To recapitulate (that’s the way the English instructor begins every other sentence), I am very much obliged for my seven presents.  I’m pretending to myself that they came in a box from my family in California.  The watch is from father, the rug from mother, the hot water bottle from grandmother who is always worrying for fear I shall catch cold in this climate—­and the yellow paper from my little brother Harry.  My sister Isabel gave me the silk stockings, and Aunt Susan the Matthew Arnold poems; Uncle Harry (little Harry is named after him) gave me the dictionary.  He wanted to send chocolates, but I insisted on synonyms.

You don’t object, do you, to playing the part of a composite family?

And now, shall I tell you about my vacation, or are you only interested in my education as such?  I hope you appreciate the delicate shade of meaning in `as such’.  It is the latest addition to my vocabulary.

The girl from Texas is named Leonora Fenton. (Almost as funny as Jerusha, isn’t it?) I like her, but not so much as Sallie McBride; I shall never like any one so much as Sallie—­except you.  I must always like you the best of all, because you’re my whole family rolled into one.  Leonora and I and two Sophomores have walked ’cross country every pleasant day and explored the whole neighbourhood, dressed in short skirts and knit jackets and caps, and carrying shiny sticks to whack things with.  Once we walked into town—­four miles—­ and stopped at a restaurant where the college girls go for dinner.  Broiled lobster (35 cents), and for dessert, buckwheat cakes and maple syrup (15 cents).  Nourishing and cheap.

It was such a lark!  Especially for me, because it was so awfully different from the asylum—­I feel like an escaped convict every time I leave the campus.  Before I thought, I started to tell the others what an experience I was having.  The cat was almost out of the bag when I grabbed it by its tail and pulled it back.  It’s awfully hard for me not to tell everything I know.  I’m a very confiding soul by nature; if I didn’t have you to tell things to, I’d burst.

We had a molasses candy pull last Friday evening, given by the house matron of Fergussen to the left-behinds in the other halls.  There were twenty-two of us altogether, Freshmen and Sophomores and juniors and Seniors all united in amicable accord.  The kitchen is huge, with copper pots and kettles hanging in rows on the stone wall—­ the littlest casserole among them about the size of a wash boiler.  Four hundred girls live in Fergussen.  The chef, in a white cap and apron, fetched out twenty-two other white caps and aprons—­ I can’t imagine where he got so many—­and we all turned ourselves into cooks.

It was great fun, though I have seen better candy.  When it was finally finished, and ourselves and the kitchen and the door-knobs all thoroughly sticky, we organized a procession and still in our caps and aprons, each carrying a big fork or spoon or frying pan, we marched through the empty corridors to the officers’ parlour, where half-a-dozen professors and instructors were passing a tranquil evening.  We serenaded them with college songs and offered refreshments.  They accepted politely but dubiously.  We left them sucking chunks of molasses candy, sticky and speechless.