15th May
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
Is it good manners when you get into a car just to stare straight aheadand not see anybody else?
A very beautiful lady in a very beautiful velvet dress got into the cartoday, and without the slightest expression sat for fifteen minutes andlooked at a sign advertising suspenders. It doesn't seem polite toignore everybody else as though you were the only important personpresent. Anyway, you miss a lot. While she was absorbing that sillysign, 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, andruns it through a pulley in the ceiling. It would be a beautifulsystem if one had perfect confidence in the probity of one'sinstructor. I'm always afraid, though, that she will let the rope getslack, so I keep one anxious eye on her and swim with the other, andwith this divided interest I do not make the progress that I otherwisemight.
Very miscellaneous weather we're having of late. It was raining when Icommenced and now the sun is shining. Sallie and I are going out toplay tennis--thereby gaining exemption from Gym.
A week later
I should have finished this letter long ago, but I didn't. You don'tmind, do you, Daddy, if I'm not very regular? I really do love towrite to you; it gives me such a respectable feeling of having somefamily. Would you like me to tell you something? You are not the onlyman to whom I write letters. There are two others! I have beenreceiving beautiful long letters this winter from Master Jervie (withtypewritten envelopes so Julia won't recognize the writing). Did youever hear anything so shocking? And every week or so a very scrawlyepistle, usually on yellow tablet paper, arrives from Princeton. Allof which I answer with business-like promptness. So you see--I am notso different from other girls--I get letters, too.
Did I tell you that I have been elected a member of the Senior DramaticClub? Very recherche organization. Only seventy-five members out ofone thousand. Do you think as a consistent Socialist that I ought tobelong?
What do you suppose is at present engaging my attention in sociology?I am writing (figurez vous!) a paper on the Care of Dependent Children.The Professor shuffled up his subjects and dealt them outpromiscuously, and that fell to me. C'est drole ca n'est pas?
There goes the gong for dinner. I'll post this as I pass the box.
Affectionately, J.