1 files changed, 5316 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/157.txt b/157.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c020a2f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/157.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,5316 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Daddy-Long-Legs, by Jean Webster
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Daddy-Long-Legs
+
+Author: Jean Webster
+
+Release Date: June 9, 2008 [EBook #157]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DADDY-LONG-LEGS ***
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+DADDY-LONG-LEGS
+
+
+by
+
+JEAN WEBSTER
+
+
+
+Copyright 1912 by The Century Company
+
+
+
+
+TO YOU
+
+
+
+
+Blue Wednesday
+
+The first Wednesday in every month was a Perfectly Awful Day--a day to
+be awaited with dread, endured with courage and forgotten with haste.
+Every floor must be spotless, every chair dustless, and every bed
+without a wrinkle.  Ninety-seven squirming little orphans must be
+scrubbed and combed and buttoned into freshly starched ginghams; and
+all ninety-seven reminded of their manners, and told to say, 'Yes,
+sir,' 'No, sir,' whenever a Trustee spoke.
+
+It was a distressing time; and poor Jerusha Abbott, being the oldest
+orphan, had to bear the brunt of it.  But this particular first
+Wednesday, like its predecessors, finally dragged itself to a close.
+Jerusha escaped from the pantry where she had been making sandwiches
+for the asylum's guests, and turned upstairs to accomplish her regular
+work.  Her special care was room F, where eleven little tots, from four
+to seven, occupied eleven little cots set in a row.  Jerusha assembled
+her charges, straightened their rumpled frocks, wiped their noses, and
+started them in an orderly and willing line towards the dining-room to
+engage themselves for a blessed half hour with bread and milk and prune
+pudding.
+
+Then she dropped down on the window seat and leaned throbbing temples
+against the cool glass.  She had been on her feet since five that
+morning, doing everybody's bidding, scolded and hurried by a nervous
+matron.  Mrs. Lippett, behind the scenes, did not always maintain that
+calm and pompous dignity with which she faced an audience of Trustees
+and lady visitors.  Jerusha gazed out across a broad stretch of frozen
+lawn, beyond the tall iron paling that marked the confines of the
+asylum, down undulating ridges sprinkled with country estates, to the
+spires of the village rising from the midst of bare trees.
+
+The day was ended--quite successfully, so far as she knew.  The
+Trustees and the visiting committee had made their rounds, and read
+their reports, and drunk their tea, and now were hurrying home to their
+own cheerful firesides, to forget their bothersome little charges for
+another month.  Jerusha leaned forward watching with curiosity--and a
+touch of wistfulness--the stream of carriages and automobiles that
+rolled out of the asylum gates.  In imagination she followed first one
+equipage, then another, to the big houses dotted along the hillside.
+She pictured herself in a fur coat and a velvet hat trimmed with
+feathers leaning back in the seat and nonchalantly murmuring 'Home' to
+the driver.  But on the door-sill of her home the picture grew blurred.
+
+Jerusha had an imagination--an imagination, Mrs. Lippett told her, that
+would get her into trouble if she didn't take care--but keen as it was,
+it could not carry her beyond the front porch of the houses she would
+enter.  Poor, eager, adventurous little Jerusha, in all her seventeen
+years, had never stepped inside an ordinary house; she could not
+picture the daily routine of those other human beings who carried on
+their lives undiscommoded by orphans.
+
+                   Je-ru-sha Ab-bott
+                   You are wan-ted
+                   In the of-fice,
+                   And I think you'd
+                   Better hurry up!
+
+
+Tommy Dillon, who had joined the choir, came singing up the stairs and
+down the corridor, his chant growing louder as he approached room F.
+Jerusha wrenched herself from the window and refaced the troubles of
+life.
+
+'Who wants me?' she cut into Tommy's chant with a note of sharp anxiety.
+
+               Mrs. Lippett in the office,
+               And I think she's mad.
+                      Ah-a-men!
+
+
+Tommy piously intoned, but his accent was not entirely malicious.  Even
+the most hardened little orphan felt sympathy for an erring sister who
+was summoned to the office to face an annoyed matron; and Tommy liked
+Jerusha even if she did sometimes jerk him by the arm and nearly scrub
+his nose off.
+
+Jerusha went without comment, but with two parallel lines on her brow.
+What could have gone wrong, she wondered.  Were the sandwiches not thin
+enough?  Were there shells in the nut cakes?  Had a lady visitor seen
+the hole in Susie Hawthorn's stocking?  Had--O horrors!--one of the
+cherubic little babes in her own room F 'sauced' a Trustee?
+
+The long lower hall had not been lighted, and as she came downstairs, a
+last Trustee stood, on the point of departure, in the open door that
+led to the porte-cochere. Jerusha caught only a fleeting impression of
+the man--and the impression consisted entirely of tallness.  He was
+waving his arm towards an automobile waiting in the curved drive.  As
+it sprang into motion and approached, head on for an instant, the
+glaring headlights threw his shadow sharply against the wall inside.
+The shadow pictured grotesquely elongated legs and arms that ran along
+the floor and up the wall of the corridor.  It looked, for all the
+world, like a huge, wavering daddy-long-legs.
+
+Jerusha's anxious frown gave place to quick laughter.  She was by
+nature a sunny soul, and had always snatched the tiniest excuse to be
+amused.  If one could derive any sort of entertainment out of the
+oppressive fact of a Trustee, it was something unexpected to the good.
+She advanced to the office quite cheered by the tiny episode, and
+presented a smiling face to Mrs. Lippett.  To her surprise the matron
+was also, if not exactly smiling, at least appreciably affable; she
+wore an expression almost as pleasant as the one she donned for
+visitors.
+
+'Sit down, Jerusha, I have something to say to you.'  Jerusha dropped
+into the nearest chair and waited with a touch of breathlessness.  An
+automobile flashed past the window; Mrs. Lippett glanced after it.
+
+'Did you notice the gentleman who has just gone?'
+
+'I saw his back.'
+
+'He is one of our most affluential Trustees, and has given large sums
+of money towards the asylum's support.  I am not at liberty to mention
+his name; he expressly stipulated that he was to remain unknown.'
+
+Jerusha's eyes widened slightly; she was not accustomed to being
+summoned to the office to discuss the eccentricities of Trustees with
+the matron.
+
+'This gentleman has taken an interest in several of our boys.  You
+remember Charles Benton and Henry Freize?  They were both sent through
+college by Mr.--er--this Trustee, and both have repaid with hard work
+and success the money that was so generously expended.  Other payment
+the gentleman does not wish.  Heretofore his philanthropies have been
+directed solely towards the boys; I have never been able to interest
+him in the slightest degree in any of the girls in the institution, no
+matter how deserving.  He does not, I may tell you, care for girls.'
+
+'No, ma'am,' Jerusha murmured, since some reply seemed to be expected
+at this point.
+
+'To-day at the regular meeting, the question of your future was brought
+up.'
+
+Mrs. Lippett allowed a moment of silence to fall, then resumed in a
+slow, placid manner extremely trying to her hearer's suddenly tightened
+nerves.
+
+'Usually, as you know, the children are not kept after they are
+sixteen, but an exception was made in your case.  You had finished our
+school at fourteen, and having done so well in your studies--not
+always, I must say, in your conduct--it was determined to let you go on
+in the village high school.  Now you are finishing that, and of course
+the asylum cannot be responsible any longer for your support.  As it
+is, you have had two years more than most.'
+
+Mrs. Lippett overlooked the fact that Jerusha had worked hard for her
+board during those two years, that the convenience of the asylum had
+come first and her education second; that on days like the present she
+was kept at home to scrub.
+
+'As I say, the question of your future was brought up and your record
+was discussed--thoroughly discussed.'
+
+Mrs. Lippett brought accusing eyes to bear upon the prisoner in the
+dock, and the prisoner looked guilty because it seemed to be
+expected--not because she could remember any strikingly black pages in
+her record.
+
+'Of course the usual disposition of one in your place would be to put
+you in a position where you could begin to work, but you have done well
+in school in certain branches; it seems that your work in English has
+even been brilliant.  Miss Pritchard, who is on our visiting committee,
+is also on the school board; she has been talking with your rhetoric
+teacher, and made a speech in your favour.  She also read aloud an
+essay that you had written entitled, "Blue Wednesday".'
+
+Jerusha's guilty expression this time was not assumed.
+
+'It seemed to me that you showed little gratitude in holding up to
+ridicule the institution that has done so much for you.  Had you not
+managed to be funny I doubt if you would have been forgiven.  But
+fortunately for you, Mr.--, that is, the gentleman who has just
+gone--appears to have an immoderate sense of humour.  On the strength
+of that impertinent paper, he has offered to send you to college.'
+
+'To college?'  Jerusha's eyes grew big.  Mrs. Lippett nodded.
+
+'He waited to discuss the terms with me.  They are unusual.  The
+gentleman, I may say, is erratic.  He believes that you have
+originality, and he is planning to educate you to become a writer.'
+
+'A writer?'  Jerusha's mind was numbed.  She could only repeat Mrs.
+Lippett's words.
+
+'That is his wish.  Whether anything will come of it, the future will
+show.  He is giving you a very liberal allowance, almost, for a girl
+who has never had any experience in taking care of money, too liberal.
+But he planned the matter in detail, and I did not feel free to make
+any suggestions.  You are to remain here through the summer, and Miss
+Pritchard has kindly offered to superintend your outfit.  Your board
+and tuition will be paid directly to the college, and you will receive
+in addition during the four years you are there, an allowance of
+thirty-five dollars a month.  This will enable you to enter on the same
+standing as the other students.  The money will be sent to you by the
+gentleman's private secretary once a month, and in return, you will
+write a letter of acknowledgment once a month.  That is--you are not to
+thank him for the money; he doesn't care to have that mentioned, but
+you are to write a letter telling of the progress in your studies and
+the details of your daily life.  Just such a letter as you would write
+to your parents if they were living.
+
+'These letters will be addressed to Mr. John Smith and will be sent in
+care of the secretary.  The gentleman's name is not John Smith, but he
+prefers to remain unknown.  To you he will never be anything but John
+Smith.  His reason in requiring the letters is that he thinks nothing
+so fosters facility in literary expression as letter-writing. Since you
+have no family with whom to correspond, he desires you to write in this
+way; also, he wishes to keep track of your progress.  He will never
+answer your letters, nor in the slightest particular take any notice of
+them.  He detests letter-writing and does not wish you to become a
+burden.  If any point should ever arise where an answer would seem to
+be imperative--such as in the event of your being expelled, which I
+trust will not occur--you may correspond with Mr. Griggs, his
+secretary.  These monthly letters are absolutely obligatory on your
+part; they are the only payment that Mr. Smith requires, so you must be
+as punctilious in sending them as though it were a bill that you were
+paying.  I hope that they will always be respectful in tone and will
+reflect credit on your training.  You must remember that you are
+writing to a Trustee of the John Grier Home.'
+
+Jerusha's eyes longingly sought the door.  Her head was in a whirl of
+excitement, and she wished only to escape from Mrs. Lippett's
+platitudes and think.  She rose and took a tentative step backwards.
+Mrs. Lippett detained her with a gesture; it was an oratorical
+opportunity not to be slighted.
+
+'I trust that you are properly grateful for this very rare good fortune
+that has befallen you?  Not many girls in your position ever have such
+an opportunity to rise in the world.  You must always remember--'
+
+'I--yes, ma'am, thank you.  I think, if that's all, I must go and sew a
+patch on Freddie Perkins's trousers.'
+
+The door closed behind her, and Mrs. Lippett watched it with dropped
+jaw, her peroration in mid-air.
+
+
+
+
+The Letters of
+
+Miss Jerusha Abbott
+
+to
+
+Mr. Daddy-Long-Legs Smith
+
+
+                                   215 FERGUSSEN HALL
+                                           24th September
+
+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 I 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
+
+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 retourner 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, dear 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
+
+
+
+
+                                                   10th April
+
+Dear Mr. Rich-Man,
+
+Here's your cheque for fifty dollars.  Thank you very much, but I do
+not feel that I can keep it.  My allowance is sufficient to afford all
+of the hats that I need.  I am sorry that I wrote all that silly stuff
+about the millinery shop; it's just that I had never seen anything like
+it before.
