This is a very abstruse letter--does your head ache, Daddy? I think

we'll stop now and make some fudge. I'm sorry I can't send you a

piece; it will be unusually good, for we're going to make it with real

cream and three butter balls.

Yours affectionately,

Judy

PS. We're having fancy dancing in gymnasium class. You can see by the

accompanying picture how much we look like a real ballet. The one at

the end accomplishing a graceful pirouette is me--I mean I.

26th December

My Dear, Dear, Daddy,

Haven't you any sense? Don't you KNOW that you mustn't give one girl

seventeen Christmas presents? I'm a Socialist, please remember; do you

wish to turn me into a Plutocrat?

Think how embarrassing it would be if we should ever quarrel! I should

have to engage a moving-van to return your gifts.

I am sorry that the necktie I sent was so wobbly; I knit it with my own

hands (as you doubtless discovered from internal evidence). You will

have to wear it on cold days and keep your coat buttoned up tight.

Thank you, Daddy, a thousand times. I think you're the sweetest man

that ever lived--and the foolishest!

Judy

Here's a four-leaf clover from Camp McBride to bring you good luck for

the New Year.

9th January

Do you wish to do something, Daddy, that will ensure your eternal

salvation? There is a family here who are in awfully desperate

straits. A mother and father and four visible children--the two older

boys have disappeared into the world to make their fortune and have not

sent any of it back. The father worked in a glass factory and got

consumption--it's awfully unhealthy work--and now has been sent away to

a hospital. That took all their savings, and the support of the family

falls upon the oldest daughter, who is twenty-four. She dressmakes for

$1.50 a day (when she can get it) and embroiders centrepieces in the

evening. The mother isn't very strong and is extremely ineffectual and

pious. She sits with her hands folded, a picture of patient

resignation, while the daughter kills herself with overwork and

responsibility and worry; she doesn't see how they are going to get

through the rest of the winter--and I don't either. One hundred

dollars would buy some coal and some shoes for three children so that

they could go to school, and give a little margin so that she needn't

worry herself to death when a few days pass and she doesn't get work.

You are the richest man I know. Don't you suppose you could spare one

hundred dollars? That girl deserves help a lot more than I ever did.

I wouldn't ask it except for the girl; I don't care much what happens

to the mother--she is such a jelly-fish.




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