The Sheila Variations

The Books: "Jane of Lantern Hill" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book in my Daily Book Excerpt series ...

And here is my last Lucy Maud book - and it's the second to last book she wrote: Jane of Lantern Hill. Published in 1937 ... only a couple of years after the Mistress Pat debacle - and interestingly enough, it has a lot of the same themes (the love of home, the need for a home - but this is always one of Lucy Maud's themes) - but Jane, in this book, spends the majority of her time separated from her father - who lives on Prince Edward Island - and she lives in Toronto - and seriously ACHES to get back to the island. The red roads, the ocean, the freedom of life there ... One of the reasons why this overwhelming love of home doesn't quite work with the "Pat" books is: Pat LIVES at home. She is not (like Anne, or Emily) an orphan, she barely spends a freakin' night away from her house - let alone her entire LIFE. She is not "in exile". She grows up in the same house, with two parents ... and so why this unbelievable attachment to the damn house? It makes no sense. That kind of displacement was very familiar to Lucy Maud - who did not grow up with her biological parents - who was basically abandoned by her father, who went out West, and created a new family from scratch - leaving Lucy Maud at home to be raised by grandparents. And then - once Lucy Maud married The Lunatic Husband - he whisked her off to various cities and towns far far away from Prince Edward Island, and - I don't know, this is just my impression - but I feel like she never ever reconciled herself to that geographical distance. She never got used to it. She never accepted it. Her entire soul and spirit yearned towards PEI and yet - til the end of her life - she never spent more than a month there at one time. People who experience their native land from exile often have a way deeper attachment to the soil than those who actually live there (see Joyce, see a bazillion others) ... Lucy Maud Montgomery was no exception. She lived far away from PEI for 30 years. And yet where did the majority of her books take place? Prince Edward Island. No one who has read her books can be indifferent to PEI. She writes about it with such love, such specificity - it's not a romanticized view, not exactly. To her, it felt like reality. There was no place on earth as beautiful or as desirable as PEI. So you wonder if she would have written about it so well if she had lived on PEI all that time. Perhaps exile sharpened her senses, her memory.

The story of Jane of Lantern Hill is actually kind of "modern", (for Lucy Maud anyway) - and touches on issues that were very personal for her, things she never spoke about or wrote about. Anne and Emily in her other books were both orphaned - which was not their fault (the very funny Oscar Wilde quote notwithstanding). Lucy Maud wrote about her sense of being alone in the world, thrown on the kindness of others - through these orphaned characters. But she never wrote a story from her own experience: her mother died, and her father felt he couldn't raise his daughter by himself - so he moved away, married someone else, started a family - and never sent for Lucy Maud. Even though he promised to. It's like he wiped her out of existence (I'm exaggerating - she did visit a couple of times, etc.) - but he had NO intention of "sending for" his young daughter. Which - if you really think about it - is pretty damn cold. But Lucy Maud coped - she accepted her life with very little bitterness, etc. - she didn't blame her father for this ... and yet in book after book after book she writes about orphaned girls. Girls with no parents. Parents do NOT exist in Lucy Maud's world. It's an indirect indictment of the lonely childhood her father left her to.

In Jane, the situation is: Jane's parents split up acrimoniously when she was still a baby. I don't think they got divorced - just separated. Her father, in a rage, moved back home to Prince Edward Island, where he grew up - and Jane's mother moved back in with HER mother, an imperious WITCH. The three of them live in a huge mansion in Toronto and Jane grows up in a rigid atmosphere of silence - her grandmother despises her, because of the resemblance to this hated and scorned ex-husband. Jane's mother is beautiful, and "modern" - much more modern than other mothers in Lucy Maud's books - and by that I mean, she wears makeup, perfume - she's an urban woman, going out to dinner parties, etc. But there's a sadness there. Jane is forbidden to ask questions about her father, whom she has never met.

Jane is a winning little child. You like her. She has spunk. She's not fanciful like Anne, or really really good at something like Emily - but she's the kind of person well liked by everyone. A person with the gift of human connection and friendship. Lucy Maud writes her well - you really GET her character. She's not a re-tread of Anne or Emily. She is her own person. For example: - Anne is a bumbling idiot at first when it comes to domestic issues - and puts salt into pancakes, and forgets the flour ... and Marilla has a hell of a time teaching her to cook. But Jane doesn't have that problem - she's kind of a brilliant cook, improvisational, enthusiastic, good at it - but - she doesn't even know this about herself - because her environment is so rigid, so "children should be seen and not heard" - that she isn't given a chance to discover who she is at ALL. She just tries to make herself as good and unobtrusive and unoffensive as possible - to avoid the wrath of her icy-eyed grandmother.

But then one day - out of the blue - her father writes to her mother demanding that Jane come stay with him for the summer. Jane is 10 or 11 years old. It is his "right" to see Jane, to meet her, he says. A huge family upset occurs. Jane doesn't want to go. She doesn't even KNOW her father! Her mother is a weakling, unable to stand up to her icy mother - and the grandmother is just a flat out witch. But eventually - fearful that he will turn it into a legal issue - they allow Jane to go. Jane goes reluctantly. Even though she is unhappy living in the big echoing marble mansion, with her grandmother - who hates her - she doesn't want to leave. She is afraid of the unknown. She doesn't know who she is yet.

