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!
I'm the happiest of all! Because I'm not in the asylum any more;
and I'm not anybody's nursemaid or typewriter or bookkeeper (I
should have been, you know, except for you).

I'm sorry now for all my past badnesses.

I'm sorry I was ever impertinent to Mrs. Lippett.

I'm sorry I ever slapped Freddie Perkins.

I'm sorry I ever filled the sugar bowl with salt.

I'm sorry I ever made faces behind the Trustees' backs.

I'm going to be good and sweet and kind to everybody because I'm
so happy. And this summer I'm going to write and write and write
and begin to be a great author. Isn't that an exalted stand
to take? Oh, I'm developing a beautiful character! It droops
a bit under cold and frost, but it does grow fast when the sun shines.

That's the way with everybody. I don't agree with the theory that
adversity and sorrow and disappointment develop moral strength.
The happy people are the ones who are bubbling over with kindliness.
I have no faith in misanthropes. (Fine word! Just learned it.)
You are not a misanthrope are you, Daddy?

I started to tell you about the campus. I wish you'd come
for a little visit and let me walk you about and say:

`That is the library. This is the gas plant, Daddy dear.
The Gothic building on your left is the gymnasium, and the Tudor
Romanesque beside it is the new infirmary.'

Oh, I'm fine at showing people about. I've done it all my life at
the asylum, and I've been doing it all day here. I have honestly.

And a Man, too!

That's a great experience. I never talked to a man before (except
occasional Trustees, and they don't count). Pardon, Daddy, I don't
mean to hurt your feelings when I abuse Trustees. I don't consider
that you really belong among them. You just tumbled on to the Board
by chance. The Trustee, as such, is fat and pompous and benevolent.
He pats one on the head and wears a gold watch chain.

That looks like a June bug, but is meant to be a portrait of any
Trustee except you.

However--to resume:

I have been walking and talking and having tea with a man.
And with a very superior man--with Mr. Jervis Pendleton of the House
of Julia; her uncle, in short (in long, perhaps I ought to say;
he's as tall as you.) Being in town on business, he decided to run
out to the college and call on his niece. He's her father's
youngest brother, but she doesn't know him very intimately. It seems
he glanced at her when she was a baby, decided he didn't like her,
and has never noticed her since.

Anyway, there he was, sitting in the reception room very proper
with his hat and stick and gloves beside him; and Julia and Sallie
with seventh-hour recitations that they couldn't cut. So Julia
dashed into my room and begged me to walk him about the campus
and then deliver him to her when the seventh hour was over.
I said I would, obligingly but unenthusiastically, because I don't
care much for Pendletons.

But he turned out to be a sweet lamb. He's a real human being--
not a Pendleton at all. We had a beautiful time; I've longed
for an uncle ever since. Do you mind pretending you're my uncle?
I believe they're superior to grandmothers.

Mr. Pendleton reminded me a little of you, Daddy, as you were twenty
years ago. You see I know you intimately, even if we haven't
ever met!

He's tall and thinnish with a dark face all over lines, and the
funniest underneath smile that never quite comes through but just
wrinkles up the corners of his mouth. And he has a way of making
you feel right off as though you'd known him a long time.
He's very companionable.

We walked all over the campus from the quadrangle to the athletic grounds;
then he said he felt weak and must have some tea. He proposed that
we go to College Inn--it's just off the campus by the pine walk.
I said we ought to go back for Julia and Sallie, but he said he didn't
like to have his nieces drink too much tea; it made them nervous.
So we just ran away and had tea and muffins and marmalade and
ice-cream and cake at a nice little table out on the balcony.
The inn was quite conveniently empty, this being the end of the month
and allowances low.

We had the jolliest time! But he had to run for his train
the minute he got back and he barely saw Julia at all. She was
furious with me for taking him off; it seems he's an unusually rich
and desirable uncle. It relieved my mind to find he was rich,
for the tea and things cost sixty cents apiece.

This morning (it's Monday now) three boxes of chocolates came by
express for Julia and Sallie and me. What do you think of that?
To be getting candy from a man!

I begin to feel like a girl instead of a foundling.

I wish you'd come and have tea some day and let me see if I like you.
But wouldn't it be dreadful if I didn't? However, I know I should.

Bien! I make you my compliments.
`Jamais je ne t'oublierai.'
Judy


PS. I looked in the glass this morning and found a perfectly
new dimple that I'd never seen before. It's very curious.
Where do you suppose it came from?



9th June

Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

Happy day! I've just finished my last examination Physiology.
And now:

Three months on a farm!

