Daddy-Long-Legs
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 any 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 humor.
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 to-morrow; 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.
P. S. 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?
September 15th.
_Dear Daddy_,
I was weighed yesterday on the flour scales in the general store at
the Corners. I’ve gained nine pounds! Let me recommend Lock Willow
as a health resort.
Yours ever,
JUDY.
September 25th.
_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
in 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 reëlected 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.
Good-by, 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.
October 17th.
_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?
2d. 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 Forever,” 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 mes compliments,
Très respectueux.
Je suis,
Votre JUDY._
November 12th.
_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.,
December 31st.
_Dear Daddy-Long-Legs_,
I meant to write to you before and thank you for your Christmas
check, 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 fireplaces 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