19th december

dear daddy-long-legs,

you never answered my question and it was very important.

are you bald?

i have it planned exactly what you look like--very satisfactorily--

until i reach the top of your head, and then i am stuck. i can't

decide whether you have white hair or black hair or sort of sprinkly

grey hair or maybe none at all.

here is your portrait:

but the problem is, shall i add some hair?

would you like to know what colour your eyes are? they're grey,

and your eyebrows stick out like a porch roof (beetling, they're

called in novels), and your mouth is a straight line with a tendency

to turn down at the corners. oh, you see, i know! you're a snappy

old thing with a temper.

(chapel bell.)

9.45 p.m.

i have a new unbreakable rule: never, never to study at night no matter

how many written reviews are coming in the morning. instead, i read

just plain books--i have to, you know, because there are eighteen

blank years behind me. you wouldn't believe, daddy, what an abyss

of ignorance my mind is; i am just realizing the depths myself.

the things that most girls with a properly assorted family and a home

and friends and a library know by absorption, i have never heard of.

for example:

i never read mother goose or david copperfield or ivanhoe or

cinderella or blue beard or robinson crusoe or jane eyre or alice

in wonderland or a word of rudyard kipling. i didn't know that henry

the eighth was married more than once or that shelley was a poet.

i didn't know that people used to be monkeys and that the garden

of eden was a beautiful myth. i didn't know that r. l. s. stood

for robert louis stevenson or that george eliot was a lady.

i had never seen a picture of the `mona lisa' and (it's true but you

won't believe it) i had never heard of sherlock holmes.

now, i know all of these things and a lot of others besides,

but you can see how much i need to catch up. and oh, but it's fun!

i look forward all day to evening, and then i put an `engaged' on the

door and get into my nice red bath robe and furry slippers and pile

all the cushions behind me on the couch, and light the brass student

lamp at my elbow, and read and read and read one book isn't enough.

i have four going at once. just now, they're tennyson's poems and

vanity fair and kipling's plain tales and--don't laugh--little women.

i find that i am the only girl in college who wasn't brought up on

little women. i haven't told anybody though (that would stamp me

as queer). i just quietly went and bought it with $1.12 of my last

month's allowance; and the next time somebody mentions pickled limes,

i'll know what she is talking about!

(ten o'clock bell. this is a very interrupted letter.)

saturday

sir,

i have the honour to report fresh explorations in the field of geometry.

on friday last we abandoned our former works in parallelopipeds

and proceeded to truncated prisms. we are finding the road rough

and very uphill.

sunday

the christmas holidays begin next week and the trunks are up.

the corridors are so filled up that you can hardly get through,

and everybody is so bubbling over with excitement that studying is

getting left out. i'm going to have a beautiful time in vacation;

there's another freshman who lives in texas staying behind,

and we are planning to take long walks and if there's any ice--

learn to skate. then there is still the whole library to be read--

and three empty weeks to do it in!

goodbye, daddy, i hope that you are feeling as happy as am.

yours ever,

judy

ps. don't forget to answer my question. if you don't want

the trouble of writing, have your secretary telegraph. he can

just say:

mr. smith is quite bald,

or

mr. smith is not bald,

or

mr. smith has white hair.

and you can deduct the twenty-five cents out of my allowance.

goodbye till january--and a merry christmas!