Daddy Long Legs

I'm sorry now for all my past badnesses.

I'm sorry I was ever impertinent to Mrs. Lippett.

I'm sorry I ever slapped Freddie Perkins.

I'm sorry I ever filled the sugar bowl with salt.

I'm sorry I ever made faces behind the Trustees' backs.

I'm going to be good and sweet and kind to everybody because I'm so

happy. And this summer I'm going to write and write and write and

begin to be a great author. Isn't that an exalted stand to take? Oh,

I'm developing a beautiful character! It droops a bit under cold and

frost, but it does grow fast when the sun shines.

That's the way with everybody. I don't agree with the theory that

adversity and sorrow and disappointment develop moral strength. The

happy people are the ones who are bubbling over with kindliness. I

have no faith in misanthropes. (Fine word! Just learned it.) You are

not a misanthrope are you, Daddy?

I started to tell you about the campus. I wish you'd come for a little

visit and let me walk you about and say:

'That is the library. This is the gas plant, Daddy dear. The Gothic

building on your left is the gymnasium, and the Tudor Romanesque beside

it is the new infirmary.' Oh, I'm fine at showing people about. I've done it all my life at the

asylum, and I've been doing it all day here. I have honestly.

And a Man, too!

That's a great experience. I never talked to a man before (except

occasional Trustees, and they don't count). Pardon, Daddy, I don't mean

to hurt your feelings when I abuse Trustees. I don't consider that you

really belong among them. You just tumbled on to the Board by chance.

The Trustee, as such, is fat and pompous and benevolent. He pats one

on the head and wears a gold watch chain.

That looks like a June bug, but is meant to be a portrait of any

Trustee except you.

However--to resume: I have been walking and talking and having tea with a man. And with a

very superior man--with Mr. Jervis Pendleton of the House of Julia; her

uncle, in short (in long, perhaps I ought to say; he's as tall as you.)

Being in town on business, he decided to run out to the college and

call on his niece. He's her father's youngest brother, but she doesn't

know him very intimately. It seems he glanced at her when she was a

baby, decided he didn't like her, and has never noticed her since.

Anyway, there he was, sitting in the reception room very proper with

his hat and stick and gloves beside him; and Julia and Sallie with

seventh-hour recitations that they couldn't cut. So Julia dashed into

my room and begged me to walk him about the campus and then deliver him

to her when the seventh hour was over. I said I would, obligingly but

unenthusiastically, because I don't care much for Pendletons.