So off she goes to Prince Edward Island. Fearful, hateful, cautious, resentful. Naturally - it turns out that her father is wonderful. You can see why he might not be a good husband - at least not to a woman like Jane's mother - he's a bit irresponsible with his money - you get that right away, he's unconventional - he's a writer - he doesn't care about material things - but you LOVE him. In my opinion, he is the only convincing father-figure Lucy Maud ever wrote. He accepts Jane as she stands. There are no preconceived notions about who she should be - she also is not expected to be a 'good little girl' - and follow the rules. She can swim all day if she wants to, she doesn't have to go to church if she doesn't want to - she can make the friends she wants to make - not have stupid "approved" friends. And he already loves her, because she is his daughter. So in that environment of acceptance - Jane just starts to blossom. She lives with her father in his little seaside cottage (called Lantern Hill, of course) - and she cooks - she's never had a chance to cook before - because the house in Toronto has servants doing everything for her. So after a couple of false starts - Jane becomes an awesome cook. It is the happiest summer of her life. She makes friends her own age for the first time - she has adventures - and she basically just falls in love with her dad. She comes alive. Even though she had never been to PEI before - by the end of the summer she knows: It is HOME.

Of course when it is time for her to return back to Toronto- and her mother - and her horrible grandmother - it ACHES. She doesn't know how to bear it. Jane has discovered her home soil. She must endure the back and forth - she misses her mother desperately - but her heart will always be in Prince Edward Island. It's kind of a complex little book - witih modern-era issues. And I personally think that some of her nature-writing in this book is her best ever - and that is quite a statement, because when she's writing about the natural world - she is always good.

In this excerpt - Jane is staying with her father - her relationship with him is new and fresh ... and she has announced to him that she finds the Bible boring. He feigns shock (but always in a humorous way) and tells her that the best place to read the Bible is in the great outdoors. God isn't meant to be contained in a man-made building. (Is this Lucy Maud digging at her stick-in-the-mud religious fanatic minister husband? Her books are FULL of hints that religion ruins God. Member Anne Shirley talking about how prayers shouldn't be in actual words - that she wanted to walk into the woods and feel a prayer? This would have been heretical to her husband, who feared the flames of hell to such an extent that he went mad. Anyway, I just wonder about that.) Jane's father feels that the Bible should only be read with the sound of the crashing waves in the air, etc. Jane is skeptical.

(Notice here how her father talks to Jane as though she is an intelligent person, not a little girl. He treats her like she is good company. Think back on being a little kid - and how much you cherished grown-ups who treated you like that - with respect. Lucy Maud really gets that.)

Also: notice the creativity and fluidity with which Jane's dad reads the Bible. It's unconventional. Can't you hear snippety know-it-all Christians arguing in a kneejerk way about where he gets it wrong? Which, of course, misses the entire point. Or - that IS the point. Jane has been turned off of religion through overly literal practice. Or, to be more blunt: Christians have turned her off God. Jane's dad couldn't give a shit about any of that. To him - God comes alive in nature. This was always true for Lucy Maud as well, who went to the ocean, the woods, to commune - (which is hugely ironic - seeing as she married an unimaginative unspiritually-minded minister.) Jane's father would probably be seen as a heathen by many. But Jane knows better. So does Lucy Maud. I love this whole passage. It's full of heart, it's smart ... and I can hear the two voices. (She re-uses a couple phrases here from other books. Any serious Lucy Maud fans will immediately recognize them.)

Excerpt from Jane of Lantern Hill by Lucy Maud Montgomery

After all Jane found it did not require a miracle to make her like the Bible. She and dad went to the shore every Sunday afternoon and he read to her from it. Jane loved those Sunday afternoons. They took their suppers with them and ate them squatted on the sand. She had an inborn love of the sea and all pertaining to it. She loved the dunes ... she loved the music of the winds that whistled along the silvery solitude of the sand-shore ... she loved the far dim shores that would be jewelled with home-lights on fine blue evenings. And she loved dad's voice reading the Bible to her. He had a voice that would make anything sound beautiful. Jane thought if dad had had no other good quality at all, she must have loved him for his voice. And she loved the little comments he made as he read ... things that made the verses come alive for her. She had never thought that there was anything like that in the Bible. But then, dad did not read about knops and taches.

"'When all the morning stars sang together' ... the essence of creation's joy is in that, Jane. Can't you hear that immortal music of the spheres? 'Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon and thou, moon, in the vale of Ajalon.' Such sublime arrogance, Jane ... Mussolini himself couldn't rival that. 'Here shall thy proud waves be stayed' ... look at them rolling in there, Jane ... 'so far and no further' ... the majestic law to which they yield obedience never falters or fails. 'Give me neither poverty nor riches' ... the prayer of Agar, son of Jakeh. A sensible man was Agar, my Jane. Didn't I tell you the Bible was full of common sense? 'A fool uttereth all his mind.' Proverbs is harder on the fool than on anybody else, Jane ... and rightly. It's the fools that make all the trouble in the world, not the wicked. 'Whither thou goest I will gol and where thou lodgest I will lodge; thy people shall be my people and thy God my God; where thou diest will I die and there will I be buried; the Lord do so to me and more also if aught but death part thee and me.' The high-water mark of the expression of emotion in any language that I'm acquainted with, Jane ... Ruth to Naomi ... and all such simple words. Hardly any of more than one syllable ... the writer of that verse knew how to marry words as no one else has ever done. And he knew enough not to use too many of them. Jane, the most awful as well as the most beautiful things in the world can be said in three words or less ... I love you ... he is gone ... he is come ... she is dead ... too late ... and life is illumined or ruined. 'All the daughters of music shall be brought low' ... aren't you a little sorry for them, Jane ... those foolish, light-footed daughters of music? Do you think they quite deserved such a humiliation? 'They have taken away my lord and I know not where they have laid him' ... that supreme cry of desolation! 'Ask for the old paths and walk therein and ye shall find rest.' Ah, Jane, the feet of some of us have strayed far from the old paths ... we can't find our way back to them, much as we may long to. 'As cold water to a thirsty soul so is good news from a far country.' Were you ever thirsty, Jane ... really thirsty ... burning with fever ... thinking of heaven in terms of cold water? I was, more than once. 'A thousand years in thy sight is but as yesterday when it is past and as a watch in the night.' Think of a Being like that, Jane, when the little moments torture you. 'Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.' The most terrible and tremendous saying in the world, Jane ... because we are all afraid of truth and afraid of freedom ... that's why we murdered Jesus."

