Daddy-Long-Legs - Jean Webster

whenever a trusty spoke. It was a distressing time, and poor Jerusha Abbot, 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 sat 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, missus Lippet, 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 mar 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 the 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. Missus Lippet 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 porches 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. Jerusha, Abbit, you are wanted in the office, and I think you'd better hurry up.

Tommy Dylan, 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. Missus lippet in the office, and I think she's mad ah Man. Tommy pie 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 nutcakes? Had a lady visitor

seen the hole in Susie Hawthorne's stocking? Had oh horrors? One of the cherubic little babies 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 missus 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. Missus 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. Jerushe'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 Freese. They were both sent through college by mister this trustee, and both have repaid, with hard working success the money that was so generously expended mother payment. The gentleman does not wish Heretofore, his

philanthropies have been directed solely toward 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, Jerushem murmured, since some replies seemed to be expected at this point. Today, at the regular meeting,

the question of your future was brought up. Missus Lippett allowed a moment of silence to fall, then resumed in a slow, placid manner, extremely trying to her hearers 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 finished 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. Missus 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. Missus Lippet 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. She has been talking with your rhetoric teacher and made a speech in your favor. 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, mister that is, the gentleman who has just gone appears to have an immoderate sense of humor. On the strength of that impertinent paper he has offered to send you to college. To college. Jerusha's eyes grew big. Missus 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. Jerus's mind was numbed. She could only repeat Missus Lippet'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 had never had any experience and take 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 were 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 mister 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 foster's 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 mister Griggs, his secretary. These monthly letters are absolutely obligatory on your part. They are the only payment that mister 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 Greerholm Jerushe's eyes longingly sought the door. Her head was in a whirl of excitement, and she wished only to escape from Missus Lippet's platitudes and think. She rose and took a tentative step backwards. Missus Lippett detained her with his 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, ay, yes, ma'am, thank you. I think if that's all, I must go and sew a patch on Freddy Perkins's trousers. The door closed behind her, and Missus Lippett watched it with dropped

jaw her preorientation in mid air. End of Part one, Part two, The Letters of Miss Jerusha Abbot to mister Daddy Longlegs Smith, two fifteen, Ferguson Hall, twenty fourth September. Dear kind trustee who sends orphans to college. Here I am. I traveled yesterday for four hours in a train. It's a funny sensation, isn't it. I never wrote 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, missus 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 a name with a little personality. I might as well write letters to dear hitching Post or dear clothes prop.

I've been thinking about you a great deal this summer. Having somebody taken interest in me after all these years makes me feel as though I have 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. One you are tall, Two you are rich.

Three you hate girls. I suppose I might call you dear mister girl hater, only that's rather insulting to me, or dear mister 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 Daddy long Legs. I hope you

won't mind. It's just a private pet name. We won't tell missus 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 the time there. It goes lights out, good night. Observe with what precision. I obey rules due to my training

in the John Greer Home. Yours very respectfully, Jerusha Abbot to mister Daddy long Lake Smith, first October, Dear Daddy long Lakes, 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 Greer 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 pleased to be a little more quiet, and two freshmen named Ally mc bride and Julia Rutledge Pendleton. Sally has red hair and a turned 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 northwest 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 basketball team, and there's just a chance that I shall get in it. I am 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 practicing 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. Missus Lippett said, you wanted to know, But seventh hour has just rung, and in ten minutes I'm

due with athletic field and gymnasium clothes. Don't you hope I'll get in the team? Yours always, Jerusha Abbot p s. Nine o'clock. SALLYE mac bride just poked her head in at my door. This is what she said. I am 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 tenth October? Dear Daddy longlegs,

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 have 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 Materlink, and I asked if she was a freshman. That joke has gone all over college. But anyway, I'm just as bright in glass as any of the others, 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 ratan chair and a brown rug with an ink spot in the middle. I stand the chair over the spot. The windows are high up. 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 mc bride 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. Sally is the most entertaining person in

the world, and Julia Ruttledge Pendleton the least. So it's queer what a mixture the registrar can make in the matter of roommates. Sallly 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. One Latin second Punic War. Hannibal and his forces pitched camp at Lake Tresimeneus. Last night. They prepared an ambuscade for the Romans, and a battle took place at the fourth watch. This morning, Romans in retreat. Two French twenty four pages of the Three Musketeers and third conjunction irregular verbs. Three Geometry finished cylinders, now doing cones. Four English studying exposition. My style improves

daily in clearness and brevity. Five Physiology reached the digestive system bile and the pancreas. Next time, yours on the way to being educated. Jerusha Abbot p s. I hope you never touch alcohol, Daddy, it does dreadful things to your liver. Wednesday, Dear Daddy, longlegs. I've changed my name. I'm still Jerusha in the catalog, but I'm Judy everywhere else. It's really too bad, isn't it. They have to give yourself the only pet name you ever had. I didn't

make up the Judy though. That's what Freddy Perkins used to call me before he could talk plainly. I wish missus Lippett would use a little more ingenuity about choosing baby names. She gets the last names out of the telephone book. You'll find Abbot 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 fault 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 glasses, 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 Greer Holme, 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 Missus 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 checks. That isn't

a very polite thing to say. But you can't expect me to have any manners. A found le An asylum isn't a young lady's 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 Greer Home written on my face, And when 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 old Sallie McBride that my father and mother 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'm 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, Nay Jerusha Saturday morning. I've just been reading this letter over and it sounds pretty uncheerful. But can't you guess that I have a special topic do 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 post grip. We had a bishop this morning, and what do you think he said? The most beneficent promise made us in the Bible?

I'll settle pretty soon. If my letters bore you, you can always toss them into the waste basket. I promise not to write another till the middle of November. Yours, most loquaciously, Judy Abbott, fifteenth November. Dear Daddy long legs, listen to what I've learned today. The area of the convex surface of this 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, handed down from somebody bigger. Perhaps you don't realize what a climax that makes in the career of an Orthan. 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

Miss Lippett, Thank goodness. I have an evening dress pink mul 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 gypsy. And another of rose colored shalli and a gray 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 Abbot. Oh my, I suppose you're thinking now what.

