and not discouraging people by harsh judgments. I wish you might
have heard it.
This is the sunniest, most blinding winter afternoon, with icicles
dripping from the fir trees and all the world bending under a weight
of snow--except me, and I'm bending under a weight of sorrow.
Now for the news--courage, Judy!--you must tell.
Are you SURELY in a good humour? I failed in mathematics and
Latin prose. I am tutoring in them, and will take another examination
next month. I'm sorry if you're disappointed, but otherwise I don't
care a bit because I've learned such a lot of things not mentioned
in the catalogue. I've read seventeen novels and bushels of poetry--
really necessary novels like Vanity Fair and Richard Feverel
and Alice in Wonderland. Also Emerson's Essays and Lockhart's
Life of Scott and the first volume of Gibbon's Roman Empire
and half of Benvenuto Cellini's Life--wasn't he entertaining?
He used to saunter out and casually kill a man before breakfast.
So you see, Daddy, I'm much more intelligent than if I'd just stuck
to Latin. Will you forgive me this once if I promise never to fail again?
Yours in sackcloth,
Judy
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
This is an extra letter in the middle of the month because I'm
rather lonely tonight. It's awfully stormy. All the lights are
out on the campus, but I drank black coffee and I can't go to sleep.
I had a supper party this evening consisting of Sallie and Julia
and Leonora Fenton--and sardines and toasted muffins and salad
and fudge and coffee. Julia said she'd had a good time, but Sallie
stayed to help wash the dishes.
I might, very usefully, put some time on Latin tonight but,
there's no doubt about it, I'm a very languid Latin scholar.
We've finished Livy and De Senectute and are now engaged with De
Amicitia (pronounced Damn Icitia).
Should you mind, just for a little while, pretending you are
my grandmother? Sallie has one and Julia and Leonora each two,
and they were all comparing them tonight. I can't think of
anything I'd rather have; it's such a respectable relationship.
So, if you really don't object--When I went into town yesterday,
I saw the sweetest cap of Cluny lace trimmed with lavender ribbon.
I am going to make you a present of it on your eighty-third birthday.
! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
That's the clock in the chapel tower striking twelve. I believe
I am sleepy after all.
Good night, Granny.
I love you dearly.
Judy
The Ides of March
Dear D.-L.-L.,
I am studying Latin prose composition. I have been studying it.
I shall be studying it. I shall be about to have been studying it.
My re-examination comes the 7th hour next Tuesday, and I am
going to pass or BUST. So you may expect to hear from me next,
whole and happy and free from conditions, or in fragments.
I will write a respectable letter when it's over. Tonight I have
a pressing engagement with the Ablative Absolute.
Yours--in evident haste
J. A.
26th March
Mr. D.-L.-L. Smith,
SIR: You never answer any questions; you never show the slightest
interest in anything I do. You are probably the horridest one of
all those horrid Trustees, and the reason you are educating me is,
not because you care a bit about me, but from a sense of Duty.
I don't know a single thing about you. I don't even know your name.
It is very uninspiring writing to a Thing. I haven't a doubt but that
you throw my letters into the waste-basket without reading them.
Hereafter I shall write only about work.
My re-examinations in Latin and geometry came last week. I passed
them both and am now free from conditions.
Yours truly,
Jerusha Abbott
2nd April
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
I am a BEAST.
Please forget about that dreadful letter I sent you last week--
I was feeling terribly lonely and miserable and sore-throaty the night
I wrote. I didn't know it, but I was just sickening for tonsillitis
and grippe and lots of things mixed. I'm in the infirmary now,
and have been here for six days; this is the first time they would let
me sit up and have a pen and paper. The head nurse is very bossy.
But I've been thinking about it all the time and I shan't get well
until you forgive me.
Here is a picture of the way I look, with a bandage tied around
my head in rabbit's ears.
Doesn't that arouse your sympathy? I am having sublingual
gland swelling. And I've been studying physiology all the year without
ever hearing of sublingual glands. How futile a thing is education!
I can't write any more; I get rather shaky when I sit up too long.