+
+However, I wasn't begging!  And I would rather not accept any more
+charity than I have to.
+
+                   Sincerely yours,
+                                     Jerusha Abbott
+
+
+
+
+                                           11th April
+
+Dearest Daddy,
+
+Will you please forgive me for the letter I wrote you yesterday?  After
+I posted it I was sorry, and tried to get it back, but that beastly
+mail clerk wouldn't give it back to me.
+
+It's the middle of the night now; I've been awake for hours thinking
+what a Worm I am--what a Thousand-legged Worm--and that's the worst I
+can say!  I've closed the door very softly into the study so as not to
+wake Julia and Sallie, and am sitting up in bed writing to you on paper
+torn out of my history note-book.
+
+I just wanted to tell you that I am sorry I was so impolite about your
+cheque.  I know you meant it kindly, and I think you're an old dear to
+take so much trouble for such a silly thing as a hat.  I ought to have
+returned it very much more graciously.
+
+But in any case, I had to return it.  It's different with me than with
+other girls.  They can take things naturally from people.  They have
+fathers and brothers and aunts and uncles; but I can't be on any such
+relations with any one.  I like to pretend that you belong to me, just
+to play with the idea, but of course I know you don't. I'm alone,
+really--with my back to the wall fighting the world--and I get sort of
+gaspy when I think about it.  I put it out of my mind, and keep on
+pretending; but don't you see, Daddy?  I can't accept any more money
+than I have to, because some day I shall be wanting to pay it back, and
+even as great an author as I intend to be won't be able to face a
+PERFECTLY TREMENDOUS debt.
+
+I'd love pretty hats and things, but I mustn't mortgage the future to
+pay for them.
+
+You'll forgive me, won't you, for being so rude?  I have an awful habit
+of writing impulsively when I first think things, and then posting the
+letter beyond recall.  But if I sometimes seem thoughtless and
+ungrateful, I never mean it.  In my heart I thank you always for the
+life and freedom and independence that you have given me.  My childhood
+was just a long, sullen stretch of revolt, and now I am so happy every
+moment of the day that I can't believe it's true.  I feel like a
+made-up heroine in a story-book.
+
+It's a quarter past two.  I'm going to tiptoe out to post this off now.
+You'll receive it in the next mail after the other; so you won't have a
+very long time to think bad of me.
+
+                       Good night, Daddy,
+                           I love you always,
+                                               Judy
+
+
+
+
+                                                   4th May
+
+Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
+
+Field Day last Saturday.  It was a very spectacular occasion.  First we
+had a parade of all the classes, with everybody dressed in white linen,
+the Seniors carrying blue and gold Japanese umbrellas, and the juniors
+white and yellow banners.  Our class had crimson balloons--very
+fetching, especially as they were always getting loose and floating
+off--and the Freshmen wore green tissue-paper hats with long streamers.
+Also we had a band in blue uniforms hired from town.  Also about a
+dozen funny people, like clowns in a circus, to keep the spectators
+entertained between events.
+
+Julia was dressed as a fat country man with a linen duster and whiskers
+and baggy umbrella.  Patsy Moriarty (Patrici really.  Did you ever hear
+such a name?  Mrs. Lippett couldn't have done better) who is tall and
+thin was Julia's wife in a absurd green bonnet over one ear.  Waves of
+laughter followed them the whole length of the course.  Julia played
+the part extremely well.  I never dreamed that a Pendleton could
+display so much comedy spirit--begging Master Jervie's pardon; I don't
+consider him a true Pendleton though, any more than I consider you a
+true Trustee.
+
+Sallie and I weren't in the parade because we were entered for the
+events.  And what do you think?  We both won!  At least in something.
+We tried for the running broad jump and lost; but Sallie won the
+pole-vaulting (seven feet three inches) and I won the fifty-yard sprint
+(eight seconds).
+
+I was pretty panting at the end, but it was great fun, with the whole
+class waving balloons and cheering and yelling:
+
+               What's the matter with Judy Abbott?
+               She's all right.
+               Who's all right?
+               Judy Ab-bott!
+
+
+That, Daddy, is true fame.  Then trotting back to the dressing tent and
+being rubbed down with alcohol and having a lemon to suck.  You see
+we're very professional.  It's a fine thing to win an event for your
+class, because the class that wins the most gets the athletic cup for
+the year.  The Seniors won it this year, with seven events to their
+credit.  The athletic association gave a dinner in the gymnasium to all
+of the winners.  We had fried soft-shell crabs, and chocolate ice-cream
+moulded in the shape of basket balls.
+
+I sat up half of last night reading Jane Eyre.  Are you old enough,
+Daddy, to remember sixty years ago?  And, if so, did people talk that
+way?
+
+The haughty Lady Blanche says to the footman, 'Stop your chattering,
+knave, and do my bidding.'  Mr. Rochester talks about the metal welkin
+when he means the sky; and as for the mad woman who laughs like a hyena
+and sets fire to bed curtains and tears up wedding veils and
+BITES--it's melodrama of the purest, but just the same, you read and
+read and read.  I can't see how any girl could have written such a
+book, especially any girl who was brought up in a churchyard.  There's
+something about those Brontes that fascinates me.  Their books, their
+lives, their spirit.  Where did they get it?  When I was reading about
+little Jane's troubles in the charity school, I got so angry that I had
+to go out and take a walk.  I understood exactly how she felt.  Having
+known Mrs. Lippett, I could see Mr. Brocklehurst.
+
+Don't be outraged, Daddy.  I am not intimating that the John Grier Home
+was like the Lowood Institute.  We had plenty to eat and plenty to
+wear, sufficient water to wash in, and a furnace in the cellar.  But
+there was one deadly likeness.  Our lives were absolutely monotonous
+and uneventful.  Nothing nice ever happened, except ice-cream on
+Sundays, and even that was regular.  In all the eighteen years I was
+there I only had one adventure--when the woodshed burned.  We had to
+get up in the night and dress so as to be ready in case the house
+should catch.  But it didn't catch and we went back to bed.
+
+Everybody likes a few surprises; it's a perfectly natural human
+craving.  But I never had one until Mrs. Lippett called me to the
+office to tell me that Mr. John Smith was going to send me to college.
+And then she broke the news so gradually that it just barely shocked me.
+
+You know, Daddy, I think that the most necessary quality for any person
+to have is imagination.  It makes people able to put themselves in
+other people's places.  It makes them kind and sympathetic and
+understanding.  It ought to be cultivated in children.  But the John
+Grier Home instantly stamped out the slightest flicker that appeared.
+Duty was the one quality that was encouraged.  I don't think children
+ought to know the meaning of the word; it's odious, detestable.  They
+ought to do everything from love.
+
+Wait until you see the orphan asylum that I am going to be the head of!
+It's my favourite play at night before I go to sleep.  I plan it out to
+the littlest detail--the meals and clothes and study and amusements and
+punishments; for even my superior orphans are sometimes bad.
+
+But anyway, they are going to be happy.  I think that every one, no
+matter how many troubles he may have when he grows up, ought to have a
+happy childhood to look back upon.  And if I ever have any children of
+my own, no matter how unhappy I may be, I am not going to let them have
+any cares until they grow up.
+
+(There goes the chapel bell--I'll finish this letter sometime).
+
+
+                                               Thursday
+
+When I came in from laboratory this afternoon, I found a squirrel
+sitting on the tea table helping himself to almonds.  These are the
+kind of callers we entertain now that warm weather has come and the
+windows stay open--
+
+
+                                             Saturday morning
+
+Perhaps you think, last night being Friday, with no classes today, that
+I passed a nice quiet, readable evening with the set of Stevenson that
+I bought with my prize money?  But if so, you've never attended a
+girls' college, Daddy dear.  Six friends dropped in to make fudge, and
+one of them dropped the fudge--while it was still liquid--right in the
+middle of our best rug.  We shall never be able to clean up the mess.
+
+I haven't mentioned any lessons of late; but we are still having them
+every day.  It's sort of a relief though, to get away from them and
+discuss life in the large--rather one-sided discussions that you and I
+hold, but that's your own fault.  You are welcome to answer back any
+time you choose.
+
+I've been writing this letter off and on for three days, and I fear by
+now vous etes bien bored!
+
+                   Goodbye, nice Mr. Man,
+                                               Judy
+
+
+
+
+Mr. Daddy-Long-Legs Smith,
+
+SIR:  Having completed the study of argumentation and the science of
+dividing a thesis into heads, I have decided to adopt the following
+form for letter-writing. It contains all necessary facts, but no
+unnecessary verbiage.
+
+I. We had written examinations this week in:
+       A. Chemistry.
+       B. History.
+
+II.  A new dormitory is being built.
+       A. Its material is:
+           (a) red brick.
+           (b) grey stone.
+       B. Its capacity will be:
+           (a) one dean, five instructors.
+           (b) two hundred girls.
+           (c) one housekeeper, three cooks, twenty waitresses,
+               twenty chambermaids.
+
+III.  We had junket for dessert tonight.
+
+IV.  I am writing a special topic upon the Sources of Shakespeare's
+Plays.
+
+V. Lou McMahon slipped and fell this afternoon at basket ball, and she:
+       A. Dislocated her shoulder.
+       B. Bruised her knee.
+
+VI.  I have a new hat trimmed with:
+       A. Blue velvet ribbon.
+       B. Two blue quills.
+       C. Three red pompoms.
+
+VII.  It is half past nine.
+
+VIII.  Good night.
+
+                                           Judy
+
+
+
+
+                                               2nd June
+
+Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
+
+You will never guess the nice thing that has happened.
+
+The McBrides have asked me to spend the summer at their camp in the
+Adirondacks!  They belong to a sort of club on a lovely little lake in
+the middle of the woods.  The different members have houses made of
+logs dotted about among the trees, and they go canoeing on the lake,
+and take long walks through trails to other camps, and have dances once
+a week in the club house--Jimmie McBride is going to have a college
+friend visiting him part of the summer, so you see we shall have plenty
+of men to dance with.
+
+Wasn't it sweet of Mrs. McBride to ask me?  It appears that she liked
+me when I was there for Christmas.
+
+Please excuse this being short.  It isn't a real letter; it's just to
+let you know that I'm disposed of for the summer.
+
+                   Yours,
+                       In a VERY contented frame of mind,
+                                                   Judy
+
+
+
+
+                                                   5th June
+
+Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
+
+Your secretary man has just written to me saying that Mr. Smith prefers
+that I should not accept Mrs. McBride's invitation, but should return
+to Lock Willow the same as last summer.
+
+Why, why, WHY, Daddy?
+
+You don't understand about it.  Mrs. McBride does want me, really and
+truly.  I'm not the least bit of trouble in the house.  I'm a help.
+They don't take up many servants, and Sallie an I can do lots of useful
+things.  It's a fine chance for me to learn housekeeping.  Every woman
+ought to understand it, and I only know asylum-keeping.
+
+There aren't any girls our age at the camp, and Mrs. McBride wants me
+for a companion for Sallie.  We are planning to do a lot of reading
+together.  We are going to read all of the books for next year's
+English and sociology.  The Professor said it would be a great help if
+we would get our reading finished in the summer; and it's so much
+easier to remember it if we read together and talk it over.
+
+Just to live in the same house with Sallie's mother is an education.
+She's the most interesting, entertaining, companionable, charming woman
+in the world; she knows everything.  Think how many summers I've spent
+with Mrs. Lippett and how I'll appreciate the contrast.  You needn't be
+afraid that I'll be crowding them, for their house is made of rubber.
