Daddy-Long-Legs
by Jean Webster
First published 1912 · 196 pages · about 3 hours to read
Read free on Project Gutenberg · Find in a library
About this book
From poor lonely orphan to sophisticated young woman — Jerusha Abbott can hardly believe her good fortune.
All her life Jerusha has lived at the drearyJohn Grier Home for orphans. Now that she's seventeen, her time there is up and her prospects for the future are dim. But suddenly an anonymous benefactor sends her to a posh northerstern college for women. All Jerusha must do in return is write to the man she nicknames Daddy-Long-Legs and tell him of her progress.
And what progress there is! Jerusha — now Judy because she has always hated her name — reads everything from Mother Goose to Plato, joins the basketball team, buys her first pair of stockings, writes a novel, wins a scholarship, lives with two roomates who couldn't be more different; and, for the first time in her life, falls in love.
Quotes
“The first Wednesday in every month was a Perfectly Awful Day--a day to be awaited with dread, endured with courage and forgotten with haste.”
“At least homesickness is one disease that I've escaped! I never heard of anybody being asylum-sick, did you?”
“Anybody can rise to a crisis and face a crushing tragedy with courage, but to meet the petty hazards of the day with a laugh--I really think that requires SPIRIT.”
“If I had been Daddy, and you had been Judy, I should have said, 'Bless you my child, run along and have a good time; see lots of new people and learn lots of new things; live out of doors, and get strong and well and rested for a year of hard work.'”
“Don't you think it would be interesting if you really could read the story of your life--written perfectly truthfully by an omniscient author?”
Passages chosen with AI from the book's public-domain text on Project Gutenberg.
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