This is a very abstruse letter--does your head ache, Daddy? I think
we'll stop now and make some fudge. I'm sorry I can't send you a
piece; it will be unusually good, for we're going to make it with real
cream and three butter balls.
Yours affectionately,
Judy
PS. We're having fancy dancing in gymnasium class. You can see by the
accompanying picture how much we look like a real ballet. The one at
the end accomplishing a graceful pirouette is me--I mean I.
26th December
My Dear, Dear, Daddy,
Haven't you any sense? Don't you KNOW that you mustn't give one girl
seventeen Christmas presents? I'm a Socialist, please remember; do you
wish to turn me into a Plutocrat?
Think how embarrassing it would be if we should ever quarrel! I should
have to engage a moving-van to return your gifts.
I am sorry that the necktie I sent was so wobbly; I knit it with my own
hands (as you doubtless discovered from internal evidence). You will
have to wear it on cold days and keep your coat buttoned up tight.
Thank you, Daddy, a thousand times. I think you're the sweetest man
that ever lived--and the foolishest!
Judy
Here's a four-leaf clover from Camp McBride to bring you good luck for
the New Year.
9th January
Do you wish to do something, Daddy, that will ensure your eternal
salvation? There is a family here who are in awfully desperate
straits. A mother and father and four visible children--the two older
boys have disappeared into the world to make their fortune and have not
sent any of it back. The father worked in a glass factory and got
consumption--it's awfully unhealthy work--and now has been sent away to
a hospital. That took all their savings, and the support of the family
falls upon the oldest daughter, who is twenty-four. She dressmakes for
$1.50 a day (when she can get it) and embroiders centrepieces in the
evening. The mother isn't very strong and is extremely ineffectual and
pious. She sits with her hands folded, a picture of patient
resignation, while the daughter kills herself with overwork and
responsibility and worry; she doesn't see how they are going to get
through the rest of the winter--and I don't either. One hundred
dollars would buy some coal and some shoes for three children so that
they could go to school, and give a little margin so that she needn't
worry herself to death when a few days pass and she doesn't get work.
You are the richest man I know. Don't you suppose you could spare one
hundred dollars? That girl deserves help a lot more than I ever did.
I wouldn't ask it except for the girl; I don't care much what happens
to the mother--she is such a jelly-fish.