Daddy Long-Legs

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Grosset & Dunlap, 1912 - 254 pages
Judy Abbott is a lively, endearing young girl growing up in an orphanage. Her dreams of college seem in vain until the unknown benefactor offers to pay for her tuition. The only requirements are that she must write to him every month, and that she can never know who he is.
 

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Page 184 - The world is so full of a number of things I am sure we should all be as happy as kings; and Thurber's comment— 'we all know how happy kings are.
Page 74 - I asked no other thing, No other was denied. I offered Being for it; The mighty merchant smiled. Brazil? He twirled a button, Without a glance my way: "But, madam, is there nothing else That we can show to-day?
Page 265 - This morning come home my fine camlet cloak, with gold buttons, and a silk suit, which cost me much money, and I pray God to make me able to pay for it.
Page 45 - I didn't know that RLS stood for Robert Louis Stevenson or that George Eliot was a lady. I had never seen a picture of the "Mona Lisa" and (it's true but you won't believe it) I had never heard of Sherlock Holmes. Now, I know all of these things and a lot of others besides, but you can see how much I need to catch up. And oh, but it's fun! I look forward all day to evening, and then I put an "engaged...
Page 35 - ... 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...
Page 237 - ... Anyway, he insisted on my going to Europe. He said that it was a necessary part of my education and that I mustn't think of refusing. Also, that he would be in Paris at the same time, and that we would run away from the chaperon occasionally and have dinner together at nice, funny, foreign restaurants. Well, Daddy, it did appeal to me! I almost weakened; if he hadn't been so dictatorial, maybe I should have entirely weakened. I can be enticed step by step, but I won't be forced.
Page 26 - I'm due at the athletic field in gymnasium clothes. Don't you hope I'll make the team? Yours always, Jerusha Abbott PS. (9 o'clock) Sallie McBride just poked her head in at my door. This is what she said: "I'm so homesick that I simply can't stand it. Do you feel that way?
Page 27 - Dear Daddy-Long-Legs, Did you ever hear of Michael Angelo? He was a famous artist who lived in Italy in the Middle Ages. Everybody in English Literature seemed to know about him and the whole class laughed because I thought he was an archangel. He sounds like an archangel, doesn't he? The trouble with college is that you are expected to know such a lot of things you've never learned. It's very embarrassing at times. But now, when the girls talk about things that I never heard of, I just keep still...
Page 20 - I have been thinking about you a great deal this summer; having somebody take an interest in me after all these years, makes me feel as though I had found a sort of family. It seems as though I belonged to somebody now, and it's a very comfortable sensation.
Page 289 - ... start of me. In other ways, though, he's just an overgrown boy, and he does need looking after — he hasn't any sense about wearing rubbers when it rains. He and I always think the same things are funny, and that is such a lot; it's dreadful when two people's senses of humor are antagonistic. I don't believe there's any bridging that gulf! And he is — Oh, well! He is just himself, and I miss him, and miss him, and miss him. The whole world seems empty and aching. I hate the moonlight because...

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