Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
Isn't it funny? I started to write to you yesterday afternoon, but as
far as I got was the heading, 'Dear Daddy-Long-Legs', and then I
remembered I'd promised to pick some blackberries for supper, so I went
off and left the sheet lying on the table, and when I came back today,
what do you think I found sitting in the middle of the page? A real
true Daddy-Long-Legs!
I picked him up very gently by one leg, and dropped him out of the
window. I wouldn't hurt one of them for the world. They always remind
me of you.
We hitched up the spring wagon this morning and drove to the Centre to
church. It's a sweet little white frame church with a spire and three
Doric columns in front (or maybe Ionic--I always get them mixed).
A nice sleepy sermon with everybody drowsily waving palm-leaf fans, and
the only sound, aside from the minister, the buzzing of locusts in the
trees outside. I didn't wake up till I found myself on my feet singing
the hymn, and then I was awfully sorry I hadn't listened to the sermon;
I should like to know more of the psychology of a man who would pick
out such a hymn. This was it:
Come, leave your sports and earthly toys
And join me in celestial joys.
Or else, dear friend, a long farewell.
I leave you now to sink to hell.
I find that it isn't safe to discuss religion with the Semples. Their
God (whom they have inherited intact from their remote Puritan
ancestors) is a narrow, irrational, unjust, mean, revengeful, bigoted
Person. Thank heaven I don't inherit God from anybody! I am free to
make mine up as I wish Him. He's kind and sympathetic and imaginative
and forgiving and understanding--and He has a sense of humour.
I like the Semples immensely; their practice is so superior to their
theory. They are better than their own God. I told them so--and they
are horribly troubled. They think I am blasphemous--and I think they
are! We've dropped theology from our conversation.
This is Sunday afternoon.
Amasai (hired man) in a purple tie and some bright yellow buckskin
gloves, very red and shaved, has just driven off with Carrie (hired
girl) in a big hat trimmed with red roses and a blue muslin dress and
her hair curled as tight as it will curl. Amasai spent all the morning
washing the buggy; and Carrie stayed home from church ostensibly to
cook the dinner, but really to iron the muslin dress.
In two minutes more when this letter is finished I am going to settle
down to a book which I found in the attic. It's entitled, On the
Trail, and sprawled across the front page in a funny little-boy hand:
Jervis Pendleton
if this book should ever roam,
Box its ears and send it home.
He spent the summer here once after he had been ill, when he was about
eleven years old; and he left On the Trail behind. It looks well
read--the marks of his grimy little hands are frequent! Also in a
corner of the attic there is a water wheel and a windmill and some bows
and arrows. Mrs. Semple talks so constantly about him that I begin to
believe he really lives--not a grown man with a silk hat and walking
stick, but a nice, dirty, tousle-headed boy who clatters up the stairs
with an awful racket, and leaves the screen doors open, and is always
asking for cookies. (And getting them, too, if I know Mrs. Semple!) He
seems to have been an adventurous little soul--and brave and truthful.
I'm sorry to think he is a Pendleton; he was meant for something better.
We're going to begin threshing oats tomorrow; a steam engine is coming
and three extra men.
It grieves me to tell you that Buttercup (the spotted cow with one
horn, Mother of Lesbia) has done a disgraceful thing. She got into the
orchard Friday evening and ate apples under the trees, and ate and ate
until they went to her head. For two days she has been perfectly dead
drunk! That is the truth I am telling. Did you ever hear anything so
scandalous?
Sir,
I remain,
Your affectionate orphan,
Judy Abbott
PS. Indians in the first chapter and highwaymen in the second. I hold
my breath. What can the third contain? 'Red Hawk leapt twenty feet in
the air and bit the dust.' That is the subject of the frontispiece.
Aren't Judy and Jervie having fun?