Dear Comrade,
Hooray! I’m a Fabian.
That’s a Socialist who’s willing to wait. We don’t want the social revolution to come tomorrow morning; it would be too upsetting. We want it to come very gradually in the distant future, when we shall all be prepared and able to sustain the shock.
In the meantime, we must be getting ready, by instituting industrial, educational and orphan asylum reforms.
Yours, with fraternal love,
Judy
Monday, 3rd hour
Dear D.-L.-L.,
Don’t be insulted because this is so short. It isn’t a letter; it’s just a LINE to say that I’m going to write a letter pretty soon when examinations are over. It is not only necessary that I pass, but pass WELL. I have a scholarship to live up to.
Yours, studying hard,
J. A.
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
President Cuyler made a speech this evening about the modern generation being flippant and superficial. He says that we are losing the old ideals of earnest endeavour and true scholarship; and particularly is this falling-off noticeable in our disrespectful attitude towards organized authority. We no longer pay a seemly deference to our superiors.
I came away from chapel very sober.
Am I too familiar, Daddy? Ought I to treat you with more dignity and aloofness? — Yes, I’m sure I ought. I’ll begin again.
My Dear Mr. Smith,
You will be pleased to hear that I passed successfully my mid-year examinations, and am now commencing work in the new semester. I am leaving chemistry — having completed the course in qualitative analysis — and am entering upon the study of biology. I approach this subject with some hesitation, as I understand that we dissect angleworms and frogs.
An extremely interesting and valuable lecture was given in the chapel last week upon Roman Remains in Southern France. I have never listened to a more illuminating exposition of the subject.
We are reading Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey in connection with our course in English Literature. What an exquisite work it is, and how adequately it embodies his conceptions of Pantheism! The Romantic movement of the early part of the last century, exemplified in the works of such poets as Shelley, Byron, Keats, and Wordsworth, appeals to me very much more than the Classical period that preceded it. Speaking of poetry, have you ever read that charming little thing of Tennyson’s called Locksley Hall?
I am attending gymnasium very regularly of late. A proctor system has been devised, and failure to comply with the rules causes a great deal of inconvenience. The gymnasium is equipped with a very beautiful swimming tank of cement and marble, the gift of a former graduate. My room-mate, Miss McBride, has given me her bathing-suit (it shrank so that she can no longer wear it) and I am about to begin swimming lessons.
We had delicious pink ice-cream for dessert last night. Only vegetable dyes are used in colouring the food. The college is very much opposed, both from aesthetic and hygienic motives, to the use of aniline dyes.
The weather of late has been ideal — bright sunshine and clouds interspersed with a few welcome snow-storms. I and my companions have enjoyed our walks to and from classes — particularly from.
Trusting, my dear Mr. Smith, that this will find you in your usual good health,
I remain, Most cordially yours,
Jerusha Abbott
Dear Daddy,
Spring has come again! You should see how lovely the campus is. I think you might come and look at it for yourself. Master Jervie dropped in again last Friday — but he chose a most unpropitious time, for Sallie and Julia and I were just running to catch a train. And where do you think we were going? To Princeton, to attend a dance and a ball game, if you please! I didn’t ask you if I might go, because I had a feeling that your secretary would say no. But it was entirely regular; we had leave-of-absence from college, and Mrs. McBride chaperoned us. We had a charming time — but I shall have to omit details; they are too many and complicated.
Saturday
Up before dawn! The night watchman called us — six of us — and we made coffee in a chafing dish (you never saw so many grounds!) and walked two miles to the top of One Tree Hill to see the sun rise. We had to scramble up the last slope! The sun almost beat us! And perhaps you think we didn’t bring back appetites to breakfast!
Dear me, Daddy, I seem to have a very ejaculatory style today; this page is peppered with exclamations.
I meant to have written a lot about the budding trees and the new cinder path in the athletic field, and the awful lesson we have in biology for tomorrow, and the new canoes on the lake, and Catherine Prentiss who has pneumonia, and Prexy’s Angora kitten that strayed from home and has been boarding in Fergussen Hall for two weeks until a chambermaid reported it, and about my three new dresses — white and pink and blue polka dots with a hat to match — but I am too sleepy. I am always making this an excuse, am I not? But a girls’ college is a busy place and we do get tired by the end of the day! Particularly when the day begins at dawn.
Affectionately,
Judy
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
Is it good manners when you get into a car just to stare straight ahead and not see anybody else?
A very beautiful lady in a very beautiful velvet dress got into the car today, and without the slightest expression sat for fifteen minutes and looked at a sign advertising suspenders. It doesn’t seem polite to ignore everybody else as though you were the only important person present. Anyway, you miss a lot. While she was absorbing that silly sign, I was studying a whole car full of interesting human beings.
The accompanying illustration is hereby reproduced for the first time. It looks like a spider on the end of a string, but it isn’t at all; it’s a picture of me learning to swim in the tank in the gymnasium.
The instructor hooks a rope into a ring in the back of my belt, and runs it through a pulley in the ceiling. It would be a beautiful system if one had perfect confidence in the probity of one’s instructor. I’m always afraid, though, that she will let the rope get slack, so I keep one anxious eye on her and swim with the other, and with this divided interest I do not make the progress that I otherwise might.
Very miscellaneous weather we’re having of late. It was raining when I commenced and now the sun is shining. Sallie and I are going out to play tennis — thereby gaining exemption from Gym.
I should have finished this letter long ago, but I didn’t. You don’t mind, do you, Daddy, if I’m not very regular? I really do love to write to you; it gives me such a respectable feeling of having some family. Would you like me to tell you something? You are not the only man to whom I write letters. There are two others! I have been receiving beautiful long letters this winter from Master Jervie (with typewritten envelopes so Julia won’t recognize the writing). Did you ever hear anything so shocking? And every week or so a very scrawly epistle, usually on yellow tablet paper, arrives from Princeton. All of which I answer with business-like promptness. So you see — I am not so different from other girls — I get letters, too.
Did I tell you that I have been elected a member of the Senior Dramatic Club? Very recherche organization. Only seventy-five members out of one thousand. Do you think as a consistent Socialist that I ought to belong?