+When they have a lot of company, they just sprinkle tents about in the
+woods and turn the boys outside.  It's going to be such a nice, healthy
+summer exercising out of doors every minute.  Jimmie McBride is going
+to teach me how to ride horseback and paddle a canoe, and how to shoot
+and--oh, lots of things I ought to know.  It's the kind of nice, jolly,
+care-free time that I've never had; and I think every girl deserves it
+once in her life.  Of course I'll do exactly as you say, but please,
+PLEASE let me go, Daddy.  I've never wanted anything so much.
+
+This isn't Jerusha Abbott, the future great author, writing to you.
+It's just Judy--a girl.
+
+
+
+                                               9th June
+
+Mr. John Smith,
+
+SIR:  Yours of the 7th inst. at hand.  In compliance with the
+instructions received through your secretary, I leave on Friday next to
+spend the summer at Lock Willow Farm.
+
+I hope always to remain,
+                               (Miss) Jerusha Abbott
+
+
+
+
+                                            LOCK WILLOW FARM,
+                                               3rd August
+
+Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
+
+It has been nearly two months since I wrote, which wasn't nice of me, I
+know, but I haven't loved you much this summer--you see I'm being frank!
+
+You can't imagine how disappointed I was at having to give up the
+McBrides' camp.  Of course I know that you're my guardian, and that I
+have to regard your wishes in all matters, but I couldn't see any
+REASON.  It was so distinctly the best thing that could have happened
+to me.  If I had been Daddy, and you had been Judy, I should have said,
+'Bless you my child, run along and have a good time; see lots of new
+people and learn lots of new things; live out of doors, and get strong
+and well and rested for a year of hard work.'
+
+But not at all!  Just a curt line from your secretary ordering me to
+Lock Willow.
+
+It's the impersonality of your commands that hurts my feelings.  It
+seems as though, if you felt the tiniest little bit for me the way I
+feel for you, you'd sometimes send me a message that you'd written with
+your own hand, instead of those beastly typewritten secretary's notes.
+If there were the slightest hint that you cared, I'd do anything on
+earth to please you.
+
+I know that I was to write nice, long, detailed letters without ever
+expecting any answer.  You're living up to your side of the
+bargain--I'm being educated--and I suppose you're thinking I'm not
+living up to mine!
+
+But, Daddy, it is a hard bargain.  It is, really.  I'm so awfully
+lonely.  You are the only person I have to care for, and you are so
+shadowy.  You're just an imaginary man that I've made up--and probably
+the real YOU isn't a bit like my imaginary YOU.  But you did once, when
+I was ill in the infirmary, send me a message, and now, when I am
+feeling awfully forgotten, I get out your card and read it over.
+
+I don't think I am telling you at all what I started to say, which was
+this:
+
+Although my feelings are still hurt, for it is very humiliating to be
+picked up and moved about by an arbitrary, peremptory, unreasonable,
+omnipotent, invisible Providence, still, when a man has been as kind
+and generous and thoughtful as you have heretofore been towards me, I
+suppose he has a right to be an arbitrary, peremptory, unreasonable,
+invisible Providence if he chooses, and so--I'll forgive you and be
+cheerful again.  But I still don't enjoy getting Sallie's letters about
+the good times they are having in camp!
+
+However--we will draw a veil over that and begin again.
+
+I've been writing and writing this summer; four short stories finished
+and sent to four different magazines.  So you see I'm trying to be an
+author.  I have a workroom fixed in a corner of the attic where Master
+Jervie used to have his rainy-day playroom.  It's in a cool, breezy
+corner with two dormer windows, and shaded by a maple tree with a
+family of red squirrels living in a hole.
+
+I'll write a nicer letter in a few days and tell you all the farm news.
+
+We need rain.
+
+                               Yours as ever,
+                                                   Judy
+
+
+
+
+                                               10th August
+
+Mr. Daddy-Long-Legs,
+
+SIR:  I address you from the second crotch in the willow tree by the
+pool in the pasture.  There's a frog croaking underneath, a locust
+singing overhead and two little 'devil downheads' darting up and down
+the trunk.  I've been here for an hour; it's a very comfortable crotch,
+especially after being upholstered with two sofa cushions.  I came up
+with a pen and tablet hoping to write an immortal short story, but I've
+been having a dreadful time with my heroine--I CAN'T make her behave as
+I want her to behave; so I've abandoned her for the moment, and am
+writing to you.  (Not much relief though, for I can't make you behave
+as I want you to, either.)
+
+If you are in that dreadful New York, I wish I could send you some of
+this lovely, breezy, sunshiny outlook.  The country is Heaven after a
+week of rain.
+
+Speaking of Heaven--do you remember Mr. Kellogg that I told you about
+last summer?--the minister of the little white church at the Corners.
+Well, the poor old soul is dead--last winter of pneumonia.  I went half
+a dozen times to hear him preach and got very well acquainted with his
+theology.  He believed to the end exactly the same things he started
+with.  It seems to me that a man who can think straight along for
+forty-seven years without changing a single idea ought to be kept in a
+cabinet as a curiosity.  I hope he is enjoying his harp and golden
+crown; he was so perfectly sure of finding them!  There's a new young
+man, very consequential, in his place.  The congregation is pretty
+dubious, especially the faction led by Deacon Cummings.  It looks as
+though there was going to be an awful split in the church.  We don't
+care for innovations in religion in this neighbourhood.
+
+During our week of rain I sat up in the attic and had an orgy of
+reading--Stevenson, mostly.  He himself is more entertaining than any
+of the characters in his books; I dare say he made himself into the
+kind of hero that would look well in print.  Don't you think it was
+perfect of him to spend all the ten thousand dollars his father left,
+for a yacht, and go sailing off to the South Seas?  He lived up to his
+adventurous creed.  If my father had left me ten thousand dollars, I'd
+do it, too.  The thought of Vailima makes me wild.  I want to see the
+tropics.  I want to see the whole world.  I am going to be a great
+author, or artist, or actress, or playwright--or whatever sort of a
+great person I turn out to be.  I have a terrible wanderthirst; the
+very sight of a map makes me want to put on my hat and take an umbrella
+and start.  'I shall see before I die the palms and temples of the
+South.'
+
+
+
+                               Thursday evening at twilight,
+                               sitting on the doorstep.
+
+Very hard to get any news into this letter!  Judy is becoming so
+philosophical of late, that she wishes to discourse largely of the
+world in general, instead of descending to the trivial details of daily
+life.  But if you MUST have news, here it is:
+
+Our nine young pigs waded across the brook and ran away last Tuesday,
+and only eight came back.  We don't want to accuse anyone unjustly, but
+we suspect that Widow Dowd has one more than she ought to have.
+
+Mr. Weaver has painted his barn and his two silos a bright pumpkin
+yellow--a very ugly colour, but he says it will wear.
+
+The Brewers have company this week; Mrs. Brewer's sister and two nieces
+from Ohio.
+
+One of our Rhode Island Reds only brought off three chicks out of
+fifteen eggs.  We can't imagine what was the trouble.  Rhode island
+Reds, in my opinion, are a very inferior breed.  I prefer Buff
+Orpingtons.
+
+The new clerk in the post office at Bonnyrigg Four Corners drank every
+drop of Jamaica ginger they had in stock--seven dollars' worth--before
+he was discovered.
+
+Old Ira Hatch has rheumatism and can't work any more; he never saved
+his money when he was earning good wages, so now he has to live on the
+town.
+
+There's to be an ice-cream social at the schoolhouse next Saturday
+evening.  Come and bring your families.
+
+I have a new hat that I bought for twenty-five cents at the post
+office.  This is my latest portrait, on my way to rake the hay.
+
+It's getting too dark to see; anyway, the news is all used up.
+
+                               Good night,
+                                               Judy
+
+
+
+
+                                                   Friday
+
+Good morning!  Here is some news!  What do you think?  You'd never,
+never, never guess who's coming to Lock Willow.  A letter to Mrs.
+Semple from Mr. Pendleton.  He's motoring through the Berkshires, and
+is tired and wants to rest on a nice quiet farm--if he climbs out at
+her doorstep some night will she have a room ready for him?  Maybe
+he'll stay one week, or maybe two, or maybe three; he'll see how
+restful it is when he gets here.
+
+Such a flutter as we are in!  The whole house is being cleaned and all
+the curtains washed.  I am driving to the Corners this morning to get
+some new oilcloth for the entry, and two cans of brown floor paint for
+the hall and back stairs.  Mrs. Dowd is engaged to come tomorrow to
+wash the windows (in the exigency of the moment, we waive our
+suspicions in regard to the piglet). You might think, from this account
+of our activities, that the house was not already immaculate; but I
+assure you it was!  Whatever Mrs. Semple's limitations, she is a
+HOUSEKEEPER.
+
+But isn't it just like a man, Daddy?  He doesn't give the remotest hint
+as to whether he will land on the doorstep today, or two weeks from
+today.  We shall live in a perpetual breathlessness until he comes--and
+if he doesn't hurry, the cleaning may all have to be done over again.
+
+There's Amasai waiting below with the buckboard and Grover.  I drive
+alone--but if you could see old Grove, you wouldn't be worried as to my
+safety.
+
+With my hand on my heart--farewell.
+
+                                                   Judy
+
+
+PS.  Isn't that a nice ending?  I got it out of Stevenson's letters.
+
+
+
+
+                                                  Saturday
+
+Good morning again!  I didn't get this ENVELOPED yesterday before the
+postman came, so I'll add some more.  We have one mail a day at twelve
+o'clock. Rural delivery is a blessing to the farmers!  Our postman not
+only delivers letters, but he runs errands for us in town, at five
+cents an errand.  Yesterday he brought me some shoe-strings and a jar
+of cold cream (I sunburned all the skin off my nose before I got my new
+hat) and a blue Windsor tie and a bottle of blacking all for ten cents.
+That was an unusual bargain, owing to the largeness of my order.
+
+Also he tells us what is happening in the Great World.  Several people
+on the route take daily papers, and he reads them as he jogs along, and
+repeats the news to the ones who don't subscribe.  So in case a war
+breaks out between the United States and Japan, or the president is
+assassinated, or Mr. Rockefeller leaves a million dollars to the John
+Grier Home, you needn't bother to write; I'll hear it anyway.
+
+No sign yet of Master Jervie.  But you should see how clean our house
+is--and with what anxiety we wipe our feet before we step in!
+
+I hope he'll come soon; I am longing for someone to talk to.  Mrs.
+Semple, to tell you the truth, gets rather monotonous.  She never lets
+ideas interrupt the easy flow of her conversation.  It's a funny thing
+about the people here.  Their world is just this single hilltop.  They
+are not a bit universal, if you know what I mean.  It's exactly the
+same as at the John Grier Home.  Our ideas there were bounded by the
+four sides of the iron fence, only I didn't mind it so much because I
+was younger, and was so awfully busy.  By the time I'd got all my beds
+made and my babies' faces washed and had gone to school and come home
+and had washed their faces again and darned their stockings and mended
+Freddie Perkins's trousers (he tore them every day of his life) and
+learned my lessons in between--I was ready to go to bed, and I didn't
+notice any lack of social intercourse.  But after two years in a
+conversational college, I do miss it; and I shall be glad to see
+somebody who speaks my language.
+
+I really believe I've finished, Daddy.  Nothing else occurs to me at
+the moment--I'll try to write a longer letter next time.
+
+                           Yours always,
+                                           Judy
+
+
+PS.  The lettuce hasn't done at all well this year.  It was so dry
+early in the season.
+
+
+
+
+                                                   25th August
+
+Well, Daddy, Master Jervie's here.  And such a nice time as we're
+having!  At least I am, and I think he is, too--he has been here ten
+days and he doesn't show any signs of going.  The way Mrs. Semple
+pampers that man is scandalous.  If she indulged him as much when he
+was a baby, I don't know how he ever turned out so well.
+
+He and I eat at a little table set on the side porch, or sometimes
+under the trees, or--when it rains or is cold--in the best parlour.  He
+just picks out the spot he wants to eat in and Carrie trots after him
+with the table.  Then if it has been an awful nuisance, and she has had
+to carry the dishes very far, she finds a dollar under the sugar bowl.
