A very beautiful lady in a very beautiful velvet dress got into the car
today, and without the slightest expression sat for fifteen minutes and
looked at a sign advertising suspenders. It doesn't seem polite to
ignore everybody else as though you were the only important person
present. Anyway, you miss a lot. While she was absorbing that silly
sign, I was studying a whole car full of interesting human beings.
The accompanying illustration is hereby reproduced for the first time.
It looks like a spider on the end of a string, but it isn't at all;
it's a picture of me learning to swim in the tank in the gymnasium.
The instructor hooks a rope into a ring in the back of my belt, and
runs it through a pulley in the ceiling. It would be a beautiful
system if one had perfect confidence in the probity of one's
instructor. I'm always afraid, though, that she will let the rope get
slack, so I keep one anxious eye on her and swim with the other, and
with this divided interest I do not make the progress that I otherwise
might.
Very miscellaneous weather we're having of late. It was raining when I
commenced and now the sun is shining. Sallie and I are going out to
play tennis--thereby gaining exemption from Gym.
A week later I should have finished this letter long ago, but I didn't. You don't
mind, do you, Daddy, if I'm not very regular? I really do love to
write to you; it gives me such a respectable feeling of having some
family. Would you like me to tell you something? You are not the only
man to whom I write letters. There are two others! I have been
receiving beautiful long letters this winter from Master Jervie (with
typewritten envelopes so Julia won't recognize the writing). Did you
ever hear anything so shocking? And every week or so a very scrawly
epistle, usually on yellow tablet paper, arrives from Princeton. All
of which I answer with business-like promptness. So you see--I am not
so different from other girls--I get letters, too.
Did I tell you that I have been elected a member of the Senior Dramatic
Club? Very recherche organization. Only seventy-five members out of
one thousand. Do you think as a consistent Socialist that I ought to
belong?
What do you suppose is at present engaging my attention in sociology?
I am writing (figurez vous!) a paper on the Care of Dependent Children.
The Professor shuffled up his subjects and dealt them out
promiscuously, and that fell to me. C'est drole ca n'est pas?