Author of, “When the Sophomores
Won the Game.” For sale at all
news stands, price ten cents.
September 26th.
_Dear Daddy-Long-Legs_,
Back at college again and an upper classman. Our study is better
than ever this year--faces the South with two huge windows--and oh!
so furnished. Julia, with an unlimited allowance, arrived two days
early and was attacked with a fever of settling.
We have new wall paper and Oriental rugs and mahogany chairs--not
painted mahogany which made us sufficiently happy last year, but
real. It’s very gorgeous, but I don’t feel as though I belonged in
it; I’m nervous all the time for fear I’ll get an ink spot in the
wrong place.
And, Daddy, I found your letter waiting for me--pardon--I mean your
secretary’s.
Will you kindly convey to me a comprehensible reason why I should
not accept that scholarship? I don’t understand your objection in
the least. But anyway, it won’t do the slightest good for you to
object, for I’ve already accepted it--and I am not going to change!
That sounds a little impertinent, but I don’t mean it so.
I suppose you feel that when you set out to educate me, you’d like
to finish the work, and put a neat period, in the shape of a
diploma, at the end.
But look at it just a second from my point of view. I shall owe my
education to you just as much as though I let you pay for the whole
of it, but I won’t be quite so much indebted. I know that you don’t
want me to return the money, but nevertheless, I am going to want to
do it, if I possibly can; and winning this scholarship makes it so
much easier. I was expecting to spend the rest of my life in paying
my debts, but now I shall only have to spend one-half of the rest of
it.
I hope you understand my position and won’t be cross. The allowance
I shall still most gratefully accept. It requires an allowance to
live up to Julia and her furniture! I wish that she had been reared
to simpler tastes, or else that she were not my room-mate.
This isn’t much of a letter; I meant to have written a lot--but
I’ve been hemming four window curtains and three portières (I’m
glad you can’t see the length of the stitches) and polishing a brass
desk set with tooth powder (very uphill work) and sawing off picture
wire with manicure scissors, and unpacking four boxes of books, and
putting away two trunkfuls of clothes (it doesn’t seem believable
that Jerusha Abbott owns two trunks full of clothes, but she does!)
and welcoming back fifty dear friends in between.
Opening day is a joyous occasion!
Good night, Daddy dear, and don’t be annoyed because your chick is
wanting to scratch for herself. She’s growing up into an awfully
energetic little hen--with a very determined cluck and lots of
beautiful feathers (all due to you).
Affectionately,