Dear Mr. Philanthropist,

Your cheque for my family came yesterday. Thank you so much!
I cut gymnasium and took it down to them right after luncheon,
and you should have seen the girl\'s face! She was so surprised
and happy and relieved that she looked almost young; and she\'s only
twenty-four. Isn\'t it pitiful?

Anyway, she feels now as though all the good things were coming together.
She has steady work ahead for two months--someone\'s getting married,
and there\'s a trousseau to make.

`Thank the good Lord!\' cried the mother, when she grasped the fact
that that small piece of paper was one hundred dollars.

`It wasn\'t the good Lord at all,\' said I, `it was Daddy-Long-Legs.\'
(Mr. Smith, I called you.)

`But it was the good Lord who put it in his mind,\' said she.

`Not at all! I put it in his mind myself,\' said I.

But anyway, Daddy, I trust the good Lord will reward you suitably.
You deserve ten thousand years out of purgatory.
Yours most gratefully,
Judy Abbott


15th Feb.
May it please Your Most Excellent Majesty:

This morning I did eat my breakfast upon a cold turkey pie
and a goose, and I did send for a cup of tee (a china drink)
of which I had never drank before.

Don\'t be nervous, Daddy--I haven\'t lost my mind; I\'m merely quoting
Sam\'l Pepys. We\'re reading him in connection with English History,
original sources. Sallie and Julia and I converse now in the language
of 1660. Listen to this:

`I went to Charing Cross to see Major Harrison hanged,
drawn and quartered: he looking as cheerful as any man could
do in that condition.\' And this: `Dined with my lady who is
in handsome mourning for her brother who died yesterday of spotted fever.\'

Seems a little early to commence entertaining, doesn\'t it? A friend
of Pepys devised a very cunning manner whereby the king might pay
his debts out of the sale to poor people of old decayed provisions.
What do you, a reformer, think of that? I don\'t believe we\'re so bad
today as the newspapers make out.

Samuel ............