JEAN WEBSTER
DADDY-LONG-LEGS
TO YOU
Blue Wednesday
The first Wednesday in every month was a Perfectly Awful Day--a day
to be awaited with dread, endured with courage and forgotten with haste.
Every floor must be spotless, every chair dustless, and every bed
without a wrinkle. Ninety-seven squirming little orphans must be
scrubbed and combed and buttoned into freshly starched ginghams;
and all ninety-seven reminded of their manners, and told to say,
`Yes, sir,' `No, sir,' whenever a Trustee spoke.
It was a distressing time; and poor Jerusha Abbott, being the
oldest orphan, had to bear the brunt of it. But this particular
first Wednesday, like its predecessors, finally dragged itself
to a close. Jerusha escaped from the pantry where she had been
making sandwiches for the asylum's guests, and turned upstairs
to accomplish her regular work. Her special care was room F,
where eleven little tots, from four to seven, occupied eleven little
cots set in a row. Jerusha assembled her charges, straightened their
rumpled frocks, wiped their noses, and started them in an orderly
and willing line towards the dining-room to engage themselves
for a blessed half hour with bread and milk and prune pudding.
Then she dropped down on the window seat and leaned throbbing temples
against the cool glass. 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 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.
The day was ended--quite successfully, so far as she knew.
The Trustees and the visiting committee had made their rounds,
and read their reports, and drunk their tea, and now were hurrying
home to their own cheerful firesides, to forget their bothersome
little charges for another month. Jerusha leaned forward
watching with curiosity--and a touch of wistfulness--the stream
of carriages and automobiles that rolled out of the asylum gates.
In imagination she followed first one equipage, then another,
to the big houses dotted along the hillside. She pictured herself
in a fur coat and a velvet hat trimmed with feathers leaning back
in the seat and nonchalantly murmuring `Home' to the driver.
But on the door-sill of her home the picture grew blurred.
Jerusha had an imagination--an imagination, Mrs. Lippett told her,
that would get her into trouble if she didn't take care--but keen
as it was, it could not carry her beyond the front porch of the
houses she would enter. Poor, eager, adventurous little Jerusha,
in all her seventeen years, had never stepped inside an ordinary house;
she could not picture the daily routine of those other human beings
who carried on their lives undiscommoded by orphans.
Je-ru-sha Ab-bott
You are wan-ted
In the of-fice,
And I think you'd
Better hurry up!
Tommy Dillon, who had joined the choir, came singing up the stairs
and down the corridor, his chant growing louder as he approached
room F. Jerusha wrenched herself from the window and refaced
the troubles of life.
`Who wants me?' she cut into Tommy's chant with a note of sharp anxiety.
Mrs. Lippett in the office,
And I think she's mad.
Ah-a-men!
Tommy piously intoned, but his accent was not entirely malicious.
Even the most hardened little orphan felt sympathy for an erring
sister who was summoned to the office to face an annoyed matron;
and Tommy liked Jerusha even if she did sometimes jerk him by the arm
and nearly scrub his nose off.
Jerusha went without comment, but with two parallel lines on her brow.
What could have gone wrong, she wondered. Were the sandwiches
not thin enough? Were there shells in the nut cakes? Had a lady
visitor seen the hole in Susie Hawthorn's stocking? Had--O horrors!--
one of the cherubic little babes in her own room F `sauced' a Trustee?
The long lower hall had not been lighted, and as she came downstairs,
a last Trustee stood, on the point of departure, in the open door that
led to the porte-cochere. Jerusha caught only a fleeting impression
of the man--and the impression consisted entirely of tallness.
He was waving his arm towards an automobile waiting in the curved drive.
As it sprang into motion and approached, head on for an instant,
the glaring headlights threw his shadow sharply against the wall inside.
The shadow pictured grotesquely elongated legs and arms that ran
along the floor and up the wall of the corridor. It looked,
for all the world, like a huge, wavering daddy-long-legs.
Jerusha's anxious frown gave place to quick laughter. She was by nature
a sunny soul, and had always snatched the tiniest excuse to be amused.
If one could derive any sort of entertainment out of the oppressive
fact of a Trustee, it was something unexpected to the good.
She advanced to the office quite cheered by the tiny episode,
and presented a smiling face to Mrs. Lippett. To her surprise the
matron was also, if not exactly smiling, at least appreciably affable;
she wore an expression almost as pleasant as the one she donned
for visitors.