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 thirteenth 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 Fabus Maximus two battles and light skirmishing Romans repulsed with heavy losses. I have the honor of being your special correspondent from the front j abbott p S. 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. Nineteenth 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 sprinkling gray 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 color your eyes are? They're gray 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, nine forty five PM. 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 in a library know by absorption, I have never heard of. For example, I never read Mother Goose or David Copperfield or Ivan Hoe, or Cinderella or Bluebeard 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 them ownA lissa. And it's true, but you won't believe it. I had never heard of Sherlock Holmes. Now I know all 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 bathrobe and furry slippers, and pile all the cushions behind me on the couch, and light the brass a student lamp at my elbow, and read and read and read. One book isn't enough. I have four going at once. Just now there are Tennyson's poems, and Vanity Fair and Kipling's Plain Tails 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 a dollar twelve 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 honor to report fresh explorations in the field of geometry. On Friday last we abandoned our former works in parallela

pipeds and proceeded to truncated prisms. We are finding the road rough and a 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 learned 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 p. S. Don't forget to answer my question. If you don't want the trouble of writing, have your secretary telegraph.

He can just say mister Smith is quite bald, or mister Smith is not bald, or mister Smith has white hair, and you can deduct the twenty five cents out of my allowance. Goodbye till January and a Merry Christmas. End of Part two, Part three 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 popcorns. It's late afternoon.

The sun is just setting a cold yellow color 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 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. You want to know what I bought

with my money? Number one, a silver watch in a leather case to wear on my wrist and get me to recitations in time. Number two Matthew Arnold's Poems. Number three, A hot water bottle. Number four, a steamer rug. My tower is cold. Number five. Five hundred sheets of yellow manuscript paper. I'm going to commence being an author pretty soon. Number six. A dictionary of synonyms to enlarge the author's vocabulary. Number seven. 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. It's a 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 form my little brother Harry. My sister Isabelle 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 Lorona Fenton. Almost as funny as Jerusha, isn't it. I like her, but not so much as Sallie McBride. I shall never like anyone so much as Sally except you. I must always like you the best of all, because

you're my whole family rolled into one. Lorona and I and two sophomores have walked cross country every pleasant day and explore Lord the whole neighborhood, dressed in short skirts and nitch 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 thirty five cents and for dessert buckwheat cakes and maple syrup fifteen 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 too, I'd burst.

We had a molasses candy poll last Friday evening, given by the house matron of Ferguson 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 castorle among them about the size of a wash boiler.

Four hundred girls live in Ferguson 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 in 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 officer's parlor, where half a dozen professors and instructors were passing a trinquill 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 a short, little thank you note, but when I get started, I seem to have a ready pen. Good Bye 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 p. S. Maybe it isn't proper to send love. If it isn't, please excuse, but I must love somebody, and there is only you

and missus Lippett to choose between. So you see, you'll have to put up with it, dear daddy, because I can 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 textbooks 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 Montgomery's or the Virginia Montgomery's. Her mother was a Rutherford. The family came over in the Ark and were connected by marriage with Henry the eighth. 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 Abbot 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 humor first. Jerusha Abbot has commenced to be an author a whom entitled from My Tower appears in the February Monthly on the first page, which is a very great honor 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 think of something else pleasant.

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. I'm bending under a weight of sorrow. Now for the news courage, Judy, you must tell, are you surely in a good humor? 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 catalog. 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 Gibson's Roman Empire, and half of ben Venudo Sellini'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 Sally and Julia and Leonora Fenton and sardines and toasted muffins and salad and fudge and coffee. Julia said she had a good time, but Sally 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 Desenectute and now engaged with d'amikitia

pronounced damn akitia. Should you mind just for a little while pretending you are my grandmother? Sally has one, and Julia and Leonora each too, 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 clooney 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 LLL. 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 seventh hour next Tuesday, and I'm 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 to night. I have a pressing engagement with the oblative absolute. Yours, in evident haste j A. Twenty sixth March, Mister D. L. L. Smith, Sir, you never answer my 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 for 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 now free from conditions, yours truly, Jerusha Abbot, second 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 tonsilitis and gripe 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 land 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 shy 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, fourth 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 rose buds and much nicer still, it contained a card with a very polite message written in a funny, little uphill backhand, 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 round them. Only. Please take out that dreadful one and burn it. I'd hate to think that you ever read it.

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 Greer home. Every spring when the hop toad 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 day. We were severely punished in our activities in this direction, but in spite of all the discouragement, the toads would collect, and one day, well, I won't bore you with particulars, but somehow one of the fattest, biggest, juiciest toads got into one of those big leather armchairs in the trustees room, and that afternoon 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'm 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 favorite 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 Hailworth Churchyard. She had never known any men in her life. How could she imagine a man like Heathcliff. 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 a lot 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. Sally 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, nine thirty p m. Such a lot of troubles. I didn't hear the rising bell this morning. Then I broke my shoe string 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 professor and I

had a disagreement touching a little matter of logarithms. On looking it up, I found that she was right. We had mutton stew and pie plant for lunch. Hate them both. It tastes like the asylum. The post brought me nothing but Bill's, 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.

divinity who distributes blessed 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 we 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 address 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 flavored 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, uninterminently stupid girl who sits next to me in Latin because her name begins with A. I wish missus Lippett had named me ZABRISKI came to ask if Monday's lesson commenced at paragraphs sixty nine or seventy 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'm going to develop. I am going to pretend that all life is just a game which I must play as skillfully 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. Twenty seventh May, Daddy long Legs esquire, Dear Sir, I am in receipt of a letter from Missus 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, Jean blans lu etambric jesuistrehurus about the farm, parsca jeanne jenebin on a farm, don ma vie, and I'd hate to retu mer cha John Grier a wash dishes to lette. There would be

danger of Calcaucho's afrouez happening. Parscaeget perdue ma hmilitae to autrefois a je pour that I would just break out calcajour a smash every cup and saucer, Don lameison, pardon breviete a paper ginnipo pas send demey Novelle parsque suis d'n french class a jet pou cou moisieur le prefaceur is going to call me on toute de suite. He did beauvoi juvou mme bouku Judy thirtieth May, Dear Daddy long legs, did you ever see this campus? This 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 joyous and carefree for vacations 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 anymore. 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 missus Lippet. I'm sorry I ever slapped Freddie Perkins. I'm sorry I ever filled the sugar.

