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, doesn’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 confusing at times. But now, when the girls talk about things that I’v 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!

Sallie is the most amusing person in the world – and Julia Rutledge Pendleton the least so. It’s strange what a mixture the registrar can make in the matter of roommates. 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.

Jerusha Abbott

Wednesday

Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

I’ve changed my name.

I’m still “Jerusha” in the catalogue, but I’m “Judy” everywhere else. I didn’t quite make up the Judy though. That’s what Freddy Perkins used to call me before he could talk plainly.

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.

(Dinner bell. Goodbye.)

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 doesn’t seem possible, does it, considering the eighteen years of training that I’ve had? The aim of the John Grier Home is to turn the ninety-seven orphans into ninety-seven twins.

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 of your cheques. That isn’t a very polite thing to say – but you can’t expect me to have any manners; a foundling asylum isn’t a young ladies’ finishing school.

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 hanging 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 difference, do you?

Anyway, Sallie McBride likes me!

Yours ever,

Judy Abbott (Nee Jerusha.)

Поиск по сайту: