May 15th.
_Dear Daddy-Long-Legs_,
Is it good manners when you get into a car just to stare straight
ahead and not see anybody else?
A very beautiful lady in a very beautiful velvet dress got into the
car to-day, and without the slightest expression sat for fifteen
minutes and looked at a sign advertising suspenders. It doesn’t
seem polite to ignore everybody else as though you were the only
important person present. Anyway, you miss a lot. While she was
absorbing that silly sign, I was studying a whole car full of
interesting human beings.
The accompanying illustration is hereby reproduced for the first
time. It looks like a spider on the end of a string, but it isn’t
at all; it’s a picture of me learning to swim in the tank in the
gymnasium.
[Illustration]
The instructor hooks a rope into a ring in the back of my belt, and
runs it through a pulley in the ceiling. It would be a beautiful
system if one had perfect confidence in the probity of one’s
instructor. I’m always afraid, though, that she will let the rope
get slack, so I keep one anxious eye on her and swim with the other,
and with this divided interest I do not make the progress that I
otherwise might.
Very miscellaneous weather we’re having of late. It was raining
when I commenced and now the sun is shining. Sallie and I are going
out to play tennis--thereby gaining exemption from Gym.
A week later.
I should have finished this letter long ago, but I didn’t. You
don’t mind, do you, Daddy, if I’m not very regular? I really do
love to write to you; it gives me such a respectable feeling of
having some family. Would you like me to tell you something? You are
not the only man to whom I write letters. There are two others!
I have been receiving beautiful long letters this winter from Master
Jervie (with typewritten envelopes so Julia won’t recognize the
writing). Did you ever hear anything so shocking? And every week or
so a very scrawly epistle, usually on yellow tablet paper, arrives
from Princeton. All of which I answer with businesslike promptness.
So you see--I am not so different from other girls--I get mail, too.
Did I tell you that I have been elected a member of the Senior
Dramatic Club? Very _recherché_ organization. Only seventy-five
members out of one thousand. Do you think as a consistent Socialist
that I ought to belong?
What do you suppose is at present engaging my attention in
sociology? I am writing (_figurez vous!_) a paper on the Care of
Dependent Children. The Professor shuffled up his subjects and dealt
them out promiscuously, and that fell to me. _C’est drôle ça n’est
pas?_
There goes the gong for dinner. I’ll mail this as I pass the chute.
Affectionately,