Daddy-Long-Legs: List 4

But he says that once she was thin and wiry and spry and could run faster than he.

The lower slopes are covered with woods, but the top is just piled rocks and open moor.

I can walk over everybody's land, and look at everybody's view, and dabble in everybody's brook; and enjoy it just as much as though I owned the land—and with no taxes to pay!

Our conversation these past two days has been nautical and piratical.

Will you kindly convey to me a comprehensible reason why I should not accept that scholarship?

I never knew a man so obstinate, and stubborn and unreasonable, and tenacious, and bull-doggish, and unable-to-see-other-people's-point-of-view, as you.

I never knew a man so obstinate, and stubborn and unreasonable, and tenacious, and bull-doggish, and unable-to-see-other-people's-point-of-view, as you.

Now, you see, if you had been a sane, sensible person and had written nice, cheering fatherly letters to your little Judy, and had come occasionally and patted her on the head, and had said you were glad she was such a good girl—Then, perhaps, she wouldn't have flouted you in your old age, but would have obeyed your slightest wish like the dutiful daughter she was meant to be.

That is my ultimatum!

I'm rather awed at the prospect of meeting Pendletons EN MASSE, and also I'd have to get a lot of new clothes—so, Daddy dear, if you write that you would prefer having me remain quietly at college, I will bow to your wishes with my usual sweet docility.

This is an awfully wasteful country to throw away such an honest, educated, conscientious, intelligent citizen as I would be.

I invited Jimmie McBride, and Sallie invited his room-mate at Princeton, who visited them last summer at their camp—an awfully nice man with red hair—and Julia invited a man from New York, not very exciting, but socially irreproachable.

He said he was bashful about dancing with girls he didn't know!

Some of them were awfully perturbed at first at the prospect of facing one thousand girls; but they got acclimated very quickly.

Probably I am one by rights; I belong to the proletariat.

My mind is a confused jumble of onyx and gilding and mosaic floors and palms.

I'm still pretty breathless but I am glad to get back to college and my books—I believe that I really am a student; this atmosphere of academic calm I find more bracing than New York.

College is a very satisfying sort of life; the books and study and regular classes keep you alive mentally, and then when your mind gets tired, you have the gymnasium and outdoor athletics, and always plenty of congenial friends who are thinking about the same things you are.

We do appreciate our own witticisms!

President Cuyler made a speech this evening about the modern generation being flippant and superficial.

President Cuyler made a speech this evening about the modern generation being flippant and superficial.

He says that we are losing the old ideals of earnest endeavour and true scholarship; and particularly is this falling-off noticeable in our disrespectful attitude towards organized authority.

We no longer pay a seemly deference to our superiors.

We no longer pay a seemly deference to our superiors.

Ought I to treat you with more dignity and aloofness?—Yes, I'm sure I ought. I'll begin again.

I am leaving chemistry—having completed the course in qualitative analysis—and am entering upon the study of biology.

A proctor system has been devised, and failure to comply with the rules causes a great deal of inconvenience.

The college is very much opposed, both from aesthetic and hygienic motives, to the use of aniline dyes.

The weather of late has been ideal—bright sunshine and clouds interspersed with a few welcome snow-storms.

Master Jervie dropped in again last Friday—but he chose a most unpropitious time, for Sallie and Julia and I were just running to catch a train.

It would be a beautiful system if one had perfect confidence in the probity of one's instructor.

I have been receiving beautiful long letters this winter from Master Jervie (with typewritten envelopes so Julia won't recognize the writing). Did you ever hear anything so shocking? And every week or so a very scrawly epistle, usually on yellow tablet paper, arrives from Princeton.

I am writing (figurez vous!) a paper on the Care of Dependent Children. The Professor shuffled up his subjects and dealt them out promiscuously, and that fell to me.

Very busy time—commencement in ten days, examinations tomorrow; lots of studying, lots of packing, and the outdoor world so lovely that it hurts you to stay inside.

Doesn't that impress you as a perfectly exorbitant amount?