Jean Webster

“ It is the beginning of the romance of Katherine, a young Dutch girl who has sent, as a love token, to a young English officer, the bow of orange ribbon which she has worn for years as a sacred emblem on the day of St. Nicholas. After the bow of ribbon Katherine’s heart soon flies. Unlike her sister, whose heart has found a safe resting place among her own people, Katherine’s heart must rove from home—must know to the utmost all that life holds of both joy and sorrow. And so she goes beyond the seas, leaving her parents as desolate as were Isaac and Rebecca of old. ”

“ But if I sometimes seem thoughtless and ungrateful, I never mean it. In my heart I thank you always for the life and freedom and independence that you have given me. My childhood was just a long, sullen stretch of revolt, and now I am so happy every moment of the day that I can’t believe it ’s true. I feel like a made-up heroine in a story-book.
It ’s a quarter past two. I ’m going to tiptoe out to the mail chute and get this off now. You ’ll receive it in the next mail after the other; so you won’t have a very long time to think bad of me.
Good night, Daddy,
I love you always,
Judy. ”

“ Anybody can rise to a crisis and face a crushing tragedy with courage, but to meet the petty hazards of the day with a laugh—I really think that requires spirit.
It ’s the kind of character that I am going to develop. I am going to pretend that all life is just a game which I must play as skilfully and fairly as I can. If I lose, I am going to shrug my shoulders and laugh—also if I win.
Anyway, I am going to be a sport. You will never hear me complain again, Daddy dear, because Julia wears silk stockings and centipedes drop off the wall. ”

“ I ’m still pretty breathless but I am glad to get back to college and my books—I believe that I really am a student; this atmosphere of academic calm I find more bracing than New York. College is a very satisfying sort of life; the books and study and regular classes keep you alive mentally, and then when your mind gets tired, you have the gymnasium and outdoor athletics, and always plenty of congenial friends who are thinking about the same things you are. ”

“ You don’t mind, do you, Daddy, if I ’m not very regular? I really do love to write to you; it gives me such a respectable feeling of having some family. Would you like me to tell you something? You are not the only man to whom I write letters. There are two others! I have been receiving beautiful long letters this winter from Master Jervie (with typewritten envelopes so Julia won’t recognize the writing) . Did you ever hear anything so shocking? And every week or so a very scrawly epistle, usually on yellow tablet paper, arrives from Princeton. ”

“ When I first came to college I felt quite resentful because I ’d been robbed of the normal kind of childhood that the other girls had had; but now, I don’t feel that way in the least. I regard it as a very unusual adventure. It gives me a sort of 271 vantage point from which to stand aside and look at life. Emerging full grown, I get a perspective on the world, that other people who have been brought up in the thick of things, entirely lack.
I know lots of girls (Julia, for instance) who never know that they are happy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ She had been on her feet since five that morning, doing everybody’s bidding, scolded and hurried by a nervous matron. Mrs. Lippett, behind the scenes, did not always maintain that calm and pompous dignity with which she faced an 5 audience of Trustees and lady visitors. Jerusha gazed out across a broad stretch of frozen lawn, beyond the tall iron paling that marked the confines of the asylum, down undulating ridges sprinkled with country estates, to the spires of the village rising from the midst of bare trees. ”

“ There ’s one girl in the class who chatters away in French as fast as she does in English. She went abroad with her parents when she was a child, and spent three years in a convent school. You can imagine how bright she is compared with the rest of us—irregular verbs are mere playthings. I wish my parents had chucked me into a French convent when I was little instead of a foundling asylum. Oh, no, I don’t either! Because then maybe I should never have known you. I ’d rather know you than French.
Good-by, Daddy. ”

“ I thought we were paying a social call, and started to shake hands, but it seems we were only buying hats—at least Julia was. She sat down in front of a mirror and tried on a dozen, each lovelier than the last, and bought the two loveliest of all.
I can’t imagine any joy in life greater than sitting down in front of a mirror and buying any hat you choose without having first to consider the price! There ’s no doubt about it, Daddy; New York would rapidly undermine this fine, stoical character which the John Grier Home so patiently built up. ”

“ 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? ”

“ It is the most perfect house for children to be brought up in; with shadowy nooks for hide and seek, and open fireplaces for pop-corn, and an attic to romp in on rainy days, and slippery banisters with a comfortable flat knob at the bottom, and a great big sunny kitchen, and a nice fat, sunny cook who has lived in the family thirteen years and always saves out a piece of dough for the children to bake. ”

“ Lippett called me to the office to tell me that Mr. John Smith was going to send me to college. And then she broke the news so gradually that it just barely shocked me.
You know, Daddy, I think that the most necessary quality for any person to have is imagination. It makes people able to put themselves in other people’s places. It makes them kind and sympathetic and understanding. It ought to be cultivated in children. But the John Grier Home instantly stamped out the slightest flicker that appeared. Duty was the one quality that was encouraged. ”

“ Dear me, Daddy, I seem to have a very ejaculatory style to-day; this page is peppered with exclamations.
I meant to have written a lot about the budding trees and the new cinder path in the athletic field, and the awful lesson we have in biology for to-morrow, and the new canoes on the lake, and Catherine Prentiss who has pneumonia, and Prexy’s Angora kitten that strayed from home and has been boarding in Fergussen Hall for two weeks 228 until a chambermaid reported it, and about my three new dresses—white and pink and blue polka dots with a hat to match—but I am too sleepy. ”