I don't know what kind of a thing a farm is. I've never been on
one in my life. I've never even looked at one (except from the car
window), but I know I'm going to love it, and I'm going to love
being FREE.

I am not used even yet to being outside the John Grier Home.
Whenever I think of it excited little thrills chase up and down
my back. I feel as though I must run faster and faster and keep
looking over my shoulder to make sure that Mrs. Lippett isn't after
me with her arm stretched out to grab me back.

I don't have to mind any one this summer, do I?

Your nominal authority doesn't annoy me in the least; you are too
far away to do any harm. Mrs. Lippett is dead for ever, so far as I
am concerned, and the Semples aren't expected to overlook my moral
welfare, are they? No, I am sure not. I am entirely grown up. Hooray!

I leave you now to pack a trunk, and three boxes of teakettles
and dishes and sofa cushions and books.
Yours ever,
Judy


PS. Here is my physiology exam. Do you think you could have passed?

LOCK WILLOW FARM,
Saturday night
Dearest Daddy-Long-Legs,

I've only just come and I'm not unpacked, but I can't wait to tell you
how much I like farms. This is a heavenly, heavenly, HEAVENLY spot!
The house is square like this: And OLD. A hundred years or so.
It has a veranda on the side which I can't draw and a sweet porch
in front. The picture really doesn't do it justice--those things
that look like feather dusters are maple trees, and the prickly ones
that border the drive are murmuring pines and hemlocks. It stands
on the top of a hill and looks way off over miles of green meadows
to another line of hills.

That is the way Connecticut goes, in a series of Marcelle waves;
and Lock Willow Farm is just on the crest of one wave. The barns
used to be across the road where they obstructed the view, but a kind
flash of lightning came from heaven and burnt them down.

The people are Mr. and Mrs. Semple and a hired girl and two hired men.
The hired people eat in the kitchen, and the Semples and Judy
in the dining-room. We had ham and eggs and biscuits and honey
and jelly-cake and pie and pickles and cheese and tea for supper--
and a great deal of conversation. I have never been so entertaining
in my life; everything I say appears to be funny. I suppose it is,
because I've never been in the country before, and my questions are
backed by an all-inclusive ignorance.

The room marked with a cross is not where the murder was committed,
but the one that I occupy. It's big and square and empty,
with adorable old-fashioned furniture and windows that have to
be propped up on sticks and green shades trimmed with gold that
fall down if you touch them. And a big square mahogany table--
I'm going to spend the summer with my elbows spread out on it,
writing a novel.

Oh, Daddy, I'm so excited! I can't wait till daylight to explore.
It's 8.30 now, and I am about to blow out my candle and try to go
to sleep. We rise at five. Did you ever know such fun? I can't
believe this is really Judy. You and the Good Lord give me more
than I deserve. I must be a very, very, VERY good person to pay.
I'm going to be. You'll see.
Good night,
Judy


PS. You should hear the frogs sing and the little pigs squeal
and you should see the new moon! I saw it over my right shoulder.





LOCK WILLOW,
12th July
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

How did your secretary come to know about Lock Willow?
(That isn't a rhetorical question. I am awfully curious to know.)
For listen to this: Mr. Jervis Pendleton used to own this farm,
but now he has given it to Mrs. Semple who was his old nurse.
Did you ever hear of such a funny coincidence? She still calls him
`Master Jervie' and talks about what a sweet little boy he used to be.
She has one of his baby curls put away in a box, and it is red--
or at least reddish!

Since she discovered that I know him, I have risen very much
in her opinion. Knowing a member of the Pendleton family
is the best introduction one can have at Lock Willow.
And the cream of the whole family is Master Jervis--
I am pleased to say that Julia belongs to an inferior branch.

The farm gets more and more entertaining. I rode on a hay
wagon yesterday. We have three big pigs and nine little piglets,
and you should see them eat. They are pigs! We've oceans
of little baby chickens and ducks and turkeys and guinea fowls.
You must be mad to live in a city when you might live on a farm.

It is my daily business to hunt the eggs. I fell off a beam in the
barn loft yesterday, while I was trying to crawl over to a nest that
the black hen has stolen. And when I came in with a scratched knee,
Mrs. Semple bound it up with witch-hazel, murmuring all the time,
`Dear! Dear! It seems only yesterday that Master Jervie fell off
that very same beam and scratched this very same knee.'

The scenery around here is perfectly beautiful. There's a valley
and a river and a lot of wooded hills, and way in the distance
a tall blue mountain that simply melts in your mouth.