Jane did not understand all dad said, but she put it all away in her mind to grow up to. All her life she was to have recurring flashes of insight when she recalled something dad had said. Not only of the Bible but of all the poetry he read to her that summer. He taught her the loveliness of words ... dad read words as if he tasted them.

" 'Glimpses of the moon ...' one of the immortal phrases of literature, Jane. There are phrases with sheer magic in them ..."

"I know," said Jane. " 'On the road to Mandalay' ... I read that in one of Miss Colwin's books ... and 'horns of elfland faintly blowing.' That gives me a beautiful ache."

"You have the root of the matter in you, Jane. But, oh, my Jane, why ... why ... did Shakespeare leave his wife his second best bed?"

"Perhaps she liked it best," said Jane practically.

" 'Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings' ... to be sure. I wonder if that eminently sane suggestion has ever occurred to the commentators who have agonised over it. Can you guess who the dark lady was, Jane? You know when a poet praises a woman she is immortal ... witness Beatrice ... Laura ... Lucasta ... Highland Mary. All talked about hundreds of years after they are dead because great poets loved them. The weeds are growing over Troy but we remember Helen."

"I suppose she didn't have a big mouth," said Jane wistfully.

Dad kept a straight face.

"Not too small a one, Jane. You couldn't imagine goddess Helen with a rosebud mouth, could you?"

"Is my mouth too big, dad?" implored Jane. "The girls at St. Agatha's said it was."

"Not too big, Jane. A generous mouth ... the mouth of a giver, not a taker ... a frank, friendly mouth ... with very well cut corners, Jane. Nno weakness about them ... you wouldn't have eloped with Paris, Jane, and made all that unholy mess. You would have been true to your vows, Jane ... in spirit as well as in letter; even in this upside-down world."

Jane had the oddest feeling that dad was thinking of mother, not of Argive Helen. But she was comforted by what he said about her mouth.

Dad did not always read from the masters. One day he took to the shore a thin little volume of poems by Bernard Freeman Trotter.

"I knew him overseas ... he was killed ... listen to his song about the poplars, Jane.

"'And so I sing the poplars and when I come to die
I will not look for jasper walls but cast about my eye
For a row of wind-blown poplars against an English sky.'

"What will you want to see when you get to heaven, Jane?"

"Lantern Hill," said Jane.

Dad laughed. It was so delightful to make dad laugh ... and so easy. Though a good many times Jane didn't know exactly what he was laughing at, Jane didn't mind that a bit ... but sometimes she wondered if mother had minded it.

One evening after dad had been spouting poetry until he was tired, Jane said timidly, "Would you like to hear me recite, dad?"

She recited The Little Baby of Mathieu. It was easy ... dad made such a good audience.

"You can do it, Jane. That was good. I must give you a bit of training along that line too. I used to be rather good at interpreting the habitant myself."

"Someone she did not like used to be rather good at reading habitant poetry" ... Jane remembered who had said that. She understood another thing now.

Dad had rolled over to where he could see their house in a gap in the twilit dunes.

"I see the Jimmy Johns' light ... and the Snowbeam light at Hungry Cove ... but our house is dark. Let's go home and light it up, Jane. And is there any of that applesauce you made for supper left?"

So they went home together and dad lighted his gasoline lamp and sat down at his desk to work on his epic of Methuselah ... or something else ... and Jane got a candle to light her to bed. She liked a candle better than a lamp. It went out so graciously ... the thin trail of smoke ... the smouldering wick, giving one wild little wink at you before it left you in the dark.

The Books: "Mistress Pat" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book in my Daily Book Excerpt series ...

Yawn. The second (and thankfully last) book in the Pat series. It's endless. Mistress Pat. Pat's fear of change begins to seem pathological here as she grows older. Like - her sister goes to college and Pat grieves for months the "loss". Every single thing that says "change" is resisted. Judy Plum wants to go home to visit Ireland - and Pat so dreads this that she can barely show an enthusiasm for her friend. Pat - you can't do without Judy Plum for 3 months? What the hell is your problem? Get a LIFE. Trees are cut down. Pat mourns. Her brother marries someone she despises. Yes, that sucks, it does ... but get over it. Your brother is not YOU, Pat. She has stupid love affairs which I, the reader, cannot get into because I know Pat's heart isn't in it. Naturally, on the very last page of the book - she "falls in love" with Jingle (yes, that is his name) - her childhood friend - a kind of Gilbert-ish character - and Pat insists, over YEARS, that she does not love him - even though Jingle loves her. Then - in one moment - she realizes she DOES love him. Pat - grownups learn how to deal with their emotions, learn how to know their own mind. It's boring to read. And again, you can feel Lucy Maud losing steam. For example, the book is broken up into "years" - which doesn't really make sense in the context. If it were the story of Pat going to college, then having chapters be titled "First Year", "Second Year", etc. would make sense. But in this context - it just seems like everyone is marking time. Another thing is the length of the chapters. The "First Year" chapter is 100 pages long. It goes on forEVER. And every chapter after that gets shorter and shorter and shorter ... there's one montage that starts one of the "years" that literally goes like this: "It was summer ... it was autumn ... it was winter ..." Lucy Maud must have been very tired. But she was obligated to finish the book. So she basically just sketched it in. And you can FEEL that, when you're reading it.

