Affectionately,
Judy
14th December
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
I dreamed the funniest dream last night. I thought I went into a book
store and the clerk brought me a new book named The Life and Letters of
Judy Abbott. I could see it perfectly plainly--red cloth binding with
a picture of the John Grier Home on the cover, and my portrait for a
frontispiece with, 'Very truly yours, Judy Abbott,' written below. But
just as I was turning to the end to read the inscription on my
tombstone, I woke up. It was very annoying! I almost found out whom
I'm going to marry and when I'm going to die.
Don't you think it would be interesting if you really could read the
story of your life--written perfectly truthfully by an omniscient
author? And suppose you could only read it on this condition: that
you would never forget it, but would have to go through life knowing
ahead of time exactly how everything you did would turn out, and
foreseeing to the exact hour the time when you would die. How many
people do you suppose would have the courage to read it then? or how
many could suppress their curiosity sufficiently to escape from reading
it, even at the price of having to live without hope and without
surprises?
Life is monotonous enough at best; you have to eat and sleep about so
often. But imagine how DEADLY monotonous it would be if nothing
unexpected could happen between meals. Mercy! Daddy, there's a blot,
but I'm on the third page and I can't begin a new sheet.
I'm going on with biology again this year--very interesting subject;
we're studying the alimentary system at present. You should see how
sweet a cross-section of the duodenum of a cat is under the microscope.
Also we've arrived at philosophy--interesting but evanescent. I prefer
biology where you can pin the subject under discussion to a board.
There's another! And another! This pen is weeping copiously. Please
excuse its tears.
Do you believe in free will? I do--unreservedly. I don't agree at all
with the philosophers who think that every action is the absolutely
inevitable and automatic resultant of an aggregation of remote causes.
That's the most immoral doctrine I ever heard--nobody would be to blame
for anything. If a man believed in fatalism, he would naturally just
sit down and say, 'The Lord's will be done,' and continue to sit until
he fell over dead.
I believe absolutely in my own free will and my own power to
accomplish--and that is the belief that moves mountains. You watch me
become a great author! I have four chapters of my new book finished
and five more drafted.