We churn twice a week; and we keep the cream in the spring house
which is made of stone with the brook running underneath.
Some of the farmers around here have a separator, but we don't
care for these new-fashioned ideas. It may be a little harder
to separate the cream in pans, but it's sufficiently better to pay.
We have six calves; and I've chosen the names for all of them.

1. Sylvia, because she was born in the woods.

2. Lesbia, after the Lesbia in Catullus.

3. Sallie.

4. Julia--a spotted, nondescript animal.

5. Judy, after me.

6. Daddy-Long-Legs. You don't mind, do you, Daddy? He's pure
Jersey and has a sweet disposition. He looks like this--you can
see how appropriate the name is.

I haven't had time yet to begin my immortal novel; the farm
keeps me too busy.
Yours always,
Judy


PS. I've learned to make doughnuts.

PS. (2) If you are thinking of raising chickens, let me recommend
Buff Orpingtons. They haven't any pin feathers.

PS. (3) I wish I could send you a pat of the nice, fresh butter
I churned yesterday. I'm a fine dairy-maid!

PS. (4) This is a picture of Miss Jerusha Abbott, the future
great author, driving home the cows.



Sunday

Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

Isn't it funny? I started to write to you yesterday afternoon,
but as far as I got was the heading, `Dear Daddy-Long-Legs', and then
I remembered I'd promised to pick some blackberries for supper,
so I went off and left the sheet lying on the table, and when I
came back today, what do you think I found sitting in the middle
of the page? A real true Daddy-Long-Legs!

I picked him up very gently by one leg, and dropped him out
of the window. I wouldn't hurt one of them for the world.
They always remind me of you.

We hitched up the spring wagon this morning and drove to the Centre
to church. It's a sweet little white frame church with a spire
and three Doric columns in front (or maybe Ionic--I always get
them mixed).

A nice sleepy sermon with everybody drowsily waving palm-leaf fans,
and the only sound, aside from the minister, the buzzing of locusts
in the trees outside. I didn't wake up till I found myself on
my feet singing the hymn, and then I was awfully sorry I hadn't
listened to the sermon; I should like to know more of the psychology
of a man who would pick out such a hymn. This was it:

Come, leave your sports and earthly toys
And join me in celestial joys.
Or else, dear friend, a long farewell.
I leave you now to sink to hell.


I find that it isn't safe to discuss religion with the Semples.
Their God (whom they have inherited intact from their remote
Puritan ancestors) is a narrow, irrational, unjust, mean, revengeful,
bigoted Person. Thank heaven I don't inherit God from anybody!
I am free to make mine up as I wish Him. He's kind and sympathetic
and imaginative and forgiving and understanding--and He has a sense
of humour.

I like the Semples immensely; their practice is so superior to
their theory. They are better than their own God. I told them so--
and they are horribly troubled. They think I am blasphemous--
and I think they are! We've dropped theology from our conversation.

This is Sunday afternoon.

Amasai (hired man) in a purple tie and some bright yellow buckskin gloves,
very red and shaved, has just driven off with Carrie (hired girl)
in a big hat trimmed with red roses and a blue muslin dress and her
hair curled as tight as it will curl. Amasai spent all the morning
washing the buggy; and Carrie stayed home from church ostensibly
to cook the dinner, but really to iron the muslin dress.

In two minutes more when this letter is finished I am going to settle
down to a book which I found in the attic. It's entitled, On the Trail,
and sprawled across the front page in a funny little-boy hand:

Jervis Pendleton
if this book should ever roam,
Box its ears and send it home.


He spent the summer here once after he had been ill, when he
was about eleven years old; and he left On the Trail behind.
It looks well read--the marks of his grimy little hands are frequent!
Also in a corner of the attic there is a water wheel and a windmill
and some bows and arrows. Mrs. Semple talks so constantly about him
that I begin to believe he really lives--not a grown man with a silk hat
and walking stick, but a nice, dirty, tousle-headed boy who clatters
up the stairs with an awful racket, and leaves the screen doors open,
and is always asking for cookies. (And getting them, too, if I
know Mrs. Semple!) He seems to have been an adventurous little soul--
and brave and truthful. I'm sorry to think he is a Pendleton;
he was meant for something better.

We're going to begin threshing oats tomorrow; a steam engine
is coming and three extra men.