moral strength. The happy people are the ones who are bubbling over with kindliness. I have no faith in misanthropies. Fine word, just learned it. You are not a misanthropy, 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 feeling. When I abuse trustees, I don't consider that you really belong among them. You just tumbled onto the board by chance. The trustee as such is fat

and pompous and benevolent. He pats me 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 mister 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 Sally with the seventh hour recitations. 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 Pendleton's. 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 grandmother's. Mister Pendleton remind 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, the dark face all over lines and the funniest underneath, a smile that never quite comes through but just wrinkles up at the corners of his mouth. And he has a way of making you feel right off,

as though you've 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 Sally, but he said he didn't like to have his nieces

drink too much tea. It made him nervous. So we just ran away and had tea in muffins and marmalade and ice cream and cake at a nice little table out in the balcony. The inn was quite conveniently empty, this being the end of the month and allowance is 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 in things cost sixty cents apiece. This morning it's Monday now. Three boxes of chocolates came by express for Julia and SALLYE and me. What do you think of that? To be getting candy from a man. I began to feel like a girl instead of a fire. 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 hew my compliments. Jamai June, tout oublier, 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? Ninth June. Dear Daddy, long legs, Happy day. I've just finished my last examination of 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 Greerholme. Whenever I think of it, excited little thrills chase up and die on my back. I feel as though I must run faster and faster, and keep looking over my shoulder to make sure that missus Lippid isn't after me with her arms stretched out to grab me back. I don't have to mind anyone this summer, do I. Your nominal authority doesn't annoy me in the least. You are too far away to do

any harm. Missus Lippett is dead forever so far as I am concerned. And the Semples aren't expected to overlook my moral welfare, are they? No, I'm sure not. I am entirely grown up. Hooray. I leave you now to pack a trunk and three boxes of tea kettles and dishes and sofa cushions and books. Yours ever, Judy, Yes, here's my physiology exam. Do you think you could have passed? End of Part three, Part four, 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 Marcel 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 mister and Missus 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 eight thirty now and I am about to blow out my candle and try.

am awfully curious to know. For listen to this. Mister Jervis Pendleton used to own this farm, but now he has given it to missus Semple, who was his old nurse. Did you ever hear of such a funny coincidence? She still calls him Master Jerviy 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 luck 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 loth yesterday while I was trying to crawl over to a nest that the black hen had stolen. And when I came in with a scratched knee, missus semple bounded up with witch Hazel murmuring all the time. Dear, dear, it seems only yesterday that Master Jervy fell off that very same beam

and scratched his 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 a 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. Sylvia because she was born in the woods. Lesbia after the Lesbia in Kettalusts, Sally Julia, a spotted nondescript animal. Judy after me 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. Two. If you are thinking of raising chickens, let me recommend buff Orpington's. They haven't any pin feathers. P. S. Three. I wish I could send you a pat of the nice fresh butter I churned yesterday. I am a dairy maid. Ps. Four. This is a picture of Miss Jerusha Abbot, 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 center to church. It's a sweet little white framed 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 could pick out such a hymn.

make mine up as I wish him. He's and sympathetic and imaginative and forgiving and understanding, and he has a sense of humor. I like the Semples immensely. Their practice is so superior to their theory. They are better than their own. God I told them so, and they are horribly troubled. They think I am blasphemous, and I think they are. We've dropped theology from our conversation. This is

Sunday afternoon. A MASSI 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. A Maassi 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's 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. Missus 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 tussel 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 Missus 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 in eight apples under the trees and eight and eight 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 abbot 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 Jervy having fun? Fifteenth September. Dear Daddy, I was weighed yesterday on the flower scales in the general store at the Coomers. I've gained nine pounds. Let me recommend Lock Willow as a health resort. Yours ever, Judy. End of Part four, Part.

you understand. And the least what I'm trying to say, a person important enough to be a trustee can't appreciate the feelings of a person unimportant enough to be a founder. And now, Daddy, listen to this. Whom do you think? I am rooming with Sallly McBride and Julia Rutlich Pendleton. It's the truth. We have a study in three little bedrooms. Voilla, Sally and I decided last spring that we should like to room together, and Julia made up her mind to

stay with Sally. 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 Greer Home for Orphans rooming with a Pendleton. This is a democratic country. Sally is running for class president, and unless all science 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. In 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 with 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 found the asylum.

Oh no, I don't either, because then maybe I should never have known you, and I'd rather know you than French. Good Bye, 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, Jay Abbott, seventeenth 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 of wood? 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. Sally thinks that she could swim in it, but I'm 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. First,

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 second, 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. Sally was elected, and we had a torchlight parade with transparencies saying McBride forever, and a band consisting of fourteen pieces, three mouth organs and eleven combs. We are very important persons. Now in two fifty eight, 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 the president when we share Daddy, except de mes compliment, respectors, Just ri vautrue Judy, twelfth November, Dear Daddy, long legs, we beat the freshman at basketball 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.

