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 h............