THE LETTERS OF MISS JERUSHA ABBOTT
to
MR. DADDY-LONG-LEGS SMITH

215 Fergussen Hall,

September 24th.

Dear Kind-Trustee-Who-Sends-Orphans-to-College,

Here I am! I traveled yesterday for four hours in a train. It ’s a funny sensation is n’t it? I never rode in one before.

College is the biggest, most bewildering place—I get lost whenever I leave my room. I will write you a description later when I ’m feeling less muddled; also I will tell you about my lessons. Classes don’t begin until Monday morning, and this is Saturday night. But I wanted to write a letter first just to get acquainted.

It seems queer to be writing letters to somebody you don’t know. It seems queer for me to be writing letters at all—I ’ve never written more than three or four in my life, so please overlook it if these are not a model kind.

Before leaving yesterday morning, Mrs. Lippett and I had a very serious talk. She told me how to behave all the rest of my life, and especially how to behave toward the kind gentleman who is doing so much for me. I must take care to be Very Respectful.

But how can one be very respectful to a person who wishes to be called John Smith? Why could n’t you have picked out a name with a little personality? I might as well write letters to Dear Hitching-Post or Dear Clothes-Pole.

I have been thinking about you a great deal this summer; having somebody take an interest in me after all these years, makes me feel as though I had found a sort of family. It seems as though I belonged to somebody now, and it ’s a very comfortable sensation. I must say, however, that when I think about you, my imagination has very little to work upon. There are just three things that I know:

  I. You are tall.
 II. You are rich.
III. You hate girls.

I suppose I might call you Dear Mr. Girl-Hater. Only that ’s sort of insulting to me. Or Dear Mr. Rich-Man, but that ’s insulting to you, as though money were the only important thing about you. Besides, being rich is such a very external quality. Maybe you won’t stay rich all your life; lots of very clever men get smashed up in Wall Street. But at least you will stay tall all your life! So I ’ve decided to call you Dear Daddy-Long-Legs. I hope you won’t mind. It ’s just a private pet name—we won’t tell Mrs. Lippett.

The ten o’clock bell is going to ring in two minutes. Our day is divided into sections by bells. We eat and sleep and study by bells. It ’s very enlivening; I feel like a fire horse all of the time. There it goes! Lights out. Good night.

Observe with what precision I obey rules—due to my training in the John Grier Home.

Yours most respectfully,

Jerusha Abbott.

To Mr. Daddy-Long-Legs Smith.

October 1st.

Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

I love college and I love you for sending me—I ’m very, very happy, and so excited every moment of the time that I can scarcely sleep. You can’t imagine how different it is from the John Grier Home. I never dreamed there was such a place in the world. I ’m feeling sorry for everybody who is n’t a girl and who can’t come here; I am sure the college you attended when you were a boy could n’t have been so nice.

My room is up in a tower that used to be the contagious ward before they built the new infirmary. There are three other girls on the same floor of the tower—a Senior who wears spectacles and is always asking us please to be a little more quiet, and two Freshmen named Sallie McBride and Julia Rutledge Pendleton. Sallie has red hair and a turn-up nose and is quite friendly; Julia comes from one of the first families in New York and has n’t noticed me yet. They room together and the Senior and I have singles. Usually Freshmen can’t get singles; they are very scarce, but I got one without even asking. I suppose the registrar did n’t think it would be right to ask a properly brought-up girl to room with a foundling. You see there are advantages!

My room is on the northwest corner with two windows and a view. After you ’ve lived in a ward for eighteen years with twenty room-mates, it is restful to be alone. This is the first chance I ’ve ever had to get acquainted with Jerusha Abbott. I think I ’m going to like her.

Do you think you are?

Tuesday.

They are organizing the Freshman basket-ball team and there ’s just a chance that I shall make it. I ’m little of course, but terribly quick and wiry and tough. While the others are hopping about in the air, I can dodge under their feet and grab the ball. It ’s loads of fun practising—out in the athletic field in the afternoon with the trees all red and yellow and the air full of the smell of burning leaves, and everybody laughing and shouting. These are the happiest girls I ever saw—and I am the happiest of all!

I meant to write a long letter and tell you all the things I ’m learning (Mrs. Lippett said you wanted to know) but 7th hour has just rung, and in ten minutes I ’m due at the athletic field in gymnasium clothes. Don’t you hope I ’ll make the team?

Yours always,

Jerusha Abbott.

P. S. (9 o’clock.)

Sallie McBride just poked her head in at my door. This is what she said:

“I ’m so homesick that I simply can’t stand it. Do you feel that way?”

I smiled a little and said no, I thought I could pull through. At least homesickness is one disease that I ’ve escaped! I never heard of anybody being asylumsick, did you?

October 10th.

Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

Did you ever hear of Michael Angelo?

He was a famous artist who lived in Italy in the Middle Ages. Everybody in English Literature seemed to know about him and the whole class laughed because I thought he was an archangel. He sounds like an archangel, does n’t he? The trouble with college is that you are expected to know such a lot of things you ’ve never learned. It ’s very embarrassing at times. But now, when the girls talk about things that I never heard of, I just keep still and look them up in the encyclopedia.

I made an awful mistake the first day. Somebody mentioned Maurice Maeterlinck, and I asked if she was a Freshman. That joke has gone all over college. But anyway, I ’m just as bright in class as any of the others—and brighter than some of them!

