poor-box dresses. I was perfectly sure to be put down in class
next to the girl who first owned my dress, and she would whisper
and giggle and point it out to the others. The bitterness
of wearing your enemies' cast-off clothes eats into your soul.
If I wore silk stockings for the rest of my life, I don't believe
I could obliterate the scar.
LATEST WAR BULLETIN!
News from the Scene of Action.
At the fourth watch on Thursday the 13th of November, Hannibal routed
the advance guard of the Romans and led the Carthaginian forces
over the mountains into the plains of Casilinum. A cohort of light
armed Numidians engaged the infantry of Quintus Fabius Maximus.
Two battles and light skirmishing. Romans repulsed with heavy losses.
I have the honour of being,
Your special correspondent from the front,
J. Abbott
PS. I know I'm not to expect any letters in return, and I've
been warned not to bother you with questions, but tell me, Daddy,
just this once--are you awfully old or just a little old? And are
you perfectly bald or just a little bald? It is very difficult
thinking about you in the abstract like a theorem in geometry.
Given a tall rich man who hates girls, but is very generous to one
quite impertinent girl, what does he look like?
R.S.V.P.
19th December
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
You never answered my question and it was very important.
ARE YOU BALD?
I have it planned exactly what you look like--very satisfactorily--
until I reach the top of your head, and then I AM stuck. I can't
decide whether you have white hair or black hair or sort of sprinkly
grey hair or maybe none at all.
Here is your portrait:
But the problem is, shall I add some hair?
Would you like to know what colour your eyes are? They're grey,
and your eyebrows stick out like a porch roof (beetling, they're
called in novels), and your mouth is a straight line with a tendency
to turn down at the corners. Oh, you see, I know! You're a snappy
old thing with a temper.
(Chapel bell.)
9.45 p.m.
I have a new unbreakable rule: never, never to study at night no matter
how many written reviews are coming in the morning. Instead, I read
just plain books--I have to, you know, because there are eighteen
blank years behind me. You wouldn't believe, Daddy, what an abyss
of ignorance my mind is; I am just realizing the depths myself.
The things that most girls with a properly assorted family and a home
and friends and a library know by absorption, I have never heard of.
For example:
I never read Mother Goose or David Copperfield or Ivanhoe or
Cinderella or Blue Beard or Robinson Crusoe or Jane Eyre or Alice
in Wonderland or a word of Rudyard Kipling. I didn't know that Henry
the Eighth was married more than once or that Shelley was a poet.
I didn't know that people used to be monkeys and that the Garden
of Eden was a beautiful myth. I didn't know that R. L. S. stood
for Robert Louis Stevenson or that George Eliot was a lady.
I had never seen a picture of the `Mona Lisa' and (it's true but you
won't believe it) I had never heard of Sherlock Holmes.
Now, I know all of these things and a lot of others besides,
but you can see how much I need to catch up. And oh, but it's fun!
I look forward all day to evening, and then I put an `engaged' on the
door and get into my nice red bath robe and furry slippers and pile
all the cushions behind me on the couch, and light the brass student
lamp at my elbow, and read and read and read one book isn't enough.
I have four going at once. Just now, they're Tennyson's poems and
Vanity Fair and Kipling's Plain Tales and--don't laugh--Little Women.
I find that I am the only girl in college who wasn't brought up on
Little Women. I haven't told anybody though (that WOULD stamp me
as queer). I just quietly went and bought it with $1.12 of my last
month's allowance; and the next time somebody mentions pickled limes,
I'll know what she is talking about!
(Ten o'clock bell. This is a very interrupted letter.)
Saturday
Sir,
I have the honour to report fresh explorations in the field of geometry.
On Friday last we abandoned our former works in parallelopipeds
and proceeded to truncated prisms. We are finding the road rough
and very uphill.
Sunday
The Christmas holidays begin next week and the trunks are up.
The corridors are so filled up that you can hardly get through,
and everybody is so bubbling over with excitement that studying is
getting left out. I'm going to have a beautiful time in vacation;
there's another Freshman who lives in Texas staying behind,
and we are planning to take long walks and if there's any ice--
learn to skate. Then there is still the whole library to be read--
and three empty weeks to do it in!
