19th december
dear daddy-long-legs,
you never answered my question and it was very important.
are you bald?
i have it planned exactly what you look like--very satisfactorily--
until i reach the top of your head, and then i am stuck. i can't
decide whether you have white hair or black hair or sort of sprinkly
grey hair or maybe none at all.
here is your portrait:
but the problem is, shall i add some hair?
would you like to know what colour your eyes are? they're grey,
and your eyebrows stick out like a porch roof (beetling, they're
called in novels), and your mouth is a straight line with a tendency
to turn down at the corners. oh, you see, i know! you're a snappy
old thing with a temper.
(chapel bell.)
9.45 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 wouldn'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 didn't know that henry
the eighth was married more than once or that shelley was a poet.
i didn't know that people used to be monkeys and that the garden
of eden was a beautiful myth. i didn'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 isn'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 wasn't brought up on
little women. i haven'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.)
saturday
sir,
i have the honour 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.
sunday
the christmas holidays begin next week and the trunks are up.
the corridors are so filled up 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!
goodbye, daddy, i hope that you are feeling as happy as am.
yours ever,
judy
ps. 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.
goodbye till january--and a merry christmas!
