my dear, dear, daddy,

haven't you any sense? don't you know that you mustn't give one girl

seventeen christmas presents? i'm a socialist, please remember;

do you wish to turn me into a plutocrat?

think how embarrassing it would be if we should ever quarrel!

i should have to engage a moving-van to return your gifts.

i am sorry that the necktie i sent was so wobbly; i knit it with my

own hands (as you doubtless discovered from internal evidence).

you will have to wear it on cold days and keep your coat buttoned

up tight.

thank you, daddy, a thousand times. i think you're the sweetest

man that ever lived--and the foolishest!

judy

here's a four-leaf clover from camp mcbride to bring you good luck

for the new year.

9th january

do you wish to do something, daddy, that will ensure your

eternal salvation? there is a family here who are in awfully

desperate straits. a mother and father and four visible children--

the two older boys have disappeared into the world to make their

fortune and have not sent any of it back. the father worked in a

glass factory and got consumption--it's awfully unhealthy work--

and now has been sent away to a hospital. that took all their savings,

and the support of the family falls upon the oldest daughter,

who is twenty-four. she dressmakes for $1.50 a day (when she can

get it) and embroiders centrepieces in the evening. the mother

isn't very strong and is extremely ineffectual and pious.

she sits with her hands folded, a picture of patient resignation,

while the daughter kills herself with overwork and responsibility

and worry; she doesn't see how they are going to get through the

rest of the winter--and i don't either. one hundred dollars would

buy some coal and some shoes for three children so that they could

go to school, and give a little margin so that she needn't worry

herself to death when a few days pass and she doesn't get work.

you are the richest man i know. don't you suppose you could spare

one hundred dollars? that girl deserves help a lot more than i

ever did. i wouldn't ask it except for the girl; i don't care

much what happens to the mother--she is such a jelly-fish.

the way people are for ever rolling their eyes to heaven and saying,

`perhaps it's all for the best,' when they are perfectly dead sure

it's not, makes me enraged. humility or resignation or whatever

you choose to call it, is simply impotent inertia. i'm for a more

militant religion!

we are getting the most dreadful lessons in philosophy--all of

schopenhauer for tomorrow. the professor doesn't seem to realize

that we are taking any other subject. he's a queer old duck;

he goes about with his head in the clouds and blinks dazedly

when occasionally he strikes solid earth. he tries to lighten

his lectures with an occasional witticism--and we do our best

to smile, but i assure you his jokes are no laughing matter.

he spends his entire time between classes in trying to figure

out whether matter really exists or whether he only thinks it exists.

i'm sure my sewing girl hasn't any doubt but that it exists!

where do you think my new novel is? in the waste-basket. i can

see myself that it's no good on earth, and when a loving author

realizes that, what would be the judgment of a critical public?

later

i address you, daddy, from a bed of pain. for two days i've

been laid up with swollen tonsils; i can just swallow hot milk,

and that is all. `what were your parents thinking of not to have

those tonsils out when you were a baby?' the doctor wished to know.

i'm sure i haven't an idea, but i doubt if they were thinking much

about me.

yours,

j. a.

next morning

i just read this over before sealing it. 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.

affectionately,

judy