Bets, her childhood friend dies. A brother and sister move into Bets' old house. Pat, because she has mental problems, decides not to like them - because they have moved into Bets' old house. Yeah, that's a good reason not to like somebody. But eventually they become friends. David and Suzanne are her friends - and I guess she starts to "date" David - even though the way it's written you know it's never going to go anywhere. It's not like with Emily's other lovers - Jarback Priest, et al ... these are characters who are alive, and her relationship with these people could go somewhere. It's not a literary device to track time passing. It's a real relationship. But Pat "goes out" with David for EVER and then ... I guess she breaks it off with him, I don't know ... the whole thing seems so tired.

Here's an excerpt. There are a couple of lines here that I think are quite good. The whole description in the paragraph starting "Pat went up to the Long House ..." I do like the "silence kneeling like a grey nun" line. But other than that - what we are seeing here - is a woman full of pathologies who cannot accept reality.

Excerpt from Mistress Pat.

They heard about the Long House at Winnie's. It was to have new tenants. They had rented the house for the summer ... not the farm, which was still to be farmed by John Hammond, the owner, who had bought it from the successor of the Wilcoxes.

Pat heard the news with a feeling of distaste. The Long House had been vacant almost ever since Bets had died. A couple had bought the farm, lived there for a few months, then sold out to John Hammond. Pat had been glad of this. It was easier to fancy that Bets was still there when it was empty. In childhood she had resented it being empty and lonely, and had wanted to see it occupied and warmed and lighted. But it was different now. She preferred to think of it as tenanted only by the fragrance of old years and the little spectral joys of the past. Somehow, it seemed to belong to her as long as it was

"Abandoned to the lonely peace
Of bygone ghostly things."

Judy had more news the next morning. The newcomers were a man and his sister. Kirk was their name. He was a widower and had been until recently the editor of a paper in Halifax. And they had bought the house, not rented it.

"Wid the garden and the spruce bush thrown in," said Judy. "John Hammond do be still houlding to the farm. He was here last night, after ye wint away, complaining tarrible about the cost av his wife's operation. 'Oh, oh, what a pity,' sez I, sympathetic-like. 'Sure and a funeral wud have come chaper,' sez I. Patsy dear, did ye be hearing Lester Conway was married?"

"Somebody sent me a paper with the notice marked," laughed Pat. "I'm sure it was May Binnie. Fancy any one supposing it mattered to me."

It seemed a lifetime since she had been so wildly in love with Lester Conway. Why was it she never fell in love like that nowadays? Not that she wanted to ... but why? Was she getting too old? Nonsense!

She knew her clan was beginning to say she didn't know what she wanted but she knew quite well and couldn't find it in any of the men who wooed her. As far as they were concerned, she seemed possessed by a spirit of contrariness. No matter how nice they seemed while they were merely friends or acquaintances she could not bear them when they showed signs of developing into lovers. Silver Bush had no rival in her heart.

In the evening she stood in the garden and looked up at the Long House ... it was suddenly a delicate, aerial pink in the sunset light. Pat had never been enar it since the day of Bets' funeral. Now she had a strange whim to visit it once more before the strangers came and took it from her forever ... to go and keep a tryst with old, sacred memories.

Pat slipped into the house and flung a bright-hued scarf over her brown dress with its neck-frill of pleated pink chiffon. She always thought she looked nicer in that dress than any other. Somehow people seldom wondered whether Pat Gardiner was pretty or not ... she was so vital, so wholesome, so joyous, that nothing else mattered. Yet her dark-brown hair was wavy and lustrous, her golden-brown eyes held challenging lights and the corners of her mouth had such a jolly quirk. She was looking her best to-night with a little flush of excitement staining her round, creamy cheeks. She felt as if she were slipping back into the past.

Judy was in the kitchen, telling stories to a couple of Aunt Hazel's small fry who were visiting at Silver Bush. Pat caught a sentence or two as she went out. "Oh, oh, the ears av him, children dear! He cud hear the softest wind walking over the hills and what the grasses used to say to aich other at the sunrising." Dear old Judy! What a matchless storyteller she was!

"I remember how Joe and Win and Sid and I used to sit on the backdoor steps and listen to her telling fairy tales by moonlight," thought Pat, "and whatever she told you you felt had happened ... must have happened. That is the difference between her yarns and Tillytuck's. Oh, it is really awful to think of her going away in the fall for a whole winter."

Pat went up to the Long House by the old delightful short cut past Swallowfield and over the brook and up the hill fields. It was a long time since she had trodden that fairy path but it had not changed. The fields on the hill still looked as if they loved each other. The big silver birch still hung over the log bridge across the brook. The damp mint, crushed under her feet, still gave out its old haunting aroma, and all kinds of wild blossom filled the crevices of the stone dyke where she and Bets had picked wild strawberries. Its base was still lost in a wave of fern and bayberry. And on the hill the Watching Pine still watched and seemed to shake a hand meaningly at her. At the top was the old gate, fallen into ruin, and beyond it the path through the spruce bush where silence seemed to kneel like a grey nun and she felt that Bets had come to meet her, walking through the dusk with dreams in her eyes.

Past the bush she came out on the garden with the house in the midst. Pat stopped and gazed around her. Everything she looked on had some memory of pleasure or pain. The old garden was very eloquent ... that old garden that had once been so beloved by Bets. She seemed to come back again in the flowers she had tended and loved. The whole place was full of her. She had planted that row of lilies ... she had trained that vine over the trellis ... she had set out that rose-bush by the porch step. But most of it was now a festering mass of weeds and in its midst was the sad, empty house, with the little dormer window in its spruce-shadowed roof ... the window of the room where she had seen the sunrise light falling over Bets' dead face. A dreadful pang of loneliness tore her soul.

"I hate those people who are going to live in you," she told the house. "I daresay they'll tear you up and turn you inside out. That will break my heart. You won't be you then."

The Books: "Pat of Silver Bush" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book in my Daily Book Excerpt series ...

