I meant to write you a nice, cheerful, entertaining letter to-night, but I ’m too sleepy—and scared. The Freshman’s lot is not a happy one.
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 Abbott has commenced to be an author. A poem entitled, “From my Tower,” appears in the February Monthly—on the first page, which is a very great 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’t think of something else pleasant—Oh, yes! I ’m learning to skate, and can glide about quite respectably all by myself. Also I ’ve learned how to slide down a rope from the roof of the gymnasium, and I can vault a bar three feet and six inches high—I hope shortly to pull up to four feet.
We had a very inspiring sermon this morning preached by the Bishop of Alabama. His text was: “Judge not that ye be not judged.” It was about the necessity of overlooking mistakes in others, and not discouraging people by harsh judgments. I wish you might have heard it.
This is the sunniest, most blinding winter afternoon, with icicles dripping from the fir trees and all the world bending under a weight of snow—except me, and I ’m bending under a weight of sorrow.
Now for the news—courage, Judy!—you must tell.
Are you surely in a good humor? I flunked mathematics and Latin prose. I am tutoring in them, and will take another examination next month. I ’m sorry if you ’re disappointed, but otherwise I don’t care a bit because I ’ve learned such a lot of things not mentioned in the catalogue. I ’ve read seventeen novels and bushels of poetry—really necessary novels like “Vanity Fair” and “Richard Feverel” and “Alice in Wonderland.” Also Emerson’s “Essays” and Lockhart’s “Life of Scott” and the first volume of Gibbon’s “Roman Empire” and half of Benvenuto Cellini’s “Life”—was n’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 flunk again?
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
This is an extra letter in the middle of the month because I ’m sort of lonely to-night. It ’s awfully stormy; the snow is beating against my tower. All the lights are out on the campus, but I drank black coffee and I can’t go to sleep.
I had a supper party this evening consisting of Sallie and Julia and Leonora Fenton—and sardines and toasted muffins and salad and fudge and coffee. Julia said she ’d had a good time, but Sallie stayed to help wash the dishes.
I might, very usefully, put some time on Latin to-night—but, there ’s no doubt about it, I ’m a very languid Latin scholar. We ’ve finished Livy and De Senectute and are now engaged with De Amicitia (pronounced Damn Icitia).
Should you mind, just for a little while, pretending you are my grandmother? Sallie has one and Julia and Leonora each two, and they were all comparing them to-night. I can’t think of anything I ’d rather have; it ’s such a respectable relationship. So, if you really don’t object—When I went into town yesterday, I saw the sweetest cap of Cluny lace trimmed with lavender ribbon. I am going to make you a present of it on your eighty-third birthday.
! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
That ’s the clock in the chapel tower striking twelve. I believe I am sleepy after all.
Dear D. L. L.,
I am studying Latin prose composition. I have been studying it. I shall be studying it. I shall be about to have been studying it. My reëxamination comes the 7th hour next Tuesday, and I am going to pass or BUST. So you may expect to hear from me next, whole and happy and free from conditions, or in fragments.
I will write a respectable letter when it ’s over. To-night I have a pressing engagement with the Ablative Absolute.
Mr. D. L. L. Smith.
Sir: You never answer any questions; you never show the slightest interest in anything I do. You are probably the horridest one of all those horrid Trustees, and the reason you are educating me is, not because you care a bit about me, but from a sense of Duty.
I don’t know a single thing about you. I don’t even know your name. It is very uninspiring writing to a Thing. I have n’t a doubt but that you throw my letters into the waste-basket without reading them. Hereafter I shall write only about work.
My reëxaminations in Latin and geometry came last week. I passed them both and am now free from conditions.
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 did n’t know it, but I was just coming down with tonsilitis and grippe and lots of things mixed. I ’m in the infirmary now, and have been here for six days; this is the first time they would let me sit up and have a pen and paper. The head nurse is very bossy. But I ’ve been thinking about it all the time and I shan’t get well until you forgive me.
Here is a picture of the way I look, with a bandage tied around my head in rabbit ’s ears.
Does n’t that arouse your sympathy? I am having sublingual gland swelling. And I ’ve been studying physiology all the year without ever hearing of sublingual glands. How futile a thing is education!
I can’t write any more; I get sort of shaky when I sit up too long. Please forgive me for being impertinent and ungrateful. I was badly brought up.
Dearest Daddy-Long-Legs,
Yesterday evening just toward dark, when I was sitting up in bed looking out at the rain and feeling awfully bored with life in a great institution, the nurse appeared with a long white box addressed to me, and filled with the loveliest pink rosebuds. And much nicer still, it contained a card with a very polite message written in a funny little uphill back hand (but one which shows a great deal of character). Thank you, Daddy, a thousand times. Your flowers make the first real, true present I ever received in my life. If you want to know what a baby I am, I lay down and cried because I was so happy.
Now that I am sure you read my letters, I ’ll make them much more interesting, so they ’ll be worth keeping in a safe with red tape around them—only please take