`Sit down, Jerusha, I have something to say to you.' Jerusha dropped
into the nearest chair and waited with a touch of breathlessness.
An automobile flashed past the window; Mrs. Lippett glanced after it.
`Did you notice the gentleman who has just gone?'
`I saw his back.'
`He is one of our most affluential Trustees, and has given large sums
of money towards the asylum's support. I am not at liberty to mention
his name; he expressly stipulated that he was to remain unknown.'
Jerusha's eyes widened slightly; she was not accustomed to being
summoned to the office to discuss the eccentricities of Trustees
with the matron.
`This gentleman has taken an interest in several of our boys.
You remember Charles Benton and Henry Freize? They were both sent
through college by Mr.--er--this Trustee, and both have repaid with
hard work and success the money that was so generously expended.
Other payment the gentleman does not wish. Heretofore his
philanthropies have been directed solely towards the boys;
I have never been able to interest him in the slightest degree
in any of the girls in the institution, no matter how deserving.
He does not, I may tell you, care for girls.'
`No, ma'am,' Jerusha murmured, since some reply seemed to be expected
at this point.
`To-day at the regular meeting, the question of your future was
brought up.'
Mrs. Lippett allowed a moment of silence to fall, then resumed
in a slow, placid manner extremely trying to her hearer's suddenly
tightened nerves.
`Usually, as you know, the children are not kept after they are sixteen,
but an exception was made in your case. You had finished our school
at fourteen, and having done so well in your studies--not always,
I must say, in your conduct--it was determined to let you go on in
the village high school. Now you are finishing that, and of course
the asylum cannot be responsible any longer for your support.
As it is, you have had two years more than most.'
Mrs. Lippett overlooked the fact that Jerusha had worked hard
for her board during those two years, that the convenience
of the asylum had come first and her education second;
that on days like the present she was kept at home to scrub.
`As I say, the question of your future was brought up and your
record was discussed--thoroughly discussed.'
Mrs. Lippett brought accusing eyes to bear upon the prisoner in the dock,
and the prisoner looked guilty because it seemed to be expected--
not because she could remember any strikingly black pages in her record.
`Of course the usual disposition of one in your place would be to
put you in a position where you could begin to work, but you have
done well in school in certain branches; it seems that your work
in English has even been brilliant. Miss Pritchard, who is on our
visiting committee, is also on the school board; she has been talking
with your rhetoric teacher, and made a speech in your favour.
She also read aloud an essay that you had written entitled,
"Blue Wednesday".'
Jerusha's guilty expression this time was not assumed.
`It seemed to me that you showed little gratitude in holding up
to ridicule the institution that has done so much for you. Had you
not managed to be funny I doubt if you would have been forgiven.
But fortunately for you, Mr.--, that is, the gentleman who has
just gone--appears to have an immoderate sense of humour.
On the strength of that impertinent paper, he has offered to send
you to college.'
`To college?' Jerusha's eyes grew big. Mrs. Lippett nodded.
`He waited to discuss the terms with me. They are unusual.
The gentleman, I may say, is erratic. He believes that you
have originality, and he is planning to educate you to become
a writer.'
`A writer?' Jerusha's mind was numbed. She could only repeat Mrs.
Lippett's words.
`That is his wish. Whether anything will come of it, the future
will show. He is giving you a very liberal allowance, almost, for a girl
who has never had any experience in taking care of money, too liberal.
But he planned the matter in detail, and I did not feel free to
make any suggestions. You are to remain here through the summer,
and Miss Pritchard has kindly offered to superintend your outfit.
Your board and tuition will be paid directly to the college,
and you will receive in addition during the four years you are there,
an allowance of thirty-five dollars a month. This will enable you
to enter on the same standing as the other students. The money will
be sent to you by the gentleman's private secretary once a month,
and in return, you will write a letter of acknowledgment once a month.
That is--you are not to thank him for the money; he doesn't care
to have that mentioned, but you are to write a letter telling of
the progress in your studies and the details of your daily life.
Just such a letter as you would write to your parents if they
were living.
`These letters will be addressed to Mr. John Smith and will be sent
in care of the secretary. The gentleman's name is not John Smith,
but he prefers to remain unknown. To you he will never be anything
but John Smith. His reason in requiring the letters is that he
thinks nothing so fosters facility in literary expression as
letter-writing. Since you have no family with whom to correspond,
he desires you to write in this way; also, he wishes to keep
track of your progress. He will never answer your letters,
nor in the slightest particular take any notice of them.
