GIOVANNA AS THE WRONG PRINCESS

Adorablest Mother,

My times in this school get better and better and now my tiptopest joy of all is that I am to act in a real play. The Principal divided us girls into program groops and my Dolly chum is writing O a gorjous drama just out of her own thinks for our groop to give next month.

First Dolly read a book from the library how to make plays, but that book only gave her much discurage and her head to ache therefore she decided younity and atmosphear are too much style for a school play and not to have them in hers. So she writes it absolootly by inspuration same as poetry only worse for long and often which is terrible. That inspuration falls on her in the middle of nights and just in front of dessert and once when climbing the trapeeze so she lost her hold, but on the floor stayed her play notebook and when the gym teacher came running to see how bad she was hurt, there she lay to scribble, scribble like crazy and never knew her bumps until they turned their bumpy color. O Mother, how wonderful is genius!

The Age of Dolly’s play is Middle because then all persons wore costumes instead of clothes and were romantic every minute. Dolly adores romance which it is her grief and woe to be now so scarce and most extinkt. The Principal likes that time because petticoats were good form for gentlemen, so the King girl can be real modish in a red kimono trimmed by bands of cotton decorated with ink blots, and the other mail characters will keep on their long cloaks so their gym suits won’t show.

Dolly can’t dyvulge the plot yet because the characters are so opstreperus that whatever she writes them to do they fuss back at her to fix it all different. She says that’s because, being the children of her brains, they must take after her in temperment. But we girls coaxed and teased her most crazy till she consented to give us just an introduckshun no more to those desperit tempermental characters.

Dolly will act the Right Princess as the playwrite must ever be leading lady or no fair, and I am the Wrong Princess which is the next best part for being her chum. The rest are the King, Queen, Noble, Prince of the Long Feather, Cruel Jailer, Wicked Witch, and four Hop-livelys who must be sometimes pezzents (which means not birds but the poor and humble obliged to dust with their aprons the chairs of nobility) sometimes kitchen sculpins and sometimes pop-up ghosts.

Dolly says the Wrong Princess gets taken for the real kind at first but by and by she is expozed and found out to be nothing but a half orphan of the Wicked Witch. Already I love my part because to be any princess whatsoever will be magnificent like I never dreamed. I try hard with my manners, Mother, I do indeed, but they are not the teeniest bit enough good for even the wrong kind of princess. I must just watch them now like cats and mice not to put shame on you by the rudeness of my princess ways. But the half orphan piece of my part I guess I will understand to act as some girl of two parents might not.

I knew a little girl in another dormitory of our asylum who was fairy once at a genuine theater and she told how in a play you are always fine and wonderful like makebelieve come true only she always wished it wouldn’t be over so dreadful quick.

O Mother, I go upstairs and downstairs in all the rooms of this school so happy to think on my character in Dolly’s drama that scarcely can my feet walk and not skippity skippity as would be no proper princess manners. I love Dolly more than I ever did, which was lots already, to see her write in her play notebook those good grand words for me to speak. It is diffycult not to feel haughty when I think that a backward like me has genius for her chum.

Your joyful-up-to-the-sky Wrong Princess.

O Mother Dear and Only Comfort,

I most wish I was an old old lady dead in my peaceful grave so Dolly would get repentants on herself for her perfiddy and she calls perfiddy on me the same when I perfidded nothing and she all. Now we are no more chums and never can be in our long lives.

Dolly had promised, when the play was finished up, to read it first to me like a secret, so last night after supper I ran with her very happy to our room, and O dear! O dear! how I wish that inspuration had never dropped on her. When she began to read we were the lovingest friends and when she stopped we were the hatingest enemies.

The play makes its start with the King and Queen discovered on top of their thrones talking about their believed-to-be child, the Wrong Princess—how vile and evil is her dishpishum and how dark her looks—just like me. Her name is Zeerooty as any girl so wicked must have her name spelled with Z to hiss like the snakes in her black heart.

The King says “Adzooks! cheer up, Mrs. Queen. This is the day the Noble Prince of the Long Feather comes to be her sooter. He will marry her away from us and good riddants to our Zeerooty.” The Queen has scares the Noble Prince won’t like the blackness and tempers of Zeerooty and says weddings in the dark are real stylish among her set, but the king only zooks some more.

Dolly must read hard and fast to finish before the electric light would go off, so she never looked at me to know the feelings sprouting in my soul. I kept myself still and spoke not with hopes the King and Queen were some mistaken and me not to be so mean as their thinks.