It grieves me to tell you that Buttercup (the spotted cow with
one horn, Mother of Lesbia) has done a disgraceful thing. She got
into the orchard Friday evening and ate apples under the trees,
and ate and ate until they went to her head. For two days she
has been perfectly dead drunk! That is the truth I am telling.
Did you ever hear anything so scandalous?
Sir,
I remain,
Your affectionate orphan,
Judy Abbott


PS. Indians in the first chapter and highwaymen in the second.
I hold my breath. What can the third contain? `Red Hawk leapt
twenty feet in the air and bit the dust.' That is the subject of
the frontispiece. Aren't Judy and Jervie having fun?


15th September
Dear Daddy,

I was weighed yesterday on the flour scales in the general store
at the Comers. I've gained nine pounds! Let me recommend Lock
Willow as a health resort.
Yours ever,
Judy



Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

Behold me--a Sophomore! I came up last Friday, sorry to leave
Lock Willow, but glad to see the campus again. It is a pleasant
sensation to come back to something familiar. I am beginning to feel
at home in college, and in command of the situation; I am beginning,
in fact, to feel at home in the world--as though I really belonged
to it and had not just crept in on sufferance.

I don't suppose you understand in the least what I am trying to say.
A person important enough to be a Trustee can't appreciate the
feelings of a person unimportant enough to be a foundling.

And now, Daddy, listen to this. Whom do you think I am rooming with?
Sallie McBride and Julia Rutledge Pendleton. It's the truth.
We have a study and three little bedrooms--VOILA!

Sallie and I decided last spring that we should like to room together,
and Julia made up her mind to stay with Sallie--why, I can't imagine,
for they are not a bit alike; but the Pendletons are naturally
conservative and inimical (fine word!) to change. Anyway, here we are.
Think of Jerusha Abbott, late of the John Grier Home for Orphans,
rooming with a Pendleton. This is a democratic country.

Sallie is running for class president, and unless all signs fail,
she is going to be elected. Such an atmosphere of intrigue you should
see what politicians we are! Oh, I tell you, Daddy, when we women get
our rights, you men will have to look alive in order to keep yours.
Election comes next Saturday, and we're going to have a torchlight
procession in the evening, no matter who wins.

I am beginning chemistry, a most unusual study. I've never seen
anything like it before. Molecules and Atoms are the material employed,
but I'll be in a position to discuss them more definitely next month.

I am also taking argumentation and logic.

Also history of the whole world.

Also plays of William Shakespeare.

Also French.

If this keeps up many years longer, I shall become quite intelligent.

I should rather have elected economics than French, but I
didn't dare, because I was afraid that unless I re-elected
French, the Professor would not let me pass--as it was,
I just managed to squeeze through the June examination.
But I will say that my high-school preparation was not very adequate.

There's one girl in the class who chatters away in French as fast
as she does in English. She went abroad with her parents when she
was a child, and spent three years in a convent school. You can
imagine how bright she is compared with the rest of us--irregular verbs
are mere playthings. I wish my parents had chucked me into a French
convent when I was little instead of a foundling asylum. Oh no,
I don't either! Because then maybe I should never have known you.
I'd rather know you than French.

Goodbye, Daddy. I must call on Harriet Martin now,
and, having discussed the chemical situation,
casually drop a few thoughts on the subject of our next president.
Yours in politics,
J. Abbott


17th October
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

Supposing the swimming tank in the gymnasium were filled full
of lemon jelly, could a person trying to swim manage to keep
on top or would he sink?

We were having lemon jelly for dessert when the question came up.
We discussed it heatedly for half an hour and it's still unsettled.
Sallie thinks that she could swim in it, but I am perfectly sure
that the best swimmer in the world would sink. Wouldn't it be funny
to be drowned in lemon jelly?

Two other problems are engaging the attention of our table.

1st. What shape are the rooms in an octagon house?
Some of the girls insist that they're square;
but I think they'd have to be shaped like a piece of pie. Don't you?

2nd. Suppose there were a great big hollow sphere made of
looking-glass and you were sitting inside. Where would it stop
reflecting your face and begin reflecting your back? The more
one thinks about this problem, the more puzzling it becomes.
You can see with what deep philosophical reflection we engage our leisure!

Did I ever tell you about the election? It happened three weeks ago,
but so fast do we live, that three weeks is ancient history.
Sallie was elected, and we had a torchlight parade with
transparencies saying, `McBride for Ever,' and a band consisting
of fourteen pieces (three mouth organs and eleven combs).

We're very important persons now in `258.' Julia and I come in
for a great deal of reflected glory. It's quite a social strain
to be living in the same house with a president.

