Daddy Long Legs

I sat up half of last night reading Jane Eyre. Are you old enough,

Daddy, to remember sixty years ago? And, if so, did people talk that

way?

The haughty Lady Blanche says to the footman, 'Stop your chattering,

knave, and do my bidding.' Mr. Rochester talks about the metal welkin

when he means the sky; and as for the mad woman who laughs like a hyena

and sets fire to bed curtains and tears up wedding veils and

BITES--it's melodrama of the purest, but just the same, you read and

read and read. I can't see how any girl could have written such a

book, especially any girl who was brought up in a churchyard. There's

something about those Brontes that fascinates me. Their books, their

lives, their spirit. Where did they get it? When I was reading about

little Jane's troubles in the charity school, I got so angry that I had

to go out and take a walk. I understood exactly how she felt. Having

known Mrs. Lippett, I could see Mr. Brocklehurst.

Don't be outraged, Daddy. I am not intimating that the John Grier Home

was like the Lowood Institute. We had plenty to eat and plenty to

wear, sufficient water to wash in, and a furnace in the cellar. But

there was one deadly likeness. Our lives were absolutely monotonous

and uneventful. Nothing nice ever happened, except ice-cream on

Sundays, and even that was regular. In all the eighteen years I was

there I only had one adventure--when the woodshed burned. We had to

get up in the night and dress so as to be ready in case the house

should catch. But it didn't catch and we went back to bed.

Everybody likes a few surprises; it's a perfectly natural human

craving. But I never had one until Mrs. Lippett called me to the

office to tell me that Mr. John Smith was going to send me to college.

And then she broke the news so gradually that it just barely shocked me.

You know, Daddy, I think that the most necessary quality for any person

to have is imagination. It makes people able to put themselves in

other people's places. It makes them kind and sympathetic and

understanding. It ought to be cultivated in children. But the John

Grier Home instantly stamped out the slightest flicker that appeared.

Duty was the one quality that was encouraged. I don't think children

ought to know the meaning of the word; it's odious, detestable. They

ought to do everything from love.

Wait until you see the orphan asylum that I am going to be the head of!

It's my favourite play at night before I go to sleep. I plan it out to

the littlest detail--the meals and clothes and study and amusements and

punishments; for even my superior orphans are sometimes bad.