"I've been to the opera-house, but it wasn't an opera, it was a
play. That house--I wish you could see it!--the inside, I mean,
for outside it looks like it needs washing. The chairs--well, if
you sent that stool of ours to a university you couldn't train it
up to look anything like those opera-chairs. And the dresses--the
diamonds.... Everything was perfectly lovely except what we had
come to see, and my party thought it was too funny for anything;
but it wasn't funny to me. The story they acted was all about a
young couple fooling their parents and getting married without
father and mother knowing, and a baby brought in at the last that
nobody would claim though it was said to be somebody's that
shouldn't have had one--the audience just screamed with laughter
over that; I thought they never would quiet down. Out in The big
world, babies and old fathers and mothers seem to be jokes. The
star of the evening was a married actress with 'Miss' before her
name. You could hear every word she spoke, but the others didn't
seem to try to make themselves plain--I guess that's why they aren't
stars, too.

"I've lived more during the last week than I had the previous
fifty-one. We must have been to everything there is, except a
church. Yesterday was Sunday, and I asked Mrs. Sellimer about it,
but she said people didn't go to church any more.

"Maybe you wonder why I don't tell you about our crowd, but I guess
it's because I feel as if they didn't matter. I wouldn't say that
to anybody in the world but to you, Brick and Bill, and if I hadn't
promised to write you every single thing, I wouldn't even tell you,
because they are so good to me. It sounds untrue to them, doesn't
it? But you won't tell anybody, because you've nobody to tell! And