Sally 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 house full 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'm 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 and the tall one with her nose in the air. As 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 thirty one December. Dear Daddy long Legs, I meant to write to you before and thank you for your Christmas check. But life in the mc bridehousehold 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 Sally. She lives in a big, old fashioned brick house with white trimmings, set back from the street, exactly the kind of house that I used to look at so curiously when I was in the John Grier Home and wonder what it could be like inside. I never expected to see with my own eyes, But here I am. Everything is so comfortable and RESTful and homelike. I walk from room to

room and drink in the furnishings. It is the most perfect house for children to be brought up in with shadowy nooks for hide and seek, and open fireplaces for popcorn, and an attic to romp in on rainy days, and slippery banisters with a comfortable fat knob on 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. Sally 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 Jimmy, 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 sam 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. Mister McBride owns a factory, and Christmas Eve he had a tree for the employee's children. It was in the long packing room, which was decorated

with evergreens and holly. Jimmy McBride was dressed as Santa Claus and Sally and I helped him distribute the presence. Dear me, Daddy, but it was a funny sensation. I felt as benevolent as a trustee of the John Greer Home. I kissed one sweet, sticky little boy, but I don't think I've 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 Missus Lippett couldn't see me leading the cotillion with Jimmy 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? Six point thirty 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. Thon'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. Amasi caught a big, fat gray 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 Jervy 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 acquire 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 are reading Marie Beshkertzeff'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 twentieth January. Dear Daddy longlegs, 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 day to mont, wouldn't it. It's really awfully queer not to know what one is sort of exciting and romantic. There's 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 gypsy. 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 old girl in a 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 crummy? 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. I'll Feta Shane, Share, Daddy Pax Tibby, Judy p S. There's one thing I'm

perfectly sure of. I'm not a chinaman. Fourth February, Dear, Daddy long Legs, Jimmy mc bride has sent me a Princeton banner as big as one end of the room. I'm very grateful to him for remembering me, but I don't know what on earth to do with it. Sally 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 a nice, warm, thick felt I hate to waste it. Would it be very improper to have

it made into a bathrobe. My old one shrank when it was washed. I've entirely omitted of late telling you what I'm 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 sales between chemistry and history. I like the historical method best. If I say that William the Conqueror came over in fourteen ninety two, and Columbus discovered America in eleven hundred or ten sixty six, or whatever 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. Six 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 on time examinations next week. But who

he was afraid? Yours ever, Judy fifth 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 clamor. 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, and 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 the fence. The fox thought he had us there, but we fooled him. Then straightway 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 campus. Anyway, all nineteen of us settled like locusts over the furniture and clamored for honey. There wasn't enough to go around. But missus Crystal Spring, that's our pet name for her. She's by right to 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 I am never going to fail again. I shan't be able to graduate with honors, though, because of that beastly Latin prose and geometry freshman year. But I don't care what's the hawgs, as long as you're rappy. 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 Aphelia,

and such a sensible Ophelia. I keep Hamlet amused all the time, and pat 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've 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 twenty fourth March, maybe the twenty fifth, Dear Daddy, longlegs. 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 here after too. Listen to what has happened.

Jerusha Abbott has won the Short Story Contest, a twenty five dollars 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 missus Lippett hadn't given me such a silly name. It sounds like an authoress, doesn't it. Also, I have been chosen for the Spring Dramatics, as you like it. Out of Doors, I'm going to be Celia own cousin

to Rosalind. And lastly, Julia and Sally and I are going to New York next Friday to do some spring shopping and stay all night and go to the theater the next day with Master Jerviy. He invited us. Julia is going to stay at home with her family. But Sally 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 an 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've studied it for four weeks in Shakespeare class and I know it by heart. I'm so excited over all these prospects that I could scarcely sleep. Goodbye, Daddy, This is a very entertaining world, yours, eh, Judy pes. I've just looked at the calendar. It's the twenty eighth. 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? Seventh April. Dear Daddy, long Legs, Mercy isn't New York? Big Wooster 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. Sally 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 the 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 too 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 under this fine, stoical character which the John Greer Home so patiently built up. And after we'd finish our shopping, we met Master Jerviy at Sherry's. I suppose you've been in Sherry's picture that then picture the dining room of the John Greer 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 theater. It was dazzling, marvelous, 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 crossed the footlights only where 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 one 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 experienced daddy to pass eighteen years in the John Greer 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 score. Whenever people looked at me, I felt as though they saw right through my sham new clothes

to the Czech 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 Jerviy 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. When I'm changing my mind eleven pages, this is a letter have courage. I'm going to stop yours always, Judy tenth April. Dear mister rich Man, here's your check for

fifty dollars. Thank you very much, but I do not feel that I can keep it. My allowance is sufficient to afford all 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, eleventh 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 Sally, and I'm sitting up in bed writing to you on paper torn out

of my history notebook. I just wanted to tell you that I am sorry I was so impolite about your check. 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 anyone. I like to pretend 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 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 someday I should 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 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 I've made up heroin 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 fourth May Dear Daddy. Longlegs

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 junior's white and yellow banners. Our class had crimson balloons, very fetching, especially as they were always getting loose and floating off, and the freshman 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 a baggy umbrella. Patsy Moriarty Patricia, really did you ever hear such a name? Missus Lippet couldn't have done better? Who is tall and thin? Was Julia's wife, in an absurd green bonnet over one ear waves of las after follow 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 Jervy's pardon. I don't consider him a true Pendleton though, any more than I consider you a true trustee. Sally 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 Sally 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 Abbot?

all of the winners. We had fried soft shell crabs and chocolate ice cream molded in the shape of basketballs. 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. Mister Rochester talks about the metal welkin when he means the sky and asks 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 Missus Lippett, I could see mister Brocklehurst. Don't be outraged, daddy. I am not intimating that the John Greer Home was like the Lowood Institute. We had plenty to eat, plenty to wear, a 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 Missus Lippett called me to the office to tell me that mister 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 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 greer Holme instantly stamped out the slightest flicker that appeared. Duty was the one quality that wasn't 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 till you see the orphan asylum that I'm going to be the head of. It's my favorite 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're going to be happy. I think that everyone, 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 unhe happy 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 in, the windows stay open Saturday morning.

