Friday

What do you think, Daddy? The English instructor said that my last
paper shows an unusual amount of originality. She did, truly.
Those were her words. It doesn't seem possible, does it,
considering the eighteen years of training that I've had? The aim
of the John Grier Home (as you doubtless know and heartily approve of)
is to turn the ninety-seven orphans into ninety-seven twins.

The unusual artistic ability which I exhibit was developed at an early
age through drawing chalk pictures of Mrs. Lippett on the woodshed door.

I hope that I don't hurt your feelings when I criticize the home
of my youth? But you have the upper hand, you know, for if I become
too impertinent, you can always stop payment of your cheques.
That isn't a very polite thing to say--but you can't expect me
to have any manners; a foundling asylum isn't a young ladies'
finishing school.

You know, Daddy, it isn't the work that is going to be hard in college.
It's the play. Half the time I don't know what the girls are
talking about; their jokes seem to relate to a past that every one
but me has shared. I'm a foreigner in the world and I don't understand
the language. It's a miserable feeling. I've had it all my life.
At the high school the girls would stand in groups and just look at me.
I was queer and different and everybody knew it. I could FEEL
`John Grier Home' written on my face. And then a few charitable
ones would make a point of coming up and saying something polite.
I HATED EVERY ONE OF THEM--the charitable ones most of all.

Nobody here knows that I was brought up in an asylum. I told
Sallie McBride that my mother and father were dead, and that a kind
old gentleman was sending me to college which is entirely true
so far as it goes. I don't want you to think I am a coward,
but I do want to be like the other girls, and that Dreadful Home
looming over my childhood is the one great big difference.
If I can turn my back on that and shut out the remembrance, I think,
I might be just as desirable as any other girl. I don't believe
there's any real, underneath difference, do you?

Anyway, Sallie McBride likes me!
Yours ever,
Judy Abbott
(Nee Jerusha.)