+
+He is an awfully companionable sort of man, though you would never
+believe it to see him casually; he looks at first glance like a true
+Pendleton, but he isn't in the least.  He is just as simple and
+unaffected and sweet as he can be--that seems a funny way to describe a
+man, but it's true.  He's extremely nice with the farmers around here;
+he meets them in a sort of man-to-man fashion that disarms them
+immediately.  They were very suspicious at first.  They didn't care for
+his clothes!  And I will say that his clothes are rather amazing.  He
+wears knickerbockers and pleated jackets and white flannels and riding
+clothes with puffed trousers.  Whenever he comes down in anything new,
+Mrs. Semple, beaming with pride, walks around and views him from every
+angle, and urges him to be careful where he sits down; she is so afraid
+he will pick up some dust.  It bores him dreadfully.  He's always
+saying to her:
+
+'Run along, Lizzie, and tend to your work.  You can't boss me any
+longer.  I've grown up.'
+
+It's awfully funny to think of that great big, long-legged man (he's
+nearly as long-legged as you, Daddy) ever sitting in Mrs. Semple's lap
+and having his face washed.  Particularly funny when you see her lap!
+She has two laps now, and three chins.  But he says that once she was
+thin and wiry and spry and could run faster than he.
+
+Such a lot of adventures we're having!  We've explored the country for
+miles, and I've learned to fish with funny little flies made of
+feathers.  Also to shoot with a rifle and a revolver.  Also to ride
+horseback--there's an astonishing amount of life in old Grove.  We fed
+him on oats for three days, and he shied at a calf and almost ran away
+with me.
+
+                                                   Wednesday
+
+We climbed Sky Hill Monday afternoon.  That's a mountain near here; not
+an awfully high mountain, perhaps--no snow on the summit--but at least
+you are pretty breathless when you reach the top.  The lower slopes are
+covered with woods, but the top is just piled rocks and open moor.  We
+stayed up for the sunset and built a fire and cooked our supper.
+Master Jervie did the cooking; he said he knew how better than me and
+he did, too, because he's used to camping.  Then we came down by
+moonlight, and, when we reached the wood trail where it was dark, by
+the light of an electric bulb that he had in his pocket.  It was such
+fun!  He laughed and joked all the way and talked about interesting
+things.  He's read all the books I've ever read, and a lot of others
+besides.  It's astonishing how many different things he knows.
+
+We went for a long tramp this morning and got caught in a storm.  Our
+clothes were drenched before we reached home but our spirits not even
+damp.  You should have seen Mrs. Semple's face when we dripped into her
+kitchen.
+
+'Oh, Master Jervie--Miss Judy!  You are soaked through.  Dear!  Dear!
+What shall I do?  That nice new coat is perfectly ruined.'
+
+She was awfully funny; you would have thought that we were ten years
+old, and she a distracted mother.  I was afraid for a while that we
+weren't going to get any jam for tea.
+
+
+
+                                                   Saturday
+
+I started this letter ages ago, but I haven't had a second to finish it.
+
+Isn't this a nice thought from Stevenson?
+
+
+           The world is so full of a number of things,
+           I am sure we should all be as happy as kings.
+
+
+It's true, you know.  The world is full of happiness, and plenty to go
+round, if you are only willing to take the kind that comes your way.
+The whole secret is in being PLIABLE.  In the country, especially,
+there are such a lot of entertaining things.  I can walk over
+everybody's land, and look at everybody's view, and dabble in
+everybody's brook; and enjoy it just as much as though I owned the
+land--and with no taxes to pay!
+
+It's Sunday night now, about eleven o'clock, and I am supposed to be
+getting some beauty sleep, but I had black coffee for dinner, so--no
+beauty sleep for me!
+
+This morning, said Mrs. Semple to Mr. Pendleton, with a very determined
+accent:
+
+'We have to leave here at a quarter past ten in order to get to church
+by eleven.'
+
+'Very well, Lizzie,' said Master Jervie, 'you have the buggy ready, and
+if I'm not dressed, just go on without waiting.'  'We'll wait,' said
+she.
+
+'As you please,' said he, 'only don't keep the horses standing too
+long.'
+
+Then while she was dressing, he told Carrie to pack up a lunch, and he
+told me to scramble into my walking clothes; and we slipped out the
+back way and went fishing.
+
+It discommoded the household dreadfully, because Lock Willow of a
+Sunday dines at two.  But he ordered dinner at seven--he orders meals
+whenever he chooses; you would think the place were a restaurant--and
+that kept Carrie and Amasai from going driving.  But he said it was all
+the better because it wasn't proper for them to go driving without a
+chaperon; and anyway, he wanted the horses himself to take me driving.
+Did you ever hear anything so funny?
+
+And poor Mrs. Semple believes that people who go fishing on Sundays go
+afterwards to a sizzling hot hell!  She is awfully troubled to think
+that she didn't train him better when he was small and helpless and she
+had the chance.  Besides--she wished to show him off in church.
+
+Anyway, we had our fishing (he caught four little ones) and we cooked
+them on a camp-fire for lunch.  They kept falling off our spiked sticks
+into the fire, so they tasted a little ashy, but we ate them.  We got
+home at four and went driving at five and had dinner at seven, and at
+ten I was sent to bed and here I am, writing to you.
+
+I am getting a little sleepy, though.
+
+                                       Good night.
+
+
+Here is a picture of the one fish I caught.
+
+
+
+
+Ship Ahoy, Cap'n Long-Legs!
+
+Avast!  Belay!  Yo, ho, ho, and a bottle of rum.  Guess what I'm
+reading?  Our conversation these past two days has been nautical and
+piratical.  Isn't Treasure Island fun?  Did you ever read it, or wasn't
+it written when you were a boy?  Stevenson only got thirty pounds for
+the serial rights--I don't believe it pays to be a great author.  Maybe
+I'll be a school-teacher.
+
+Excuse me for filling my letters so full of Stevenson; my mind is very
+much engaged with him at present.  He comprises Lock Willow's library.
+
+I've been writing this letter for two weeks, and I think it's about
+long enough.  Never say, Daddy, that I don't give details.  I wish you
+were here, too; we'd all have such a jolly time together.  I like my
+different friends to know each other.  I wanted to ask Mr. Pendleton if
+he knew you in New York--I should think he might; you must move in
+about the same exalted social circles, and you are both interested in
+reforms and things--but I couldn't, for I don't know your real name.
+
+It's the silliest thing I ever heard of, not to know your name.  Mrs.
+Lippett warned me that you were eccentric.  I should think so!
+
+                           Affectionately,
+                                               Judy
+
+
+PS.  On reading this over, I find that it isn't all Stevenson.  There
+are one or two glancing references to Master Jervie.
+
+
+
+
+                                               10th September
+
+Dear Daddy,
+
+He has gone, and we are missing him!  When you get accustomed to people
+or places or ways of living, and then have them snatched away, it does
+leave an awfully empty, gnawing sort of sensation.  I'm finding Mrs.
+Semple's conversation pretty unseasoned food.
+
+College opens in two weeks and I shall be glad to begin work again.  I
+have worked quite a lot this summer though--six short stories and seven
+poems.  Those I sent to the magazines all came back with the most
+courteous promptitude.  But I don't mind.  It's good practice.  Master
+Jervie read them--he brought in the post, so I couldn't help his
+knowing--and he said they were DREADFUL.  They showed that I didn't
+have the slightest idea of what I was talking about.  (Master Jervie
+doesn't let politeness interfere with truth.) But the last one I
+did--just a little sketch laid in college--he said wasn't bad; and he
+had it typewritten, and I sent it to a magazine.  They've had it two
+weeks; maybe they're thinking it over.
+
+You should see the sky!  There's the queerest orange-coloured light
+over everything.  We're going to have a storm.
+
+
+It commenced just that moment with tremendously big drops and all the
+shutters banging.  I had to run to close the windows, while Carrie flew
+to the attic with an armful of milk pans to put under the places where
+the roof leaks and then, just as I was resuming my pen, I remembered
+that I'd left a cushion and rug and hat and Matthew Arnold's poems
+under a tree in the orchard, so I dashed out to get them, all quite
+soaked.  The red cover of the poems had run into the inside; Dover
+Beach in the future will be washed by pink waves.
+
+A storm is awfully disturbing in the country.  You are always having to
+think of so many things that are out of doors and getting spoiled.
+
+                                                   Thursday
+
+Daddy!  Daddy!  What do you think?  The postman has just come with two
+letters.
+
+1st.  My story is accepted.  $50.
+
+ALORS!  I'm an AUTHOR.
+
+2nd.  A letter from the college secretary.  I'm to have a scholarship
+for two years that will cover board and tuition.  It was founded for
+'marked proficiency in English with general excellency in other lines.'
+And I've won it!  I applied for it before I left, but I didn't have an
+idea I'd get it, on account of my Freshman bad work in maths and Latin.
+But it seems I've made it up.  I am awfully glad, Daddy, because now I
+won't be such a burden to you.  The monthly allowance will be all I'll
+need, and maybe I can earn that with writing or tutoring or something.
+
+I'm LONGING to go back and begin work.
+
+                   Yours ever,
+                                           Jerusha Abbott,
+
+                               Author of When the Sophomores Won
+                               the Game.  For sale at all news
+                               stands, price ten cents.
+
+
+
+
+                                               26th September
+
+Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
+
+Back at college again and an upper classman.  Our study is better than
+ever this year--faces the South with two huge windows and oh!  so
+furnished.  Julia, with an unlimited allowance, arrived two days early
+and was attacked with a fever for settling.
+
+We have new wall paper and oriental rugs and mahogany chairs--not
+painted mahogany which made us sufficiently happy last year, but real.
+It's very gorgeous, but I don't feel as though I belonged in it; I'm
+nervous all the time for fear I'll get an ink spot in the wrong place.
+
+And, Daddy, I found your letter waiting for me--pardon--I mean your
+secretary's.
+
+Will you kindly convey to me a comprehensible reason why I should not
+accept that scholarship?  I don't understand your objection in the
+least.  But anyway, it won't do the slightest good for you to object,
+for I've already accepted it and I am not going to change!  That sounds
+a little impertinent, but I don't mean it so.
+
+I suppose you feel that when you set out to educate me, you'd like to
+finish the work, and put a neat period, in the shape of a diploma, at
+the end.
+
+But look at it just a second from my point of view.  I shall owe my
+education to you just as much as though I let you pay for the whole of
+it, but I won't be quite so much indebted.  I know that you don't want
+me to return the money, but nevertheless, I am going to want to do it,
+if I possibly can; and winning this scholarship makes it so much
+easier.  I was expecting to spend the rest of my life in paying my
+debts, but now I shall only have to spend one-half of the rest of it.
+
+I hope you understand my position and won't be cross.  The allowance I
+shall still most gratefully accept.  It requires an allowance to live
+up to Julia and her furniture!  I wish that she had been reared to
+simpler tastes, or else that she were not my room-mate.
+
+This isn't much of a letter; I meant to have written a lot--but I've
+been hemming four window curtains and three portieres (I'm glad you
+can't see the length of the stitches), and polishing a brass desk set
+with tooth powder (very uphill work), and sawing off picture wire with
+manicure scissors, and unpacking four boxes of books, and putting away
+two trunkfuls of clothes (it doesn't seem believable that Jerusha
+Abbott owns two trunks full of clothes, but she does!) and welcoming
+back fifty dear friends in between.
+
+Opening day is a joyous occasion!
+
+Good night, Daddy dear, and don't be annoyed because your chick is
+wanting to scratch for herself.  She's growing up into an awfully
+energetic little hen--with a very determined cluck and lots of
+beautiful feathers (all due to you).
