Chapter V: Some Letters

From Virginia Tucker to Mr. Jeffry Tucker.

Gresham, Oct. 15, 19--

Dearest Zebedee:

It gets worse and worse--We've had a whole month
of it now and my demerits are much more numerous
than my merits. I see no way of getting out of the
hole I am in. Everything I do or don't do means
just another black mark for me. Now who can help
sneezing when a sneeze is crying out to be
sneezed? And who can help making a face when a
sneeze is imminent? Not a Tucker! You know
yourself what a terrific noise you make when you
sneeze and how you jump up and crack your heels
together just as you explode. If you were in
church and a sneeze came you could not contain
yourself within yourself without the risk of
breaking yourself up into infinitesimal bits. I
inherit my sneeze as directly from my paternal
parent as I do my chin and my so-called
stubbornness (we call it character, don't we,
Zebedeedlums?). I do think it is hard to be kept
in bounds a week for an inherited weakness--or
shall we say strength? Our Tucker sneeze certainly
should not be put down as a weakness.

Another thing about this new principal is that she
can't tell me from Dee or Dee from me. She seems
to think both of us are me, lately, although at
first she thought both of us were Dee. I kicked
over the first condition, but Heaven knows the
last is much more trying, as I get all of Dee's
demerits; not that Dee does not behave like a
perfect gentleman and insist on her share of blame
and even more than her share. There is no use in
arguing with Miss Plympton. She won't believe you
if you say you didn't do a thing, and she won't
believe you when you say you did. She just sits
there and marks in her book and has the expression
of:

"The Moving Finger writes; and having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line
Nor all your tears wash out a Word of it."

The other day I sneezed, in fact I out-sneezed all
the dead and gone Tuckers. I couldn't help it. I
don't like to sew on hooks any more than Miss
Plympton herself would and that sneeze popped off
two. She looked up from the chronological page of
dates she had been hammering into us and said
sternly: "Caro-ginia Tucker, that unseemly noise
must stop." "Yessum!" I gasped, holding my nose
about as Dee does Brindle when he tries to get
away from her to eat some little dog up. I held on
with all my might, but every one knows that
sneezes never come singly. The other one is as
sure to come out as murder. When the next one
came, it was worse than the first because of my
efforts to hold it in, just as it makes more noise
to shoot down a well than to shoot up in the air.
(Don't you think my language sounds rather
Homeric? I do.) Well, when the second report
sounded, Miss Plympton put down her pencil and sat
looking at me. She said nothing, but kept on
making chins. As fast as she made one, another one
disappeared, but nothing daunted, she just made
another. I kept thinking: "I wish every time she
made a chin something would go bang! and then
maybe she would sympathize with me. I certainly
can't help making sneezes any more than she can
making chins." What do you think happened at this
psychological moment? Why, Dee sneezed! As a rule,
Dee is not quite so eruptive as you and I are; in
fact, sometimes she irritates me by giving cat
sneezes, but this time, whew! The Great Sneezeeks
himself would have envied her. And do you know
what that old stick-in-the-mud did? She looked
square at me and said: "Viroline, ten demerits, a
page of dictionary and two hymns." That isn't as
bad as it sounds, as I know so many hymns I can
get one up in no time, and I got even with her by
saying the page of the dictionary beginning with
chin. It goes Chin, China, Chinaman, Chincapin,
Chinch, Chinchilla, Chin-cough, Chine, Chinese,
Chink, etc. I took especial pains to accent the
first syllable too. Of course Dee stood up and
clamored to be heard and to claim the sneeze. It
was certainly one to be proud of. Miss Plympton
changed her expression from the Moving Finger to

"That inverted Bowl they call the Sky,
Whereunder crawling cooped we live and die,
Lift not your hands to _It_ for help--for It
As impotently moves as you or I."

You know yourself, Zebedee, how hard it is to keep
in the straight and narrow path when you are
blamed whether you are there or not. I feel that I
might as well be "killed for an old sheep as a
lamb," so I do get into lots of scrapes. The
school is not the same with Miss Peyton ill and
Miss Cox married. Dee and Page and I are real blue
sometimes, but not all the time. We do have lots
of fun breaking rules and keeping the eleventh
commandment. Now don't get preachy! You would
stand Miss Plympton just about one minute and then
you would pack your doll rags and go home.

We like the new teacher in English a lot. She is
much more interesting than last year's and seems
to have some outlook. Miss Ball is her name.

Zebedee, since Miss Plympton seems to have such a
feeling against me, don't you think it would be
well for me to stop history and take up china
painting? I don't think much of the art course
here, but it would be real fun to do china
painting and I could paint you a cup and saucer to
drink your coffee out of when we get to
housekeeping. I am crazy to do some modelling and
think another year you better let me go to New
York and study at the art school. Dee and Page
think so, too, and they want to specialize in
something.

