iting, have your secretary telegraph. He can just say:

Mr. Smith is quite bald,

or

Mr. Smith is not bald,

or

Mr. Smith has white hair.

And you can deduct the twenty-five cents out of my allowance.

Goodbye till January--and a merry Christmas!

Towards the end of
the Christmas vacation.
Exact date unknown

Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

Is it snowing where you are? All the world that I see from my tower is
draped in white and the flakes are coming down as big as pop-corns.
It's late afternoon--the sun is just setting (a cold yellow colour)
behind some colder violet hills, and I am up in my window seat using
the last light to write to you.

Your five gold pieces were a surprise! I'm not used to receiving
Christmas presents. You have already given me such lots of
things--everything I have, you know--that I don't quite feel that I
deserve extras. But I like them just the same. Do you want to know
what I bought with my money?

I. A silver watch in a leather case to wear on my wrist and get me to
recitations in time.

II. Matthew Arnold's poems.

III. A hot water bottle.

IV. A steamer rug. (My tower is cold.)

V. Five hundred sheets of yellow manuscript paper. (I'm going to
commence being an author pretty soon.)

VI. A dictionary of synonyms. (To enlarge the author's vocabulary.)

VII. (I don't much like to confess this last item, but I will.) A pair
of silk stockings.

And now, Daddy, never say I don't tell all!

It was a very low motive, if you must know it, that prompted the silk
stockings. Julia Pendleton comes into my room to do geometry, and she
sits cross-legged on the couch and wears silk stockings every night.
But just wait--as soon as she gets back from vacation I shall go in and
sit on her couch in my silk stockings. You see, Daddy, the miserable
creature that I am but at least I'm honest; and you knew already, from
my asylum record, that I wasn't perfect, didn't you?

To recapitulate (that's the way the English instructor begins every
other sentence), I am very much obliged for my seven presents. I'm
pretending to myself that they came in a box from my family in
California. The watch is from father, t