+
+                           Affectionately,
+                                               Judy
+
+
+
+
+                                               30th September
+
+Dear Daddy,
+
+Are you still harping on that scholarship?  I never knew a man so
+obstinate, and stubborn and unreasonable, and tenacious, and
+bull-doggish, and unable-to-see-other-people's-point-of-view, as you.
+
+You prefer that I should not be accepting favours from strangers.
+
+Strangers!--And what are you, pray?
+
+Is there anyone in the world that I know less?  I shouldn't recognize
+you if I met you in the street.  Now, you see, if you had been a sane,
+sensible person and had written nice, cheering fatherly letters to your
+little Judy, and had come occasionally and patted her on the head, and
+had said you were glad she was such a good girl--Then, perhaps, she
+wouldn't have flouted you in your old age, but would have obeyed your
+slightest wish like the dutiful daughter she was meant to be.
+
+Strangers indeed!  You live in a glass house, Mr. Smith.
+
+And besides, this isn't a favour; it's like a prize--I earned it by
+hard work.  If nobody had been good enough in English, the committee
+wouldn't have awarded the scholarship; some years they don't. Also--
+But what's the use of arguing with a man?  You belong, Mr. Smith, to a
+sex devoid of a sense of logic.  To bring a man into line, there are
+just two methods:  one must either coax or be disagreeable.  I scorn to
+coax men for what I wish.  Therefore, I must be disagreeable.
+
+I refuse, sir, to give up the scholarship; and if you make any more
+fuss, I won't accept the monthly allowance either, but will wear myself
+into a nervous wreck tutoring stupid Freshmen.
+
+That is my ultimatum!
+
+And listen--I have a further thought.  Since you are so afraid that by
+taking this scholarship I am depriving someone else of an education, I
+know a way out.  You can apply the money that you would have spent for
+me towards educating some other little girl from the John Grier Home.
+Don't you think that's a nice idea?  Only, Daddy, EDUCATE the new girl
+as much as you choose, but please don't LIKE her any better than me.
+
+I trust that your secretary won't be hurt because I pay so little
+attention to the suggestions offered in his letter, but I can't help it
+if he is.  He's a spoiled child, Daddy.  I've meekly given in to his
+whims heretofore, but this time I intend to be FIRM.
+
+Yours,
+       With a mind,
+           Completely and Irrevocably and
+               World-without-End Made-up,
+
+                                        Jerusha Abbott
+
+
+
+
+                                                   9th November
+
+Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
+
+I started down town today to buy a bottle of shoe blacking and some
+collars and the material for a new blouse and a jar of violet cream and
+a cake of Castile soap--all very necessary; I couldn't be happy another
+day without them--and when I tried to pay the car fare, I found that I
+had left my purse in the pocket of my other coat.  So I had to get out
+and take the next car, and was late for gymnasium.
+
+It's a dreadful thing to have no memory and two coats!
+
+Julia Pendleton has invited me to visit her for the Christmas holidays.
+How does that strike you, Mr. Smith?  Fancy Jerusha Abbott, of the John
+Grier Home, sitting at the tables of the rich.  I don't know why Julia
+wants me--she seems to be getting quite attached to me of late.  I
+should, to tell the truth, very much prefer going to Sallie's, but
+Julia asked me first, so if I go anywhere it must be to New York
+instead of to Worcester.  I'm rather awed at the prospect of meeting
+Pendletons EN MASSE, and also I'd have to get a lot of new clothes--so,
+Daddy dear, if you write that you would prefer having me remain quietly
+at college, I will bow to your wishes with my usual sweet docility.
+
+I'm engaged at odd moments with the Life and Letters of Thomas
+Huxley--it makes nice, light reading to pick up between times.  Do you
+know what an archaeopteryx is?  It's a bird.  And a stereognathus?  I'm
+not sure myself, but I think it's a missing link, like a bird with
+teeth or a lizard with wings.  No, it isn't either; I've just looked in
+the book.  It's a mesozoic mammal.
+
+I've elected economics this year--very illuminating subject.  When I
+finish that I'm going to take Charity and Reform; then, Mr. Trustee,
+I'll know just how an orphan asylum ought to be run.  Don't you think
+I'd make an admirable voter if I had my rights?  I was twenty-one last
+week.  This is an awfully wasteful country to throw away such an
+honest, educated, conscientious, intelligent citizen as I would be.
+
+                           Yours always,
+                                               Judy
+
+
+
+
+                                               7th December
+
+Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
+
+Thank you for permission to visit Julia--I take it that silence means
+consent.
+
+Such a social whirl as we've been having!  The Founder's dance came
+last week--this was the first year that any of us could attend; only
+upper classmen being allowed.
+
+I invited Jimmie McBride, and Sallie invited his room-mate at
+Princeton, who visited them last summer at their camp--an awfully nice
+man with red hair--and Julia invited a man from New York, not very
+exciting, but socially irreproachable.  He is connected with the De la
+Mater Chichesters.  Perhaps that means something to you?  It doesn't
+illuminate me to any extent.
+
+However--our guests came Friday afternoon in time for tea in the senior
+corridor, and then dashed down to the hotel for dinner.  The hotel was
+so full that they slept in rows on the billiard tables, they say.
+Jimmie McBride says that the next time he is bidden to a social event
+in this college, he is going to bring one of their Adirondack tents and
+pitch it on the campus.
+
+At seven-thirty they came back for the President's reception and dance.
+Our functions commence early!  We had the men's cards all made out
+ahead of time, and after every dance, we'd leave them in groups, under
+the letter that stood for their names, so that they could be readily
+found by their next partners.  Jimmie McBride, for example, would stand
+patiently under 'M' until he was claimed.  (At least, he ought to have
+stood patiently, but he kept wandering off and getting mixed with 'R's'
+and 'S's' and all sorts of letters.) I found him a very difficult
+guest; he was sulky because he had only three dances with me.  He said
+he was bashful about dancing with girls he didn't know!
+
+The next morning we had a glee club concert--and who do you think wrote
+the funny new song composed for the occasion?  It's the truth.  She
+did.  Oh, I tell you, Daddy, your little foundling is getting to be
+quite a prominent person!
+
+Anyway, our gay two days were great fun, and I think the men enjoyed
+it.  Some of them were awfully perturbed at first at the prospect of
+facing one thousand girls; but they got acclimated very quickly.  Our
+two Princeton men had a beautiful time--at least they politely said
+they had, and they've invited us to their dance next spring.  We've
+accepted, so please don't object, Daddy dear.
+
+Julia and Sallie and I all had new dresses.  Do you want to hear about
+them?  Julia's was cream satin and gold embroidery and she wore purple
+orchids.  It was a DREAM and came from Paris, and cost a million
+dollars.
+
+Sallie's was pale blue trimmed with Persian embroidery, and went
+beautifully with red hair.  It didn't cost quite a million, but was
+just as effective as Julia's.
+
+Mine was pale pink crepe de chine trimmed with ecru lace and rose
+satin.  And I carried crimson roses which J. McB.  sent (Sallie having
+told him what colour to get). And we all had satin slippers and silk
+stockings and chiffon scarfs to match.
+
+You must be deeply impressed by these millinery details.
+
+One can't help thinking, Daddy, what a colourless life a man is forced
+to lead, when one reflects that chiffon and Venetian point and hand
+embroidery and Irish crochet are to him mere empty words.  Whereas a
+woman--whether she is interested in babies or microbes or husbands or
+poetry or servants or parallelograms or gardens or Plato or bridge--is
+fundamentally and always interested in clothes.
+
+It's the one touch of nature that makes the whole world kin.  (That
+isn't original.  I got it out of one of Shakespeare's plays).
+
+However, to resume.  Do you want me to tell you a secret that I've
+lately discovered?  And will you promise not to think me vain?  Then
+listen:
+
+I'm pretty.
+
+I am, really.  I'd be an awful idiot not to know it with three
+looking-glasses in the room.
+
+                                           A Friend
+
+
+PS.  This is one of those wicked anonymous letters you read about in
+novels.
+
+
+
+                                               20th December
+
+Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
+
+I've just a moment, because I must attend two classes, pack a trunk and
+a suit-case, and catch the four-o'clock train--but I couldn't go
+without sending a word to let you know how much I appreciate my
+Christmas box.
+
+I love the furs and the necklace and the Liberty scarf and the gloves
+and handkerchiefs and books and purse--and most of all I love you!  But
+Daddy, you have no business to spoil me this way.  I'm only human--and
+a girl at that.  How can I keep my mind sternly fixed on a studious
+career, when you deflect me with such worldly frivolities?
+
+I have strong suspicions now as to which one of the John Grier Trustees
+used to give the Christmas tree and the Sunday ice-cream.  He was
+nameless, but by his works I know him!  You deserve to be happy for all
+the good things you do.
+
+Goodbye, and a very merry Christmas.
+
+                               Yours always,
+                                               Judy
+
+
+PS.  I am sending a slight token, too.  Do you think you would like her
+if you knew her?
+
+
+
+
+                                               11th January
+
+I meant to write to you from the city, Daddy, but New York is an
+engrossing place.
+
+I had an interesting--and illuminating--time, but I'm glad I don't
+belong to such a family!  I should truly rather have the John Grier
+Home for a background.  Whatever the drawbacks of my bringing up, there
+was at least no pretence about it.  I know now what people mean when
+they say they are weighed down by Things.  The material atmosphere of
+that house was crushing; I didn't draw a deep breath until I was on an
+express train coming back.  All the furniture was carved and
+upholstered and gorgeous; the people I met were beautifully dressed and
+low-voiced and well-bred, but it's the truth, Daddy, I never heard one
+word of real talk from the time we arrived until we left.  I don't
+think an idea ever entered the front door.
+
+Mrs. Pendleton never thinks of anything but jewels and dressmakers and
+social engagements.  She did seem a different kind of mother from Mrs.
+McBride!  If I ever marry and have a family, I'm going to make them as
+exactly like the McBrides as I can.  Not for all the money in the world
+would I ever let any children of mine develop into Pendletons.  Maybe
+it isn't polite to criticize people you've been visiting?  If it isn't,
+please excuse.  This is very confidential, between you and me.
+
+I only saw Master Jervie once when he called at tea time, and then I
+didn't have a chance to speak to him alone.  It was really
+disappointing after our nice time last summer.  I don't think he cares
+much for his relatives--and I am sure they don't care much for him!
+Julia's mother says he's unbalanced.  He's a Socialist--except, thank
+Heaven, he doesn't let his hair grow and wear red ties.  She can't
+imagine where he picked up his queer ideas; the family have been Church
+of England for generations.  He throws away his money on every sort of
+crazy reform, instead of spending it on such sensible things as yachts
+and automobiles and polo ponies.  He does buy candy with it though!  He
+sent Julia and me each a box for Christmas.
+
+You know, I think I'll be a Socialist, too.  You wouldn't mind, would
+you, Daddy?  They're quite different from Anarchists; they don't
+believe in blowing people up.  Probably I am one by rights; I belong to
+the proletariat.  I haven't determined yet just which kind I am going
+to be.  I will look into the subject over Sunday, and declare my
+principles in my next.
+
+I've seen loads of theatres and hotels and beautiful houses.  My mind
+is a confused jumble of onyx and gilding and mosaic floors and palms.
+I'm still pretty breathless but I am glad to get back to college and my
+books--I believe that I really am a student; this atmosphere of
+academic calm I find more bracing than New York.  College is a very
+satisfying sort of life; the books and study and regular classes keep
+you alive mentally, and then when your mind gets tired, you have the
+gymnasium and outdoor athletics, and always plenty of congenial friends
+who are thinking about the same things you are.  We spend a whole
+evening in nothing but talk--talk--talk--and go to bed with a very
+uplifted feeling, as though we had settled permanently some pressing
+world problems.  And filling in every crevice, there is always such a
+lot of nonsense--just silly jokes about the little things that come up
+but very satisfying.  We do appreciate our own witticisms!