Bonne nuit, cher Daddy.
Acceptez mez compliments,
Tres respectueux,
je suis,
Votre Judy


12th November
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

We beat the Freshmen at basket ball yesterday. Of course we're pleased--
but oh, if we could only beat the juniors! I'd be willing to be black
and blue all over and stay in bed a week in a witch-hazel compress.

Sallie has invited me to spend the Christmas vacation with her.
She lives in Worcester, Massachusetts. Wasn't it nice of her?
I shall love to go. I've never been in a private family in my life,
except at Lock Willow, and the Semples were grown-up and old and
don't count. But the McBrides have a houseful of children (anyway two
or three) and a mother and father and grandmother, and an Angora cat.
It's a perfectly complete family! Packing your trunk and going
away is more fun than staying behind. I am terribly excited at
the prospect.

Seventh hour--I must run to rehearsal. I'm to be in the
Thanksgiving theatricals. A prince in a tower with a velvet
tunic and yellow curls. Isn't that a lark?
Yours,
J. A.

Saturday

Do you want to know what I look like? Here's a photograph of all
three that Leonora Fenton took.

The light one who is laughing is Sallie, and the tall one with her
nose in the air is Julia, and the little one with the hair blowing
across her face is Judy--she is really more beautiful than that,
but the sun was in her eyes.



`STONE GATE',
WORCESTER, MASS.,

31st December
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

I meant to write to you before and thank you for your Christmas cheque,
but life in the McBride household is very absorbing, and I don't
seem able to find two consecutive minutes to spend at a desk.

I bought a new gown--one that I didn't need, but just wanted.
My Christmas present this year is from Daddy-Long-Legs; my family
just sent love.

I've been having the most beautiful vacation visiting Sallie.
She lives in a big old-fashioned brick house with white trimmings set
back from the street--exactly the kind of house that I used to look
at so curiously when I was in the John Grier Home, and wonder what it
could be like inside. I never expected to see with my own eyes--
but here I am! Everything is so comfortable and restful and homelike;
I walk from room to room and drink in the furnishings.

It is the most perfect house for children to be brought up in;
with shadowy nooks for hide and seek, and open fire places for pop-corn,
and an attic to romp in on rainy days and slippery banisters with a
comfortable flat knob at the bottom, and a great big sunny kitchen,
and a nice, fat, sunny cook who has lived in the family thirteen years
and always saves out a piece of dough for the children to bake.
Just the sight of such a house makes you want to be a child all
over again.

And as for families! I never dreamed they could be so nice.
Sallie has a father and mother and grandmother, and the sweetest
three-year-old baby sister all over curls, and a medium-sized brother
who always forgets to wipe his feet, and a big, good-looking brother
named Jimmie, who is a junior at Princeton.

We have the jolliest times at the table--everybody laughs and jokes
and talks at once, and we don't have to say grace beforehand.
It's a relief not having to thank Somebody for every mouthful you eat.
(I dare say I'm blasphemous; but you'd be, too, if you'd offered as
much obligatory thanks as I have.)

Such a lot of things we've done--I can't begin to tell you about them.
Mr. McBride owns a factory and Christmas eve he had a tree for
the employees' children. It was in the long packing-room which was
decorated with evergreens and holly. Jimmie McBride was dressed
as Santa Claus and Sallie and I helped him distribute the presents.

Dear me, Daddy, but it was a funny sensation! I felt as benevolent
as a Trustee of the John Grier home. I kissed one sweet,
sticky little boy--but I don't think I patted any of them on the head!

And two days after Christmas, they gave a dance at their own house
for ME.

It was the first really true ball I ever attended--college doesn't
count where we dance with girls. I had a new white evening gown
(your Christmas present--many thanks) and long white gloves
and white satin slippers. The only drawback to my perfect,
utter, absolute happiness was the fact that Mrs. Lippett
couldn't see me leading the cotillion with Jimmie McBride.
Tell her about it, please, the next time you visit the J. G. H.
Yours ever,
Judy Abbott


PS. Would you be terribly displeased, Daddy, if I didn't turn
out to be a Great Author after all, but just a Plain Girl?



6.30, Saturday
Dear Daddy,


We started to walk to town today, but mercy! how it poured.
I like winter to be winter with snow instead of rain.

Julia's desirable uncle called again this afternoon--and brought
a five-pound box of chocolates. There are advantages, you see,
about rooming with Julia.

