Sunday

The Christmas holidays begin next week and the trunks are up.  The corridors are so filled up that you can hardly get through, and everybody is so bubbling over with excitement that studying is getting left out.  I’m going to have a beautiful time in vacation; there’s another Freshman who lives in Texas staying behind, and we are planning to take long walks and if there’s any ice—­ learn to skate.  Then there is still the whole library to be read—­ and three empty weeks to do it in!

Goodbye, Daddy, I hope that you are feeling as happy as am. 
                               Yours ever,
                                           Judy

PS.  Don’t forget to answer my question.  If you don’t want the trouble of writing, have your secretary telegraph.  He can

just say: 
                          Mr. Smith is quite bald,

or

Mr. Smith is not bald,

or

Mr. Smith has white hair.

And you can deduct the twenty-five cents out of my allowance.

Goodbye till January—­and a merry Christmas!

Towards the end of
the Christmas vacation. 
Exact date unknown

Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

Is it snowing where you are?  All the world that I see from my tower is draped in white and the flakes are coming down as big as pop-corns.  It’s late afternoon—­the sun is just setting (a cold yellow colour) behind some colder violet hills, and I am up in my window seat using the last light to write to you.

Your five gold pieces were a surprise!  I’m not used to receiving Christmas presents.  You have already given me such lots of things—­ everything I have, you know—­that I don’t quite feel that I deserve extras.  But I like them just the same.  Do you want to know what I bought with my money?

I. A silver watch in a leather case to wear on my wrist and get me to recitations in time.

II.  Matthew Arnold’s poems.

III.  A hot water bottle.

IV.  A steamer rug. (My tower is cold.)

V. Five hundred sheets of yellow manuscript paper. (I’m going to commence being an author pretty soon.)

VI.  A dictionary of synonyms. (To enlarge the author’s vocabulary.)

VII. (I don’t much like to confess this last item, but I will.)
A pair of silk stockings.

And now, Daddy, never say I don’t tell all!

It was a very low motive, if you must know it, that prompted the silk stockings.  Julia Pendleton comes into my room to do geometry, and she sits cross-legged on the couch and wears silk stockings every night.  But just wait—­as soon as she gets back from vacation I shall go in and sit on her couch in my silk stockings.  You see, Daddy, the miserable creature that I am but at least I’m honest; and you knew already, from my asylum record, that I wasn’t perfect, didn’t you?