What do you think is my favourite book? Just now, I mean; I change
every three days. Wuthering Heights. Emily Bronte was quite young
when she wrote it, and had never been outside of Haworth churchyard.
She had never known any men in her life; how COULD she imagine a man
like Heathcliffe?
I couldn't do it, and I'm quite young and never outside the John Grier
Asylum--I've had every chance in the world. Sometimes a dreadful fear
comes over me that I'm not a genius. Will you be awfully disappointed,
Daddy, if I don't turn out to be a great author? In the spring when
everything is so beautiful and green and budding, I feel like turning
my back on lessons, and running away to play with the weather. There
are such lots of adventures out in the fields! It's much more
entertaining to live books than to write them.
Ow ! ! ! ! ! !
That was a shriek which brought Sallie and Julia and (for a disgusted
moment) the Senior from across the hall. It was caused by a centipede
like this: only worse. Just as I had finished the last sentence and
was thinking what to say next--plump!--it fell off the ceiling and
landed at my side. I tipped two cups off the tea table in trying to
get away. Sallie whacked it with the back of my hair brush--which I
shall never be able to use again--and killed the front end, but the
rear fifty feet ran under the bureau and escaped.
This dormitory, owing to its age and ivy-covered walls, is full of
centipedes. They are dreadful creatures. I'd rather find a tiger
under the bed.
Friday, 9.30 p.m.
Such a lot of troubles! I didn't hear the rising bell this morning,
then I broke my shoestring while I was hurrying to dress and dropped my
collar button down my neck. I was late for breakfast and also for
first-hour recitation. I forgot to take any blotting paper and my
fountain pen leaked. In trigonometry the Professor and I had a
disagreement touching a little matter of logarithms. On looking it up,
I find that she was right. We had mutton stew and pie-plant for
lunch--hate 'em both; they taste like the asylum. The post brought me
nothing but bills (though I must say that I never do get anything else;
my family are not the kind that write). In English class this
afternoon we had an unexpected written lesson. This was it:
I asked no other thing,
No other was denied.
I offered Being for it;
The mighty merchant smiled.
Brazil? He twirled a button
Without a glance my way:
But, madam, is there nothing else
That we can show today?
That is a poem. I don't know who wrote it or what it means. It was
simply printed out on the blackboard when we arrived and we were
ordered to comment upon it. When I read the first verse I thought I
had an idea--The Mighty Merchant was a divinity who distributes
blessings in return for virtuous deeds--but when I got to the second
verse and found him twirling a button, it seemed a blasphemous
supposition, and I hastily changed my mind. The rest of the class was
in the same predicament; and there we sat for three-quarters of an hour
with blank paper and equally blank minds. Getting an education is an
awfully wearing process!
But this didn't end the day. There's worse to come.
It rained so we couldn't play golf, but had to go to gymnasium instead.
The girl next to me banged my elbow with an Indian club. I got home to
find that the box with my new blue spring dress had come, and the skirt
was so tight that I couldn't sit down. Friday is sweeping day, and the
maid had mixed all the papers on my desk. We had tombstone for dessert
(milk and gelatin flavoured with vanilla). We were kept in chapel
twenty minutes later than usual to listen to a speech about womanly
women. And then--just as I was settling down with a sigh of
well-earned relief to The Portrait of a Lady, a girl named Ackerly, a
dough-faced, deadly, unintermittently stupid girl, who sits next to me
in Latin because her name begins with A (I wish Mrs. Lippett had named
me Zabriski), came to ask if Monday's lesson commenced at paragraph 69
or 70, and stayed ONE HOUR. She has just gone.
Did you ever hear of such a discouraging series of events? It isn't
the big troubles in life that require character. Anybody can rise to a
crisis and face a crushing tragedy with courage, but to meet the petty
hazards of the day with a laugh--I really think that requires SPIRIT.
It's the kind of character that I am going to develop. I am going to
pretend that all life is just a game which I must play as skilfully and
fairly as I can. If I lose, I am going to shrug my shoulders and
laugh--also if I win.
Anyway, I am going to be a sport. You will never hear me complain
again, Daddy dear, because Julia wears silk stockings and centipedes
drop off the wall.
Yours ever,
Judy
Answer soon.