Our innocent prattle appeared to amuse him and he waited for a later
train in order to take tea in the study. We had an awful lot of
trouble getting permission. It's hard enough entertaining fathers
and grandfathers, but uncles are a step worse; and as for brothers
and cousins, they are next to impossible. Julia had to swear
that he was her uncle before a notary public and then have the
county clerk's certificate attached. (Don't I know a lot of law?)
And even then I doubt if we could have had our tea if the Dean
had chanced to see how youngish and good-looking Uncle Jervis is.

Anyway, we had it, with brown bread Swiss cheese sandwiches.
He helped make them and then ate four. I told him that I had
spent last summer at Lock Willow, and we had a beautiful gossipy
time about the Semples, and the horses and cows and chickens.
All the horses that he used to know are dead, except Grover,
who was a baby colt at the time of his last visit--and poor Grove
now is so old he can just limp about the pasture.

He asked if they still kept doughnuts in a yellow crock with a blue
plate over it on the bottom shelf of the pantry--and they do!
He wanted to know if there was still a woodchuck's hole under the pile
of rocks in the night pasture--and there is! Amasai caught a big,
fat, grey one there this summer, the twenty-fifth great-grandson
of the one Master Jervis caught when he was a little boy.

I called him `Master Jervie' to his face, but he didn't appear
to be insulted. Julia says she has never seen him so amiable;
he's usually pretty unapproachable. But Julia hasn't a bit of tact;
and men, I find, require a great deal. They purr if you rub them the
right way and spit if you don't. (That isn't a very elegant metaphor.
I mean it figuratively.)

We're reading Marie Bashkirtseff's journal. Isn't it amazing?
Listen to this: `Last night I was seized by a fit of despair
that found utterance in moans, and that finally drove me to throw
the dining-room clock into the sea.'

It makes me almost hope I'm not a genius; they must be very wearing
to have about--and awfully destructive to the furniture.

Mercy! how it keeps Pouring. We shall have to swim to chapel tonight.
Yours ever,
Judy




20th Jan.
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

Did you ever have a sweet baby girl who was stolen from the cradle
in infancy?

Maybe I am she! If we were in a novel, that would be the denouement,
wouldn't it?

It's really awfully queer not to know what one is--sort of
exciting and romantic. There are such a lot of possibilities.
Maybe I'm not American; lots of people aren't. I may be straight
descended from the ancient Romans, or I may be a Viking's daughter,
or I may be the child of a Russian exile and belong by rights
in a Siberian prison, or maybe I'm a Gipsy--I think perhaps I am.
I have a very WANDERING spirit, though I haven't as yet had much
chance to develop it.

Do you know about that one scandalous blot in my career the time I ran
away from the asylum because they punished me for stealing cookies?
It's down in the books free for any Trustee to read. But really,
Daddy, what could you expect? When you put a hungry little nine-year
girl in the pantry scouring knives, with the cookie jar at her elbow,
and go off and leave her alone; and then suddenly pop in again,
wouldn't you expect to find her a bit crumby? And then when you
jerk her by the elbow and box her ears, and make her leave the table
when the pudding comes, and tell all the other children that it's
because she's a thief, wouldn't you expect her to run away?

I only ran four miles. They caught me and brought me back;
and every day for a week I was tied, like a naughty puppy, to a stake
in the back yard while the other children were out at recess.

Oh, dear! There's the chapel bell, and after
chapel I have a committee meeting. I'm
sorry because I meant to write you a very entertaining letter this time.
Auf wiedersehen
Cher Daddy,
Pax tibi!
Judy


PS. There's one thing I'm perfectly sure of I'm not a Chinaman.


4th February
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

Jimmie McBride has sent me a Princeton banner as big as one end
of the room; I am very grateful to him for remembering me, but I
don't know what on earth to do with it. Sallie and Julia won't
let me hang it up; our room this year is furnished in red, and you
can imagine what an effect we'd have if I added orange and black.
But it's such nice, warm, thick felt, I hate to waste it.
Would it be very improper to have it made into a bath robe?
My old one shrank when it was washed.

I've entirely omitted of late telling you what I am learning,
but though you might not imagine it from my letters, my time is
exclusively occupied with study. It's a very bewildering matter
to get educated in five branches at once.

`The test of true scholarship,' says Chemistry Professor,
`is a painstaking passion for detail.'

`Be careful not to keep your eyes glued to detail,' says History
Professor. `Stand far enough away to get a perspective of the whole.'

You can see with what nicety we have to trim our sails between
chemistry and history. I like the historical method best.
If I say that William the Conqueror came over in 1492, and Columbus
discovered America in 1100 or 1066 or whenever it was, that's a mere
detail that the Professor overlooks. It gives a feeling of security
and restfulness to the history recitation, that is entirely lacking
in chemistry.

