Daddy Long Legs

Oh, dear! There's the chapel bell, and after chapel I have a committee

meeting. I'm sorry because I meant to write you a very entertaining

letter this time.

Auf wiedersehen

Cher Daddy,

Pax tibi!

Judy

PS. There's one thing I'm perfectly sure of I'm not a Chinaman.

4th February

Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

Jimmie McBride has sent me a Princeton banner as big as one end of the

room; I am very grateful to him for remembering me, but I don't know

what on earth to do with it. Sallie and Julia won't let me hang it up;

our room this year is furnished in red, and you can imagine what an

effect we'd have if I added orange and black. But it's such nice,

warm, thick felt, I hate to waste it. Would it be very improper to

have it made into a bath robe? My old one shrank when it was washed.

I've entirely omitted of late telling you what I am learning, but

though you might not imagine it from my letters, my time is exclusively

occupied with study. It's a very bewildering matter to get educated in

five branches at once.

'The test of true scholarship,' says Chemistry Professor, 'is a

painstaking passion for detail.'

'Be careful not to keep your eyes glued to detail,' says History

Professor. 'Stand far enough away to get a perspective of the whole.'

You can see with what nicety we have to trim our sails between

chemistry and history. I like the historical method best. If I say

that William the Conqueror came over in 1492, and Columbus discovered

America in 1100 or 1066 or whenever it was, that's a mere detail that

the Professor overlooks. It gives a feeling of security and

restfulness to the history recitation, that is entirely lacking in

chemistry.

Sixth-hour bell--I must go to the laboratory and look into a little

matter of acids and salts and alkalis. I've burned a hole as big as a

plate in the front of my chemistry apron, with hydrochloric acid. If

the theory worked, I ought to be able to neutralize that hole with good

strong ammonia, oughtn't I?

Examinations next week, but who's afraid?

Yours ever,

Judy

5th March

Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

There is a March wind blowing, and the sky is filled with heavy, black

moving clouds. The crows in the pine trees are making such a clamour!

It's an intoxicating, exhilarating, CALLING noise. You want to close

your books and be off over the hills to race with the wind.

We had a paper chase last Saturday over five miles of squashy 'cross

country. The fox (composed of three girls and a bushel or so of

confetti) started half an hour before the twenty-seven hunters. I was

one of the twenty-seven; eight dropped by the wayside; we ended

nineteen. The trail led over a hill, through a cornfield, and into a

swamp where we had to leap lightly from hummock to hummock. of course

half of us went in ankle deep. We kept losing the trail, and we wasted

twenty-five minutes over that swamp. Then up a hill through some woods

and in at a barn window! The barn doors were all locked and the window

was up high and pretty small. I don't call that fair, do you?