+
+It isn't the great big pleasures that count the most; it's making a
+great deal out of the little ones--I've discovered the true secret of
+happiness, Daddy, and that is to live in the now.  Not to be for ever
+regretting the past, or anticipating the future; but to get the most
+that you can out of this very instant.  It's like farming.  You can
+have extensive farming and intensive farming; well, I am going to have
+intensive living after this.  I'm going to enjoy every second, and I'm
+going to KNOW I'm enjoying it while I'm enjoying it.  Most people don't
+live; they just race.  They are trying to reach some goal far away on
+the horizon, and in the heat of the going they get so breathless and
+panting that they lose all sight of the beautiful, tranquil country
+they are passing through; and then the first thing they know, they are
+old and worn out, and it doesn't make any difference whether they've
+reached the goal or not.  I've decided to sit down by the way and pile
+up a lot of little happinesses, even if I never become a Great Author.
+Did you ever know such a philosopheress as I am developing into?
+
+                                   Yours ever,
+                                                   Judy
+
+PS.  It's raining cats and dogs tonight.  Two puppies and a kitten have
+just landed on the window-sill.
+
+
+
+
+Dear Comrade,
+
+Hooray!  I'm a Fabian.
+
+That's a Socialist who's willing to wait.  We don't want the social
+revolution to come tomorrow morning; it would be too upsetting.  We
+want it to come very gradually in the distant future, when we shall all
+be prepared and able to sustain the shock.
+
+In the meantime, we must be getting ready, by instituting industrial,
+educational and orphan asylum reforms.
+
+               Yours, with fraternal love,
+                                               Judy
+
+Monday, 3rd hour
+
+
+
+
+                                                   11th February
+Dear D.-L.-L.,
+
+Don't be insulted because this is so short.  It isn't a letter; it's
+just a LINE to say that I'm going to write a letter pretty soon when
+examinations are over.  It is not only necessary that I pass, but pass
+WELL.  I have a scholarship to live up to.
+
+                       Yours, studying hard,
+                                               J. A.
+
+
+
+
+                                                   5th March
+
+Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
+
+President Cuyler made a speech this evening about the modern generation
+being flippant and superficial.  He says that we are losing the old
+ideals of earnest endeavour and true scholarship; and particularly is
+this falling-off noticeable in our disrespectful attitude towards
+organized authority.  We no longer pay a seemly deference to our
+superiors.
+
+I came away from chapel very sober.
+
+Am I too familiar, Daddy?  Ought I to treat you with more dignity and
+aloofness?--Yes, I'm sure I ought.  I'll begin again.
+
+My Dear Mr. Smith,
+
+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 Tintern Abbey in connection with our course
+in English Literature.  What an exquisite work it is, and how
+adequately it embodies his conceptions 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 colouring the food.  The college is very much opposed,
+both from aesthetic 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
+
+
+
+
+                                               24th April
+
+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 today; 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 tomorrow, 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 girls' 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
+
+
+
+
+                                                   15th May
+
+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
+today, 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 business-like promptness.  So you see--I am not
+so different from other girls--I get letters, too.
+
+Did I tell you that I have been elected a member of the Senior Dramatic
+Club?  Very recherche 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 drole ca n'est pas?
+
+There goes the gong for dinner.  I'll post this as I pass the box.
+
+                                   Affectionately,
+                                                       J.
+
+
+
+
+                                                   4th June
+
+Dear Daddy,
+
+Very busy time--commencement in ten days, examinations tomorrow; lots
+of studying, lots of packing, and the outdoor 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
+in advance 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 for 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 programme 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.
+
+Goodbye, 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 any 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.
+
+
+
+
+                                                       10th June
+
+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's 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 judge.  We almost
+quarrelled--I am not sure but that we entirely did!
+
+In any case, I packed my trunk fast and came up here.  I thought I'd
+better see my bridges in flames behind me before I finished writing to
+you.  They are entirely reduced to ashes now.  Here I am at Cliff Top
+(the name of Mrs. Paterson's cottage) with my trunk unpacked and
+Florence (the little one) already struggling with first declension
+nouns.  And it bids fair to be a struggle!  She is a most uncommonly
+spoiled child; I shall have to teach her first how to study--she has
+never in her life concentrated on anything more difficult than
+ice-cream soda water.
+
+We use a quiet corner of the cliffs for a schoolroom--Mrs. Paterson
+wishes me to keep them out of doors--and I will say that I find it
+difficult to concentrate with the blue sea before me and ships
+a-sailing by!  And when I think I might be on one, sailing off to
+foreign lands--but I WON'T let myself think of anything but Latin
+Grammar.
+
+
+The prepositions a or ab, absque, coram, cum, de e or ex, prae, pro,
+sine, tenus, in, subter, sub and super govern the ablative.
+
+
+So you see, Daddy, I am already plunged into work with my eyes
+persistently set against temptation.  Don't be cross with me, please,
+and don't think that I do not appreciate your kindness, for I
+do--always--always.  The only way I can ever repay you is by turning
+out a Very Useful Citizen (Are women citizens?  I don't suppose they
+are.) Anyway, a Very Useful Person.  And when you look at me you can
+say, 'I gave that Very Useful Person to the world.'
+
+That sounds well, doesn't it, Daddy?  But I don't wish to mislead you.
+The feeling often comes over me that I am not at all remarkable; it is
+fun to plan a career, but in all probability I shan't turn out a bit
+different from any other ordinary person.  I may end by marrying an
+undertaker and being an inspiration to him in his work.
+
+                           Yours ever,
+                                           Judy
+
+
+
+
+                                                   19th August
+
+Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
+
+My window looks out on the loveliest landscape--ocean-scape,
+rather--nothing but water and rocks.
+
+The summer goes.  I spend the morning with Latin and English and
+algebra and my two stupid girls.  I don't know how Marion is ever going
+to get into college, or stay in after she gets there.  And as for
+Florence, she is hopeless--but oh! such a little beauty.  I don't
+suppose it matters in the least whether they are stupid or not so long
+as they are pretty?  One can't help thinking, though, how their
+conversation will bore their husbands, unless they are fortunate enough
+to obtain stupid husbands.  I suppose that's quite possible; the world
+seems to be filled with stupid men; I've met a number this summer.
+
+In the afternoon we take a walk on the cliffs, or swim, if the tide is
+right.  I can swim in salt water with the utmost ease you see my
+education is already being put to use!
+
+A letter comes from Mr. Jervis Pendleton in Paris, rather a short
+concise letter; I'm not quite forgiven yet for refusing to follow his
+advice.  However, if he gets back in time, he will see me for a few
+days at Lock Willow before college opens, and if I am very nice and
+sweet and docile, I shall (I am led to infer) be received into favour
+again.
+
+Also a letter from Sallie.  She wants me to come to their camp for two
+weeks in September.  Must I ask your permission, or haven't I yet
+arrived at the place where I can do as I please?  Yes, I am sure I
+have--I'm a Senior, you know.  Having worked all summer, I feel like
+taking a little healthful recreation; I want to see the Adirondacks; I
+want to see Sallie; I want to see Sallie's brother--he's going to teach
+me to canoe--and (we come to my chief motive, which is mean) I want
+Master Jervie to arrive at Lock Willow and find me not there.
+
+I MUST show him that he can't dictate to me.  No one can dictate to me
+but you, Daddy--and you can't always!  I'm off for the woods.
+
+                                       Judy
+
+
+
+
+                                       CAMP MCBRIDE,
+                                                   6th September
+
+Dear Daddy,
+
+Your letter didn't come in time (I am pleased to say). If you wish your
+instructions to be obeyed, you must have your secretary transmit them
+in less than two weeks.  As you observe, I am here, and have been for
+five days.
+
+The woods are fine, and so is the camp, and so is the weather, and so
+are the McBrides, and so is the whole world.  I'm very happy!
+
+There's Jimmie calling for me to come canoeing.  Goodbye--sorry to have
+disobeyed, but why are you so persistent about not wanting me to play a
+little?  When I've worked all the summer I deserve two weeks.  You are
+awfully dog-in-the-mangerish.
+
+However--I love you still, Daddy, in spite of all your faults.
+
+                                           Judy
+
+
+
+
+                                                   3rd October
+Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
+
+Back at college and a Senior--also editor of the Monthly.  It doesn't
+seem possible, does it, that so sophisticated a person, just four years
+ago, was an inmate of the John Grier Home?  We do arrive fast in
+America!
+
+What do you think of this?  A note from Master Jervie directed to Lock
+Willow and forwarded here.  He's sorry, but he finds that he can't get
+up there this autumn; he has accepted an invitation to go yachting with
+some friends.  Hopes I've had a nice summer and am enjoying the country.
+
+And he knew all the time that I was with the McBrides, for Julia told
+him so!  You men ought to leave intrigue to women; you haven't a light
+enough touch.
+
+Julia has a trunkful of the most ravishing new clothes--an evening gown
+of rainbow Liberty crepe that would be fitting raiment for the angels
+in Paradise.  And I thought that my own clothes this year were
+unprecedentedly (is there such a word?) beautiful.  I copied Mrs.
+Paterson's wardrobe with the aid of a cheap dressmaker, and though the
+gowns didn't turn out quite twins of the originals, I was entirely
+happy until Julia unpacked.  But now--I live to see Paris!
+
+Dear Daddy, aren't you glad you're not a girl?  I suppose you think
+that the fuss we make over clothes is too absolutely silly?  It is.  No
+doubt about it.  But it's entirely your fault.
+
+Did you ever hear about the learned Herr Professor who regarded
+unnecessary adornment with contempt and favoured sensible, utilitarian
+clothes for women?  His wife, who was an obliging creature, adopted
+'dress reform.'  And what do you think he did?  He eloped with a chorus
+girl.
+
+                           Yours ever,
+                                                   Judy
+
+
+PS.  The chamber-maid in our corridor wears blue checked gingham
+aprons.  I am going to get her some brown ones instead, and sink the
+blue ones in the bottom of the lake.  I have a reminiscent chill every
+time I look at them.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                               17th November
+
+Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
+
+Such a blight has fallen over my literary career.  I don't know whether
+to tell you or not, but I would like some sympathy--silent sympathy,
+please; don't re-open the wound by referring to it in your next letter.
+
+I've been writing a book, all last winter in the evenings, and all the
+summer when I wasn't teaching Latin to my two stupid children.  I just
+finished it before college opened and sent it to a publisher.  He kept
+it two months, and I was certain he was going to take it; but yesterday
+morning an express parcel came (thirty cents due) and there it was back
+again with a letter from the publisher, a very nice, fatherly
+letter--but frank!  He said he saw from the address that I was still at
+college, and if I would accept some advice, he would suggest that I put
+all of my energy into my lessons and wait until I graduated before
+beginning to write.  He enclosed his reader's opinion.  Here it is:
+
+'Plot highly improbable.  Characterization exaggerated.  Conversation
+unnatural.  A good deal of humour but not always in the best of taste.
+Tell her to keep on trying, and in time she may produce a real book.'
+
+Not on the whole flattering, is it, Daddy?  And I thought I was making
+a notable addition to American literature.  I did truly.  I was
+planning to surprise you by writing a great novel before I graduated.
+I collected the material for it while I was at Julia's last Christmas.
+But I dare say the editor is right.  Probably two weeks was not enough
+in which to observe the manners and customs of a great city.
+
+I took it walking with me yesterday afternoon, and when I came to the
+gas house, I went in and asked the engineer if I might borrow his
+furnace.  He politely opened the door, and with my own hands I chucked
+it in.  I felt as though I had cremated my only child!
+
+I went to bed last night utterly dejected; I thought I was never going
+to amount to anything, and that you had thrown away your money for
+nothing.  But what do you think?  I woke up this morning with a
+beautiful new plot in my head, and I've been going about all day
+planning my characters, just as happy as I could be.  No one can ever
+accuse me of being a pessimist!  If I had a husband and twelve children
+swallowed by an earthquake one day, I'd bob up smilingly the next
+morning and commence to look for another set.
