Daddy-Long-Legs
You will be pleased to hear that I passed successfully my mid-year
examinations, and am now commencing work in the new semester. I am
leaving chemistry--having completed the course in qualitative
analysis--and am entering upon the study of biology. I approach this
subject with some hesitation, as I understand that we dissect
angleworms and frogs.
An extremely interesting and valuable lecture was given in the
chapel last week upon Roman Remains in Southern France. I have never
listened to a more illuminating exposition of the subject.
We are reading Wordsworth’s “Tinturn Abbey” in connection with our
course in English Literature. What an exquisite work it is, and how
adequately it embodies his conception of Pantheism! The Romantic
movement of the early part of the last century, exemplified in the
works of such poets as Shelley, Byron, Keats, and Wordsworth,
appeals to me very much more than the Classical period that preceded
it. Speaking of poetry, have you ever read that charming little
thing of Tennyson’s called “Locksley Hall”?
I am attending gymnasium very regularly of late. A proctor system
has been devised, and failure to comply with the rules causes a
great deal of inconvenience. The gymnasium is equipped with a very
beautiful swimming tank of cement and marble, the gift of a former
graduate. My room-mate, Miss McBride, has given me her bathing-suit
(it shrank so that she can no longer wear it) and I am about to
begin swimming lessons.
We had delicious pink ice-cream for dessert last night. Only
vegetable dyes are used in coloring the food. The college is very
much opposed, both from esthetic and hygienic motives, to the use of
aniline dyes.
The weather of late has been ideal--bright sunshine and clouds
interspersed with a few welcome snow-storms. I and my companions
have enjoyed our walks to and from classes--particularly from.
Trusting, my dear Mr. Smith, that this will find you in your usual
good health,
I remain,
Most cordially yours,
JERUSHA ABBOTT.
April 24th.
_Dear Daddy_,
Spring has come again! You should see how lovely the campus is.
I think you might come and look at it for yourself. Master Jervie
dropped in again last Friday--but he chose a most unpropitious time,
for Sallie and Julia and I were just running to catch a train. And
where do you think we were going? To Princeton, to attend a dance
and a ball game, if you please! I didn’t ask you if I might go,
because I had a feeling that your secretary would say no. But it was
entirely regular; we had leave-of-absence from college, and Mrs.
McBride chaperoned us. We had a charming time--but I shall have to
omit details; they are too many and complicated.
Saturday.
Up before dawn! The night watchman called us--six of us--and we made
coffee in a chafing dish (you never saw so many grounds!) and walked
two miles to the top of One Tree Hill to see the sun rise. We had to
scramble up the last slope! The sun almost beat us! And perhaps you
think we didn’t bring back appetites to breakfast!
Dear me, Daddy, I seem to have a very ejaculatory style to-day; this
page is peppered with exclamations.
I meant to have written a lot about the budding trees and the new
cinder path in the athletic field, and the awful lesson we have in
biology for to-morrow, and the new canoes on the lake, and Catherine
Prentiss who has pneumonia, and Prexy’s Angora kitten that strayed
from home and has been boarding in Fergussen Hall for two weeks
until a chambermaid reported it, and about my three new
dresses--white and pink and blue polka dots with a hat to match--but
I am too sleepy. I am always making this an excuse, am I not? But a
girl’s college is a busy place and we do get tired by the end of the
day! Particularly when the day begins at dawn.
Affectionately,
JUDY.
May 15th.
_Dear Daddy-Long-Legs_,
Is it good manners when you get into a car just to stare straight
ahead and not see anybody else?
A very beautiful lady in a very beautiful velvet dress got into the
car to-day, and without the slightest expression sat for fifteen
minutes and looked at a sign advertising suspenders. It doesn’t
seem polite to ignore everybody else as though you were the only
important person present. Anyway, you miss a lot. While she was
absorbing that silly sign, I was studying a whole car full of
interesting human beings.
The accompanying illustration is hereby reproduced for the first
time. It looks like a spider on the end of a string, but it isn’t
at all; it’s a picture of me learning to swim in the tank in the
gymnasium.
The instructor hooks a rope into a ring in the back of my belt, and
runs it through a pulley in the ceiling. It would be a beautiful
system if one had perfect confidence in the probity of one’s
instructor. I’m always afraid, though, that she will let the rope
get slack, so I keep one anxious eye on her and swim with the other,
and with this divided interest I do not make the progress that I
otherwise might.
Very miscellaneous weather we’re having of late. It was raining
when I commenced and now the sun is shining. Sallie and I are going
out to play tennis--thereby gaining exemption from Gym.
A week later.
I should have finished this letter long ago, but I didn’t. You
don’t mind, do you, Daddy, if I’m not very regular? I really do
love to write to you; it gives me such a respectable feeling of
having some family. Would you like me to tell you something? You are
not the only man to whom I write letters. There are two others!
I have been receiving beautiful long letters this winter from Master
Jervie (with typewritten envelopes so Julia won’t recognize the
writing). Did you ever hear anything so shocking? And every week or
so a very scrawly epistle, usually on yellow tablet paper, arrives
from Princeton. All of which I answer with businesslike promptness.