Sixth-hour bell--I must go to the laboratory and look into a little
matter of acids and salts and alkalis. I've burned a hole as big
as a plate in the front of my chemistry apron, with hydrochloric acid.
If the theory worked, I ought to be able to neutralize that hole
with good strong ammonia, oughtn't I?

Examinations next week, but who's afraid?
Yours ever,
Judy



5th March
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

There is a March wind blowing, and the sky is filled with heavy,
black moving clouds. The crows in the pine trees are making such
a clamour! It's an intoxicating, exhilarating, CALLING noise.
You want to close your books and be off over the hills to race with
the wind.

We had a paper chase last Saturday over five miles of squashy
'cross country. The fox (composed of three girls and a bushel or so
of confetti) started half an hour before the twenty-seven hunters.
I was one of the twenty-seven; eight dropped by the wayside;
we ended nineteen. The trail led over a hill, through a cornfield,
and into a swamp where we had to leap lightly from hummock to hummock.
of course half of us went in ankle deep. We kept losing the trail,
and we wasted twenty-five minutes over that swamp. Then up a hill
through some woods and in at a barn window! The barn doors were all
locked and the window was up high and pretty small. I don't call
that fair, do you?

But we didn't go through; we circumnavigated the barn and picked up
the trail where it issued by way of a low shed roof on to the top
of a fence. The fox thought he had us there, but we fooled him.
Then straight away over two miles of rolling meadow, and awfully
hard to follow, for the confetti was getting sparse. The rule is
that it must be at the most six feet apart, but they were the longest
six feet I ever saw. Finally, after two hours of steady trotting,
we tracked Monsieur Fox into the kitchen of Crystal Spring (that's
a farm where the girls go in bob sleighs and hay wagons for chicken
and waffle suppers) and we found the three foxes placidly eating milk
and honey and biscuits. They hadn't thought we would get that far;
they were expecting us to stick in the barn window.

Both sides insist that they won. I think we did, don't you?
Because we caught them before they got back to the campus.
Anyway, all nineteen of us settled like locusts over the furniture
and clamoured for honey. There wasn't enough to go round, but Mrs.
Crystal Spring (that's our pet name for her; she's by rights a Johnson)
brought up a jar of strawberry jam and a can of maple syrup--
just made last week--and three loaves of brown bread.

We didn't get back to college till half-past six--half an hour late
for dinner--and we went straight in without dressing, and with
perfectly unimpaired appetites! Then we all cut evening chapel,
the state of our boots being enough of an excuse.

I never told you about examinations. I passed everything with the
utmost ease--I know the secret now, and am never going to fail again.
I shan't be able to graduate with honours though, because of that
beastly Latin prose and geometry Freshman year. But I don't care.
Wot's the hodds so long as you're 'appy? (That's a quotation.
I've been reading the English classics.)

Speaking of classics, have you ever read Hamlet? If you haven't,
do it right off. It's PERFECTLY CORKING. I've been hearing about
Shakespeare all my life, but I had no idea he really wrote so well;
I always suspected him of going largely on his reputation.

I have a beautiful play that I invented a long time ago when I first
learned to read. I put myself to sleep every night by pretending
I'm the person (the most important person) in the book I'm reading
at the moment.

At present I'm Ophelia--and such a sensible Ophelia! I keep
Hamlet amused all the time, and pet him and scold him and make him
wrap up his throat when he has a cold. I've entirely cured him
of being melancholy. The King and Queen are both dead--an accident
at sea; no funeral necessary--so Hamlet and I are ruling in Denmark
without any bother. We have the kingdom working beautifully.
He takes care of the governing, and I look after the charities.
I have just founded some first-class orphan asylums. If you
or any of the other Trustees would like to visit them, I shall be
pleased to show you through. I think you might find a great many
helpful suggestions.
I remain, sir,
Yours most graciously,
OPHELIA,
Queen of Denmark.



24th March,
maybe the 25th
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

I don't believe I can be going to Heaven--I am getting such a lot
of good things here; it wouldn't be fair to get them hereafter too.
Listen to what has happened.

Jerusha Abbott has won the short-story contest (a twenty-five
dollar prize) that the Monthly holds every year. And she's a Sophomore!
The contestants are mostly Seniors. When I saw my name posted,
I couldn't quite believe it was true. Maybe I am going to be an author
after all. I wish Mrs. Lippett hadn't given me such a silly name--
it sounds like an author-ess, doesn't it?

