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--verysatisfactorily--until I reach the top of your head, and then I AMstuck. I can't decide whether you have white hair or black hair orsort 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, andyour eyebrows stick out like a porch roof (beetling, they're called innovels), and your mouth is a straight line with a tendency to turn downat the corners. Oh, you see, I know! You're a snappy old thing with atemper.
(Chapel bell.)
9.45 p.m.
I have a new unbreakable rule: never, never to study at night nomatter how many written reviews are coming in the morning. Instead, Iread just plain books--I have to, you know, because there are eighteenblank years behind me. You wouldn't believe, Daddy, what an abyss ofignorance my mind is; I am just realizing the depths myself. Thethings that most girls with a properly assorted family and a home andfriends and a library know by absorption, I have never heard of. Forexample:
I never read Mother Goose or David Copperfield or Ivanhoe or Cinderellaor Blue Beard or Robinson Crusoe or Jane Eyre or Alice in Wonderland ora word of Rudyard Kipling. I didn't know that Henry the Eighth wasmarried more than once or that Shelley was a poet. I didn't know thatpeople used to be monkeys and that the Garden of Eden was a beautifulmyth. I didn't know that R. L. S. stood for Robert Louis Stevenson orthat George Eliot was a lady. I had never seen a picture of the 'MonaLisa' and (it's true but you won't believe it) I had never heard ofSherlock Holmes.
Now, I know all of these things and a lot of others besides, but youcan see how much I need to catch up. And oh, but it's fun! I lookforward all day to evening, and then I put an 'engaged' on the door andget into my nice red bath robe and furry slippers and pile all thecushions behind me on the couch, and light the brass student lamp at myelbow, and read and read and read one book isn't enough. I have fourgoing at once. Just now, they're Tennyson's poems and Vanity Fair andKipling's Plain Tales and--don't laugh--Little Women. I find that I amthe only girl in college who wasn't brought up on Little Women. Ihaven't told anybody though (that WOULD stamp me as queer). I justquietly went and bought it with $1.12 of my last month's allowance; andthe next time somebody mentions pickled limes, I'll know what she istalking about!
(Ten o'clock bell. This is a very interrupted letter.)
Saturday
Sir,
I have the honour to report fresh explorations in the field ofgeometry. On Friday last we abandoned our former works inparallelopipeds and proceeded to truncated prisms. We are finding theroad rough and very uphill.
Sunday
The Christmas holidays begin next week and the trunks are up. Thecorridors are so filled up that you can hardly get through, andeverybody is so bubbling over with excitement that studying is gettingleft out. I'm going to have a beautiful time in vacation; there'sanother Freshman who lives in Texas staying behind, and we are planningto take long walks and if there's any ice--learn to skate. Then thereis still the whole library to be read--and three empty weeks to do itin!
Goodbye, Daddy, I hope that you are feeling as happy as I am.
Yours ever, Judy
PS. Don't forget to answer my question. If you don't want the troubleof 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!