Perhaps you think last night, being Friday with no classes to day, 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're 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. Vouzette biem board, good bye, nice mister Mann. Judy mister Daddy Longlegs 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. One. We had written examinations this week in A chemistry B History. Two. A new dormitory is being built. A. Its material is a red brick B greystone. B. Its capacity will be A one dean, five instructors, B two hundred girls, C one housekeeper, three cooks,

twenty waitresses, twenty chambermaids. Three. We had junk it for dessert to night. Four. I am writing a special topic upon the so of Shakespeare's plays. Five lu mac mahn slipped and fell this afternoon at basketball, and she a dislocated her shoulder B Where is her knee? Six? I have a new hat trimmed with a blue velvet ribbon B two blue quills, C three reb pom poms. Seven. It is half past nine. Eight. Good night Judy.

once a week in the club house. Jimmy 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 missus 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 am disposed of for the summer. Yours

in a very contented frame of mind. Judy, fifth June, Dear Daddy long Legs, your secretary man has just written to me saying that mister Smith prefers that I should not accept missus McBride's invitation, but should return to Lockwillow the same as last year. Why why, why, Daddy, you don't understand about it. Missus 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 Sally and I can do lots of useful things.

It's a fine chance for me to learn housekeeping. Every woman to understand it, and I only know asylum keeping. There aren't any girls our age at the camp, and Missus McBride wants me for a companion for Sallie. We are planning to do a lot of reading together. We are going to read all 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 Sally's mother is an education. She is the most interesting, entertaining, companionable, charming woman in the world. She knows everything. Think how many summers I've spent with Missus 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 it in

the woods and turn the boys outside. It's going to be such a nice, healthy summer exercising out of doors every minute. Jimmy 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 Abbot, the future great author writing to you. It's just Judy, a girl. Ninth June, Mister John Smith, Sir, Yours of the seventh Instant 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 Abbot, lock Willow Farm, third 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 mc bride's 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've 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 lightest 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 Sally'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 work room fixed in a corner of the attic where Master Jervy 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 tenth August, Mister Daddy long Legs, Sir, I address you from the second crotch in the willow tree, by the pool and the pasture. There was a frog croaking underneath, a locust singing overhead, and two little devil down heads 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 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, mister 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 geeking Cummings. It looks as though there was going to be an awful split in the church.

We don't care for innovations and religion in this neighborhood. During our week of reign, 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 Sees. He lived

up to his adventurous creed. If my father had left me ten thousand dollars, I'd do it too. The thought of Vilema makes me wild. I want to see the tropics, I want to see the whole world. I'm going to be a great author. Or artist or actress or play right 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 any one unjustly, but we suspect that widow Dowd has won more than

she ought to have. Mister Weaver has painted his barn and his two silos and a bright pumpkin yellow, a very ugly color, but he says it will wear. The Brewers have company this week, missus 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 or Pringkings.

The new clerk in the post office at Bonnie Rig 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's 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 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 guess? Who's coming to lock Willow? A letter to missus Semple from mister Pendleton. He's motoring through the Berkshires and is tired and wants to rest at a nice quiet farm. If he climbs out at her doorsteps 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'm driving to the corners this morning to get some new oil cloth to the entry and two cans of brown floor paint for the hall and back stairs. Missus Dowd is engaged to come tomorrow to wash the windows. In the exigency of the moment, we wave 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, however, it was. Whatever Missus 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 to day or two weeks from to day. 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 AMESI

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, Yes, isn't that a nice ending? I got it out of Stephenson's letters Saturday. Good morning again. I didn't get this enveloped yesterday before the postman came, so i'll ads 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 sun burned 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 the war breaks out between the United States and Japan, or the president is assassinated, or mister 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 Jerviy, 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 missus Semple, to tell you the truth. It's 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 Greerhome. 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 got all my beds made and my baby's faces washed, and had gone to school and come home and washed their faces again, and darned their stockings and mended Freddy 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 p. S. The lettuce hasn't done it all well this year. It

was so dry early in the season. Twenty fifth August. Well, Daddy, Master Jerviy'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 doesn't show any signs of going the way missus 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 parlor. He just picks out the spot he wants to eat in and carry 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 just like

a true Pendleton, but he isn't in the least. He is just as simple and unaffected and as sweet as can be. That seems a funny way to describe a man, but it's true. He's extremely nice with the farmers round 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. 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, missus 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 is 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 missus 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, in 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 an old grove. We fed him on oats for three days, and he shineded a calf and almost ran away with me. Wednesday. We climbed sky Hill Monday afternoon. That's a mountain near here, not an

off the 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 more. We stayed up for the sunset and built a fire and cooked our supper. Master Jervy 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 missus Semple's face when we'd ripped 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 had 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 stought 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 missus Semple to mister Pendleton, with a very determined accent.

We have I have to leave here at a quarter past ten in order to get to church.

He orders meals whenever he chooses. You would think the place where a restaurant. And that kept Carrie and Amesi from going driving, But he said it was all the better because it wasn't proper for them to go driving without a chaperone, And anyway, he wanted the horses himself take me driving. Did you ever hear anything so funny? And poor missus Semple believes that people who go fishing on Sundays will afterwards go 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, a boy cap'n long legs, a vast be lay 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 Stephenson. 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 mister 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. Missus Lippett warned me that you were eccentric. I should think so affectionately. Judy p. S. On reading this over, I find that it isn't all Stephenson. There are one or two glancing references to Master Jervy tenth 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 Missus 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 Jervy 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 Jervy doesn't let politeness interfere with truth. But the last one I did, just a little sketch late 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 colored 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 carry 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 drug 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. The 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? First, Mice, the story is accepted fifty dollars a lore. I am an author. Second 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 all need, and maybe I can earn that with writing or tutoring or something. I'm longing to go back and begin work yours ever, jerushe Abbott, author of When the Sophomores Won the Game for sale

at All Newstands price ten cents. End of Part six, Part seven, twenty sixth September. Dear Daddy Longlegs, 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 inkspot in the wrong place. And Daddy, I found your letter waiting for me. Pardon, I mean your secretaries. 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'm 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'll 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 roommate. This isn't much of a letter. I meant to have written a lot, but I've been hemming four window curtains in three poortiers. I'm glad you can't see the link of the bitches, 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 Abbot owns two trunks full of clothes, but she does. And welcoming back fifty dear friends in between. The 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 hand with the little determined cluck and lots of beautiful feathers, all due to you. Affectionately Judy thirtieth 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 points of view as you. You prefer that I should not be accepting favorites from strangers. Strangers, and what are you pray? Is there any one 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 impatted her on the head and 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 a bade your slightest wish, like the dutiful daughter she was meant to be. Strangers. Indeed, you live in a glass house, mister Smith. And besides, this

