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a very sneezy cold?
    Sunday.
    I forgot to mail this yesterday so I will add an indignant postscript. We had a bishop this morning, and what do you think he said?
    â€œThe most beneficent promise made us in the Bible is this, ‘The poor ye have always with you.’ They were put here in order to keep us charitable.”
    The poor, please observe, being a sort of useful domestic animal. If I hadn’t grown into such a perfect lady, I should have gone up after service and told him what I thought.
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    October 25th.
    Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
    I’ve made the basket-ball team and you ought to see the bruise on my left shoulder. It’s blue and mahogany with little streaks of orange. Julia Pendleton tried for the team, but she didn’t make it. Hooray!
    You see what a mean disposition I have.
    College gets nicer and nicer. I like the girls and the teachers and the classes and the campus and the things to eat. We have ice-cream twice a week and we never have corn-meal mush.
    You only wanted to hear from me once a month, didn’t you? And I’ve been peppering you with letters every few days! But I’ve been so excited about all these new adventures that I must talk to somebody; and you’re the only one I know. Please excuse my exuberance; I’ll settle pretty soon. If my letters bore you, you can always toss them into the waste-basket. I promise not to write another till the middle of November.
    Yours most loquaciously,
    JUDY ABBOTT.

    November 15th.
    Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
    Listen to what I’ve learned to-day:
    The area of the convex surface of the frustum of a regular pyramid is half the product of the sum of the perimeters of its bases by the altitude of either of its trapezoids.
    It doesn’t sound true, but it is—I can prove it!
    You’ve never heard about my clothes, have you, Daddy? Six dresses, all new and beautiful and bought for me—not handed down from somebody bigger. Perhaps you don’t realize what a climax that marks in the career of an orphan? You gave them to me, and I am very, very, very much obliged. It’s a fine thing to be educated—but nothing compared to the dizzying experience of owning six new dresses. Miss Pritchard who is on the visiting committee picked them out—not Mrs. Lippett, thank goodness. I have an evening dress, pink mull over silk (I’m perfectly beautiful in that), and a blue church dress, and a dinner dress of red veiling with Oriental trimming (makes me look like a Gipsy) and another of rose-colored challis, and a gray street suit, and an every-day dress for classes. That wouldn’t be an awfully big wardrobe for Julia Rutledge Pendleton, perhaps, but for Jerusha Abbott—Oh, my!
    I suppose you’re thinking now what a frivolous, shallow, little beast she is, and what a waste of money to educate a girl?
    But Daddy, if you’d been dressed in check ginghams all your life, you’d appreciate how I feel. And when I started to the high school, I entered upon another period even worse than the checked ginghams.
    The poor box.
    You can’t know how I dreaded appearing in school in those miserable poor-box dresses. I was perfectly sure to be put down in class next to the girl who first owned my dress, and she would whisper and giggle and point it out to the others. The bitterness of wearing your enemies’ cast-off clothes eats into your soul. If I wore silk stockings for the rest of my life, I don’t believe I could obliterate the scar.
    LATEST WAR BULLETIN!
News from the Scene of Action.
    At the fourth watch on Thursday the 13th of November, Hannibal routed the advance guard of the Romans and led the Carthaginian forces over the mountains into the plains of Casilinum. A cohort of light armed Numidians engaged the infantry of Quintus Fabius Maximus. Two battles and light skirmishing. Romans repulsed with heavy losses.
    I have the honor of being,
    Your special correspondent from the front
    J.