Please forgive me for being impertinent and ungrateful. I was badly
brought up.
Yours with love,
Judy Abbott
THE INFIRMARY
4th April
Dearest Daddy-Long-Legs,
Yesterday evening just towards dark, when I was sitting up in bed
looking out at the rain and feeling awfully bored with life
in a great institution, the nurse appeared with a long white box
addressed to me, and filled with the LOVELIEST pink rosebuds.
And much nicer still, it contained a card with a very polite message
written in a funny little uphill back hand (but one which shows
a great deal of character). Thank you, Daddy, a thousand times.
Your flowers make the first real, true present I ever received in
my life. If you want to know what a baby I am I lay down and cried
because I was so happy.
Now that I am sure you read my letters, I'll make them much
more interesting, so they'll be worth keeping in a safe with red tape
around them--only please take out that dreadful one and burn it up.
I'd hate to think that you ever read it over.
Thank you for making a very sick, cross, miserable Freshman cheerful.
Probably you have lots of loving family and friends, and you don't
know what it feels like to be alone. But I do.
Goodbye--I'll promise never to be horrid again, because now I
know you're a real person; also I'll promise never to bother you
with any more questions.
Do you still hate girls?
Yours for ever,
Judy
8th hour, Monday
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
I hope you aren't the Trustee who sat on the toad? It went off--
I was told--with quite a pop, so probably he was a fatter Trustee.
Do you remember the little dugout places with gratings over them
by the laundry windows in the John Grier Home? Every spring when the
hoptoad season opened we used to form a collection of toads and keep
them in those window holes; and occasionally they would spill over
into the laundry, causing a very pleasurable commotion on wash days.
We were severely punished for our activities in this direction,
but in spite of all discouragement the toads would collect.
And one day--well, I won't bore you with particulars--but somehow,
one of the fattest, biggest, JUCIEST toads got into one of those
big leather arm chairs in the Trustees' room, and that afternoon
at the Trustees' meeting--But I dare say you were there and recall
the rest?
Looking back dispassionately after a period of time, I will say
that punishment was merited, and--if I remember rightly--adequate.
I don't know why I am in such a reminiscent mood except that
spring and the reappearance of toads always awakens the old
acquisitive instinct. The only thing that keeps me from starting
a collection is the fact that no rule exists against it.
After chapel, Thursday
What do you think is my favourite book? Just now, I mean; I change
every three days. Wuthering Heights. Emily Bronte was quite young
when she wrote it, and had never been outside of Haworth churchyard.
She had never known any men in her life; how COULD she imagine a man
like Heathcliffe?
I couldn't do it, and I'm quite young and never outside the John
Grier Asylum--I've had every chance in the world. Sometimes a
dreadful fear comes over me that I'm not a genius. Will you be
awfully disappointed, Daddy, if I don't turn out to be a great author?
In the spring when everything is so beautiful and green and budding,
I feel like turning my back on lessons, and running away to play with
the weather. There are such lots of adventures out in the fields!
It's much more entertaining to live books than to write them.
Ow ! ! ! ! ! !
That was a shriek which brought Sallie and Julia and (for a
disgusted moment) the Senior from across the hall. It was caused
by a centipede like this: only worse. Just as I had finished the
last sentence and was thinking what to say next--plump!--it fell off
the ceiling and landed at my side. I tipped two cups off the tea
table in trying to get away. Sallie whacked it with the back of my
hair brush--which I shall never be able to use again--and killed
the front end, but the rear fifty feet ran under the bureau and escaped.
This dormitory, owing to its age and ivy-covered walls, is full
of centipedes. They are dreadful creatures. I'd rather find
a tiger under the bed.
Friday, 9.30 p.m.
Such a lot of troubles! I didn't hear the rising bell this morning,
then I broke my shoestring while I was hurrying to dress and
dropped my collar button down my neck. I was late for breakfast
and also for first-hour recitation. I forgot to take any blotting
paper and my fountain pen leaked. In trigonometry the Professor
and I had a disagreement touching a little matter of logarithms.