Do you care to know how I ’ve furnished my room? It ’s a symphony in brown and yellow. The wall was tinted buff, and I ’ve bought yellow denim curtains and cushions and a mahogany desk (second hand for three dollars) and a rattan chair and a brown rug with an ink spot in the middle. I stand the chair over the spot.

The windows are up high; you can’t look out from an ordinary seat. But I unscrewed the looking-glass from the back of the bureau, upholstered the top, and moved it up against the window. It ’s just the right height for a window seat. You pull out the drawers like steps and walk up. Very comfortable!

Sallie McBride helped me choose the things at the Senior auction. She has lived in a house all her life and knows about furnishing. You can’t imagine what fun it is to shop and pay with a real five-dollar bill and get some change—when you ’ve never had more than a nickel in your life. I assure you, Daddy dear, I do appreciate that allowance.

Sallie is the most entertaining person in the world—and Julia Rutledge Pendleton the least so. It ’s queer what a mixture the registrar can make in the matter of room-mates. Sallie thinks everything is funny—even flunking—and Julia is bored at everything. She never makes the slightest effort to be amiable. She believes that if you are a Pendleton, that fact alone admits you to heaven without any further examination. Julia and I were born to be enemies.

And now I suppose you ’ve been waiting very impatiently to hear what I am learning?

I. Latin: Second Punic war. Hannibal and his forces pitched camp at Lake Trasimenus last night. They prepared an ambuscade for the Romans, and a battle took place at the fourth watch this morning. Romans in retreat.

II. French: 24 pages of the “Three Musketeers” and third conjugation, irregular verbs.

III. Geometry: Finished cylinders; now doing cones.

IV. English: Studying exposition. My style improves daily in clearness and brevity.

V. Physiology: Reached the digestive system. Bile and the pancreas next time. Yours, on the way to being educated,

Jerusha Abbott.

P. S. I hope you never touch alcohol, Daddy?

It does dreadful things to your liver.

Wednesday.

Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

I ’ve changed my name.

I ’m still “Jerusha” in the catalogue, but I ’m “Judy” every place else. It ’s sort of too bad, is n’t it, to have to give yourself the only pet name you ever had? I did n’t quite make up the Judy though. That ’s what Freddie Perkins used to call me before he could talk plain.

I wish Mrs. Lippett would use a little more ingenuity about choosing babies’ names. She gets the last names out of the telephone book—you ’ll find Abbott on the first page—and she picks the Christian names up anywhere; she got Jerusha from a tombstone. I ’ve always hated it; but I rather like Judy. It ’s such a silly name. It belongs to the kind of girl I ’m not—a sweet little blue-eyed thing, petted and spoiled by all the family, who romps her way through life without any cares. Would n’t it be nice to be like that? Whatever faults I may have, no one can ever accuse me of having been spoiled by my family! But it ’s sort of fun to pretend I ’ve been. In the future please always address me as Judy.

Do you want to know something? I have three pairs of kid gloves. I ’ve had kid mittens before from the Christmas tree, but never real kid gloves with five fingers. I take them out and try them on every little while. It ’s all I can do not to wear them to classes.

(Dinner bell. Good-by.)

JUDY AND THE ORPHANS AT JOHN GRIER HOME.

Friday.

What do you think, Daddy? The English instructor said that my last paper shows an unusual amount of originality. She did, truly. Those were her words. It does n’t seem possible, does it, considering the eighteen years of training that I ’ve had? The aim of the John Grier Home (as you doubtless know and heartily approve of) is to turn the ninety-seven orphans into ninety-seven twins.

The unusual artistic ability which I exhibit, was developed at an early age through drawing chalk pictures of Mrs. Lippett on the woodshed door.

I hope that I don’t hurt your feelings when I criticize the home of my youth? But you have the upper hand, you know, for if I become too impertinent, you can always stop payment on your checks. That is n’t a very polite thing to say—but you can’t expect me to have any manners; a foundling asylum is n’t a young ladies’ finishing school.

You know, Daddy, it is n’t the work that is going to be hard in college. It ’s the play. Half the time I don’t know what the girls are talking about; their jokes seem to relate to a past that every one but me has shared. I ’m a foreigner in the world and I don’t understand the language. It ’s a miserable feeling. I ’ve had it all my life. At the high school the girls would stand in groups and just look at me. I was queer and different and everybody knew it. I could feel “John Grier Home” written on my face. And then a few charitable ones would make a point of coming up and saying something polite. I hated every one of them—the charitable ones most of all.

Nobody here knows that I was brought up in an asylum. I told Sallie McBride that my mother and father were dead, and that a kind old gentleman was sending me to college—which is entirely true so far as it goes. I don’t want you to think I am a coward, but I do want to be like the other girls, and that Dreadful Home looming over my childhood is the one great big difference. If I can turn my back on that and shut out the remembrance, I think I might be just as desirable as any other girl. I don’t believe there ’s any real, underneath difference, do you?

Anyway, Sallie McBride likes me!

Yours ever,

Judy Abbott.

(Née Jerusha.)

Saturday morning.

I ’ve just been reading this letter over and it sounds pretty un-cheerful. But can’t you guess that I have a special topic due Monday morning and a review in geometry and a very sneezy cold?

Sunday.

I forgot to mail this yesterday so I will add an indignant