isn't a favor, 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 the man you belong mister 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 scorned 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 freshman. 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 toward educating some other little girl from the John Greer 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 he offered in his letter. But I can't help it if he is. He's a spoiled

child's 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 up. Jerusha Abbot, ninth November. Dear Daddy long Legs. I started downtown today to buy a bottle of shoe blacking and some collars into 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 in two coats. Julia Pendleton has invited me to visit her for the Christmas holidays. How does that strike you, mister Smith? Fancy Jerusha Abbot of the John Greerholme 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 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 odd at the prospect of meeting Pendleton's end mass, and also I 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 facility. 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 to Stereognothus. 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, mister Trustee, I'll know just how an orphan asylum ought to be run. Don't you think I'd make an admirable rot 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, seventh December, Dear Daddy Longlegs, thank you from your 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 upperclassmen being allowed. I invited Jimmy mc bride, and Sally invited his roommate 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

materire 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's tables. They say Jimmy mc bride says that the next time he has 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 name, so that they could be readily found by their next partners. Jimmy mc bride, 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 the 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 Salie 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 crape machine trimmed with ecru lace and rose satin, and I carried crimson roses with Jimmie McBride's scent, Salie having told him what color to get, and we all had satin silk lippers and silk stockings and shiffon scarfs to match. You must be deeply impressed by these millinery details.

One can't help thinking, Daddy, what a colorless 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, it's 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 p s. This is one of those wicked anonymous letters you read

about in novels. Twentieth December, Dear Daddy longlegs, 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 frivilties. I have strong suspicions now as to which one of the John Greer trustees used to give the Christmas tree in 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. Good Bye and to very merry Christmas, Yours always, Judy P. S. I am sending a slight token two. I think you would like her if you knew her.

Eleventh 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 Greerholme for a background. Whatever the drawbacks of my bringing up, there was at least no pretense 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. Missus Pendleton never thinks of anything but jewels and dressmakers and social engagements. She did seem a different mother from

Missus mc bride. If I ever marry and have a family, I'm going to make them as exactly like the McBride's as I can.

care much for him. Julia's mother says he's unbalanced. He's a socialist, except, thank Heavens, 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 autumnalis 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 theater and hotels and beautiful houses. My mind is a confused jungle of onyx and gilding

and mosaic floors and palms. I'm still pretty breathless, but I am glad to get back to college. In 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 in 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, talk, and go to bed with 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 forever regretting the past or anticipating the future, but to get the most you can out of this very instant. It's like farming. You could have extensive farming and intensive farming. Well, I'm 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. We

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 philosopherus as I am developing into yours ever, Judy p s. It's raining cats and dogs tonight. Two puppies and a kitten have just landed on the windowsill. Dear Comrade, hooray, I am 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 wanted 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, third hour, eleventh 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 Ja fifth March,

Dear Daddy long Legs. President Cueler made a speech this evening about the modern generation being flippant and superficial. He says that we are losing the old ideals of earnest endeavor and true scholarship, and particularly is this falling off noticeable in our disrespectful attitude toward 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 mister 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 tinturn Albe in connection with our course in English literature. Whatdenness quisite 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 so much poets as Shelley, Byron, Heats 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 procter 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 shranks so that she can no longer wear it, and I am about to begin swimming lessons. We had delicious pink ice cream for dessert last night. Only vegetable dyes are used in coloring the food. The college is very much opposed, both from esthetic and hygienic motives, to the use of anoline dyes. The weather of late has been ideal bright sunshine and

clouds interspersed with a few welcome snowstorms. I and my companions have enjoyed our walks to and from classes, particularly from trusting my dear mister Smith, this, this will find you in your usual good health. I remained most cordially yours, Jerusha Abbot, twenty fourth 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 Jervy dropped in again last Friday, but he chose a most unpropitious time for Sally 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 in a ballgame, 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 a leave of absence from college and Missus mc

bride chaperoned us. We had a charming time, but I shall have to admit details they are too many and complicated. Saturday, up before dawn, the night watchman called us six of us and we made coffee and a chafing dish. You never saw so many grounds and walked two miles to the top of one tree hill to see the sunrise. We had to scramble up the last slope. The sun almost beat us. And perhaps you think we didn't bring back appetites to breakfast. Dear me, Daddy, I seem to

have a very ejaculatory style to day. This page is peppered with exclamations. I meant to have written a lot about the budding trees and the new cinder path in the athletic field, and the awful lesson we have in biology for tomorrow, and the new canoes on the lake, and Catherine Prentice who has pneumonia, and Prexy's Angora kitten that strayed from home and has been boarding in Ferguson 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'm always making this as an excuse, am I not? But a girl's college is a busy place and we do get tired by the end of the day, particularly when the day begins at dawn. Affectionately, Judy fifteenth may dear Daddy longlegs. 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 of 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 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've been having of late. It was raining when I commenced, and now the sun is shining. Sally and I are going out to play tennis, thereby gaining exemption from Jim 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 Jerviy, with typewritten envelopes, so Julia won't recognize the writing. Did you ever hear anything so shocking? And every week or so a very SCROLLI 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 very 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 research organization, only seventy five members out of one thousand. Do you think, as a consistent socialist that I ought to be long? What do you suppose is at present engaging my attention in sociology? I am writing figuerre vu, a paper on the care of dependent children. The professor shuffled up his subjects and dealt them out promiscuously, and

that fell to me Sedrosa and Nepa. There goes the gong for dinner. I'll post this as I passed the box affectionately. Jay fourth 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, and 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'm 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 this summer at the sea side with a missus Charles Patterson, and tutor her daughter, who is to enter college in the autumn. I met her through the McBride's 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 she'll probably spend the remaining three weeks at Lock Willow. I should like to see the semples again and all the friendly animals. How does my program strike you, daddy? I am getting quite independent, you see. You have put me on my feet and I think I can almost walk alone by now. Princeton commencement in