He detests letter-writing and does not wish you to become a burden.
If any point should ever arise where an answer would seem
to be imperative--such as in the event of your being expelled,
which I trust will not occur--you may correspond with Mr. Griggs,
his secretary. These monthly letters are absolutely obligatory
on your part; they are the only payment that Mr. Smith requires,
so you must be as punctilious in sending them as though it
were a bill that you were paying. I hope that they will always
be respectful in tone and will reflect credit on your training.
You must remember that you are writing to a Trustee of the John
Grier Home.'
Jerusha's eyes longingly sought the door. Her head was in a whirl
of excitement, and she wished only to escape from Mrs. Lippett's
platitudes and think. She rose and took a tentative step backwards.
Mrs. Lippett detained her with a gesture; it was an oratorical
opportunity not to be slighted.
`I trust that you are properly grateful for this very rare good fortune
that has befallen you? Not many girls in your position ever have
such an opportunity to rise in the world. You must always remember--'
`I--yes, ma'am, thank you. I think, if that's all, I must go
and sew a patch on Freddie Perkins's trousers.'
The door closed behind her, and Mrs. Lippett watched it with dropped jaw,
her peroration in mid-air.
The Letters of
Miss Jerusha Abbott
to
Mr. Daddy-Long-Legs Smith
215 FERGUSSEN HALL
24th September
Dear Kind-Trustee-Who-Sends-Orphans-to-College,
Here I am! I travelled yesterday for four hours in a train.
It's a funny sensation, isn't it? I never rode in one before.
College is the biggest, most bewildering place--I get lost whenever
I leave my room. I will write you a description later when I'm
feeling less muddled; also I will tell you about my lessons.
Classes don't begin until Monday morning, and this is Saturday night.
But I wanted to write a letter first just to get acquainted.
It seems queer to be writing letters to somebody you don't know.
It seems queer for me to be writing letters at all--I've never
written more than three or four in my life, so please overlook it
if these are not a model kind.
Before leaving yesterday morning, Mrs. Lippett and I had a very
serious talk. She told me how to behave all the rest of my life,
and especially how to behave towards the kind gentleman who is doing
so much for me. I must take care to be Very Respectful.
But how can one be very respectful to a person who
wishes to be called John Smith? Why couldn't you
have picked out a name with a little personality?
I might as well write letters to Dear Hitching-Post or Dear Clothes-Prop.
I have been thinking about you a great deal this summer; having
somebody take an interest in me after all these years makes me
feel as though I had found a sort of family. It seems as though I
belonged to somebody now, and it's a very comfortable sensation.
I must say, however, that when I think about you, my imagination
has very little to work upon. There are just three things that
I know:
I. You are tall.
II. You are rich.
III. You hate girls.
I suppose I might call you Dear Mr. Girl-Hater. Only that's rather
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.
The ten o'clock bell is going to ring in two minutes. Our day is
divided into sections by bells. We eat and sleep and study by bells.
It's very enlivening; I feel like a fire horse all of the time.
There it goes! Lights out. Good night.
Observe with what precision I obey rules--due to my training
in the John Grier Home.
Yours most respectfully,
Jerusha Abbott
To Mr. Daddy-Long-Legs Smith
1st October
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
I love college and I love you for sending me--I'm very, very happy,
and so excited every moment of the time that I can scarcely sleep.
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 isn't a girl and who can't come here; I am
sure the college you attended when you were a boy couldn'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, and two
Freshmen named Sallie McBride and Julia Rutledge Pendleton.
Sallie has red hair and a turn-up nose and is quite friendly;
Julia comes from one of the first families in New York and hasn't
noticed me yet. They room together and the Senior and I have singles.
Usually Freshmen can't get singles; they are very scarce, but I got
one without even asking. I suppose the registrar didn't think it would
be right to ask a properly brought-up girl to room with a foundling.
You see there are advantages!
My room is on the north-west corner with two windows and a view.
After you've lived in a ward for eighteen years with twenty
room-mates, it is restful to be alone. This is the first chance
I've ever had to get acquainted with Jerusha Abbott. I think I'm
going to like her.
Do you think you are?
Tuesday
They are organizing the Freshman basket-ball team and there's
just a chance that I shall get in it. I'm little of course,
but terribly quick and wiry and tough. While the others are hopping
about in the air, I can dodge under their feet and grab the ball.