Goodbye, Daddy, I hope that you are feeling as happy as am.
Yours ever,
Judy
PS. Don't forget to answer my question. If you don't want
the trouble of writing, have your secretary telegraph. He can
just say:
Mr. Smith is quite bald,
or
Mr. Smith is not bald,
or
Mr. Smith has white hair.
And you can deduct the twenty-five cents out of my allowance.
Goodbye till January--and a merry Christmas!
Towards the end of
the Christmas vacation.
Exact date unknown
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
Is it snowing where you are? All the world that I see from my tower
is draped in white and the flakes are coming down as big as pop-corns.
It's late afternoon--the sun is just setting (a cold yellow colour)
behind some colder violet hills, and I am up in my window seat
using the last light to write to you.
Your five gold pieces were a surprise! I'm not used to receiving
Christmas presents. You have already given me such lots of things--
everything I have, you know--that I don't quite feel that I
deserve extras. But I like them just the same. Do you want to know
what I bought with my money?
I. A silver watch in a leather case to wear on my wrist and get me
to recitations in time.
II. Matthew Arnold's poems.
III. A hot water bottle.
IV. A steamer rug. (My tower is cold.)
V. Five hundred sheets of yellow manuscript paper. (I'm going
to commence being an author pretty soon.)
VI. A dictionary of synonyms. (To enlarge the author's vocabulary.)
VII. (I don't much like to confess this last item, but I will.)
A pair of silk stockings.
And now, Daddy, never say I don't tell all!
It was a very low motive, if you must know it, that prompted the
silk stockings. Julia Pendleton comes into my room to do geometry,
and she sits cross-legged on the couch and wears silk stockings
every night. But just wait--as soon as she gets back from vacation
I shall go in and sit on her couch in my silk stockings. You see,
Daddy, the miserable creature that I am but at least I'm honest;
and you knew already, from my asylum record, that I wasn't perfect,
didn't you?
To recapitulate (that's the way the English instructor begins every
other sentence), I am very much obliged for my seven presents.
I'm pretending to myself that they came in a box from my family
in California. The watch is from father, the rug from mother,
the hot water bottle from grandmother who is always worrying for fear
I shall catch cold in this climate--and the yellow paper from my
little brother Harry. My sister Isabel gave me the silk stockings,
and Aunt Susan the Matthew Arnold poems; Uncle Harry (little Harry is
named after him) gave me the dictionary. He wanted to send chocolates,
but I insisted on synonyms.
You don't object, do you, to playing the part of a composite family?
And now, shall I tell you about my vacation, or are you only interested
in my education as such? I hope you appreciate the delicate shade
of meaning in `as such'. It is the latest addition to my vocabulary.
The girl from Texas is named Leonora Fenton. (Almost as funny
as Jerusha, isn't it?) I like her, but not so much as Sallie McBride;
I shall never like any one so much as Sallie--except you. I must
always like you the best of all, because you're my whole family
rolled into one. Leonora and I and two Sophomores have walked 'cross
country every pleasant day and explored the whole neighbourhood,
dressed in short skirts and knit jackets and caps, and carrying shiny
sticks to whack things with. Once we walked into town--four miles--
and stopped at a restaurant where the college girls go for dinner.
Broiled lobster (35 cents), and for dessert, buckwheat cakes and maple
syrup (15 cents). Nourishing and cheap.
It was such a lark! Especially for me, because it was so awfully
different from the asylum--I feel like an escaped convict every
time I leave the campus. Before I thought, I started to tell
the others what an experience I was having. The cat was almost
out of the bag when I grabbed it by its tail and pulled it back.
It's awfully hard for me not to tell everything I know. I'm a very
confiding soul by nature; if I didn't have you to tell things to,
I'd burst.
We had a molasses candy pull last Friday evening, given by the
house matron of Fergussen to the left-behinds in the other halls.