“ But Daddy, if you ’d been dressed in checked ginghams all your life, you ’d appreciate how I feel. And when I started to the high school, I entered upon another 43 period even worse than the checked ginghams.
The poor box.
You can’t know how I dreaded appearing in school in those miserable poor-box dresses. I was perfectly sure to be put down in class next to the girl who first owned my dress, and she would whisper and giggle and point it out to the others. The bitterness of wearing your enemies’ cast-off clothes eats into your soul. ”

“ It is a heavenly spot in May. All the shrubs are in blossom and the trees are the loveliest young green—even the old pines look fresh and new. The grass is dotted with yellow dandelions and hundreds of girls in blue and white and pink dresses. Everybody is joyous and care-free, for vacation ’s coming, and with that to look forward to, examinations don’t count.
Is n’t that a happy frame of mind to be in? And oh, Daddy! I ’m the happiest of all! Because I ’m not in the asylum any more ”

“ I want to see the whole world. I am going to some day—I am, really, Daddy, when I get to be a great author, or artist, or actress, or playwright—or whatever sort of a great person I turn out to be. I have a terrible wanderthirst; the very sight of a map makes me want to put on my hat and take an 172 umbrella and start. ”

“ Think of Jerusha Abbott, late of the John Grier Home for Orphans, rooming with a Pendleton. This is a democratic country.
Sallie is running for class president, and unless all signs fail, she is going to be elected. Such an atmosphere of intrigue—you should see what politicians we are! 110 Oh, I tell you, Daddy, when we women get our rights, you men will have to look alive in order to keep yours. Election comes next Saturday, and we ’re going to have a torchlight procession in the evening, no matter who wins. ”

“ Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
You will never guess the nice thing that has happened.
The McBrides have asked me to spend the summer at their camp in the Adirondacks! They belong to a sort of club on a lovely little lake in the middle of the woods. The different members have houses made of logs dotted about among the trees, and they go canoeing on the lake, and take long walks through trails to other camps, and have dances once a week in the club house—Jimmie McBride is going to have a college friend visiting him part of the summer, so you see we shall have plenty of men to dance with. ”

“ 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. ”

“ My Christmas present this year is from Daddy-Long-Legs; my family just sent love.
I ’ve been having the most beautiful vacation visiting Sallie. She lives in a big old-fashioned brick house with white trimmings set back from the street—exactly the kind of house that I used to look at so curiously when I was in the John Grier Home, and 118 wonder what it could be like inside. I never expected to see with my own eyes—but here I am! Everything is so comfortable and restful and homelike; I walk from room to room and drink in the furnishings. ”

“ Is n’t New York big? Worcester is nothing to it. Do you mean to tell me that you actually live in all that confusion? I don’t believe that I shall recover for months from the bewildering effect of two days of it. I can’t begin to tell you all the amazing things I ’ve seen; I suppose you know, though, since you live there yourself.
But are n’t the streets entertaining? And the people? And the shops? I never saw such lovely things as there are in the windows. It makes you want to devote your life to wearing clothes.
Sallie and Julia and I went shopping together Saturday morning. ”

“ If I had been Daddy, and you had been Judy, I should have said, “Bless you, my child, run along and have a good time; see lots of new people and learn lots of new things; live out 166 of doors, and get strong and well and rested for a year of hard work.”
But not at all! Just a curt line from your secretary ordering me to Lock Willow. ”

“ We spend a whole evening in nothing but talk—talk—talk—and go to bed with a very uplifted feeling, as though we had settled permanently some pressing world problems. And filling in every crevice, there is always such a lot of nonsense—just silly jokes about the little things that come up—but very satisfying. ”

“ 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, 26 and two Freshmen named Sallie McBride and Julia Rutledge Pendleton. ”

“ It would be rather illogical of me to refuse to take your money for college, and then use it instead just for amusement! You must n’t get me used to too many luxuries. One does n’t miss what one has never had; but it is awfully hard going without things after one has commenced thinking they are his—hers (English language needs another pronoun) by natural right. Living with Sallie and 237 Julia is an awful strain on my stoical philosophy. They have both had things from the time they were babies; they accept happiness as a matter of course. The World, they think, owes them everything they want. ”

“ Such a social whirl as we ’ve been having! The Founder’s dance came last week—this was the first year that any of us could attend; only upper classmen being allowed.
I invited Jimmie McBride, and Sallie invited his room-mate at Princeton, who visited them last summer at their camp—an awfully nice man with red hair—and Julia invited a man from New York, not very exciting, but socially irreproachable. ”

“ The happy people are the ones who are bubbling over with kindliness. I have no faith in misanthropes. (Fine 84 word! Just learned it.) You are not a misanthrope are you, Daddy?
I started to tell you about the campus. I wish you ’d come for a little visit and let me walk you about and say:
“That is the library. This is the gas plant, Daddy dear. The Gothic building on your left is the gymnasium, and the Tudor Romanesque beside it is the new infirmary.”
Oh, I ’m fine at showing people about. I ’ve done it all my life at the asylum, and I ’ve been doing it all day here. I have honestly. ”

“ Judy Ab-bott!
That, Daddy, is true fame. Then trotting back to the dressing tent and being rubbed down with alcohol and having a lemon to suck. You see we ’re very professional. It ’s a fine thing to win an event for your class, because the class that wins the most gets the athletic cup for the year. The Seniors won it this year, with seven events to their credit. The athletic association 151 gave a dinner in the gymnasium to all of the winners. We had fried soft-shell crabs, and chocolate ice-cream molded in the shape of basket balls. ”