Daddy-Long-Legs - Jean Webster (best e reader for academics txt) š
- Author: Jean Webster
- Performer: 0140374558
Book online Ā«Daddy-Long-Legs - Jean Webster (best e reader for academics txt) šĀ». Author Jean Webster
Iāve been writing a book, all last winter in the evenings, and all the summer when I wasnāt teaching Latin to my two stupid children. I just finished it before college opened and sent it to a publisher. He kept it two months, and I was certain he was going to take it; but yesterday morning an express parcel came (thirty cents due) and there it was back again with a letter from the publisher, a very nice, fatherly letterābut frank! He said he saw from the address that I was still at college, and if I would accept some advice, he would suggest that I put all of my energy into my lessons and wait until I graduated before beginning to write. He enclosed his readerās opinion. Here it is:
`Plot highly improbable. Characterization exaggerated. Conversation unnatural. A good deal of humour but not always in the best of taste. Tell her to keep on trying, and in time she may produce a real book.ā
Not on the whole flattering, is it, Daddy? And I thought I was making a notable addition to American literature. I did truly. I was planning to surprise you by writing a great novel before I graduated. I collected the material for it while I was at Juliaās last Christmas. But I dare say the editor is right. Probably two weeks was not enough in which to observe the manners and customs of a great city.
I took it walking with me yesterday afternoon, and when I came to the gas house, I went in and asked the engineer if I might borrow his furnace. He politely opened the door, and with my own hands I chucked it in. I felt as though I had cremated my only child!
I went to bed last night utterly dejected; I thought I was never going to amount to anything, and that you had thrown away your money for nothing. But what do you think? I woke up this morning with a beautiful new plot in my head, and Iāve been going about all day planning my characters, just as happy as I could be. No one can ever accuse me of being a pessimist! If I had a husband and twelve children swallowed by an earthquake one day, Iād bob up smilingly the next morning and commence to look for another set. 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 plainlyā 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,ā 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 Iām going to marry and when Iām going to die.
Donāt you think it would be interesting if you really could read the story of your lifeāwritten 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, thereās a blot, but Iām on the third page and I canāt begin a new sheet.
Iām going on with biology again this yearāvery interesting subject; weāre 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 weāve arrived at philosophyāinteresting but evanescent. I prefer biology where you can pin the subject under discussion to a board. Thereās another! And another! This pen is weeping copiously. Please excuse its tears.
Do you believe in free will? I doāunreservedly. I donāt agree at all with the philosophers who think that every action is the absolutely inevitable and automatic resultant of an aggregation of remote causes. Thatās the most immoral doctrine I ever heardā nobody would be to blame for anything. If a man believed in fatalism, he would naturally just sit down and say, `The Lordās will be done,ā and continue to sit until he fell over dead.
I believe absolutely in my own free will and my own power to accomplishā 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.
This is a very abstruse letterādoes your head ache, Daddy? I think weāll stop now and make some fudge. Iām sorry I canāt send you a piece; it will be unusually good, for weāre going to make it with real cream and three butter balls. Yours affectionately, Judy
PS. Weāre 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 meāI mean I.
26th December My Dear, Dear, Daddy,Havenāt you any sense? Donāt you KNOW that you mustnāt give one girl seventeen Christmas presents? Iām 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 youāre the sweetest man that ever livedāand the foolishest! Judy
Hereās a four-leaf clover from Camp McBride to bring you good luck for the New Year.
9th JanuaryDo 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 childrenā 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 consumptionāitās awfully unhealthy workā 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 isnāt 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 doesnāt see how they are going to get through the rest of the winterāand I donāt 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 neednāt worry herself to death when a few days pass and she doesnāt get work.
You are the richest man I know. Donāt you suppose you could spare one hundred dollars? That girl deserves help a lot more than I ever did. I wouldnāt ask it except for the girl; I donāt care much what happens to the motherāshe is such a jelly-fish.
The way people are for ever rolling their eyes to heaven and saying, `Perhaps itās all for the best,ā when they are perfectly dead sure itās not, makes me enraged. Humility or resignation or whatever you choose to call it, is simply impotent inertia. Iām for a more militant religion!
We are getting the most dreadful lessons in philosophyāall of Schopenhauer for tomorrow. The professor doesnāt seem to realize that we are taking any other subject. Heās a queer old duck; he goes about with his head in the clouds and blinks dazedly when occasionally he strikes solid earth. He tries to lighten his lectures with an occasional witticismāand we do our best to smile, but I assure you his jokes are no laughing matter. He spends his entire time between classes in trying to figure out whether matter really exists or whether he only thinks it exists.
Iām sure my sewing girl hasnāt any doubt but that it exists!
Where do you think my new novel is? In the wastebasket. I can see myself that itās no good on earth, and when a loving author realizes that, what WOULD be the judgment of a critical public?
Later
I address you, Daddy, from a bed of pain. For two days Iāve been laid up with swollen tonsils; I can just swallow hot milk, and that is all. `What were your parents thinking of not to have those tonsils out when you were a baby?ā the doctor wished to know. Iām sure I havenāt an idea, but I doubt if they were thinking much about me. Yours, J. A.
Next morning
I just read this over before sealing it. I donāt know WHY I cast such a misty atmosphere over life. I hasten to assure you that I am young and happy and exuberant; and I trust you are the same. Youth has nothing to do with birthdays, only with ALIVEDNESS of spirit, so even if your hair is grey, Daddy, you can still be a boy. Affectionately, Judy
12th Jan. Dear Mr. Philanthropist,
Your cheque for my family came yesterday. Thank you so much! I cut gymnasium and took it down to them right after luncheon, and you should have seen the girlās face! She was so surprised and happy and relieved that she looked almost young; and sheās only twenty-four. Isnāt it pitiful?
Anyway, she feels now as though all the good things were coming together. She has steady work ahead for two monthsāsomeoneās getting married, and thereās a trousseau to make.
`Thank the good Lord!ā cried the mother, when she grasped the fact that that small piece of paper was one hundred dollars.
`It wasnāt the good Lord at all,ā said I, `it was Daddy-Long-Legs.ā (Mr. Smith, I called you.)
`But it was the good Lord who put it in his mind,ā said she.
`Not at all! I put it in his mind myself,ā said I.
But anyway, Daddy, I trust the good Lord will reward you suitably. You deserve ten thousand years out of purgatory. Yours most gratefully, Judy Abbott
15th Feb. May it please Your Most Excellent Majesty:
This morning I did eat my breakfast upon a cold turkey pie and a goose, and I did send for a cup of tee (a china drink) of which I had never drank before.
Donāt be nervous, DaddyāI havenāt lost my mind; Iām merely quoting Samāl Pepys. Weāre reading him in connection with English History, original sources. Sallie and Julia and I converse now in the language of 1660. Listen to this:
`I went to Charing Cross to see Major Harrison hanged, drawn and quartered: he looking as cheerful as any man could do in that condition.ā And this: `Dined with my lady who is in handsome mourning for her brother who died yesterday of spotted fever.ā
Seems a little early to commence entertaining, doesnāt it? A friend
Comments (0)