Daddy Long-Legs

I don’t know why I am 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 Bronté was quite young when she wrote it, and had never been outside of Haworth churchyard. She had never known any men in her life; how could she imagine a man like Heathcliffe?

I could n’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 lots 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. Sallie 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, 9.30 p. m.

Such a lot of troubles! I did n’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 the Professor and I had a disagreement touching a little matter of logarithms. On looking it up, I find that she was right. We had mutton stew and pie-plant for lunch—hate ’em both; they taste like the asylum. Nothing but bills in my mail (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. This was it:

I asked no other thing,No other was denied.I offered Being for it;The mighty merchant smiled.Brazil? He twirled a buttonWithout a glance my way:But, madam, is there nothing elseThat we can show to-day?

That is a poem. I don’t know who wrote it or what it means. It was simply printed out on the blackboard when we arrived and we were ordered to comment upon it. When I read the first verse I thought I had an idea—The Mighty Merchant was a divinity who distributes blessings 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 did n’t end the day. There ’s worse to come.

It rained so we could n’t play golf, but 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 dress had come, and the skirt was so tight that I could n’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, unintermittently stupid girl, who sits next to me in Latin because her name begins with A (I wish Mrs. Lippett had named me Zabriski), came to ask if Monday’s lesson commenced at paragraph 69 or 70, and stayed ONE HOUR. She has just gone.

Did you ever hear of such a discouraging series of events? It is n’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 am going to develop. I am going to pretend that all life is just a game which I must play as skilfully 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.

May 27th.

Daddy-Long-Legs, Esq.

Dear Sir: I am in receipt of a letter from Mrs. 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-Jambes-Longes,

Vous etes un brick!

Je suis tres heureuse about the farm, parsque je n’ai jamais been on a farm dans ma vie and I ’d hate to retourner chez John Grier, et wash dishes tout l’été. There would be danger of quelque chose affreuse happening, parsque j’ai perdue ma humilité d’autre fois et j’ai peur that I would just break out quelque jour et smash every cup and saucer dans la maison.

Pardon brièveté et paper. Je ne peux pas send des mes nouvelles parseque je suis dans French class et j’ai peur que Monsieur le Professeur is going to call on me tout de suite.

He did!

Au revoir,Je vous aime beaucoup.Judy.
May 30th.

Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

Did you ever see this campus? (That 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 is joyous and care-free, for vacation ’s coming, and with that to look forward to, examinations don’t count.

Is n’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 any more; and I ’m not anybody’s nurse-maid 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 Mrs. Lippett.

I ’m sorry I ever slapped Freddie Perkins.

I ’m sorry I ever filled the sugar bowl with salt.

I ’m sorry I ever made faces behind the Trustees’ backs.

I ’m going to be good and sweet and kind to everybody because I ’m so happy. And this summer I ’m going to write and write and write and begin to be a great author. Is n’t that an exalted stand to take? Oh, I ’m developing a beautiful character! It droops a bit under cold and frost, but it does grow fast when the sun shines.

That ’s the way with everybody. I don’t agree with the theory that adversity and sorrow and disappointment develop moral strength. The happy people are the ones who are bubbling over with kindliness. I have no faith in misanthropes. (Fine word! Just learned it.) You are not a misanthrope 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 feelings 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 one 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 Mr. 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 does n’t know him very intimately. It seems he glanced at her when she was a baby, decided he did n’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 Sallie with seventh-hour recitations that they could n’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 Pendletons.

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 grandmothers.

Mr. Pendleton reminded me a little of you, Daddy, as you were twenty years ago. You see I know you intimately, even if we have n’t ever met!

He ’s tall and thinnish with a dark face all over lines, and the funniest underneath smile that never quite comes through but just wrinkles up the corners of his mouth. And he has a way of making you feel right off as though you ’d 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 Sallie, but he said he did n’t like to have his nieces drink too much tea; it made them nervous. So we just ran away and had tea and muffins and marmalade and ice-cream and cake at a nice little table out on the balcony. The inn was quite conveniently empty, this being the end of the month and allowances 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 and things cost sixty cents apiece.

