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 honor 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 cluttered 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!
Good-by, Daddy, I hope that you are feeling as happy as I am.
Yours ever,