Then in the play a Hop-lively announces the Noble Prince of the Long Feather who enters the stage followed by the other three Hop-livelys. When all finish their politeness, that Zeerooty comes along tagged by Dolly dressed in her white silk with a big black patch basted on its front breath to show how poor and dispized she is because believed to be just the child of the Wicked Witch and given to Zeerooty for a sort of slave since the Witch has got everybody spelled so they don’t know that Zeerooty is her own black brat and Dolly the Right Princess.

Zeerooty never notices the Prince and all those Hop-livelys though I don’t see how she can help it and not be blind. She saucys her Mama Queen and kicks her Papa King on his foot. Then she discovers the Prince and has much astonish for that. She likes him fine and her manners are quick honeytaffy. She puts out her hand for him to kiss like she is the sunflower of the world, but scarcely can the Prince kiss that hand for his looks of love on Dolly.

Zeerooty perceeves those looks and goes back to acting like scandles. She throws her gloves, hat, and hanky on the floor for Dolly to pick them up and slaps her on the cheek.

O that slap was the worst ever to go from me to Dolly in her drama! It is the true, Mother, I slapped Dolly my first day in this school because I spilled the gravy on her and she put the name goosey to you for thinking I could get made into a lady. But that is so long past and see how we have been chums ever since the girls took the tayboo off me and now for her to go put that slap in her play when I thought it all forgiven up—O Mother, it hurt so bad I couldn’t even speak that first minute like once when I caught my finger in the door.

When Dolly read on, our electric study lamp went to bobbing itself round in funny ways and throwing out long strings of light into my eyes.

In the second act, Dolly is discovered dusting and dusting those thrones and the Prince tells her how sweetysweet she is and that Zeerooty so bominable which is the true—I could put no blame on him for that. He wants to marry Dolly instead of me and her young heart beats for him alone. Then I, which is Zeerooty come on and catch them in their actions. I stamp and yell so fierce all the court rush there with scares of fire. Zeerooty demands to have the Noble Prince boiled in oil with chilly sauce, mean old thing that I am! The King answers boiling a guest would be inhospittable and no good form and make war with his parents but to our lowest dunjun let him go until he can love Zeerooty and he is halled off by the Cruel Jailor while Dolly weeps into her hanky.

After that things are truly awfuller than they can be Dolly tries to rescew the Noble Prince and gets caught and dunjuned herself by the cruel Jailer, so it looks like all is over with the lovery pair. But the Cruel Jailer gets a tender spot in his tough breast and the Wicked Witch falls into her own kettle and then her spells don’t work and Zeerooty is found out to be the Wrong Princess and Dolly the Right One. Dolly is let to marry the Noble Prince of the Long Feather and Zeerooty is put out the castle gate scratching firce all the Hop-livelys who got the job to reject her and screeching swears of “Zounds! Zounds!” like the cat vickson she is to the last and no lady!

When she finished reading, my used-to-be chum actually asked if my part wasn’t just grand? I felt as a volcano when it is volcanoizing. I told her my opinion of that despizable old black snubbish Zeerooty mean as mud. I asked her what sort of mad she had kept hid away in her heart all our months of being chums that she could make me such a part to slap Dollys in her play and saucy mothers and kick fathers and boil princes like a cannible heathen?

Dolly just laughed and said Zeerooty was dandy and a real actress would know her for a splendid part.

I answered I was awear that while I might be Dago black and lean like broomsticks and used to be a slapper when I came, I was one no more but had learned better in this school where my Mother put me for such manners not to stay on me any more as the manners of that Zeerooty whom I hated and detested and bominated like a poison weed and never would I play myself to be her!

Then Dolly got mad at me like I already was at her, only she had no cause as she can ask her consceince and let it tell her what she did first to me—not counting that way-back slap.

Dolly exclaimed that genius never gets its dews this side of the silentomb, so she don’t expect it, but to think I could take such an ignoranty pursonal view of Zeerooty. She asked if after she wrote special for me that almost starry part did I really refuse to be it?

I answered “Yes, I refuse forever and ever and all the time after that to be Zeerooty.” Dolly said “This breaks the chain which binds us” and I spoke back that chain to be already busted when she read me about that mean slapping Zeerooty thing she wrote to put me into.

Dolly answered she would never never speak to me again and I told her I would not to her in all my long life and we both cried on our beds. When we must get up to undress, Dolly took off the nugget bracelet I gave her Christmas and put it on my bureau and me the same on hers with the silver candlestick she gave me.

So now I lost my chum all on account of that Zeerooty. I never expected to slap any girl again but I would Zeerooty if she were only in the world to receive my slap. And I won’t play her! I won’t! I won’t! I wont!

Your mad and Sorry Giovanna.

Angel Mother All I Got,

It is now three days that Dolly and I don’t speak any more than frozen icicles and I most wish I was one to fall down and break into little pieces and be finished. My heart is so heavy, it’s like carrying the coal-hod at the asylum to get upstairs with it to my room. Dolly and I both got the proudness not to tell what our mad is about so the other girls guess much but know nothing.