our examinations exactly coincide, which is an awful blow. Sally and I did so want to get away in time for it, but of course that is utterly impossible. Good Bye, 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. Tenth 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 used to too many luxuries. One doesn't miss what one has never had. But it's awfully hard going without things after one is commenced thinking they are his hers. English language needs another pronoun by natural right. Living with Sally 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 Jervy'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 the lady who is shopping 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 Greerholm 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 chaperone 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 abuse of adjectives. The rest escaped me, and that I didn't know what was good for me. I ought to let older people judge. We almost quarreled. 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 and 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 Missus Patterson's cottage, with my trunk unpacked, and Florence the little one already struggling with first to clension nouns, and it bids fair to be a struggle. She is a most uncommonly spoilt 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. Missus Patterson 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 absqui, korum whom da e or x pray pro sine tenus

in soubter soub 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 planet, 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, nineteenth 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 Marian is ever going to get into college, or stay in if she does get there. 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, as 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 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 mister 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, you will see me for a few days at Lockwillow before college opens. And if I am very nice and sweet and docile, I shall I am led to infer be received into favor 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 Jervey 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 to the woods Judy Camp McBride, sixth 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 McBride's, and so is the whole world. I'm very happy there's

Jimmy calling for me to come canoeing. Good bye. 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 end of Part seven.

a nice summer and I'm enjoying the country. And he knew all the time that I was with the McBride's for Julia told him, so, you men ought to leave intrigued to women, you haven't a light enough touch. Julia has a trunk full of the most ravishing new clothes, an evening gown of rainbow liberty crape that would be fitting Raymond for the Angels in Paradise. And I thought that my own clothes this year were unprecedent. Is there

such a word beautiful? I copied Missus Patterson's wardrobe with the aid of a cheap dressmaker, and though the gowns didn't turn out quite the 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 hair professor who regarded unnecessary adornment with contempt and favored 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 p s The chambermaid nar Corridor wears blue checked Gingham aprons. I'm 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. Seventeenth 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 reopen 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 humor, 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 death? 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 commenced to look for another set. Affectionately Judy fourteenth 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 Abbot. I could see it perfectly, plainly red cloth binding, with a picture of the John greer Holme on the cover, and my portrait for a frontispiece, with very truly yours, Judy Abbot written below. But just as I was turning to the end to read the inscription

on my tombstone, I woke up. 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 absolute, 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 obtruse letter. There's your headache, 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 are going to make it with real cream

and three butter balls. Yours affectionately, Judy p s. We're having fancy dancing and 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 pirouet is me, I mean I twenty six 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 in to 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'm sorry that the necktie ascent 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 Gudy. Here's a four leaf clover from Camp McBride to bring you

good luck in the new year, ninth January. Do you wish to do something, Daddy, that will ensure your internal salvation. There's 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 has now 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 dress makes for a dollar fifty a day when she can get it, and embroider centerpieces in the evening. The mother isn't very strong and is extremely ineffectual and pious. She sits with her hands folded a picture of patient resignation, while the daughter kills herself with

overwork and responsibility and worry. She doesn't see how they are going to get through the rest of the winter, and I don't either. One hundred dollars would buy some coal and some shoes for 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 jellyfish. The way people are forever rolling their eyes to heaven and saying, perhaps it's all for the best when they are perfectly dead short it's not makes me enraged. Humility or resignation, or whatever you choose to call it, is simply impotent inertia. I am for a more militant religion. We are getting the most

dreadful lessons in philosoph 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 and trying to figure out whether matter really exists, so 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's 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 JA. 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 a livenedness of spirit. So even if your hair is gray, Daddy, you can still be a boy. Affectionately Judy, twelfth January. Dear mister philanthropist, your check for my family came yesterday. Thank you so much. I cut gymnasium and took it down to them right after luncheon. And you should have seen the girl's face. She was so surprised and happy and relieved that she looked almost young,

and she's only twenty four. Isn't it pitiful? Anyway? She feels now as though all the good things were coming together. She has steady work ahead for two months, someone's getting married, and there's a trousseau to make. Thank the Good Lord, cried the mother when she grasped the fact that the small piece of paper was one hundred dollars. It wasn't the good Lord at all, said I. It was Daddy, long legs, mister 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, fifteenth February. Mate, 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 tea, 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 samal Peeps.

We're reading him in connection with English history original sources. Sally and Julia and I converse now in the language of sixteen sixty. Listen to this. I went to Charing Cross to see Major Harrison, hanged, drawn and quoted. He looking as cheerful as any man could do in that condition. And this dining 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 Peep's 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 the touching entry?

You see? He really was honest to day came home my fine camlet 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 peeps. 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're not supposed to entertain on a large 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 drop 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 caa, he says, not to develop our intellects at the expense of our emotional natures. But methought it was a poor

dry salmon. Peeps. 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, Sally 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 at walk cross country to Crystal Spring Farm and have a fry chicken and waffle supper and then have Crystal Spring drive us home and 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 honor of subscribing myself your most loyal, dutiful, faithful,

and obedient servant. Jay Abbott, March fifth, Dear mister trustee, Tomorrow is the first Wednesday in the month, A weary day for the John Greerholme. How relieved they'll be when five o'clock comes and you pat them on the head 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 resembful, 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 usual 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 am going to regard them, even toothaches, as interesting experiences and be glad to know what they feel like.

