Daddy-Long-Legs
P. S. We’re having fancy dancing in gymnasium class. You can see by
the accompanying picture how much we look like a real ballet. The
one on the end accomplishing a graceful pirouette is me--I mean I.
December 26th.
_My dear, dear Daddy_,
Haven’t you any sense? Don’t you _know_ that you mustn’t give one
girl seventeen Christmas presents? I’m a Socialist, please
remember; do you wish to turn me into a Plutocrat?
Think how embarrassing it would be if we should ever quarrel!
I should have to engage a moving van to return your gifts.
I am sorry that the necktie I sent was so wobbly; I knit it with my
own hands (as you doubtless discovered from internal evidence). You
will have to wear it on cold days and keep your coat buttoned up
tight.
Thank you, Daddy, a thousand times. I think you’re the sweetest man
that ever lived--and the foolishest!
JUDY.
Here’s a four-leaf clover from Camp McBride to bring you good luck
for the New Year.
January 9th.
Do you wish to do something, Daddy, that will insure your eternal
salvation? There is a family here who are in awfully desperate
straits. A mother and father and four visible children--the two
older boys have disappeared into the world to make their fortune and
have not sent any of it back. The father worked in a glass factory
and got consumption--it’s awfully unhealthy work--and now has been
sent away to a hospital. That took all of their savings, and the
support of the family falls upon the oldest daughter who is
twenty-four. She dressmakes for $1.50 a day (when she can get it)
and embroiders centerpieces in the evening. The mother isn’t very
strong and is extremely ineffectual and pious. She sits with her
hands folded, a picture of patient resignation, while the daughter
kills herself with overwork and responsibility and worry; she
doesn’t see how they are going to get through the rest of the
winter--and I don’t either. One hundred dollars would buy some coal
and some shoes for the three children so that they could go to
school, and give a little margin so that she needn’t worry herself
to death when a few days pass and she doesn’t get work.
You are the richest man I know. Don’t you suppose you could spare
one hundred dollars? That girl deserves help a lot more than I ever
did. I wouldn’t ask it except for the girl; I don’t care much what
happens to the mother--she is such a jelly-fish.
The way people are forever rolling their eyes to heaven and saying,
“Perhaps it’s all for the best,” when they are perfectly dead sure
it’s not, makes me enraged. Humility or resignation or whatever you
choose to call it, is simply impotent inertia. I’m for a more
militant religion!
We are getting the most dreadful lessons in philosophy--all of
Schopenhauer for to-morrow. The professor doesn’t seem to realize
that we are taking any other subject. He’s a queer old duck; he
goes about with his head in the clouds and blinks dazedly when
occasionally he strikes solid earth. He tries to lighten his
lectures with an occasional witticism--and we do our best to smile,
but I assure you his jokes are no laughing matter. He spends his
entire time between classes in trying to figure out whether matter
really exists or whether he only thinks it exists.
I’m sure my sewing girl hasn’t any doubt but that it exists!
Where do you think my new novel is? In the waste basket. I can see
myself that it’s no good on earth, and when a loving author
realizes that, what _would_ be the judgment of a critical public?
Later.
I address you, Daddy, from a bed of pain. For two days I’ve been
laid up with swollen tonsils; I can just swallow hot milk, and that
is all. “What were your parents thinking of not to have those
tonsils out when you were a baby?” the doctor wished to know. I’m
sure I haven’t an idea, but I doubt if they were thinking much
about me.
Yours,
J. A.
Next morning.
I just read this over before sealing it. I don’t know _why_ I cast
such a misty atmosphere over life. I hasten to assure you that I am
young and happy and exuberant; and I trust you are the same. Youth
has nothing to do with birthdays, only with _alivedness_ of spirit,
so even if your hair is gray, Daddy, you can still be a boy.
Affectionately,
JUDY.
Jan. 12th.
_Dear Mr. Philanthropist_,
Your check for my family came yesterday. Thank you so much! I cut
gymnasium and took it down to them right after luncheon, and you
should have seen the girl’s face! She was so surprised and happy and
relieved that she looked almost young; and she’s only twenty-four.
Isn’t it pitiful?
Anyway, she feels now as though all the good things were coming
together. She has steady work ahead for two months--some one’s
getting married, and there’s a trousseau to make.
“Thank the good Lord!” cried the mother, when she grasped the fact
that that small piece of paper was one hundred dollars.
“It wasn’t the good Lord at all,” said I, “it was Daddy-Long-Legs.”
(Mr. Smith, I called you.)
“But it was the good Lord who put it in his mind,” said she.
“Not at all! I put it in his mind myself,” said I.
But anyway, Daddy, I trust the good Lord will reward you suitably.
You deserve ten thousand years out of purgatory.
Yours most gratefully,
JUDY ABBOTT.
Feb. 15th.
_May it please Your Most Excellent Majesty:_
This morning I did eat my breakfast upon a cold turkey pie and a
goose, and I did send for a cup of tee (a china drink) of which I
had never drank before.
Don’t be nervous, Daddy--I haven’t lost my mind; I’m merely
quoting Sam’l Pepys. We’re reading him in connection with English
History, original sources. Sallie and Julia and I converse now in
the language of 1660. Listen to this:
“I went to Charing Cross to see Major Harrison hanged, drawn and
quartered: he looking as cheerful as any man could do in that
condition.” And this: “Dined with my lady who is in handsome
mourning for her brother who died yesterday of spotted fever.”
