That is a poem.  I don’t know who wrote it or what it means.  It was simply printed out on the blackboard when we arrived and we were ordered to comment upon it.  When I read the first verse I thought I had an idea—­The Mighty Merchant was a divinity who distributes blessings in return for virtuous deeds—­ but when I got to the second verse and found him twirling a button, it seemed a blasphemous supposition, and I hastily changed my mind.  The rest of the class was in the same predicament; and there we sat for three-quarters of an hour with blank paper and equally blank minds.  Getting an education is an awfully wearing process!

But this didn’t end the day.  There’s worse to come.

It rained so we couldn’t play golf, but had to go to gymnasium instead.  The girl next to me banged my elbow with an Indian club.  I got home to find that the box with my new blue spring dress had come, and the skirt was so tight that I couldn’t sit down.  Friday is sweeping day, and the maid had mixed all the papers on my desk.  We had tombstone for dessert (milk and gelatin flavoured with vanilla).  We were kept in chapel twenty minutes later than usual to listen to a speech about womanly women.  And then—­just as I was settling down with a sigh of well-earned relief to The Portrait of a Lady, a girl named Ackerly, a dough-faced, deadly, unintermittently stupid girl, who sits next to me in Latin because her name begins with A (I wish Mrs. Lippett had named me Zabriski), came to ask if Monday’s lesson commenced at paragraph 69 or 70, and stayed one hour.  She has just gone.

Did you ever hear of such a discouraging series of events?  It isn’t the big troubles in life that require character.  Anybody can rise to a crisis and face a crushing tragedy with courage, but to meet the petty hazards of the day with a laugh—­I really think that requires spirit.

It’s the kind of character that I am going to develop.  I am going to pretend that all life is just a game which I must play as skilfully and fairly as I can.  If I lose, I am going to shrug my shoulders and laugh—­also if I win.

Anyway, I am going to be a sport.  You will never hear me
complain again, Daddy dear, because Julia wears silk stockings
and centipedes drop off the wall. 
                               Yours ever,
                                           Judy

Answer soon.

27th May
Daddy-Long-Legs, Esq.

Dear sir:  I am in receipt of a letter from Mrs. Lippett. 
She hopes that I am doing well in deportment and studies. 
Since I probably have no place to go this summer, she will let me
come back to the asylum and work for my board until college opens.

I hate the John Grier home.

I’d rather die than go back. 
                   Yours most truthfully,
                                           Jerusha Abbott