There were twenty-two of us altogether, Freshmen and Sophomores and
juniors and Seniors all united in amicable accord. The kitchen is huge,
with copper pots and kettles hanging in rows on the stone wall--
the littlest casserole among them about the size of a wash boiler.
Four hundred girls live in Fergussen. The chef, in a white cap
and apron, fetched out twenty-two other white caps and aprons--
I can't imagine where he got so many--and we all turned ourselves
into cooks.
It was great fun, though I have seen better candy. When it was
finally finished, and ourselves and the kitchen and the door-knobs
all thoroughly sticky, we organized a procession and still in our
caps and aprons, each carrying a big fork or spoon or frying pan,
we marched through the empty corridors to the officers' parlour,
where half-a-dozen professors and instructors were passing
a tranquil evening. We serenaded them with college songs and
offered refreshments. They accepted politely but dubiously.
We left them sucking chunks of molasses candy, sticky and speechless.
So you see, Daddy, my education progresses!
Don't you really think that I ought to be an artist instead
of an author?
Vacation will be over in two days and I shall be glad to see the
girls again. My tower is just a trifle lonely; when nine people occupy
a house that was built for four hundred, they do rattle around a bit.
Eleven pages--poor Daddy, you must be tired! I meant this to be
just a short little thank-you note--but when I get started I seem
to have a ready pen.
Goodbye, and thank you for thinking of me--I should be perfectly
happy except for one little threatening cloud on the horizon.
Examinations come in February.
Yours with love,
Judy
PS. Maybe it isn't proper to send love? If it isn't, please excuse.
But I must love somebody and there's only you and Mrs. Lippett
to choose between, so you see--you'll HAVE to put up with it,
Daddy dear, because I can't love her.
On the Eve
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
You should see the way this college is studying! We've forgotten we
ever had a vacation. Fifty-seven irregular verbs have I introduced
to my brain in the past four days--I'm only hoping they'll stay
till after examinations.
Some of the girls sell their text-books when they're through with them,
but I intend to keep mine. Then after I've graduated I shall have
my whole education in a row in the bookcase, and when I need to use
any detail, I can turn to it without the slightest hesitation.
So much easier and more accurate than trying to keep it in your head.
Julia Pendleton dropped in this evening to pay a social call,
and stayed a solid hour. She got started on the subject of family,
and I COULDN'T switch her off. She wanted to know what my
mother's maiden name was--did you ever hear such an impertinent
question to ask of a person from a foundling asylum? I didn't
have the courage to say I didn't know, so I just miserably plumped
on the first name I could think of, and that was Montgomery.
Then she wanted to know whether I belonged to the Massachusetts
Montgomerys or the Virginia Montgomerys.
Her mother was a Rutherford. The family came over in the ark,
and were connected by marriage with Henry the VIII. On her father's
side they date back further than Adam. On the topmost branches
of her family tree there's a superior breed of monkeys with very
fine silky hair and extra long tails.
I meant to write you a nice, cheerful, entertaining letter tonight,
but I'm too sleepy--and scared. The Freshman's lot is not a happy one.
Yours, about to be examined,
Judy Abbott
Sunday
Dearest Daddy-Long-Legs,
I have some awful, awful, awful news to tell you, but I won't begin
with it; I'll try to get you in a good humour first.
Jerusha Abbott has commenced to be an author. A poem entitled,
`From my Tower', appears in the February Monthly--on the first page,
which is a very great honour for a Freshman. My English instructor
stopped me on the way out from chapel last night, and said it was
a charming piece of work except for the sixth line, which had too
many feet. I will send you a copy in case you care to read it.
Let me see if I can't think of something else pleasant--
Oh, yes! I'm learning to skate, and can glide about quite
respectably all by myself. Also I've learned how to slide down
a rope from the roof of the gymnasium, and I can vault a bar
three feet and six inches high--I hope shortly to pull up to four feet.
We had a very inspiring sermon this morning preached by the Bishop
of Alabama. His text was: `Judge not that ye be not judged.'
It was about the necessity of overlooking mistakes in others,