This morning (it ’s Monday now) three boxes of chocolates came by express for Julia and Sallie and me. What do you think of that? To be getting candy from a man!

I begin to feel like a girl instead of a foundling.

I wish you ’d come and take tea some day and let me see if I like you. But would n’t it be dreadful if I did n’t? However, I know I should.

Bien! I make you my compliments.

“Jamais je ne t’oublierai.”Judy.

P. S. 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?

June 9th.

Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

Happy day! I ’ve just finished my last examination—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 Grier Home. Whenever I think of it excited little thrills chase up and down my back. I feel as though I must run faster and faster and keep looking over my shoulder to make sure that Mrs. Lippett is n’t after me with her arm stretched out to grab me back.

I don’t have to mind any one this summer, do I?

Your nominal authority does n’t annoy me in the least; you are too far away to do any harm. Mrs. Lippett is dead forever, so far as I am concerned, and the Semples are n’t expected to overlook my moral welfare, are they? No, I am sure not. I am entirely grown up. Hooray!

I leave you now to pack a trunk, and three boxes of teakettles and dishes and sofa cushions and books.

Yours ever,Judy.

P. S. Here is my physiology exam. Do you think you could have passed?

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 does n’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 Marcelle 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 Mr. and Mrs. 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 8.30 now, and I am about to blow out my candle and try to go to sleep. We rise at five. Did you ever know such fun? I can’t believe this is really Judy. You and the Good Lord give me more than I deserve. I must be a very, very, very good person to pay. I ’m going to be. You ’ll see.

Good night,Judy.

P. S. You should hear the frogs sing and the little pigs squeal—and you should see the new moon! I saw it over my right shoulder.

Lock Willow,July 12th.

Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

How did your secretary come to know about Lock Willow? (That is n’t a rhetorical question. I am awfully curious to know.) For listen to this: Mr. Jervis Pendleton used to own this farm, but now he has given it to Mrs. Semple who was his old nurse. Did you ever hear of such a funny coincidence? She still calls him “Master Jervie” 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 ’s 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 Lock Willow. And the cream of the whole family is Master Jervie—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 loft yesterday, while I was trying to crawl over to a nest that the black hen has stolen. And when I came in with a scratched knee, Mrs. Semple bound it up with witch-hazel, murmuring all the time, “Dear! Dear! It seems only yesterday that Master Jervie fell off that very same beam and scratched this 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 the 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 take care of cream raised in pans, but it ’s enough better to pay. We have six calves; and I ’ve chosen the names for all of them.

1. Sylvia, because she was born in the woods.

2. Lesbia, after the Lesbia in Catullus.

3. Sallie.

4. Julia—a spotted, nondescript animal.

5. Judy, after me.

6. 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 have n’t had time yet to begin my immortal novel; the farm keeps me too busy.

Yours always,Judy.

P. S. I ’ve learned to make doughnuts.

P. S. (2) If you are thinking of raising chickens, let me recommend Buff Orpingtons. They have n’t any pin feathers.

P. S. (3) I wish I could send you a pat of the nice, fresh butter I churned yesterday. I ’m a fine dairy-maid!

P. S. (4) This is a picture of Miss Jerusha Abbott, the future great author, driving home the cows.

Sunday.

Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

Is n’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 to-day, 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 would n’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 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 did n’t wake up till I found myself on my feet singing the hymn, and then I was awfully sorry I had n’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 toysAnd join me in celestial joys.Or else, dear friend, a long farewell.I leave you now to sink to hell.

I find that it is n’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 any 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 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.

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 PendletonIf 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 to-morrow; 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. Are n’t Judy and Jervie having fun?

September 15th.

Dear Daddy,

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

Yours ever,Judy.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 in 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.