Three more Lucy Maud novels to go and then we will be done!! I have been saving the dad-blasted "Pat" books - mainly because the two "Pat" books stink up the field (to quote my sister's soccer coach from when she was little. "You stink up the field!") Pat of Silver Bush. It's truly bizarre to read them because they are both so bad. Lucy Maud didn't write bad books. I mean, she wrote so many of them - and with the exception of Kilmeny - they're all just GREAT. Kilmeny was one of her earlier books - it came out right after Anne of Green Gables [excerpt here] - but what's interesting about the two Pat books [this one and Mistress Pat] is that they were written so late in her career. Like - how did this amazing author who had written so much that was awesome - come up with 2 such stinkers?

Having read her journals, I know that that last decade of her life was hell on earth for her. The fact that she was able to write anything at all is quite something. And she did write other books during that decade - not just the Pat books. But she really lost her way with these two - and I have speculated as to why. Lucy Maud - living as she did far from Prince Edward Island - with her high-maintenance insane husband ... yearned, day and night, to go "home". She never really got used to living away from the sea, and whenever she would go back to PEI for a visit, her writing in her journals about the island, and the sea, and the fields of her home, and all that .... are so lush and so nostalgic and so full of yearning that they are almost painful to read. It's like - her real life, with her husband and her two kids, wasn't really the right life. She never should have moved from PEI. (But then again, if she had lived on PEI, she might not have written so eloquently and memorably about that island. Being in "exile" does wonders to someone's art. See Joyce.) But anyway, what I'm getting at here is that Lucy Maud Montgomery, a grown woman, a famous woman, lived in an almost constant state of agonizing homesickness. Like, it wasn't pleasant nostalgia - it hurt her - almost physically to be separated from PEI.

Now - anyone who has suffered through the Pat books knows - that's the whole theme of those books. Pat's love of her stupid home, Silver Bush. But the thing that doesn't work in the books is that: Pat LIVES at Silver Bush. She is not living out in, say, Manitoba, far from the red red roads of PEI. No. Pat is a little girl, LIVING at Silver Bush ... and she is so attached to her home that she literally gets sick - yes, sick - if she has to spend a night away from it. Or ... if a tree falls in a storm ... she grieves so much that she has to take to her bed. And this isn't just a childish attachment - the books start when Pat is 6 and ends when she's in her 20s - and this bullshit "Oh, how I love Silver Bush" thing never stops. And they're long books, too. Like - how many times do we, the reader, have to be told how intensely Pat loves her home? By the third chapter, I'm like, "Jesus. I get it. Okay? I get it. She loves her home." But it doesn't work for some reason.

I'd be eager to hear from other Lucy Maud fans what they think of this book. Does it work for you? Why? And if it doesn't work for you - why do you think?? Like - what is missing here, in your opinion? Where did Lucy Maud go wrong?

I believe that Lucy Maud was creating an outlet for her own homesickness ... which, of course, is a completely valid thing ... but she didn't do it in a way that makes a compelling book. She is somehow trying to make ME, the reader, love Silver Bush as much as Pat does. But the opposite occurs. Her narration keeps going back to the "how much Pat loves Silver Bush" thing that it actually starts seeming like a neuroses than anything else. I start to think that Pat could benefit from psychotropic drugs. Something is wrong with Pat. Like - why is she so homesick for her house when she lives there??? GET OVER IT, PAT. Get a LIFE, Pat. Lucy Maud also - unlike her other heroines - doesn't give us anything else about Pat to latch onto. It's not like Emily, or Anne, or Valancy ... characters who are three-dimensional, who have all KINDS of responses to things, who are complex people, and yet logical - by that I mean, Lucy Maud has made these people seem so real that their responses to things - in all different kinds of situations - seem life-like. These are not cardboard cutouts. These are not people with One Theme Only, One Theme Only, come on, sweet baby, come on ... Pat has ONE THEME. "I love my home." And you expect me to give a crap about that for 600 pages? No. I'm glad you love your home, Pat, I hope you're happy, but honestly - I think your attachment to your house (and, by extension, to things never changing) is actually neurotic - and I think you should, oh, go away to college. Go travel in Europe for a couple of months. Do SOMEthing that doesn't have to do with your stupid house. Lucy Maud makes a fetish of the house. It is described in such detail that I could probably draw a floor plan, and list every single pillow in every window seat, every dish in the cupboards .... Now, details are fine ... I mean, Lucy Maud described Green Gables in detail. Who of us can't remember that spare room? Or at New Moon, too? Each room has its own vibe, its own character ... but for some reason in those books it works, because - although the house is very important - it is, in the end, just background. In Pat of Silver Bush and Mistress Pat - the house is the thing. The house comes to life more than PAT does. And why should I care about a house? I don't. Or I might - but not just because Lucy Maud TELLS me to. I love Green Gables because it feels like a vibrant other character in those books - and I love it because Anne loves it. It is background to other things.

But it's just interesting to me because Lucy Maud wrote so much and as far as I'm concerned she rarely faltered. Here she does. Her own powers of creativity failed her (the journals mention it briefly - how hard she found it to write these two books) - you can really feel it in Mistress Pat - where she completely runs out of steam maybe 150 pages before the book finally ends. The chapters get shorter and shorter and shorter as the book goes on ... Lucy Maud just has nothing else to give by the end of that book.

And because I know the background - the horror of grief and anxiety that she lived in, day after day after day ... the books end do end up seeming like a small triumph. Perhaps not of art - but of the WILL. (heh heh triumph of the will) No but I mean: she didn't WANT to write a book at that point. She wanted to crawl into bed and sleep for 5 months. Oblivion. But since she couldn't do that ... she forced herself to sit at her desk every day, with her madman husband down the hall, causing all kinds of problems, and black clouds of war gathering over Europe again - much to her horror - her ongoing horror ... and she ploddingly, determinedly, kept at it - and kept writing - until these two books were done. These were the books she had in her in those moments. And so she wrote them. And worked on them, and sweated over them ... she knew something was off. She knew that it wasn't a good sign that the books were so hard for her to write. But she just kept going.

