Daddy Long Legs

“ 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 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.
It is the most perfect house for children to be brought up in ”

“ You can't imagine how disappointed I was at having to give up the McBride's camp. Of course I know that you're my guardian, and that I have to regard your wishes in all matters, but I couldn't see any reason. It was so distinctly the best thing that could have happened to me. 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 of doors, and get strong and well and rested for a year of hard work." ”

“ Judy
LOCK WILLOW,
19th June
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
I'm educated! My diploma is in the bottom bureau drawer with my two best dresses. Commencement was as usual, with a few showers at vital moments. Thank you for your rosebuds. They were lovely. Master Jervie and Master Jimmie both gave me roses, too, but I left theirs in the bath tub and carried yours in the class procession.
Here I am at Lock Willow for the summer—for ever maybe. The board is cheap; the surroundings quiet and conducive to a literary life. What more does a struggling author wish? I am mad about my book. ”

“ Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
How did your secretary come to know about Lock Willow? (That isn't a rhetorical question. I am awfully curious to know.) For listen to this: Mr. Jervis Pendleton used to own this farm, but now he has given it to Mrs. Semple who was his old nurse. Did you ever hear of such a funny coincidence? She still calls him "Master Jervie" and talks about what a sweet little boy he used to be. She has one of his baby curls put away in a box, and it is red—or at least reddish! ”

“ I love the furs and the necklace and the Liberty scarf and the gloves and handkerchiefs and books and purse—and most of all I love you! But Daddy, you have no business to spoil me this way. I'm only human—and a girl at that. How can I keep my mind sternly fixed on a studious career, when you deflect me with such worldly frivolities?
I have strong suspicions now as to which one of the John Grier Trustees used to give the Christmas tree and the Sunday ice-cream. He was nameless, but by his works I know him! You deserve to be happy for all the good things you do. ”

“ We shall have to swim to chapel tonight.
Yours ever,
Judy
20th Jan.
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
Did you ever have a sweet baby girl who was stolen from the cradle in infancy?
Maybe I am she! If we were in a novel, that would be the denouement, wouldn't it?
It's really awfully queer not to know what one is—sort of exciting and romantic. There are such a lot of possibilities. Maybe I'm not American; lots of people aren't. ”

“ I can't believe that I am really going to see you—I've been just thinking you so long that it hardly seems as though you are a tangible flesh-and-blood person.
You are awfully good, Daddy, to bother yourself with me, when you're not strong. ”

“ It's awfully funny to think of that great big, long-legged man (he's nearly as long-legged as you, Daddy) ever sitting in Mrs. Semple's lap and having his face washed. Particularly funny when you see her lap! ”

“ Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
You never answered my question and it was very important.
ARE YOU BALD? ”

“ The maid arrived with Master Jervie's card. He is going abroad too this summer; not with Julia and her family, but entirely by himself I told him that you had invited me to go with a lady who is chaperoning a party of girls. He knows about you, Daddy. That is, he knows that my father and mother are dead, and that a kind gentleman is sending me to college; I simply didn't have the courage to tell him about the John Grier Home and all the rest. He thinks that you are my guardian and a perfectly legitimate old family friend. ”

“ Judy
PS. There's one thing I'm perfectly sure of I'm not a Chinaman.
4th February
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
Jimmie McBride has sent me a Princeton banner as big as one end of the room; I am very grateful to him for remembering me, but I don't know what on earth to do with it. Sallie and Julia won't let me hang it up; our room this year is furnished in red, and you can imagine what an effect we'd have if I added orange and black. But it's such nice, warm, thick felt, I hate to waste it. Would it be very improper to have it made into a bath robe? My old one shrank when it was washed. ”

“ It was a rather rickety old room, though sunny and very pleasant, which had been used as a study by generations of theological students. Moreover, it was considered clean all over, like a boy with his face washed, when the floor was swept; and no storm of general house cleaning ever disturbed its peace. So overhead, where the ceiling sagged from the walls, and in dusty chinks about doors and windows that no broom ever harried, a family of spiders, some mice, a daddy-long-legs, two crickets, and a bluebottle fly, [Pg 162] besides the hornet, found snug quarters in their season, and a welcome. ”

“ Yes, you will agree with Farmer Green's boy and the rest of our friends in Pleasant Valley that Rusty certainly is a very interesting little neighbor.
THE TALE OF DADDY LONG-LEGS
Daddy is a person of such unusual appearance with his eight scrawny legs in contrast to ordinary people's two, and everything about his private life is such a mystery to his neighbors that his acquaintances give him credit for having a marvelous ability to look into the future. In fact, there are many two-legged humans, even to-day, who think he is a sort of soothsayer and mystery man. ”

