the John Grier Home.
I never dreamed there was such a place in the world. I'm feeling
sorry for everybody who isn't a girl and who can't come here; I am
sure the college you attended when you were a boy couldn't have been
so nice.
My room is up in a tower that used to be the contagious ward
before they built the new infirmary. There are three other girls
on the same floor of the tower--a Senior who wears spectacles
and is always asking us please to be a little more quiet, and two
Freshmen named Sallie McBride and Julia Rutledge Pendleton.
Sallie has red hair and a turn-up nose and is quite friendly;
Julia comes from one of the first families in New York and hasn't
noticed me yet. They room together and the Senior and I have singles.
Usually Freshmen can't get singles; they are very scarce, but I got
one without even asking. I suppose the registrar didn't think it would
be right to ask a properly brought-up girl to room with a foundling.
You see there are advantages!
My room is on the north-west corner with two windows and a view.
After you've lived in a ward for eighteen years with twenty
room-mates, it is restful to be alone. This is the first chance
I've ever had to get acquainted with Jerusha Abbott. I think I'm
going to like her.
Do you think you are?
Tuesday
They are organizing the Freshman basket-ball team and there's
just a chance that I shall get in it. I'm little of course,
but terribly quick and wiry and tough. While the others are hopping
about in the air, I can dodge under their feet and grab the ball.
It's loads of fun practising--out in the athletic field in the
afternoon with the trees all red and yellow and the air full of
the smell of burning leaves, and everybody laughing and shouting.
These are the happiest girls I ever saw--and I am the happiest
of all!
I meant to write a long letter and tell you all the things I'm learning
(Mrs. Lippett said you wanted to know), but 7th hour has just rung,
and in ten minutes I'm due at the athletic field in gymnasium clothes.
Don't you hope I'll get in the team?
Yours always,
Jerusha Abbott
PS. (9 o'clock.)
Sallie McBride just poked her head in at my door. This is what
she said:
`I'm so homesick that I simply can't stand it. Do you feel that way?'
I smiled a little and said no; I thought I could pull through.
At least homesickness is one disease that I've escaped! I never heard
of anybody being asylum-sick, did you?
10th October
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
Did you ever hear of Michael Angelo?
He was a famous artist who lived in Italy in the Middle Ages.
Everybody in English Literature seemed to know about him, and the
whole class laughed because I thought he was an archangel. He sounds
like an archangel, doesn't he? The trouble with college is that you
are expected to know such a lot of things you've never learned.
It's very embarrassing at times. But now, when the girls talk about
things that I never heard of, I just keep still and look them up
in the encyclopedia.
I made an awful mistake the first day. Somebody mentioned
Maurice Maeterlinck, and I asked if she was a Freshman.
That joke has gone all over college. But anyway, I'm just
as bright in class as any of the others--and brighter than some of them!
Do you care to know how I've furnished my room? It's a symphony
in brown and yellow. The wall was tinted buff, and I've bought
yellow denim curtains and cushions and a mahogany desk (second hand
for three dollars) and a rattan chair and a brown rug with an ink
spot in the middle. I stand the chair over the spot.
The windows are up high; you can't look out from an ordinary seat.
But I unscrewed the looking-glass from the back of the bureau,
upholstered the top and moved it up against the window. It's just
the right height for a window seat. You pull out the drawers like
steps and walk up. Very comfortable!
Sallie McBride helped me choose the things at the Senior auction.
She has lived in a house all her life and knows about furnishing.
You can't imagine what fun it is to shop and pay with a real
five-dollar bill and get some change--when you've never had more than
a few cents in your life. I assure you, Daddy dear, I do appreciate
that allowance.
Sallie is the most entertaining person in the world--and Julia
Rutledge Pendleton the least so. It's queer what a mixture
the registrar can make in the matter of room-mates. Sallie thinks
everything is funny--even flunking--and Julia is bored at everything.
She never makes the slightest effort to be amiable. She believes
that if you are a Pendleton, that fact alone admits you to heaven
without any further examination. Julia and I were born to be enemies.
And now I suppose you've been waiting very impatiently to hear
what I am learning?
I. Latin: Second Punic war. Hannibal and his forces pitched camp
at Lake Trasimenus last night. They prepared an ambuscade for
the Romans, and a battle took place at the fourth watch this morning.
Romans in retreat.
II. French: 24 pages of the Three Musketeers and third conjugation,
irregular verbs.
III. Geometry: Finished cylinders; now doing cones.
IV. English: Studying exposition. My style improves daily
in clearness and brevity.
V. Physiology: Reached the digestive system. Bile and the pancreas
next time. Yours, on the way to being educated,
Jerusha Abbott
PS. I hope you never touch alcohol, Daddy? It does dreadful
things to your liver.
Wednesday
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
I've changed my name.
I'm still `Jerusha' in the catalogue, but I'm `Judy' everywhere else.
It's really too bad, isn't it, to have to give yourself the only
pet name you ever had? I didn't quite make up the Judy though.
That's what Freddy Perkins used to call me before he could
talk plainly.
I wish Mrs. Lippett would use a little more ingenuity about choosing
babies' names. She gets the last names out of the telephone book--
you'll find Abbott on the first page--and she picks the Christian
names up anywhere; she got Jerusha from a tombstone. I've always
hated it; but I rather like Judy. It's such a silly name.