We are nearly dead to see you. What say you to
coming up here for Thanksgiving? You would miss
the football game in Richmond, but we are
certainly honing for you, honey. Dee will write
soon. Page is just the same. She cheers us up a
lot. She is awfully game--there is no prank going
that she stays out of, but she kind of holds us
down if our idea of a good time is too wild.
Thanks for the little 'phone. It works splendidly.

Good by,

Your own
DUMDEEDLEDUMS.

From Page Allison to Dr. James Allison.

Gresham,
October 15, 19--

My dearest Father:

We are having the most interesting course in
English and I feel that I am really going to learn
a whole lot about writing. I am glad I have read
all my life, but I find that I have not half taken
in what I have read. Miss Ball is teaching me to
analyze the things I like best. She reads
beautifully and gets meaning out of poetry without
ruining the metre. She doesn't elocute (I hate
that) but she has a full rich voice and her
reading is just like music. She has us write a
daily theme, any kind of snap-shot that suits us
to write about--something we have seen or might
have seen. It is awful funny what different things
we choose. Dum always has descriptions of sunsets
and moonrises and figures against the sky--how
things look, in fact. Dee is great on animal
stories, sick kittens and kindly beasts and abused
horses and lame ducks. Mary usually gets a comic
twist to her stories and has people falling off
ladders and upsetting the ink and sitting down in
the glue, etc. Annie is rather sentimental and
wishy-washy in her compositions, willowy maidens
in the moonlight with garlands of flowers. She is
fond of using such expressions as: "Hark! From out
the stillness," and "A dark and lonesome tarn."
She is rather Laura Jean Libbyish I think. As for
me, I always want to write about people, no
difference what kind of people, old or young,
black or white, rich or poor,--just so they are
people. I made a real good little sketch of
Christmas morning at Bracken. I described our
going out with the colt and leaving Christmas
cheer at the cabins, making an especial feature of
Aunt Keziah, the "Tender." Miss Ball liked that a
lot and wants me to do some more of our
neighbours. I am dying to do Sally Winn, but
somehow I am afraid she might know about it some
day and it would hurt her feelings so. I think her
character would be a very interesting one to write
about. I may use her and put her in such a
different environment that she would not know
herself in broad day-light. Miss Ball is very
complimentary about my efforts and I feel so
encouraged. She is not a bit of a purist and
thinks more of a good thought forcefully put than
of a slip in the way of a split infinitive.

We are having a right strenuous time getting out
of scrapes. I have never been so unruly in my
life, but somehow our new principal makes you want
to break rules. I believe it is because she
doesn't trust girls, and the consequence is we all
of us feel like giving her something to cry about
since she is going to raise a rumpus whether we do
or don't. She is a mighty poor judge of human
nature if she thinks any of our quintette could
lie; but she doesn't believe us on oath. We argue
that if she thinks we do things when we don't, we
might just as well do them, since they are, after
all, not really wicked things. There is nothing
very bad about creeping out of your warm bed at
midnight and flying down a cold hall to a class
room, where you will meet other girls just out of
their warm beds and when there you will, through
smothered giggles, eat burnt fudge made on a fire
surreptitiously kindled behind the barn, when you
were supposed to be piously engaged in darning
stockings in the mending class. I don't know just
what the fun is, but it certainly is fun. The best
fun is scaring the night watchman, who is an
Irishman and horribly superstitious. He is afraid
of ghosts and when he spies a flitting white
figure down the end of a long corridor while he is
making his rounds, he jumps to the conclusion it
is a "hant" and not a naughty pupil. He never
reports it to the principal, but adds it to his
already interminable list of ghost stories. He
makes his rounds as noisily as possible, so if
anything is there it will hear him and depart. He
is a little fat man with a military carriage, just
as pompous in the back as the front. He has been
told he looks like Napoleon, so he always wears
very tight trousers and a long cape which he
throws over one shoulder. One night I peeped out
the window and saw him marching up and down in
front of the building in the bright moonlight. The
heavy cane he always carries he was holding like a
musket and the poor little conceited thing
actually had his hat on sideways, which gave him
very much the look of the Emperor keeping guard
for the sleeping sentry. I gave three taps on the
wall, although it was the middle of the night, and
got Mary Flannagan to the 'phone and told her to
poke her head out of the window and go like a
screech owl. You remember I told you how fine Mary
was as an impersonator. Of course, Mary did as she
was bid and poor Napoleon ran like a rabbit. It
was kind of mean of me, but it was awfully funny.

We are planning a party for Hallowe'en. Tell Mammy
Susan to try to get me a box of goodies here in
time for it. Don't send it to the school, but wait
until I tell you where you can send it. They open
everything and dig out all the contraband, and
since everything is contraband but crackers and
simple candy, they usually dig out everything of
importance.

I miss you and Mammy Susan mighty bad. Please give
the dogs an extra pat for me and tell them not to
forget me.

Your devoted daughter,
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