“ Daddy Long-Legs is a pleasant American sentimental comedy made by Jean Webster out of her very jolly book, and not so sticky as some of our importations of the same general type. The four Acts are phases in the development of Judy (or Jerusha) Abbott, orphan; and, as normally happens in book-plays, development is extremely abrupt. Act I. shows us Judy as the drudge of the orphanage breaking into flame of rebellion on the day of the visit of the trustees. ”

“ I like to pretend that you belong to me, just to play with the idea, but of course I know you don't. I'm alone, really—with my back to the wall fighting the world—and I get sort of gaspy when I think about it. I put it out of my mind, and keep on pretending; but don't you see, Daddy? ”

“ I don't know why I cast such a misty atmosphere over life. I hasten to assure you that I am young and happy and exuberant; and I trust you are the same. Youth has nothing to do with birthdays, only with alivedness of spirit, so even if your hair is grey, Daddy, you can still be a boy. ”

“ The big moment of Judy's life is robbed of its joy, for her soul is garbed in the hated gingham of the orphanage.
"I understand."
"I can't stand this ancestral morgue another minute! Please, Jimmie, drive me out to Lock-Willow."
Even the weather weeps in sympathy.
"I'm sorry, Jimmie, dear, but I can't marry you—you aren't grown up enough for me."
Where there's no sense there's no feeling.
Jarvis wanders aimlessly for hours, dazed by his unhappiness.
B.PHILLIP
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs;— ⁠I love somebody even more than you, but I've refused to marry him. ”

“ 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 umbrella and start. ”

“ Julia Pendleton comes into my room to do geometry, and she sits cross-legged on the couch and wears silk stockings every night. But just wait—as soon as she gets back from vacation I shall go in and sit on her couch in my silk stockings. You see, Daddy, the miserable creature that I am—but at least I'm honest; and you knew already, from my asylum record, that I wasn't perfect, didn't you?
To recapitulate (that's the way the English instructor begins every other sentence) , I am very much obliged for my seven presents. ”

“ It isn't the great big pleasures that count the most; it's making a great deal out of the little ones—I've discovered the true secret of happiness, Daddy, and that is to live in the now. Not to be for ever regretting the past, or anticipating the future ”

“ 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. ”

“ Well, Daddy, Master Jervie's here. And such a nice time as we're having! At least I am, and I think he is, too—he has been here ten days and he doesn't show any signs of going. The way Mrs. Semple pampers that man is scandalous. If she indulged him as much when he was a baby, I don't know how he ever turned out so well.
He and I eat at a little table set on the side porch, or sometimes under the trees, or—when it rains or is cold—in the best parlour. He just picks out the spot he wants to eat in and Carrie trots after him with the table. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Daddy Long-Legs
A charming comedy in four acts, by Jean Webster. The full cast calls for 6 males, 7 females and 6 orphans, but the play, by the easy doubling of some of the characters may be played by 4 males, 4 females and three orphans. The orphans appear only in the first act and may be played by small girls of any age. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Dear Daddy,
We started to walk to town to-day, but mercy! how it poured. I like winter to be winter with snow instead of rain.
Julia’s desirable uncle called again this afternoon—and brought a five-pound box of chocolates. There are advantages you see about rooming with Julia.
Our innocent prattle appeared to amuse him and he waited over a train in order to take tea in the study. And an awful lot of trouble we had getting permission. It ’s hard enough entertaining fathers and grandfathers, but uncles are a step worse; and as for brothers and cousins, they are next to impossible. ”

“ Judy
LOCK WILLOW,
4th April
Dear Daddy,
Do you observe the postmark? Sallie and I are embellishing Lock Willow with our presence during the Easter Vacation. We decided that the best thing we could do with our ten days was to come where it is quiet. Our nerves had got to the point where they wouldn't stand another meal in Fergussen. Dining in a room with four hundred girls is an ordeal when you are tired. There is so much noise that you can't hear the girls across the table speak unless they make their hands into a megaphone and shout. That is the truth. ”

“ Judy
PS. On reading this over, I find that it isn't all Stevenson. There are one or two glancing references to Master Jervie.
10th September
Dear Daddy,
He has gone, and we are missing him! When you get accustomed to people or places or ways of living, and then have them snatched away, it does leave an awfully empty, gnawing sort of sensation. I'm finding Mrs. Semple's conversation pretty unseasoned food.
College opens in two weeks and I shall be glad to begin work again. I have worked quite a lot this summer though—six short stories and seven poems. ”