O Mother, if I had never been born, what troubles I would have missed, most of all this cold mad lonesome to be a deafndumb with Dolly studying on her side of our room a deafndumb also, and she my used-to-be-dearest next to you.

If Dolly would only say she is sorry she wrote that Zeerooty on me I could forgive her in a minute, but she never will. And I don’t blame Dolly, Mother, as I do Zeerooty her own self. You know how Dolly told that those characters would fuss back at her and dicktate how they wanted to be fixed. Dolly is ever a quick forgiver and never would have thought to stick in that blow for all the girls to remember me as I was in my slapping days if Zeerooty has not hipnotized her to do it.

But now she has chozen between me and that Zeerooty whom she loves like a mother her bad child to think all its meanness darling and cute. She cannot see me write in this letter “Dear Dolly, take me and not your old Zeerooty,” but I wouldn’t say it to her out loud, not for the big round world in my pocket. Goodbye my Dolly chum, I hope Zeerooty makes you happy you don’t look happy though, but sorry and frozeup same as me.

I feel my cry is coming Mother, and I must get to bed quick and sqush it in the pillow for Dolly not to hear. I’m glad you are not a chum to bandon me for some old Zeerooty. Mothers are just the one thing in the world you can always keep unless God takes them up to Heaven.

Goodnight truest and darlingist, Giovanna.

Treasure Mother,

A real lady actress, friend to the Principal, came and performed like Lady Macbeth in Assembly this afternoon just for us girls. I was so blue I didn’t want to go but we all must. She was dressed very curious and talked for her husband Mr. Macbeth also just as I used to for my doll only she made her voice big instead of little. He wanted to be king as the witches proffyside but he had some feelings not to kill the nice gentle old really truly king come to visit him like an uncle and explained how murdering your company is not good form. I guess Lady Macbeth’s first name must begin with Z. O Mother, I shook till it squeeked the seat when she dared him and called him old fraidcat. Of course he didn’t have to mind her but a wife ought to keep her husband out of meanness all she can and not put him up to more like Lady Macbeth.

I was sure that actress lady must be very bad by nature to look like that out of her eyes and dangerous, ever full of meanness to do somebody. I wondered how our dear Principal could stand her for a friend.

When she came in the reception room after she had acted I did not know her in a tailor suit and smiling sweet, not a bit like that Lady Macbeth. I was standing close by the Principal and my astonish jumped right out of me to say how she looked not mean but a lovely lady. The Principal laughed and told how good that actress is to her little brothers and orphans and beggars and adored by all.

O the Principal made me most die of mortifide to lead me to the actress lady and introdoose me by telling right out loud my thinks of her. But she was so Heavenly tackfull Mother, that by and by I could ask her the question sticking right out of my soul to be asked—how she could act herself into a mean one like Lady Macbeth whom she must ever hate and put on her looks and ways for all persons to detest and not love.

When she was gone I ran quick upstairs with my heart no more like coal hods. There sat Dolly on her side writing like crazy in her play notebook. I never thought not to speak first and I cried out, “O Dolly, it is the duty of my face to be a picture of Zeerooty’s face and my voice to sound like hers and my actions to be same as her actions to show the audients what Zeerooty is like and not what I am like which does not count at such a time. What a silly I was—all ignoranty and pursynal like you said—so please forgive and I will play Zeerooty dandy as I can.”

Dolly looked up awful sweet out of her writing and answered, “No, Giovanna, you had the right to hate Zeerooty because that actress explained it to be the smartness of Shakespeare for Lady Macbeth to have some good feelings mixed in with her badness and those repentants in her sleep and to be no monster. My Zeerooty was a fusser and a scowler and a screecher every minute which is to be a monster. I’m glad you hated her; she is now detestable to me the same, so here I sit writing some good feelings and repentants into her.”

I asked “Shall Zeerooty walk in my sleep?” and she answered she would be no copycat to Shakespeare but ever origynal and make me into a nun at the last instead of a scratcher of Hop-livelys.

Then I remembered what my real maddest mad was about, only it was so good to be speaking with my Dolly chum again I didn’t much care, but I just asked, “Dolly, would it be the same with you if Zeerooty should pull your hair instead of slap, for the girls to not remember my dreadful scandle of slapping you during my first dinner in this school?”

O Mother, Dolly had forgotten all about that slap or she never would have put it in her play and she begged please forgive. We hugged and kissed like crazy and went down to dinner with our arms around as always. I am so happy I love even poor old naughty Zeerooty.

Your devoted daughter The Wrong Princess.