Daddy-Long-Legs & Dear Enemy. Jean Webster

      I picked him up very gently by one leg, and dropped him out of the window. I wouldn’t hurt one of them for the world. They always remind me of you.

      We hitched up the spring wagon this morning and drove to the Centre to church. It’s a sweet little white frame church with a spire and three Doric columns in front (or maybe Ionic—I always get them mixed).

      A nice sleepy sermon with everybody drowsily waving palm-leaf fans, and the only sound, aside from the minister, the buzzing of locusts in the trees outside. I didn’t wake up till I found myself on my feet singing the hymn, and then I was awfully sorry I hadn’t listened to the sermon; I should like to know more of the psychology of a man who would pick out such a hymn. This was it:

      Come, leave your sports and earthly toys

       And join me in celestial joys.

       Or else, dear friend, a long farewell.

       I leave you now to sink to hell.

      I find that it isn’t safe to discuss religion with the Semples. Their God (whom they have inherited intact from their remote Puritan ancestors) is a narrow, irrational, unjust, mean, revengeful, bigoted Person. Thank heaven I don’t inherit God from anybody! I am free to make mine up as I wish Him. He’s kind and sympathetic and imaginative and forgiving and understanding—and He has a sense of humour.

      I like the Semples immensely; their practice is so superior to their theory. They are better than their own God. I told them so—and they are horribly troubled. They think I am blasphemous—and I think they are! We’ve dropped theology from our conversation.

      This is Sunday afternoon.

      Amasai (hired man) in a purple tie and some bright yellow buckskin gloves, very red and shaved, has just driven off with Carrie (hired girl) in a big hat trimmed with red roses and a blue muslin dress and her hair curled as tight as it will curl. Amasai spent all the morning washing the buggy; and Carrie stayed home from church ostensibly to cook the dinner, but really to iron the muslin dress.

      In two minutes more when this letter is finished I am going to settle down to a book which I found in the attic. It’s entitled, ‘On the Trail’, and sprawled across the front page in a funny little-boy hand:

      Jervis Pendleton

       If this book should ever roam,

       Box its ears and send it home.

      He spent the summer here once after he had been ill, when he was about eleven years old; and he left ‘On the Trail’ behind. It looks well read—the marks of his grimy little hands are frequent! Also in a corner of the attic there is a water wheel and a windmill and some bows and arrows. Mrs. Semple talks so constantly about him that I begin to believe he really lives—not a grown man with a silk hat and walking stick, but a nice, dirty, tousle-headed boy who clatters up the stairs with an awful racket, and leaves the screen doors open, and is always asking for cookies. (And getting them, too, if I know Mrs. Semple!) He seems to have been an adventurous little soul—and brave and truthful. I’m sorry to think he is a Pendleton; he was meant for something better.

      We’re going to begin threshing oats tomorrow; a steam engine is coming and three extra men.

      It grieves me to tell you that Buttercup (the spotted cow with one horn, mother of Lesbia) has done a disgraceful thing. She got into the orchard Friday evening and ate apples under the trees, and ate and ate until they went to her head. For two days she has been perfectly dead drunk! That is the truth I am telling. Did you ever hear anything so scandalous?

      Sir,

       I remain,

       Your affectionate orphan,

       Judy Abbott

      P.S. Indians in the first chapter and highwaymen in the second. I hold my breath. What can the third contain? ‘Red Hawk leapt twenty feet in the air and bit the dust.’ That is the subject of the frontispiece. Aren’t Judy and Jervie having fun?

      15th September

      Dear Daddy,

      I was weighed yesterday on the flour scales in the general store at the Comers. I’ve gained nine pounds! Let me recommend Lock Willow as a health resort.

      Yours ever,

       Judy

      Second Year

       Table of Contents

      September 25th

      Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

      Behold me—a Sophomore! I came up last Friday, sorry to leave Lock Willow, but glad to see the campus again. It is a pleasant sensation to come back to something familiar. I am beginning to feel at home in college, and in command of the situation; I am beginning, in fact, to feel at home in the world—as though I really belonged to it and had not just crept in on sufferance.

      I don’t suppose you understand in the least what I am trying to say. A person important enough to be a Trustee can’t appreciate the feelings of a person unimportant enough to be a foundling.

      And now, Daddy, listen to this. Whom do you think I am rooming with? Sallie McBride and Julia Rutledge Pendleton. It’s the truth. We have a study and three little bedrooms—voila!

      Sallie and I decided last spring that we should like to room together, and Julia made up her mind to stay with Sallie—why, I can’t imagine, for they are not a bit alike; but the Pendletons are naturally conservative and inimical (fine word!) to change. Anyway, here we are. Think of Jerusha Abbott, late of the John Grier Home for Orphans, rooming with a Pendleton. This is a democratic country.

      Sallie is running for class president, and unless all signs fail, she is going to be elected. Such an atmosphere of intrigue—you should see what politicians we are! Oh, I tell you, Daddy, when we women get our rights, you men will have to look alive in order to keep yours. Election comes next Saturday, and we’re going to have a torchlight procession in the evening, no matter who wins.

      I am beginning chemistry, a most unusual study. I’ve never seen anything like it before. Molecules and Atoms are the material employed, but I’ll be in a position to discuss them more definitely next month.

      I am also taking argumentation and logic.

      Also history of the whole world.

      Also plays of William Shakespeare.

      Also French.

      If this keeps up many years longer, I shall become quite intelligent.

      I should rather have elected economics than French, but I didn’t dare, because I was afraid that unless I reelected French, the Professor would not let me pass—as it was, I just managed to squeeze through

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