I find that so admirable.

But still. The books stink up the field. It's okay. Lucy Maud wrote so many books that will be read by generations to come .... it's okay that a couple of them, only a couple, are stinkers.

So. The excerpt. Pat has made a friend - Bets Wilcox. Oh, and here's another thing that is bad about these books. Everything is foreshadowed WAY too clearly. In her other books, when you get those moments of the future - it can be either chilling, or exciting ... but here? You know from the first what will happen ... Like stupid Jingle, Pat's "boy"friend. You know that the childhood friends will grow up and Jingle will be a Gilbert-esque suitor, and Pat - with her neurotic horror of change - will not see Jingle "in that way". It's all basically set up from their first meeting - and Judy Plum, the gabby Irish servant, with her keen eyes - sees everything. But I think she sees too much because it leaves nothing to the reader. So Bets. Pat's dear friend. Who is barely developed as a character - we just hear what she looks like, and we know - basically because Judy Plum makes a cryptic comment - that Bets is not long for this world. And oh no, boo hoo, Pat will lose her best friend. The book is full of "foreshadowing" like this - but it's too obvious - so Lucy Maud doesn't develop things - it feels more like events march to some inevitable conclusion. VERY un-Lucy-Maud-like. She really lost her way here.

Okay - so Pat - who is 11 or 12 here - has a sleepover at Bets' house right across the way. But oh no! How on earth will neurotic dipshit Pat handle sleeping away from her beloved house for one night?? Because, as we have been told on every damn page, Pat loves her house with a passion. We, the reader, are supposed to sympathize with Pat. But no. THIS reader thinks, "It's about time to start to cut the ol' apron strings, Pat - because you're starting to sound like One-Note Johnny and that is very neurotic. Get a life, hon. Things DO change in the world. And you better start to get used to it." So Pat and Bets have their sleepover and the world, unbelievably, DOESN'T end ... so Pat starts to go spend the night there even more, now that she knows that her house will not cease to exist just because she is not there.

See? Neurotic.

Oh, and one other bad thing about these books: Lucy Maud relies too much on montage to get us from event to event. It's the Lucy Maud equivalent of Rocky IV. Way too many chapters have sections that read like: "So summer turned to fall. The leaves began to turn, the air began to get chilly, the maple leaves fell ..." etc etc etc etc. Long chapters with two-page montage sequences at the beginning - basically skipping over huge chunks of time. Lucy Maud couldn't get us from A to B without a montage in these books - and again, that is so unlike her. I mean, she would use such a device in other books too - but it never felt so ... imposed in the other books. Here you can tell she's running out of steam.

Lastly - in the excerpt below - when we hear about Pat's milestone - her "soul's awakening" - I just don't feel like Lucy Maud's heart is in it. Compare it to the moment when Emily lies awake all night in the haystack - staring up at the stars - and has a truly spiritual experience, a soul's expansion that will last her the rest of her life. THAT is what Lucy Maud is trying to do here - only in Pat of Silver Bush's world - not Emily's ... and it just doesn't ... quite ... work ...

Excerpt from Pat of Silver Bush by Lucy Maud Montgomery

Pat went up to the Long House over a silver road of new-fallen snow. Every time she turned to look down on home the world was a little whiter. Bets, who had not been in school that day, was waiting for her under the pine. Just above them the Long House, amid its fir trees, was like a little dark island in a sea of snow.

There was something about the long, low-eaved house with the dormer windows in its roof, that pleased Pat. And Bets' room was a delightful one with two dormers along the side and one at each end. It was very grand, Pat told Judy, with a real "set of furniture" and a long mirror in which the delighted girls could see themselves from top to toe. The west window was covered with vines, leafless now but a green dappled curtain in summer, and the east looked right out into a big apple tree. Pat and Bets sat by the little stove and ate apples until any one might have expected them to burst. Then they crept into bed and cuddled down for one of those talks dear to the hearts of small school-girls from time immemorial.

"It's so much easier to be confidential in the dark," Pat had told Judy. "I can tell Bets everything then."

"Oh, oh, I wudn't tell iverything to innybody," warned Judy. "Not iverything, me jewel."

"Not to anybody but Bets," agreed Pat. "Bets is different."

"Too different," Judy sighed. But she did not let Pat hear it.

To lie there, with the soft swish of the fir trees sounding just outside, and talk "secrets" with Bets ... lovely secrets, not like May Binnie's ... was delightful. Bets had recently been to some wedding in the Wilcox clan and Pat had to hear all about it ... the mysterious pearl-white bride, the bridesmaids' lovely dresses, the flowers, the feast.

"Do you suppose we will ever get married?" whispered Bets.

"I won't," said Pat. "I couldn't ever go away from Silver Bush."

"But you wouldn't like to be an old maid, would you?" said Bets. "Besides, you could get him to come and live with you at Silver Bush, couldn't you?"

This was a new idea for Pat. It seemed quite attractive. Somehow, when you were with Bets, everything seemed possible. Perhaps that was another part of her charm.

"We were born on the same day," went on Bets, "so if we're ever married we must try to be married the same day."

"And die the same day. Oh, wouldn't it be romantic?" breathed Pat in ecstasy.

