Daddy,
He has gone, and we are missing him! When you get accustomed to people or places or ways of living, and then have them snatched away, it does leave an awfully empty, gnawing sort of sensation. I’m finding Mrs. Semple’s conversation pretty unseasoned food.
College opens in two weeks and I shall be glad to begin work again. I have worked quite a lot this summer though—six short stories and seven poems. Those I sent to the magazines all came back with the most courteous promptitude. But I don’t mind. It’s good practice. Master Jervie read them—he brought in the post, so I couldn’t help his knowing—and he said they were dreadful. They showed that I didn’t have the slightest idea of what I was talking about. (Master Jervie doesn’t let politeness interfere with truth.) But the last one I did—just a little sketch laid in college—he said wasn’t bad; and he had it typewritten, and I sent it to a magazine. They’ve had it two weeks; maybe they’re thinking it over.
You should see the sky! There’s the queerest orange-coloured light over everything. We’re going to have a storm.
It commenced just that moment with tremendously big drops and all the shutters banging. I had to run to close the windows, while Carrie flew to the attic with an armful of milk pans to put under the places where the roof leaks and then, just as I was resuming my pen, I remembered that I’d left a cushion and rug and hat and Matthew Arnold’s poems under a tree in the orchard, so I dashed out to get them, all quite soaked. The red cover of the poems had run into the inside; ‘Dover Beach’ in the future will be washed by pink waves.
A storm is awfully disturbing in the country. You are always having to think of so many things that are out of doors and getting spoiled.
Thursday
Daddy! Daddy! What do you think? The postman has just come with two letters.
1st.—My story is accepted. $50.
Alors! I’m an AUTHOR.
2nd.—A letter from the college secretary. I’m to have a scholarship for two years that will cover board and tuition. It was founded for ‘marked proficiency in English with general excellency in other lines’. And I’ve won it! I applied for it before I left, but I didn’t have an idea I’d get it, on account of my Freshman bad work in maths and Latin. But it seems I’ve made it up. I am awfully glad, Daddy, because now I won’t be such a burden to you. The monthly allowance will be all I’ll need, and maybe I can earn that with writing or tutoring or something.
I’m longing to go back and begin work.
Yours ever,
Jerusha Abbott,
Author of ‘When the Sophomores Won the Game’.
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