I smiled a little and said no, I thought I could pull through. At least homesickness is one disease that I ’ve escaped! I never heard of anybody being asylumsick, did you?
October 10th.
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
Did you ever hear of Michael Angelo?
He was a famous artist who lived in Italy in the Middle Ages. Everybody in English Literature seemed to know about him and the whole class laughed because I thought he was an archangel. He sounds like an archangel, does n’t he? The trouble with college is that you are expected to know such a lot of things you ’ve never learned. It ’s very embarrassing at times. But now, when the girls talk about things that I never heard of, I just keep still and look them up in the encyclopedia.
I made an awful mistake the first day. Somebody mentioned Maurice Maeterlinck, and I asked if she was a Freshman. That joke has gone all over college. But anyway, I ’m just as bright in class as any of the others—and brighter than some of them!
Do you care to know how I ’ve furnished my room? It ’s a symphony in brown and yellow. The wall was tinted buff, and I ’ve bought yellow denim curtains and cushions and a mahogany desk (second hand for three dollars) and a rattan chair and a brown rug with an ink spot in the middle. I stand the chair over the spot.
The windows are up high; you can’t look out from an ordinary seat. But I unscrewed the looking-glass from the back of the bureau, upholstered the top, and moved it up against the window. It ’s just the right height for a window seat. You pull out the drawers like steps and walk up. Very comfortable!
Sallie McBride helped me choose the things at the Senior auction. She has lived in a house all her life and knows about furnishing. You can’t imagine what fun it is to shop and pay with a real five-dollar bill and get some change—when you ’ve never had more than a nickel in your life. I assure you, Daddy dear, I do appreciate that allowance.
Sallie is the most entertaining person in the world—and Julia Rutledge Pendleton the least so. It ’s queer what a mixture the registrar can make in the matter of room-mates. Sallie thinks everything is funny—even flunking—and Julia is bored at everything. She never makes the slightest effort to be amiable. She believes that if you are a Pendleton, that fact alone admits you to heaven without any further examination. Julia and I were born to be enemies.