+
+                           Affectionately,
+                                               Judy
+
+
+
+
+                                               14th December
+
+Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
+
+I dreamed the funniest dream last night.  I thought I went into a book
+store and the clerk brought me a new book named The Life and Letters of
+Judy Abbott.  I could see it perfectly plainly--red cloth binding with
+a picture of the John Grier Home on the cover, and my portrait for a
+frontispiece with, 'Very truly yours, Judy Abbott,' written below.  But
+just as I was turning to the end to read the inscription on my
+tombstone, I woke up.  It was very annoying!  I almost found out whom
+I'm going to marry and when I'm going to die.
+
+Don't you think it would be interesting if you really could read the
+story of your life--written perfectly truthfully by an omniscient
+author?  And suppose you could only read it on this condition:  that
+you would never forget it, but would have to go through life knowing
+ahead of time exactly how everything you did would turn out, and
+foreseeing to the exact hour the time when you would die.  How many
+people do you suppose would have the courage to read it then? or how
+many could suppress their curiosity sufficiently to escape from reading
+it, even at the price of having to live without hope and without
+surprises?
+
+Life is monotonous enough at best; you have to eat and sleep about so
+often.  But imagine how DEADLY monotonous it would be if nothing
+unexpected could happen between meals.  Mercy!  Daddy, there's a blot,
+but I'm on the third page and I can't begin a new sheet.
+
+I'm going on with biology again this year--very interesting subject;
+we're studying the alimentary system at present.  You should see how
+sweet a cross-section of the duodenum of a cat is under the microscope.
+
+Also we've arrived at philosophy--interesting but evanescent.  I prefer
+biology where you can pin the subject under discussion to a board.
+There's another!  And another!  This pen is weeping copiously.  Please
+excuse its tears.
+
+Do you believe in free will?  I do--unreservedly.  I don't agree at all
+with the philosophers who think that every action is the absolutely
+inevitable and automatic resultant of an aggregation of remote causes.
+That's the most immoral doctrine I ever heard--nobody would be to blame
+for anything.  If a man believed in fatalism, he would naturally just
+sit down and say, 'The Lord's will be done,' and continue to sit until
+he fell over dead.
+
+I believe absolutely in my own free will and my own power to
+accomplish--and that is the belief that moves mountains.  You watch me
+become a great author!  I have four chapters of my new book finished
+and five more drafted.
+
+This is a very abstruse letter--does your head ache, Daddy?  I think
+we'll stop now and make some fudge.  I'm sorry I can't send you a
+piece; it will be unusually good, for we're going to make it with real
+cream and three butter balls.
+
+                       Yours affectionately,
+                                               Judy
+
+
+PS.  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 at
+the end accomplishing a graceful pirouette is me--I mean I.
+
+
+
+
+                                               26th December
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+                                                   9th January
+
+Do you wish to do something, Daddy, that will ensure 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 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 centrepieces 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 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 for ever 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 tomorrow.  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 grey, Daddy, you can still be a boy.
+
+                           Affectionately,
+                                                   Judy
+
+
+
+
+                                                   12th Jan.
+
+Dear Mr. Philanthropist,
+
+Your cheque 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--someone'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
+
+
+
+
+                                                   15th Feb.
+
+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 today
+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.  'Today 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 tonight 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,
+
+Tomorrow 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,
+                                                  4th April
+
+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, I actually believe it is--just
+about the tiny little things that happened every day.  I'm a realist
+now.  I've abandoned romanticism; I shall go back to it later though,
+when my own adventurous future begins.
+
+This new book is going to get itself finished--and published!  You see
+if it doesn't. If you just want a thing hard enough and keep on trying,
+you do get it in the end.  I've been trying for four years to get a
+letter from you--and I haven't given up hope yet.
+
+Goodbye, Daddy dear,
+
+(I like to call you Daddy dear; it's so alliterative.)
+
+                                   Affectionately,
+                                                   Judy
+
+
+PS.  I forgot to tell you the farm news, but it's very distressing.
+Skip this postscript if you don't want your sensibilities all wrought
+up.
+
+Poor old Grove is dead.  He got so that he couldn't chew and they had
+to shoot him.
+
+Nine chickens were killed by a weasel or a skunk or a rat last week.
+
+One of the cows is sick, and we had to have the veterinary surgeon out
+from Bonnyrigg Four Corners.  Amasai stayed up all night to give her
+linseed oil and whisky.  But we have an awful suspicion that the poor
+sick cow got nothing but linseed oil.
+
+Sentimental Tommy (the tortoise-shell cat) has disappeared; we are
+afraid he has been caught in a trap.
+
+There are lots of troubles in the world!
+
+
+
+
+                                                   17th May
+
+Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
+
+This is going to be extremely short because my shoulder aches at the
+sight of a pen.  Lecture notes all day, immortal novel all evening,
+make too much writing.
+
+Commencement three weeks from next Wednesday.  I think you might come
+and make my acquaintance--I shall hate you if you don't! Julia's
+inviting Master Jervie, he being her family, and Sallie's inviting
+Jimmie McB., he being her family, but who is there for me to invite?
+Just you and Lippett, and I don't want her.  Please come.
+
+Yours, with love and writer's cramp.
+                                               Judy
+
+
+
+
+                                                  LOCK WILLOW,
+                                                     19th June
+
+Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
+
+I'm educated!  My diploma is in the bottom bureau drawer with my two
+best dresses.  Commencement was as usual, with a few showers at vital
+moments.  Thank you for your rosebuds.  They were lovely.  Master
+Jervie and Master Jimmie both gave me roses, too, but I left theirs in
+the bath tub and carried yours in the class procession.
+
+Here I am at Lock Willow for the summer--for ever maybe.  The board is
+cheap; the surroundings quiet and conducive to a literary life.  What
+more does a struggling author wish?  I am mad about my book.  I think
+of it every waking moment, and dream of it at night.  All I want is
+peace and quiet and lots of time to work (interspersed with nourishing
+meals).
+
+Master Jervie is coming up for a week or so in August, and Jimmie
+McBride is going to drop in sometime through the summer.  He's
+connected with a bond house now, and goes about the country selling
+bonds to banks.  He's going to combine the 'Farmers' National' at the
+Corners and me on the same trip.
+
+You see that Lock Willow isn't entirely lacking in society.  I'd be
+expecting to have you come motoring through--only I know now that that
+is hopeless.  When you wouldn't come to my commencement, I tore you
+from my heart and buried you for ever.
+
+                           Judy Abbott, A.B.
+
+
+
+
+                                                   24th July
+
+Dearest Daddy-Long-Legs,
+
+Isn't it fun to work--or don't you ever do it?  It's especially fun
+when your kind of work is the thing you'd rather do more than anything
+else in the world.  I've been writing as fast as my pen would go every
+day this summer, and my only quarrel with life is that the days aren't
+long enough to write all the beautiful and valuable and entertaining
+thoughts I'm thinking.
+
+I've finished the second draft of my book and am going to begin the
+third tomorrow morning at half-past seven.  It's the sweetest book you
+ever saw--it is, truly.  I think of nothing else.  I can barely wait in
+the morning to dress and eat before beginning; then I write and write
+and write till suddenly I'm so tired that I'm limp all over.  Then I go
+out with Colin (the new sheep dog) and romp through the fields and get
+a fresh supply of ideas for the next day.  It's the most beautiful book
+you ever saw--Oh, pardon--I said that before.
+
+You don't think me conceited, do you, Daddy dear?
+
+I'm not, really, only just now I'm in the enthusiastic stage.  Maybe
+later on I'll get cold and critical and sniffy.  No, I'm sure I won't!
+This time I've written a real book.  Just wait till you see it.
+
+I'll try for a minute to talk about something else.  I never told you,
+did I, that Amasai and Carrie got married last May?  They are still
+working here, but so far as I can see it has spoiled them both.  She
+used to laugh when he tramped in mud or dropped ashes on the floor, but
+now--you should hear her scold!  And she doesn't curl her hair any
+longer.  Amasai, who used to be so obliging about beating rugs and
+carrying wood, grumbles if you suggest such a thing.  Also his neckties
+are quite dingy--black and brown, where they used to be scarlet and
+purple.  I've determined never to marry.  It's a deteriorating process,
+evidently.
+
+There isn't much of any farm news.  The animals are all in the best of
+health.  The pigs are unusually fat, the cows seem contented and the
+hens are laying well.  Are you interested in poultry?  If so, let me
+recommend that invaluable little work, 200 Eggs per Hen per Year.  I am
+thinking of starting an incubator next spring and raising broilers.
+You see I'm settled at Lock Willow permanently.  I have decided to stay
+until I've written 114 novels like Anthony Trollope's mother.  Then I
+shall have completed my life work and can retire and travel.
+
+Mr. James McBride spent last Sunday with us.  Fried chicken and
+ice-cream for dinner, both of which he appeared to appreciate.  I was
+awfully glad to see him; he brought a momentary reminder that the world
+at large exists.  Poor Jimmie is having a hard time peddling his bonds.
+The 'Farmers' National' at the Corners wouldn't have anything to do
+with them in spite of the fact that they pay six per cent.  interest
+and sometimes seven.  I think he'll end up by going home to Worcester
+and taking a job in his father's factory.  He's too open and confiding
+and kind-hearted ever to make a successful financier.  But to be the
+manager of a flourishing overall factory is a very desirable position,
+don't you think?  Just now he turns up his nose at overalls, but he'll
+come to them.
+
+I hope you appreciate the fact that this is a long letter from a person
+with writer's cramp.  But I still love you, Daddy dear, and I'm very
+happy.  With beautiful scenery all about, and lots to eat and a
+comfortable four-post bed and a ream of blank paper and a pint of
+ink--what more does one want in the world?
+
+                           Yours as always,
+                                               Judy
+
+PS.  The postman arrives with some more news.  We are to expect Master
+Jervie on Friday next to spend a week.  That's a very pleasant
+prospect--only I am afraid my poor book will suffer.  Master Jervie is
+very demanding.
+
+
+
+
+                                               27th August
+
+Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
+
+Where are you, I wonder?
+
+I never know what part of the world you are in, but I hope you're not
+in New York during this awful weather.  I hope you're on a mountain
+peak (but not in Switzerland; somewhere nearer) looking at the snow and
+thinking about me.  Please be thinking about me.  I'm quite lonely and
+I want to be thought about.  Oh, Daddy, I wish I knew you!  Then when
+we were unhappy we could cheer each other up.
+
+I don't think I can stand much more of Lock Willow.  I'm thinking of
+moving.  Sallie is going to do settlement work in Boston next winter.
+Don't you think it would be nice for me to go with her, then we could
+have a studio together?  I would write while she SETTLED and we could
+be together in the evenings.  Evenings are very long when there's no
+one but the Semples and Carrie and Amasai to talk to.  I know in
+advance that you won't like my studio idea.  I can read your
+secretary's letter now:
+
+
+'Miss Jerusha Abbott.
+       'DEAR MADAM,
+
+'Mr. Smith prefers that you remain at Lock Willow.
+               'Yours truly,
+                           'ELMER H. GRIGGS.'
+
+
+I hate your secretary.  I am certain that a man named Elmer H. Griggs
+must be horrid.  But truly, Daddy, I think I shall have to go to
+Boston.  I can't stay here.  If something doesn't happen soon, I shall
+throw myself into the silo pit out of sheer desperation.
+
+Mercy! but it's hot.  All the grass is burnt up and the brooks are dry
+and the roads are dusty.  It hasn't rained for weeks and weeks.
+
+This letter sounds as though I had hydrophobia, but I haven't. I just
+want some family.
+
+Goodbye, my dearest Daddy.
+
+                           I wish I knew you.
+                                               Judy
+
+
+
+
+                                         LOCK WILLOW,
+                                           19th September
+
+Dear Daddy,
+
+Something has happened and I need advice.  I need it from you, and from
+nobody else in the world.  Wouldn't it be possible for me to see you?
+It's so much easier to talk than to write; and I'm afraid your
+secretary might open the letter.
