Sunday
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
Isn't it funny? I started to write to you yesterday afternoon, but asfar as I got was the heading, 'Dear Daddy-Long-Legs', and then Iremembered I'd promised to pick some blackberries for supper, so I wentoff and left the sheet lying on the table, and when I came back today,what do you think I found sitting in the middle of the page? A realtrue Daddy-Long-Legs!
I picked him up very gently by one leg, and dropped him out of thewindow. I wouldn't hurt one of them for the world. They always remindme of you.
We hitched up the spring wagon this morning and drove to the Centre tochurch. It's a sweet little white frame church with a spire and threeDoric columns in front (or maybe Ionic--I always get them mixed).
A nice sleepy sermon with everybody drowsily waving palm-leaf fans, andthe only sound, aside from the minister, the buzzing of locusts in thetrees outside. I didn't wake up till I found myself on my feet singingthe 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 pickout 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. TheirGod (whom they have inherited intact from their remote Puritanancestors) is a narrow, irrational, unjust, mean, revengeful, bigotedPerson. Thank heaven I don't inherit God from anybody! I am free tomake mine up as I wish Him. He's kind and sympathetic and imaginativeand forgiving and understanding--and He has a sense of humour.
I like the Semples immensely; their practice is so superior to theirtheory. They are better than their own God. I told them so--and theyare horribly troubled. They think I am blasphemous--and I think theyare! We've dropped theology from our conversation.
This is Sunday afternoon.
Amasai (hired man) in a purple tie and some bright yellow buckskingloves, very red and shaved, has just driven off with Carrie (hiredgirl) in a big hat trimmed with red roses and a blue muslin dress andher hair curled as tight as it will curl. Amasai spent all the morningwashing the buggy; and Carrie stayed home from church ostensibly tocook the dinner, but really to iron the muslin dress.
In two minutes more when this letter is finished I am going to settledown to a book which I found in the attic. It's entitled, On theTrail, 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 abouteleven years old; and he left On the Trail behind. It looks wellread--the marks of his grimy little hands are frequent! Also in acorner of the attic there is a water wheel and a windmill and some bowsand arrows. Mrs. Semple talks so constantly about him that I begin tobelieve he really lives--not a grown man with a silk hat and walkingstick, but a nice, dirty, tousle-headed boy who clatters up the stairswith an awful racket, and leaves the screen doors open, and is alwaysasking for cookies. (And getting them, too, if I know Mrs. Semple!) Heseems 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 comingand three extra men.
It grieves me to tell you that Buttercup (the spotted cow with onehorn, Mother of Lesbia) has done a disgraceful thing. She got into theorchard Friday evening and ate apples under the trees, and ate and ateuntil they went to her head. For two days she has been perfectly deaddrunk! That is the truth I am telling. Did you ever hear anything soscandalous?
Sir, I remain, Your affectionate orphan, Judy Abbott
PS. Indians in the first chapter and highwaymen in the second. I holdmy breath. What can the third contain? 'Red Hawk leapt twenty feet inthe 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 theComers. I've gained nine pounds! Let me recommend Lock Willow as ahealth resort.
Yours ever, Judy