Dear Kind-Trustee-Who-Sends-Orphans-to-College,


Here I am! I travelled yesterday for four hours in a train.
It's a funny sensation, isn't it? I never rode in one before.

College is the biggest, most bewildering place--I get lost whenever
I leave my room. I will write you a description later when I'm
feeling less muddled; also I will tell you about my lessons.
Classes don't begin until Monday morning, and this is Saturday night.
But I wanted to write a letter first just to get acquainted.

It seems queer to be writing letters to somebody you don't know.
It seems queer for me to be writing letters at all--I've never
written more than three or four in my life, so please overlook it
if these are not a model kind.

Before leaving yesterday morning, Mrs. Lippett and I had a very
serious talk. She told me how to behave all the rest of my life,
and especially how to behave towards the kind gentleman who is doing
so much for me. I must take care to be Very Respectful.

But how can one be very respectful to a person who
wishes to be called John Smith? Why couldn't you
have picked out a name with a little personality?
I might as well write letters to Dear Hitching-Post or Dear Clothes-Prop.

I have been thinking about you a great deal this summer; having
somebody take an interest in me after all these years makes me
feel as though I had found a sort of family. It seems as though I
belonged to somebody now, and it's a very comfortable sensation.
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
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,
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