So you see--I am not so different from other girls--I get mail, too.
Did I tell you that I have been elected a member of the Senior
Dramatic Club? Very _recherché_ organization. Only seventy-five
members out of one thousand. Do you think as a consistent Socialist
that I ought to belong?
What do you suppose is at present engaging my attention in
sociology? I am writing (_figurez vous!_) a paper on the Care of
Dependent Children. The Professor shuffled up his subjects and dealt
them out promiscuously, and that fell to me. _C’est drôle ça n’est
pas?_
There goes the gong for dinner. I’ll mail this as I pass the chute.
Affectionately,
J.
June 4th.
_Dear Daddy_,
Very busy time--commencement in ten days, examinations to-morrow;
lots of studying, lots of packing, and the outdoors world so lovely
that it hurts you to stay inside.
But never mind, vacation’s coming. Julia is going abroad this
summer--it makes the fourth time. No doubt about it, Daddy, goods
are not distributed evenly. Sallie, as usual, goes to the
Adirondacks. And what do you think I am going to do? You may have
three guesses. Lock Willow? Wrong. The Adirondacks with Sallie?
Wrong. (I’ll never attempt that again; I was discouraged last
year.) Can’t you guess anything else? You’re not very inventive.
I’ll tell you, Daddy, if you’ll promise not to make a lot of
objections. I warn your secretary ahead of time that my mind is made
up.
I am going to spend the summer at the seaside with a Mrs. Charles
Paterson and tutor her daughter who is to enter college in the
autumn. I met her through the McBrides, and she is a very charming
woman. I am to give lessons in English and Latin to the younger
daughter, too, but I shall have a little time to myself, and I shall
be earning fifty dollars a month! Doesn’t that impress you as a
perfectly exorbitant amount? She offered it; I should have blushed
to ask more than twenty-five.
I finish at Magnolia (that’s where she lives) the first of
September and shall probably spend the remaining three weeks at Lock
Willow--I should like to see the Semples again and all the friendly
animals.
How does my program strike you, Daddy? I am getting quite
independent, you see. You have put me on my feet and I think I can
almost walk alone by now.
Princeton commencement and our examinations exactly coincide--which
is an awful blow. Sallie and I did so want to get away in time for
it, but of course that is utterly impossible.
Good-by, Daddy. Have a nice summer and come back in the autumn
rested and ready for another year of work. (That’s what you ought
to be writing to me!) I haven’t an idea what you do in the summer,
or how you amuse yourself. I can’t visualize your surroundings. Do
you play golf or hunt or ride horseback or just sit in the sun and
meditate?
Anyway, whatever it is, have a good time and don’t forget Judy.
June Tenth.
_Dear Daddy_,
This is the hardest letter I ever wrote, but I have decided what I
must do, and there isn’t going to be any turning back. It is very
sweet and generous and dear of you to wish to send me to Europe this
summer--for the moment I was intoxicated by the idea; but sober
second thoughts said no. It would be rather illogical of me to
refuse to take your money for college, and then use it instead just
for amusement! You mustn’t get me used to too many luxuries. One
doesn’t miss what one has never had; but it is awfully hard going
without things after one has commenced thinking they are his--hers
(English language needs another pronoun) by natural right. Living
with Sallie and Julia is an awful strain on my stoical philosophy.
They have both had things from the time they were babies; they
accept happiness as a matter of course. The World, they think, owes
them everything they want. Maybe the World does--in any case, it
seems to acknowledge the debt and pay up. But as for me, it owes me
nothing, and distinctly told me so in the beginning. I have no right
to borrow on credit, for there will come a time when the World will
repudiate my claim.
I seem to be floundering in a sea of metaphor--but I hope you grasp
my meaning? Anyway, I have a very strong feeling that the only
honest thing for me to do is to teach this summer and begin to
support myself.
* * * * *
MAGNOLIA,
Four days later.
I’d got just that much written, when--what do you think happened?
The maid arrived with Master Jervie’s card. He is going abroad too
this summer; not with Julia and her family but entirely by himself.
I told him that you had invited me to go with a lady who is
chaperoning a party of girls. He knows about you, Daddy. That is, he
knows that my father and mother are dead, and that a kind gentleman
is sending me to college; I simply didn’t have the courage to tell
him about the John Grier Home and all the rest. He thinks that you
are my guardian and a perfectly legitimate old family friend. I have
never told him that I didn’t know you--that would seem too queer!
Anyway, he insisted on my going to Europe. He said that it was a
necessary part of my education and that I mustn’t think of
refusing. Also, that he would be in Paris at the same time, and that
we would run away from the chaperon occasionally and have dinner
together at nice, funny, foreign restaurants.
Well, Daddy, it did appeal to me! I almost weakened; if he hadn’t
been so dictatorial, maybe I should have entirely weakened. I can be
enticed step by step, but I _won’t_ be forced. He said I was a
silly, foolish, irrational, quixotic, idiotic, stubborn child (those
are a few of his abusive adjectives; the rest escape me) and that I
didn’t know what was good for me; I ought to let older people