It's loads of fun practising--out in the athletic field in the
afternoon with the trees all red and yellow and the air full of
the smell of burning leaves, and everybody laughing and shouting.
These are the happiest girls I ever saw--and I am the happiest
of all!
I meant to write a long letter and tell you all the things I'm learning
(Mrs. Lippett said you wanted to know), but 7th hour has just rung,
and in ten minutes I'm due at the athletic field in gymnasium clothes.
Don't you hope I'll get in the team?
Yours always,
Jerusha Abbott
PS. (9 o'clock.)
Sallie McBride just poked her head in at my door. This is what
she said:
`I'm so homesick that I simply can't stand it. Do you feel that way?'
I smiled a little and said no; I thought I could pull through.
At least homesickness is one disease that I've escaped! I never heard
of anybody being asylum-sick, did you?
10th October
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 embarrassing at times. But now, when the girls talk about
things that I 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!
Do you care to know how I've furnished my room? It's a symphony
in brown and yellow. The wall was tinted buff, and I've bought
yellow denim curtains and cushions and a mahogany desk (second hand
for three dollars) and a rattan chair and a brown rug with an ink
spot in the middle. I stand the chair over the spot.
The windows are up high; you can't look out from an ordinary seat.
But I unscrewed the looking-glass from the back of the bureau,
upholstered the top and moved it up against the window. It's just
the right height for a window seat. You pull out the drawers like
steps and walk up. Very comfortable!
Sallie McBride helped me choose the things at the Senior auction.
She has lived in a house all her life and knows about furnishing.
You can't imagine what fun it is to shop and pay with a real
five-dollar bill and get some change--when you've never had more than
a few cents in your life. 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.
And now I suppose you've been waiting very impatiently to hear
what I am learning?
I. Latin: Second Punic war. Hannibal and his forces pitched camp
at Lake Trasimenus last night. They prepared an ambuscade for
the Romans, and a battle took place at the fourth watch this morning.
Romans in retreat.
II. French: 24 pages of the Three Musketeers and third conjugation,
irregular verbs.
III. Geometry: Finished cylinders; now doing cones.
IV. English: Studying exposition. My style improves daily
in clearness and brevity.
V. Physiology: Reached the digestive system. Bile and the pancreas
next time. Yours, on the way to being educated,
Jerusha Abbott
PS. I hope you never touch alcohol, Daddy? It does dreadful
things to your liver.
Wednesday
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
I've changed my name.
I'm still `Jerusha' in the catalogue, but I'm `Judy' everywhere else.
It's really too bad, isn't it, to have to give yourself the only
pet name you ever had? I didn't quite make up the Judy though.
That's what Freddy Perkins used to call me before he could
talk plainly.
I wish Mrs. Lippett would use a little more ingenuity about choosing
babies' names. She gets the last names out of the telephone book--
you'll find Abbott on the first page--and she picks the Christian
names up anywhere; she got Jerusha from a tombstone. I've always
hated it; but I rather like Judy. It's such a silly name.
It belongs to the kind of girl I'm not--a sweet little blue-eyed thing,
petted and spoiled by all the family, who romps her way through
life without any cares. Wouldn't it be nice to be like that?
Whatever faults I may have, no one can ever accuse me of having been
spoiled by my family! But it's great fun to pretend I've been.
In the future please always address me as Judy.
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. It's all I can do not to wear them to classes.
(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 (as you doubtless know and heartily approve of)
is to turn the ninety-seven orphans into ninety-seven twins.
The unusual artistic ability which I exhibit was developed at an early
age through drawing chalk pictures of Mrs. Lippett on the woodshed door.
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.
You know, Daddy, it isn't the work that is going to be hard in college.
It's the play. Half the time I don't know what the girls are
talking about; their jokes seem to relate to a past that every one
but me has shared. I'm a foreigner in the world and I don't understand
the language. It's a miserable feeling. I've had it all my life.
At the high school the girls would stand in groups and just look at me.
I was queer and different and everybody knew it. I could FEEL
`John Grier Home' written on my face. And then a few charitable
ones would make a point of coming up and saying something polite.
I HATED EVERY ONE OF THEM--the charitable ones most of all.
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?
Anyway, Sallie McBride likes me!
Yours ever,
Judy Abbott
(Nee Jerusha.)
