Oh, dear! There's the chapel bell, and after chapel I have a committee
meeting. I'm sorry because I meant to write you a very entertaining
letter this time.
Auf wiedersehen
Cher Daddy,
Pax tibi!
Judy
PS. There's one thing I'm perfectly sure of I'm not a Chinaman.
4th February
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
Jimmie McBride has sent me a Princeton banner as big as one end of the
room; I am very grateful to him for remembering me, but I don't know
what on earth to do with it. Sallie and Julia won't let me hang it up;
our room this year is furnished in red, and you can imagine what an
effect we'd have if I added orange and black. But it's such nice,
warm, thick felt, I hate to waste it. Would it be very improper to
have it made into a bath robe? My old one shrank when it was washed.
I've entirely omitted of late telling you what I am learning, but
though you might not imagine it from my letters, my time is exclusively
occupied with study. It's a very bewildering matter to get educated in
five branches at once.
'The test of true scholarship,' says Chemistry Professor, 'is a
painstaking passion for detail.'
'Be careful not to keep your eyes glued to detail,' says History
Professor. 'Stand far enough away to get a perspective of the whole.'
You can see with what nicety we have to trim our sails between
chemistry and history. I like the historical method best. If I say
that William the Conqueror came over in 1492, and Columbus discovered
America in 1100 or 1066 or whenever it was, that's a mere detail that
the Professor overlooks. It gives a feeling of security and
restfulness to the history recitation, that is entirely lacking in
chemistry.
Sixth-hour bell--I must go to the laboratory and look into a little
matter of acids and salts and alkalis. I've burned a hole as big as a
plate in the front of my chemistry apron, with hydrochloric acid. If
the theory worked, I ought to be able to neutralize that hole with good
strong ammonia, oughtn't I?
Examinations next week, but who's afraid?
Yours ever,
Judy
5th March
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
There is a March wind blowing, and the sky is filled with heavy, black
moving clouds. The crows in the pine trees are making such a clamour!
It's an intoxicating, exhilarating, CALLING noise. You want to close
your books and be off over the hills to race with the wind.
We had a paper chase last Saturday over five miles of squashy 'cross
country. The fox (composed of three girls and a bushel or so of
confetti) started half an hour before the twenty-seven hunters. I was
one of the twenty-seven; eight dropped by the wayside; we ended
nineteen. The trail led over a hill, through a cornfield, and into a
swamp where we had to leap lightly from hummock to hummock. of course
half of us went in ankle deep. We kept losing the trail, and we wasted
twenty-five minutes over that swamp. Then up a hill through some woods
and in at a barn window! The barn doors were all locked and the window
was up high and pretty small. I don't call that fair, do you?