+                                           Judy
+
+PS.  I'm very unhappy.
+
+
+
+
+                                   LOCK WILLOW,
+                                               3rd October
+
+Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
+
+Your note written in your own hand--and a pretty wobbly hand!--came
+this morning.  I am so sorry that you have been ill; I wouldn't have
+bothered you with my affairs if I had known.  Yes, I will tell you the
+trouble, but it's sort of complicated to write, and VERY PRIVATE.
+Please don't keep this letter, but burn it.
+
+Before I begin--here's a cheque for one thousand dollars.  It seems
+funny, doesn't it, for me to be sending a cheque to you?  Where do you
+think I got it?
+
+I've sold my story, Daddy.  It's going to be published serially in
+seven parts, and then in a book!  You might think I'd be wild with joy,
+but I'm not.  I'm entirely apathetic.  Of course I'm glad to begin
+paying you--I owe you over two thousand more.  It's coming in
+instalments.  Now don't be horrid, please, about taking it, because it
+makes me happy to return it.  I owe you a great deal more than the mere
+money, and the rest I will continue to pay all my life in gratitude and
+affection.
+
+And now, Daddy, about the other thing; please give me your most worldly
+advice, whether you think I'll like it or not.
+
+You know that I've always had a very special feeling towards you; you
+sort of represented my whole family; but you won't mind, will you, if I
+tell you that I have a very much more special feeling for another man?
+You can probably guess without much trouble who he is.  I suspect that
+my letters have been very full of Master Jervie for a very long time.
+
+I wish I could make you understand what he is like and how entirely
+companionable we are.  We think the same about everything--I am afraid
+I have a tendency to make over my ideas to match his!  But he is almost
+always right; he ought to be, you know, for he has fourteen years'
+start of me.  In other ways, though, he's just an overgrown boy, and he
+does need looking after--he hasn't any sense about wearing rubbers when
+it rains.  He and I always think the same things are funny, and that is
+such a lot; it's dreadful when two people's senses of humour are
+antagonistic.  I don't believe there's any bridging that gulf!
+
+And he is--Oh, well!  He is just himself, and I miss him, and miss him,
+and miss him.  The whole world seems empty and aching.  I hate the
+moonlight because it's beautiful and he isn't here to see it with me.
+But maybe you've loved somebody, too, and you know?  If you have, I
+don't need to explain; if you haven't, I can't explain.
+
+Anyway, that's the way I feel--and I've refused to marry him.
+
+I didn't tell him why; I was just dumb and miserable.  I couldn't think
+of anything to say.  And now he has gone away imagining that I want to
+marry Jimmie McBride--I don't in the least, I wouldn't think of
+marrying Jimmie; he isn't grown up enough.  But Master Jervie and I got
+into a dreadful muddle of misunderstanding and we both hurt each
+other's feelings.  The reason I sent him away was not because I didn't
+care for him, but because I cared for him so much.  I was afraid he
+would regret it in the future--and I couldn't stand that!  It didn't
+seem right for a person of my lack of antecedents to marry into any
+such family as his.  I never told him about the orphan asylum, and I
+hated to explain that I didn't know who I was.  I may be DREADFUL, you
+know.  And his family are proud--and I'm proud, too!
+
+Also, I felt sort of bound to you.  After having been educated to be a
+writer, I must at least try to be one; it would scarcely be fair to
+accept your education and then go off and not use it.  But now that I
+am going to be able to pay back the money, I feel that I have partially
+discharged that debt--besides, I suppose I could keep on being a writer
+even if I did marry.  The two professions are not necessarily exclusive.
+
+I've been thinking very hard about it.  Of course he is a Socialist,
+and he has unconventional ideas; maybe he wouldn't mind marrying into
+the proletariat so much as some men might.  Perhaps when two people are
+exactly in accord, and always happy when together and lonely when
+apart, they ought not to let anything in the world stand between them.
+Of course I WANT to believe that!  But I'd like to get your unemotional
+opinion.  You probably belong to a Family also, and will look at it
+from a worldly point of view and not just a sympathetic, human point of
+view--so you see how brave I am to lay it before you.
+
+Suppose I go to him and explain that the trouble isn't Jimmie, but is
+the John Grier Home--would that be a dreadful thing for me to do?  It
+would take a great deal of courage.  I'd almost rather be miserable for
+the rest of my life.
+
+This happened nearly two months ago; I haven't heard a word from him
+since he was here.  I was just getting sort of acclimated to the
+feeling of a broken heart, when a letter came from Julia that stirred
+me all up again.  She said--very casually--that 'Uncle Jervis' had been
+caught out all night in a storm when he was hunting in Canada, and had
+been ill ever since with pneumonia.  And I never knew it.  I was
+feeling hurt because he had just disappeared into blankness without a
+word.  I think he's pretty unhappy, and I know I am!
+
+What seems to you the right thing for me to do?
+
+                                               Judy
+
+
+
+
+                                               6th October
+
+Dearest Daddy-Long-Legs,
+
+Yes, certainly I'll come--at half-past four next Wednesday afternoon.
+Of COURSE I can find the way.  I've been in New York three times and am
+not quite a baby.  I can't believe that I am really going to see
+you--I've been just THINKING you so long that it hardly seems as though
+you are a tangible flesh-and-blood person.
+
+You are awfully good, Daddy, to bother yourself with me, when you're
+not strong.  Take care and don't catch cold.  These fall rains are very
+damp.
+
+                               Affectionately,
+                                                   Judy
+
+
+PS.  I've just had an awful thought.  Have you a butler?  I'm afraid of
+butlers, and if one opens the door I shall faint upon the step.  What
+can I say to him?  You didn't tell me your name.  Shall I ask for Mr.
+Smith?
+
+
+
+
+                                       Thursday Morning
+
+My Very Dearest Master-Jervie-Daddy-Long-Legs Pendleton-Smith,
+
+Did you sleep last night?  I didn't. Not a single wink.  I was too
+amazed and excited and bewildered and happy.  I don't believe I ever
+shall sleep again--or eat either.  But I hope you slept; you must, you
+know, because then you will get well faster and can come to me.
+
+Dear Man, I can't bear to think how ill you've been--and all the time I
+never knew it.  When the doctor came down yesterday to put me in the
+cab, he told me that for three days they gave you up.  Oh, dearest, if
+that had happened, the light would have gone out of the world for me.
+I suppose that some day in the far future--one of us must leave the
+other; but at least we shall have had our happiness and there will be
+memories to live with.
+
+I meant to cheer you up--and instead I have to cheer myself.  For in
+spite of being happier than I ever dreamed I could be, I'm also
+soberer.  The fear that something may happen rests like a shadow on my
+heart.  Always before I could be frivolous and care-free and
+unconcerned, because I had nothing precious to lose.  But now--I shall
+have a Great Big Worry all the rest of my life.  Whenever you are away
+from me I shall be thinking of all the automobiles that can run over
+you, or the sign-boards that can fall on your head, or the dreadful,
+squirmy germs that you may be swallowing.  My peace of mind is gone for
+ever--but anyway, I never cared much for just plain peace.
+
+Please get well--fast--fast--fast.  I want to have you close by where I
+can touch you and make sure you are tangible.  Such a little half hour
+we had together!  I'm afraid maybe I dreamed it.  If I were only a
+member of your family (a very distant fourth cousin) then I could come
+and visit you every day, and read aloud and plump up your pillow and
+smooth out those two little wrinkles in your forehead and make the
+corners of your mouth turn up in a nice cheerful smile.  But you are
+cheerful again, aren't you?  You were yesterday before I left.  The
+doctor said I must be a good nurse, that you looked ten years younger.
+I hope that being in love doesn't make every one ten years younger.
+Will you still care for me, darling, if I turn out to be only eleven?
+
+Yesterday was the most wonderful day that could ever happen.  If I live
+to be ninety-nine I shall never forget the tiniest detail.  The girl
+that left Lock Willow at dawn was a very different person from the one
+who came back at night.  Mrs. Semple called me at half-past four.  I
+started wide awake in the darkness and the first thought that popped
+into my head was, 'I am going to see Daddy-Long-Legs!' I ate breakfast
+in the kitchen by candle-light, and then drove the five miles to the
+station through the most glorious October colouring.  The sun came up
+on the way, and the swamp maples and dogwood glowed crimson and orange
+and the stone walls and cornfields sparkled with hoar frost; the air
+was keen and clear and full of promise.  I knew something was going to
+happen.  All the way in the train the rails kept singing, 'You're going
+to see Daddy-Long-Legs.' It made me feel secure.  I had such faith in
+Daddy's ability to set things right.  And I knew that somewhere another
+man--dearer than Daddy--was wanting to see me, and somehow I had a
+feeling that before the journey ended I should meet him, too.  And you
+see!
+
+When I came to the house on Madison Avenue it looked so big and brown
+and forbidding that I didn't dare go in, so I walked around the block
+to get up my courage.  But I needn't have been a bit afraid; your
+butler is such a nice, fatherly old man that he made me feel at home at
+once.  'Is this Miss Abbott?' he said to me, and I said, 'Yes,' so I
+didn't have to ask for Mr. Smith after all.  He told me to wait in the
+drawing-room. It was a very sombre, magnificent, man's sort of room.  I
+sat down on the edge of a big upholstered chair and kept saying to
+myself:
+
+'I'm going to see Daddy-Long-Legs! I'm going to see Daddy-Long-Legs!'
+
+
+Then presently the man came back and asked me please to step up to the
+library.  I was so excited that really and truly my feet would hardly
+take me up.  Outside the door he turned and whispered, 'He's been very
+ill, Miss. This is the first day he's been allowed to sit up.  You'll
+not stay long enough to excite him?' I knew from the way he said it
+that he loved you--and I think he's an old dear!
+
+Then he knocked and said, 'Miss Abbott,' and I went in and the door
+closed behind me.
+
+It was so dim coming in from the brightly lighted hall that for a
+moment I could scarcely make out anything; then I saw a big easy chair
+before the fire and a shining tea table with a smaller chair beside it.
+And I realized that a man was sitting in the big chair propped up by
+pillows with a rug over his knees.  Before I could stop him he
+rose--rather shakily--and steadied himself by the back of the chair and
+just looked at me without a word.  And then--and then--I saw it was
+you!  But even with that I didn't understand.  I thought Daddy had had
+you come there to meet me or a surprise.
+
+Then you laughed and held out your hand and said, 'Dear little Judy,
+couldn't you guess that I was Daddy-Long-Legs?'
+
+In an instant it flashed over me.  Oh, but I have been stupid!  A
+hundred little things might have told me, if I had had any wits.  I
+wouldn't make a very good detective, would I, Daddy?  Jervie?  What
+must I call you?  Just plain Jervie sounds disrespectful, and I can't
+be disrespectful to you!
+
+It was a very sweet half hour before your doctor came and sent me away.
+I was so dazed when I got to the station that I almost took a train for
+St Louis.  And you were pretty dazed, too.  You forgot to give me any
+tea.  But we're both very, very happy, aren't we?  I drove back to Lock
+Willow in the dark but oh, how the stars were shining!  And this
+morning I've been out with Colin visiting all the places that you and I
+went to together, and remembering what you said and how you looked.
+The woods today are burnished bronze and the air is full of frost.
+It's CLIMBING weather.  I wish you were here to climb the hills with
+me.  I am missing you dreadfully, Jervie dear, but it's a happy kind of
+missing; we'll be together soon.  We belong to each other now really
+and truly, no make-believe. Doesn't it seem queer for me to belong to
+someone at last?  It seems very, very sweet.
+
+And I shall never let you be sorry for a single instant.
+
+                       Yours, for ever and ever,
+                                                   Judy
+
+
+PS.  This is the first love-letter I ever wrote.  Isn't it funny that I
+know how?
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Daddy-Long-Legs, by Jean Webster
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DADDY-LONG-LEGS ***
+
+***** This file should be named 157.txt or 157.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/1/5/157/
+
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.