Seems a little early to commence entertaining, doesn’t it? A friend
of Pepys devised a very cunning manner whereby the king might pay
his debts out of the sale to poor people of old decayed provisions.
What do you, a reformer, think of that? I don’t believe we’re so
bad to-day as the newspapers make out.
Samuel was as excited about his clothes as any girl; he spent five
times as much on dress as his wife--that appears to have been the
Golden Age of husbands. Isn’t this a touching entry? You see he
really was honest. “To-day came home my fine Camlett cloak with gold
buttons, which cost me much money, and I pray God to make me able to
pay for it.”
Excuse me for being so full of Pepys; I’m writing a special topic
on him.
What do you think, Daddy? The Self-Government Association has
abolished the ten-o’clock rule. We can keep our lights all night if
we choose, the only requirement being that we do not disturb
others--we are not supposed to entertain on a large scale. The
result is a beautiful commentary on human nature. Now that we may
stay up as long as we choose, we no longer choose. Our heads begin
to nod at nine o’clock, and by nine-thirty the pen drops from our
nerveless grasp. It’s nine-thirty now. Good night.
Sunday.
Just back from church--preacher from Georgia. We must take care, he
says, not to develop our intellects at the expense of our emotional
natures--but methought it was a poor, dry sermon (Pepys again). It
doesn’t matter what part of the United States or Canada they come
from, or what denomination they are, we always get the same sermon.
Why on earth don’t they go to men’s colleges and urge the students
not to allow their manly natures to be crushed out by too much
mental application?
It’s a beautiful day--frozen and icy and clear. As soon as dinner
is over, Sallie and Julia and Marty Keene and Eleanor Pratt (friends
of mine, but you don’t know them) and I are going to put on short
skirts and walk ’cross country to Crystal Spring Farm and have a
fried chicken and waffle supper, and then have Mr. Crystal Spring
drive us home in his buckboard. We are supposed to be inside the
campus at seven, but we are going to stretch a point to-night and
make it eight.
Farewell, kind Sir.
I have the honour of subscribing myself,
Your most loyall, dutifull, faithfull and obedient servant,
J. ABBOTT.
March Fifth.
_Dear Mr. Trustee_,
To-morrow is the first Wednesday in the month--a weary day for the
John Grier Home. How relieved they’ll be when five o’clock comes
and you pat them on the head and take yourselves off! Did you
(individually) ever pat me on the head, Daddy? I don’t believe
so--my memory seems to be concerned only with fat Trustees.
Give the Home my love, please--my _truly_ love. I have quite a
feeling of tenderness for it as I look back through a haze of four
years. When I first came to college I felt quite resentful because
I’d been robbed of the normal kind of childhood that the other
girls had had; but now, I don’t feel that way in the least. I regard
it as a very unusual adventure. It gives me a sort of vantage point
from which to stand aside and look at life. Emerging full grown,
I get a perspective on the world, that other people who have been
brought up in the thick of things, entirely lack.
I know lots of girls (Julia, for instance) who never know that they
are happy. They are so accustomed to the feeling that their senses
are deadened to it, but as for me--I am perfectly sure every moment
of my life that I am happy. And I’m going to keep on being, no
matter what unpleasant things turn up. I’m going to regard them
(even toothaches) as interesting experiences, and be glad to know
what they feel like. “Whatever sky’s above me, I’ve a heart for
any fate.”
However, Daddy, don’t take this new affection for the J. G. H. too
literally. If I have five children, like Rousseau, I shan’t leave
them on the steps of a foundling asylum in order to insure their
being brought up simply.
Give my kindest regards to Mrs. Lippett (that, I think, is truthful;
love would be a little strong) and don’t forget to tell her what a
beautiful nature I’ve developed.
Affectionately,
JUDY.
LOCK WILLOW,
April 4th.
_Dear Daddy_,
Do you observe the postmark? Sallie and I are embellishing Lock
Willow with our presence during the Easter vacation. We decided that
the best thing we could do with our ten days was to come where it is
quiet. Our nerves had got to the point where they wouldn’t stand
another meal in Fergussen. Dining in a room with four hundred girls
is an ordeal when you are tired. There is so much noise that you
can’t hear the girls across the table speak unless they make their
hands into a megaphone and shout. That is the truth.
We are tramping over the hills and reading and writing, and having a
nice, restful time. We climbed to the top of “Sky Hill” this morning
where Master Jervie and I once cooked supper--it doesn’t seem
possible that it was nearly two years ago. I could still see the
place where the smoke of our fire blackened the rock. It is funny
how certain places get connected with certain people, and you never
go back without thinking of them. I was quite lonely without
him--for two minutes.
What do you think is my latest activity, Daddy? You will begin to
believe that I am incorrigible--I am writing a book. I started it
three weeks ago and am eating it up in chunks. I’ve caught the
secret. Master Jervie and that editor man were right; you are most
convincing when you write about the things you know. And this time
it is about something that I do know--exhaustively. Guess where
it’s laid? In the John Grier Home! And it’s good, Daddy,