It belongs to the kind of girl I'm not--a sweet little blue-eyed thing,
petted and spoiled by all the family, who romps her way through
life without any cares. Wouldn't it be nice to be like that?
Whatever faults I may have, no one can ever accuse me of having been
spoiled by my family! But it's great fun to pretend I've been.
In the future please always address me as Judy.
Do you want to know something? I have three pairs of kid gloves.
I've had kid mittens before from the Christmas tree, but never real
kid gloves with five fingers. I take them out and try them on every
little while. It's all I can do not to wear them to classes.
(Dinner bell. Goodbye.)
Friday
What do you think, Daddy? The English instructor said that my last
paper shows an unusual amount of originality. She did, truly.
Those were her words. It doesn't seem possible, does it,
considering the eighteen years of training that I've had? The aim
of the John Grier Home (as you doubtless know and heartily approve of)
is to turn the ninety-seven orphans into ninety-seven twins.
The unusual artistic ability which I exhibit was developed at an early
age through drawing chalk pictures of Mrs. Lippett on the woodshed door.
I hope that I don't hurt your feelings when I criticize the home
of my youth? But you have the upper hand, you know, for if I become
too impertinent, you can always stop payment of your cheques.
That isn't a very polite thing to say--but you can't expect me
to have any manners; a foundling asylum isn't a young ladies'
finishing school.
You know, Daddy, it isn't the work that is going to be hard in college.
It's the play. Half the time I don't know what the girls are
talking about; their jokes seem to relate to a past that every one
but me has shared. I'm a foreigner in the world and I don't understand
the language. It's a miserable feeling. I've had it all my life.
At the high school the girls would stand in groups and just look at me.
I was queer and different and everybody knew it. I could FEEL
`John Grier Home' written on my face. And then a few charitable
ones would make a point of coming up and saying something polite.
I HATED EVERY ONE OF THEM--the charitable ones most of all.
Nobody here knows that I was brought up in an asylum. I told
Sallie McBride that my mother and father were dead, and that a kind
old gentleman was sending me to college which is entirely true
so far as it goes. I don't want you to think I am a coward,
but I do want to be like the other girls, and that Dreadful Home
looming over my childhood is the one great big difference.
If I can turn my back on that and shut out the remembrance, I think,
I might be just as desirable as any other girl. I don't believe
there's any real, underneath difference, do you?
Anyway, Sallie McBride likes me!
Yours ever,
Judy Abbott
(Nee Jerusha.)
Saturday morning
I've just been reading this letter over and it sounds pretty
un-cheerful. But can't you guess that I have a special topic due
Monday morning and a review in geometry and a very sneezy cold?
Sunday
I forgot to post this yesterday, so I will add an indignant postscript.
We had a bishop this morning, and WHAT DO YOU THINK HE SAID?
`The most beneficent promise made us in the Bible is this,
"The poor ye have always with you." They were put here in order
to keep us charitable.'
The poor, please observe, being a sort of useful domestic animal.
If I hadn't grown into such a perfect lady, I should have gone up
after service and told him what I thought.
25th October
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
I'm in the basket-ball team and you ought to see the bruise on my
left shoulder. It's blue and mahogany with little streaks of orange.
Julia Pendleton tried for the team, but she didn't get in. Hooray!
You see what a mean disposition I have.
College gets nicer and nicer. I like the girls and the teachers
and the classes and the campus and the things to eat. We have
ice-cream twice a week and we never have corn-meal mush.
You only wanted to hear from me once a month, didn't you? And I've
been peppering you with letters every few days! But I've been so
excited about all these new adventures that I MUST talk to somebody;
and you're the only one I know. Please excuse my exuberance;
I'll settle pretty soon. If my letters bore you, you can always
toss them into the wastebasket. I promise not to write another till
the middle of November.
Yours most loquaciously,
Judy Abbott
15th November
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
Listen to what I've learned to-day.
The area of the convex surface of the frustum of a regular pyramid
is half the product of the sum of the perimeters of its bases
by the altitude of either of its trapezoids.
It doesn't sound true, but it is--I can prove it!
You've never heard about my clothes, have you, Daddy? Six dresses,
all new and beautiful and bought for me--not handed down from
somebody bigger. Perhaps you don't realize what a climax that marks
in the career of an orphan? You gave them to me, and I am very, very,
VERY much obliged. It's a fine thing to be educated--but nothing
compared to the dizzying experience of owning six new dresses.
Miss Pritchard, who is on the visiting committee, picked them out--
not Mrs. Lippett, thank goodness. I have an evening dress, pink mull
over silk (I'm perfectly beautiful in that), and a blue church dress,
and a dinner dress of red veiling with Oriental trimming (makes
me look like a Gipsy), and another of rose-coloured challis,
and a grey street suit, and an every-day dress for classes.
That wouldn't be an awfully big wardrobe for Julia Rutledge Pendleton,
perhaps, but for Jerusha Abbott--Oh, my!
I suppose you're thinking now what a frivolous, shallow little
beast she is, and what a waste of money to educate a girl?
But, Daddy, if you'd been dressed in checked ginghams all your life,
you'd appreciate how I feel. And when I started to the high school,
I entered upon another period even worse than the checked ginghams.
The poor box.
You can't know how I dreaded appearing in school in those miserable