Also I have been chosen for the spring dramatics--As You Like It
out of doors. I am going to be Celia, own cousin to Rosalind.

And lastly: Julia and Sallie and I are going to New York next Friday
to do some spring shopping and stay all night and go to the theatre
the next day with `Master Jervie.' He invited us. Julia is going
to stay at home with her family, but Sallie and I are going to stop
at the Martha Washington Hotel. Did you ever hear of anything
so exciting? I've never been in a hotel in my life, nor in a theatre;
except once when the Catholic Church had a festival and invited
the orphans, but that wasn't a real play and it doesn't count.

And what do you think we're going to see? Hamlet. Think of that!
We studied it for four weeks in Shakespeare class and I know it
by heart.

I am so excited over all these prospects that I can scarcely sleep.

Goodbye, Daddy.

This is a very entertaining world.
Yours ever,
Judy


PS. I've just looked at the calendar. It's the 28th.

Another postscript.

I saw a street car conductor today with one brown eye and one blue.
Wouldn't he make a nice villain for a detective story?


7th April
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

Mercy! Isn't New York big? Worcester is nothing to it. Do you
mean to tell me that you actually live in all that confusion?
I don't believe that I shall recover for months from the bewildering
effect of two days of it. I can't begin to tell you all the amazing
things I've seen; I suppose you know, though, since you live
there yourself.

But aren't the streets entertaining? And the people? And the shops?
I never saw such lovely things as there are in the windows.
It makes you want to devote your life to wearing clothes.

Sallie and Julia and I went shopping together Saturday morning.
Julia went into the very most gorgeous place I ever saw, white and
gold walls and blue carpets and blue silk curtains and gilt chairs.
A perfectly beautiful lady with yellow hair and a long black silk
trailing gown came to meet us with a welcoming smile. I thought we
were paying a social call, and started to shake hands, but it seems
we were only buying hats--at least Julia was. She sat down in front
of a mirror and tried on a dozen, each lovelier than the last,
and bought the two loveliest of all.

I can't imagine any joy in life greater than sitting down in front
of a mirror and buying any hat you choose without having first
to consider the price! There's no doubt about it, Daddy; New York
would rapidly undermine this fine stoical character which the John
Grier Home so patiently built up.

And after we'd finished our shopping, we met Master Jervie
at Sherry's. I suppose you've been in Sherry's? Picture that,
then picture the dining-room of the John Grier Home with its
oilcloth-covered tables, and white crockery that you CAN'T break,
and wooden-handled knives and forks; and fancy the way I felt!

I ate my fish with the wrong fork, but the waiter very kindly gave
me another so that nobody noticed.

And after luncheon we went to the theatre--it was dazzling,
marvellous, unbelievable--I dream about it every night.

Isn't Shakespeare wonderful?

Hamlet is so much better on the stage than when we analyze it in class;
I appreciated it before, but now, clear me!

I think, if you don't mind, that I'd rather be an actress than
a writer. Wouldn't you like me to leave college and go into a
dramatic school? And then I'll send you a box for all my performances,
and smile at you across the footlights. Only wear a red rose
in your buttonhole, please, so I'll surely smile at the right man.
It would be an awfully embarrassing mistake if I picked out the wrong one.

We came back Saturday night and had our dinner in the train,
at little tables with pink lamps and negro waiters. I never heard
of meals being served in trains before, and I inadvertently said so.

`Where on earth were you brought up?' said Julia to me.

`In a village,' said I meekly, to Julia.

`But didn't you ever travel?' said she to me.

`Not till I came to college, and then it was only a hundred
and sixty miles and we didn't eat,' said I to her.

She's getting quite interested in me, because I say such funny things.
I try hard not to, but they do pop out when I'm surprised--
and I'm surprised most of the time. It's a dizzying experience,
Daddy, to pass eighteen years in the John Grier Home, and then
suddenly to be plunged into the WORLD.

But I'm getting acclimated. I don't make such awful mistakes as I did;
and I don't feel uncomfortable any more with the other girls. I used
to squirm whenever people looked at me. I felt as though they saw
right through my sham new clothes to the checked ginghams underneath.
But I'm not letting the ginghams bother me any more. Sufficient unto
yesterday is the evil thereof.

I forgot to tell you about our flowers. Master Jervie gave us each
a big bunch of violets and lilies-of-the-valley. Wasn't that sweet
of him? I never used to care much for men--judging by Trustees--
but I'm changing my mind.

Eleven pages--this is a letter! Have courage. I'm going to stop.
Yours always,
Judy