Rls in the school were getting new clothes for Christmas
parties, and their Families were sending on invitations in great
numbers, to various festivaties that were to occur when they went home.
Nothing, however, had come for me, and I was worried. But on the
16th mother's visiting Secretary sent on four that I was to accept,
with tiped acceptances for me to copy and send. She also sent me
the good news that I was to have two party dresses, and I was to
send on my measurements for them.
One of the parties was a dinner and theater party, to be given by
Carter Brooks on New Year's Day. Carter Brooks is the well-known Yale
Center, although now no longer such but selling advertizing, etcetera.
It is tradgic to think that, after having so long anticapated that
party, I am now here in sackcloth and ashes, which is a figure of
speech for the Peter Thompson uniform of the school, with plain
white for evenings and no jewellry.
It was with anticapatory joy, therefore, that I sent the
acceptances and the desired measurements, and sat down to
cheerfully while away the time in studies and the various duties of
school life, until the Holadays.
However, I was not long to rest in piece, for in a few days I
received a letter from Carter Brooks, as follows:
DEAR BARBARA: It was sweet of you to write me so promptly, although
I confess to being rather astonished as well as delighted at being
called "Dearest." The signature too was charming, "Ever thine."
But, dear , won't you write at once and tell me why the waist,
bust and hip measurements? And the request to have them really low
in the neck?
Ever thine,
CARTER.
It will be perceived that I had sent him the letter to mother, by mistake.
I was very unhappy about it. It was not an auspisious way to begin
the Holadays, especially the low neck. Also I disliked very much
having told him my waist measure which is large owing to Basket Ball.
As I have stated before, I have known very few of the Other Sex,
but some of the girls had had more experience, and in the days
before we went home, we talked a great deal about things.
Especially Love. I felt that it was rather over-done, particularly
in fiction. Also I felt and observed at divers times that I would
never marry. It was my intention to go upon the stage, although
modafied since by what I am about to relate.
The other girls say that I look like Julia Marlowe.
Some of the girls had boys who wrote to them, and one of them--I
refrain from giving her name had--a Code. You read every third
word. He called her "Couzin" and he would write like this:
Dear Couzin: I am well. Am just about crazy this week to go home.
See notice enclosed you football game.
And so on and on. Only what it really said was "I am crazy to see you."
(In giving this Code I am betraying no secrets, as they have
quarreled and everything is now over between them.)
As I had nobody, at that time, and as I had visions of a Career, I
was a man-hater. I acknowledge that this was a pose. But after all,
what is life but a pose?
"Stupid things!" I always said. "Nothing in their heads but
football and tobacco smoke. Women," I said, "are only their
playthings. And when they do grow up and get a little intellagence
they use it in making money."
There has been a story in the school--I got it from one of the
little girls--that I was disapointed in love in early youth, the
object of my atachment having been the Tener in our Church choir at
home. I daresay I should have denied the soft impeachment, but I
did not. It was, although not appearing so at the time, my first
downward step on the path that leads to destruction.
"The way of the Transgresser is hard"--Bible.
I come now to the momentous day of my return to my dear home for
Christmas. Father and my sister Leila, who from now on I will term "Sis,"
met me at the station. Sis.