p. m.I have a new unbreakable rule: never, never to study at night no matter how many written reviews are coming in the morning. Instead, I read just plain books—I have to, you know, because there are eighteen blank years behind me. You would n’t believe, Daddy, what an abyss of ignorance my mind is; I am just realizing the depths myself. The things that most girls with a properly assorted family and a home and friends and a library know by absorption, I have never heard of. For example:
I never read “Mother Goose” or “David Copperfield” or “Ivanhoe” or “Cinderella” or “Blue Beard” or “Robinson Crusoe” or “Jane Eyre” or “Alice in Wonderland” or a word of Rudyard Kipling. I did n’t know that Henry the Eighth was married more than once or that Shelley was a poet. I did n’t know that people used to be monkeys and that the Garden of Eden was a beautiful myth. I did n’t know that R.L.S. stood for Robert Louis Stevenson or that George Eliot was a lady. I had never seen a picture of the “Mona Lisa” and (it ’s true but you won’t believe it) I had never heard of Sherlock Holmes.
Now, I know all of these things and a lot of others besides, but you can see how much I need to catch up. And oh, but it ’s fun! I look forward all day to evening, and then I put an “engaged” on the door and get into my nice red bath robe and furry slippers and pile all the cushions behind me on the couch and light the brass student lamp at my elbow, and read and read and read. One book is n’t enough. I have four going at once. Just now, they ’re Tennyson’s poems and “Vanity Fair” and Kipling’s “Plain Tales” and—don’t laugh—“Little Women.” I find that I am the only girl in college who was n’t brought up on “Little Women.” I have n’t told anybody though (that would stamp me as queer). I just quietly went and bought it with $1.12 of my last month’s allowance; and the next time somebody mentions pickled limes, I ’ll know what she is talking about!
(Ten o’clock bell. This is a very interrupted letter.)
Sir,
I have the honor to report fresh explorations in the field of geometry. On Friday last we abandoned our former works in parallelopipeds and proceeded to truncated prisms. We are finding the road rough and very uphill.
The Christmas holidays begin next week and the trunks are up. The corridors are so cluttered that you can hardly get through, and everybody is so bubbling over with excitement that studying is getting left out. I ’m going to have a beautiful time in vacation; there ’s another Freshman who lives in Texas staying behind, and we are planning to take long walks and—if there ’s any ice—learn to skate. Then there is still the whole library to be read—and three empty weeks to do it in!
Good-by, Daddy, I hope that you are feeling as happy as I am.
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:
Mr. Smith is quite bald,
or
Mr. Smith is not bald,
or
Mr. Smith has white hair.
And you can deduct the twenty-five cents out of my allowance.
Good-by till January—and a merry Christmas!
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
Is it snowing where you are? All the world that I see from my tower is draped in white and the flakes are coming down as big as pop-corn. 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 a surprise! I ’m not used to receiving Christmas presents. You have already given me such lots of things—everything I have, you know—that I don’t quite feel that I deserve extras. But I like them just the same. Do you want to know what I bought with my money?
I. A silver watch in a leather case to wear on my wrist and get me to recitations on time.
II. Matthew Arnold’s poems.
III. A hot water bottle.
IV. A steamer rug. (My tower is cold.)
V. Five hundred sheets of yellow manuscript paper. (I ’m going to commence being an author pretty soon.)
VI. A dictionary of synonyms. (To enlarge the author’s vocabulary.)
VII. (I don’t much like to confess this last item, but I will.) A pair of silk stockings.
And now, Daddy, never say I don’t tell all!
It was a very low motive, if you must know it, that prompted the silk stockings. Julia Pendleton comes into my room to do geometry, and she sits cross legged on the couch and wears silk stockings every night. But just wait—as soon as she gets back from vacation I shall go in and sit on her couch in my silk stockings. You see, Daddy, the miserable creature that I am—but at least I ’m honest; and you knew already, from my asylum record, that I was n’t perfect, did n’t you?
To recapitulate (that ’s the way the English instructor begins every other sentence), I am very much obliged for my seven presents. I ’m pretending to myself that they came in a box from my family in California. The watch is from father, the rug from mother, the hot water bottle from grandmother—who is always worrying for fear I shall catch cold in this climate—and the yellow paper from my little brother Harry. My sister Isobel gave me the silk stockings, and Aunt Susan the Matthew Arnold poems; Uncle Harry (little Harry is named for him) gave me the dictionary. He wanted to send chocolates, but I insisted on synonyms.
You don’t object do you, to playing the part of a composite family?
And now, shall I tell you about my vacation, or are you only interested in my education as such? I hope you appreciate the delicate shade of meaning in “as such.” It is the latest addition to my vocabulary.
The girl from Texas is named Leonora Fenton. (Almost as funny as Jerusha, is n’t it?) I like her, but not so much as Sallie McBride; I shall never like any one so much as Sallie—except you. I must always like you the best of all, because you ’re my whole family rolled into one. Leonora and I and two Sophomores have walked ’cross country every pleasant day and explored the whole neighborhood, dressed in short skirts and knit jackets and caps, and carrying shinny sticks to whack things with. Once we walked into town—four miles—and stopped at a restaurant where the college girls go for dinner. Broiled lobster (35 cents) and for dessert, buckwheat cakes and maple syrup (15 cents). Nourishing and cheap.
It was such a lark! Especially for me, because it was so awfully different from the asylum—I feel like an escaped convict every time I leave the campus. Before I thought, I started to tell the others what an experience I was having. The cat was almost out of the bag when I grabbed it by its tail and pulled it back. It ’s awfully hard for me not to tell everything I know. I ’m a very confiding soul by nature; if I did n’t have you to tell things to, I ’d burst.
We had a molasses candy pull last Friday evening, given by the house