Whatever sky's above me, I have a heart for any fate. However, Daddy, don't take this new affection for the j g H two literally. If I have five children like Rousseau, I shan't leave them on the steps of a foundling asylum

in order to ensure their being brought up. Simply give my kindest regards to missus 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, fourth April, Dear Daddy, do you observe the postmark? Sally 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 Ferguson, dining in a room with four hundred girls is an ordeal. When you're tired. There's so much noisy 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 Jerby 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 I am corrigible. I'm writing a book. I started it three weeks ago and am eating it up

in chunks. I've caught the secret. Master Jervy 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 Greer 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 have 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 illiterative, affectionately. Judy. Yes, 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 Bonny Rig four corners. AMESI stayed up all night to give her lindsay oil and whiskey. But we have an awful suspicion that the poor sick cow got nothing but lindseed oil. Sentimental Tommy,

the tortoise shell cat, has disappeared. We are afraid he's been caught in a trap. There are a lot of troubles in the world. Seventeenth 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 Jerviy, he being her family, and Sally's inviting Jimmy mc beee he being her family. But who is there for me to invite? Just you and lip It, and I don't want her. Please come yours with love and writer's cramp, Judy. End of Part eight of Daddy Long Legs by Jean Webster. Part nine, Lock Willow, nineteenth June, Dear Daddy long legs. I'm educated. My diploma is in

the bottom bureau drawer of my two best dresses. Commencement was as usual, with a few showers at vital moments. Thank you for your rosebuds. They were lovely. Master Jervy and Master Jimmy 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 forever. Maybe the board is cheap, the surroundings quiet and conductive to a literary life. What more does a struggling author wish? I am mad about my book.

I think about it every waking moment and dream of it at night. All I want is peace and quiet, lots of time to work, interspersed with nourishing meals. Master Jervy is coming up for a week or so in August, and Jimmy mc bride 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 Farmer's 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 it is hopeless. When you wouldn't come to my commencement, I tore you from my heart and buried you forever. Judy Abbott A. B. Twenty fourth 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 I'm 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, And 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 rob 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 being 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 stuffy. 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 moment to talk about something else I never told you, did I that AMESI and Carrie got married last May. They're still working here, but so far as I can see, it has spoiled

them both. She used to laugh when he tramped in mud and dropped ashes on the floor, but now you should hear her scold, and she doesn't curl her hair any longer. AMESI, 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 have to determined never to marry. It's a deteriorating process. Evidently there isn't much of any farm news. The animals

are all 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 two hundred eggs per hen per year. I'm thinking of starting an incubator next spring and raising broilers. You see, I'm settled at Lockwillow permanently. I've decided to stay until I've written one hundred and fourteen novels like Anthony Trollop's Mother. Then I shall have completed my life

work and can retire and travel. Mister 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 Jimmy is having a hard time pedaling his bonds. The Farmer's National at the Corners wouldn't have anything to do with them, in spite of the fact that they pay six percent interests 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, a confiding, and kind hearted ever to make a successful fit andseer. 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'll 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 am very happy with beautiful scenery all about, and lots to eat in 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 p s. The postman arrives with some more news. We are to expect Master Jervy on Friday next to spend a week. It's a very pleasant prospect. Only I'm afraid my poor book will suffer. Master Jervy is very demanding.

Twenty seventh August, Dear Daddy longlegs, where are you? I wonder? I never know what part of the world you're in, but I hope you're not in New York during this awful weather. I hope you are 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. Sally 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's settled, and we could be together in the evenings. Evenings are very long when there's no one but the simples and carry and ameside to talk to. I know in advance that you won't like

my studio idea. I can read your secretary's letter now, mister RuSHA Abbott, dear Madam, mister Smith prefers that you remain at lock Willow, yours truly, Elmer H. Griggs. I hate your secretary. I'm 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, and soon I shall throw myself into the silo pit out of sheer desperation. Oh mercy, but it's hot. All the grass is burnt up, and

the brooks are dry. The roads are Dusty 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 nineteenth 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. Third October. Dear Daddy long Legs. Your note, written in your own hand and a pretty wobbly hand, came this morning. I'm so sorry that you've been ill. I wouldn't have bothered you with my affairs if I had known. Yes, I will tell you the trouble. 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 check for one thousand dollars. It seems funny, doesn't it, for me to be sending

a check 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 and more. It's coming in installments. Now, don't be hard 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 Jersey for a very long time. I wish I could make you understand what he's like and how entirely companionable we are. We think the same about everything. I'm afraid I have a tendency to make over my ideas to match his. But

he's almost always right. He ought to be, you know, for he has fourteen year start of me, and otherwise 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 humor are antagonistic. I don't believe there's any bridging that gulf, and he is 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. 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's gone away imagining that I want to marry Jimmy McBride. I don't.

In the least. I wouldn't think of marrying Jimmy. He hasn't grown up enough. The Master Jermy 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 feel so 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'm 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's 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 went 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 we'll 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 Jimmy, but is the John Greerholme. 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 up all 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, sixth October, Dear 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 I'm not quite a baby. I can't believe that I'm really going to see you. I've been just thinking of 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, yes, I've just had

an awful thought. Have you a butler? I'm afraid of butler's 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 mister Smith? Thursday morning, my very dearest master Jervy, 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 shall ever 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 someday 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. A 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 you over, or the signboards that can fall on your head, or the dreadful, squirmy germs that you may be swallowed. My peace of mind is gone forever. But anyway, I never cared much for just plain thiefs. Please get well, fast, fast fast. I want to have you close by where I can touch you and make sure you're 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. The way you

look ten years younger. I hope that being in love doesn't make everyone 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 lived, I mean 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. Missus 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'm going to see Daddy long Legs. I ate breakfast in the kitchen by candlelight, then drove the five miles to the station through the most glorious October coloring. 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 tray, and 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 round the block to get at my courage. But I needn't have been 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 mister Smith after all. He told me to wait in the drawing room. It was a very

somber magnificent man 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 illness. 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 deer. 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 runck 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 then I didn't understand. I thought Daddy had had you come there to meet me for a surprise. Then you laughed and held up 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 hundreds of little things might have told me if I'd had any wits, I wouldn't make a very good detective, would I? Daddy Jervy? What must I call you? Just plain Jervy 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 Saint 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 Lockwillow 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 to dare 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'm missing you dreadfully, Jervy dear, but it's a happy kind

of missing. Will 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 forever and ever, Judy. End of Daddy Long Legs by Jean Webster