I'm sorry now for all my past badnesses.
I'm sorry I was ever impertinent to Mrs. Lippett.
I'm sorry I ever slapped Freddie Perkins.
I'm sorry I ever filled the sugar bowl with salt.
I'm sorry I ever made faces behind the Trustees' backs.
I'm going to be good and sweet and kind to everybody because I'm so
happy. And this summer I'm going to write and write and write and
begin to be a great author. Isn't that an exalted stand to take? Oh,
I'm developing a beautiful character! It droops a bit under cold and
frost, but it does grow fast when the sun shines.
That's the way with everybody. I don't agree with the theory that
adversity and sorrow and disappointment develop moral strength. The
happy people are the ones who are bubbling over with kindliness. I
have no faith in misanthropes. (Fine word! Just learned it.) You are
not a misanthrope are you, Daddy?
I started to tell you about the campus. I wish you'd come for a little
visit and let me walk you about and say:
'That is the library. This is the gas plant, Daddy dear. The Gothic
building on your left is the gymnasium, and the Tudor Romanesque beside
it is the new infirmary.' Oh, I'm fine at showing people about. I've done it all my life at the
asylum, and I've been doing it all day here. I have honestly.
And a Man, too!
That's a great experience. I never talked to a man before (except
occasional Trustees, and they don't count). Pardon, Daddy, I don't mean
to hurt your feelings when I abuse Trustees. I don't consider that you
really belong among them. You just tumbled on to the Board by chance.
The Trustee, as such, is fat and pompous and benevolent. He pats one
on the head and wears a gold watch chain.
That looks like a June bug, but is meant to be a portrait of any
Trustee except you.
However--to resume: I have been walking and talking and having tea with a man. And with a
very superior man--with Mr. Jervis Pendleton of the House of Julia; her
uncle, in short (in long, perhaps I ought to say; he's as tall as you.)
Being in town on business, he decided to run out to the college and
call on his niece. He's her father's youngest brother, but she doesn't
know him very intimately. It seems he glanced at her when she was a
baby, decided he didn't like her, and has never noticed her since.
Anyway, there he was, sitting in the reception room very proper with
his hat and stick and gloves beside him; and Julia and Sallie with
seventh-hour recitations that they couldn't cut. So Julia dashed into
my room and begged me to walk him about the campus and then deliver him
to her when the seventh hour was over. I said I would, obligingly but
unenthusiastically, because I don't care much for Pendletons.