Daddy Long Legs

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.