On looking it up, I find that she was right. We had mutton stew
and pie-plant for lunch--hate 'em both; they taste like the asylum.
The post brought me nothing but bills (though I must say that I
never do get anything else; my family are not the kind that write).
In English class this afternoon we had an unexpected written lesson.
This was it:
I asked no other thing,
No other was denied.
I offered Being for it;
The mighty merchant smiled.
Brazil? He twirled a button
Without a glance my way:
But, madam, is there nothing else
That we can show today?
That is a poem. I don't know who wrote it or what it means. It
was simply printed out on the blackboard when we arrived and we
were ordered to comment upon it. When I read the first verse
I thought I had an idea--The Mighty Merchant was a divinity
who distributes blessings in return for virtuous deeds--
but when I got to the second verse and found him twirling a button,
it seemed a blasphemous supposition, and I hastily changed my mind.
The rest of the class was in the same predicament; and there we
sat for three-quarters of an hour with blank paper and equally
blank minds. Getting an education is an awfully wearing process!
But this didn't end the day. There's worse to come.
It rained so we couldn't play golf, but had to go to gymnasium instead.
The girl next to me banged my elbow with an Indian club. I got
home to find that the box with my new blue spring dress had come,
and the skirt was so tight that I couldn't sit down. Friday is
sweeping day, and the maid had mixed all the papers on my desk.
We had tombstone for dessert (milk and gelatin flavoured with vanilla).
We were kept in chapel twenty minutes later than usual to listen to
a speech about womanly women. And then--just as I was settling down
with a sigh of well-earned relief to The Portrait of a Lady, a girl
named Ackerly, a dough-faced, deadly, unintermittently stupid girl,
who sits next to me in Latin because her name begins with A (I
wish Mrs. Lippett had named me Zabriski), came to ask if Monday's
lesson commenced at paragraph 69 or 70, and stayed ONE HOUR.
She has just gone.
Did you ever hear of such a discouraging series of events?
It isn't the big troubles in life that require character.
Anybody can rise to a crisis and face a crushing tragedy with courage,
but to meet the petty hazards of the day with a laugh--I really
think that requires SPIRIT.
It's the kind of character that I am going to develop. I am
going to pretend that all life is just a game which I must play
as skilfully and fairly as I can. If I lose, I am going to shrug
my shoulders and laugh--also if I win.
Anyway, I am going to be a sport. You will never hear me
complain again, Daddy dear, because Julia wears silk stockings
and centipedes drop off the wall.
Yours ever,
Judy
Answer soon.
27th May
Daddy-Long-Legs, Esq.
DEAR SIR: I am in receipt of a letter from Mrs. Lippett.
She hopes that I am doing well in deportment and studies.
Since I probably have no place to go this summer, she will let me
come back to the asylum and work for my board until college opens.
I HATE THE JOHN GRIER HOME.
I'd rather die than go back.
Yours most truthfully,
Jerusha Abbott
Cher Daddy-Jambes-Longes,
Vous etes un brick!
Je suis tres heureuse about the farm, parceque je n'ai jamais been
on a farm dans ma vie and I'd hate to retoumer chez John Grier,
et wash dishes tout l'ete. There would be danger of quelque chose
affreuse happening, parceque j'ai perdue ma humilite d'autre fois et
j'ai peur that I would just break out quelque jour et smash every
cup and saucer dans la maison.
Pardon brievete et paper. Je ne peux pas send des mes nouvelles
parceque je suis dans French class et j'ai peur que Monsieur le
Professeur is going to call on me tout de suite.
He did!
Au revoir,
je vous aime beaucoup.
Judy
30th May
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
Did you ever see this campus? (That is merely a rhetorical question.
Don't let it annoy you.) It is a heavenly spot in May. All the
shrubs are in blossom and the trees are the loveliest young green--
even the old pines look fresh and new. The grass is dotted with yellow
dandelions and hundreds of girls in blue and white and pink dresses.
Everybody is joyous and carefree, for vacation's coming, and with
that to look forward to, examinations don't count.
Isn't that a happy frame of mind to be in? And oh, Daddy!