Pat woke in the night with just a little pang of homesickness. Was Silver Bush all right? She slipped out of her bed and stole across to the nearest dormer window. She breathed on its frosty stars until she had made clear a space to peer t hrough ... then caught her breath with delight. The snow had ceased and a big moon was shining down on the cold, snowy hills. The powdered fir trees seemed to be covered with flowers spun from moonshine, the apple trees seemed picked out in silver filigree. The open space of the lawn was sparkling with enormous diamonds. How beautiful Silver Bush looked when you gazed down on it on a moonlit winter night! Was darling Cuddles covered up warm? She did kick the clothes off so. Was mother's headache better? Away over beyond Silver Bush was the poor, lean, ugly Gordon house which nobody had ever loved. Jingle would be sleeping in his kitchen loft now. All summer he had slept in the haw-mow with McGinty. Poor Jingle, whose mother never wrote to him! How could a mother be like that? Pat almost hated to go back to sleep again and lose so much beauty. It had always seemed a shame to sleep through a moonlit night. Somehow those far hills looked so different in moonlight. A verse she and Bets had learned "off by heart", in school that day came to her mind:

Come, for the night is cold,
And the frosty moonlight fills
Hollow and rift and fold
Of the eerie Ardise hills.

She repeated it to herself with a strange, deep exquisite thrill of delight, such as she had never felt before ... something that went deeper than body or brain and touched some inner sanctum of being of which the child had never been conscious. Perhaps that moment was for Patricia Gardiner the "soul's awakening" of the old picture. All her life she was to look back to it as a sort of milestone ... that brief, silvery vigil at the dormer window of the Long House.

The Books: "A Tangled Web" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book in my Daily Book Excerpt series ...

Almost done with Lucy Maud! I'm skipping the rest of the short stories ... well, for now, anyway. Thank you, Melissa, for encouraging me in this direction. Ha!

But I couldn't skip A Tangled Web. Like Blue Castle [excerpt here] - this book kind of stands alone, in the canon of Lucy Maud. It's an adult comedy - rather soap opera-ish - and in my opinion Lucy Maud is in full command of all of her powers in this book. It's chock-full of characters - this book doesn't have a "lead" - which is one of the reasons why it stands alone. The "leads" of the book are two sprawling intermarried families - with a cast of a hundred characters - all of whom we get to know. Some better than others - but still, there isn't one journey that dominates. The story of this book is: ancient Aunt Becky Dark (nee Penhallow) is dying. She's a bazillion years old and she knows she's dying. Everyone is terrified of Aunt Becky - not because she's cruel (although her comments sometimes are) - but because she always says exactly what is on her mind. She is the terrifying "matriarch" of a tangled clan - and every single person is afraid of her, because she will not hesitate to tell the truth, right to their face. Big truths - like "I know you are not in love with your husband" or little truths, like "You wear too much makeup". Anyway, Becky has, in her possession, a family heirloom: this old heinous JUG - and this is the catalyst for the entire book. The jug has been in the family for generations. Stories are told about it. It has crossed the Atlantic. It has been in glass display cases. It has also been in pantries filled with blackberry jame. It is a jug. Becky knows she is going to die and so she gathers the entire clan in her sick-room ... they are all there, crowded inside, and spilling out onto the porch ... all of them with their private griefs and hopes and hatreds ... Lucy Maud is at her best in this kind of situation - You can't believe how many balls she keeps in the air here. There are so many characters! And Becky reads out her will to the group, knowing it is going to cause ruptions and fractures and feuds ... and she cackles with glee at the thought of it, the old trouble-maker. But the big thing is the jug. Everybody wants to know: who is going to get the jug? It's basically like - the LEADERship of the family will be passed on through this jug ... and so they all sit there, in that crowded room, and we get to know each one, as they sit there ... and everybody wants it for different reasons, and everybody feels that they, personally, are the ONLY true heir of the jug ...

What ends up happening is fantastic. It's a great premise for a book. Basically, Becky announces at this meeting that the recipient of the jug will not be announced until exactly a year from that date. And she has a list of stipulations of the type of person it will NOT be given to. No drinking, no swearing, no whatever ... the list goes on and on. Naturally the vices cover pretty much everybody in the room. So over the next year, desperate to be good enough to get the jug, everyone begins to change their behavior, subtly, in order to be worthy to get the jug. Drunkards stop drinking. Etc. etc. And of course, with a clan like this one - a "tangled web" - any tiny change will have resounding implications. So shit starts to hit the fan, left and right.

It's a wonderful book - I love it.

Here's the section at the beginning of the book where Becky reads out her will. I am just amazed at how many characters she can keep going, and how - with one or 2 lines apiece, we know everything we need to know about everybody. I love, too, Lucy Maud's sense of humor. I just respond to it.

Excerpt from A Tangled Web. by Lucy Maud Montgomery

Aunt Becky unfolded her will, and settled her owlish, shell-ringed glasses on her beaky nose.

"I've left my little bit of money to Camilla for her life," she said. "After her death its to go to the hospital in Charlottetown."

Aunt Becky looked sharply over the throng. But she did not see any particular disappointment. To do the Darks and Penhallows justice, they were not money-grubbers. No one grudged Camilla Jackson her legacy. Money was a thing one could and should earn for oneself; but old family heirlooms, crusted with the sentiment of dead and gone hopes and fears for generations, were different matters. Suppose Aunt Becky left the jug to some rank outsider? Or a museum? She was quite capable of it. If she did, William Y. Penhallow mentally registered a vow that he would see his lawyer about it.

"Any debts are to be paid," continued Aunt Becky, "and my grave is to be heaped up - not left flat. I insist on that. Make a note of it, Artemas."

Artemas Dark nodded uncomfortable. He was caretaker of the Rose River graveyard, and he knew he would have trouble with the cemetery committee about that. Besides, it made it so confoundedly difficult to mow. Aunt Becky probaby read his thoughts, for she said,

"I won't have a lawn-mower running over me. You can clip my grave nicely with the shears. I've left directions for my tombstone, too. I want one as big as anybody else's. And I want my lace shawl draped around me in my coffin. It's the only thing I mean to take with me. Theodore gave it to me when Ronald was born. There were times when Theodore could do as graceful a thing as anybody. It's as good as new. I've always kept it wrapped in silver paper at the bottom of my thrid bureau drawer. Remember, Camilla."

Camilla nodded. The first sign of disappointment appeared on Mrs. Clifford Penhallow's face. She had set her heart on getting the lace shawl, for she feared she had very little chance of getting the jug. The shawl was siad to have cost Theodore Dark two hundred dollars. To think of burying two hundred dollars!

Mrs. Toynbee Dark, who had been waiting all the afternoon for an opportunity to cry, thought she saw it at the mention of Aunt Becky's baby son who had been dead for sixty years, and got out her handkerchief. But Aunt Becky headed her off.

"Don't start crying yet, Alicia. By the way, while I think of it, will you tell me something? I've always wanted to know and I'll never have another chance. Which of your three husbands did you like best - Morton Dark, Edgar Penhallow, or Toynbee Dark? Come now, make a clean breast of it."

Mrs. Toynbee put her handkerchief back in her bag and shut the latter with a vicious snap.

"I had a deep affection for all my partners," she said.

Aunt Becky wagged her head.

"Why didn't you say 'deceased' parters? You were thinking it, you know. You have that type of mind. Also, tell me honestly, don't you think you ought to have been more economical with husbands? Three! And poor Mercy and Margaret there haven't been able even to get one."

Mercy reflected bitterly that if she had employed the methods Alicia Dark had, she might have had husbands and to spare, too. Margaret coloured softly and looked piteous. Why, oh why, must cruel old Aunt Becky hold her up to public ridicule like this?

"I've divided all my belongings among you," said Aunt Becky. "I hate the thought of dying and leaving all my nice things. But since it must be, I'm not going to have any quarreling over them before I'm cold in my grave. Everything's down here in black and white. I've just left the things according to my own whims. I'll read the list. And let me say that the fact that any one of you gets something doesn't mean that you've no chance for the jug as well. I'm coming to that later."

Aunt Becky took off her spectacles, polished them, put them back on again, and took a drink of water. Drowned John nearly groaned with impatience. Heaven only knew how long it would be before she would get to the jug. He had no interest in her other paltry knick-knacks.

"Mrs. Denzil Penhallow is to have my pink china candlesticks," announced Aunt Becky. "I know you'll be delighted at this, Martha dear. You've given me so many hints about candlesticks."

Mrs. Denzil had wanted Aunt Becky's beautiful silver Georgian candlesticks. And now she was saddled with a pair of unspeakable china horrors, in colour a deep magenta pink with what looked like black worms wriggling all over them. But she tried to look pleased, because if she didn't it might spoil her chances for the jug. Denzil scowled, jug or no jug, and Aunt Becky saw it. Pompous old Denzil. She would get even with him.

"I remember when Denzil was about five years old he came down to my place with his mother, one day, and our old turkey gobbler took after him. I suppose the poor bird thought no one else had a right to be strutting around there. 'Member, Denzil? Lord, how you ran and blubbered! You certainly thought Old Nick was after you. Do you know, Denzil, I've never seen you parading up the church aisle since but I've thought of that."

Well, it had to be endured. Denzil cleared his throat and endured it.

"I haven't much jewellry," Aunt Becky was saying. "Two rings. One is an opal. I'm giving that to Virginia Powell. They say it brings bad luck, but you're too modern to believe that old superstition, Virginia. Though I never had any luck after I got it."

Virginia tried to look happy, though she had wanted the Chinese screen. As for luck or no luck, how could that matter? Life was over for her. Nobody grudged her the opal, but when Aunt Becky mentioned rings many ears were pricked up. Who would get her diamond ring? It was a fine one and worth several hundreds of dollars.

"Ambrosine Wentworth is to have my diamond ring," said Aunt becky.

Half those present could not repress a gasp of disapproval and the collective effect was quite pronounced. This, thought the gaspers, was absurd. Ambrosine Wentworth had no right whatever to that ring. And what good would it do her - an old broken-down servant? Really, Aunt Becky's brain must be softening.

"Here it is, Ambrosine," said Aunt Becky, taking it from her bony finger and handing it to the trembling Ambrosine. "I'll give it to you now, so there'll be no mistake. Put it on."

Ambrosine obeyed. Her old wrinkled face was aglow with the joy of a long-cherished dream suddenly and unexpectedly realized. Ambrosine Winkworth, through a drab life spent in other people's kitchens, had hankered all through that life for a diamond ring. She had never hoped to have it, and now here it was on her hand, a great starry wonderful thing, glittering in the June sunshine that fell through the window. Everything came true for Ambrosine in that moment. She asked no more of fate.

Perhaps Aunt Becky had divined that wistful dream of the old woman. Or perhaps she had just given Ambrosine the ring to annoy the clan. If the latter, she had certainly succeeded. Nan Penhallow was especially furious. She should have the diamond ring. Thekla Penhallow felt the same way. Joscelyn, who once had had a diamond ring, Donna, who still had one, and Gay, who expected she soon would have one, looked amused and indifferent. Chuckling to herself Aunt Becky picked up her will and gave Mrs. Clifford Penhallow her Chinese screen.

"As if I wanted her old Chinese screen," thought Mrs. Clifford, almost on the point of tears.

Margaret Penhallow was the only one whom nobody envied. She got Aunt Becky's Pilgrim's Progress, a very old, battered book. The covers had been sewed on, the leaves were yellow with age. One was afraid to touch it lest it might fall to pieces. It was a most disreputable old volume which Theodore Dark, for some unknown reason, had prized when alive. Since his death, Aunt Becky had kept it in an old box in the garret, where it had got musty and dusty. But Margaret was not disappointed. She had expected nothing.

"My green pickle leaf is to go to Rachel Penhallow," said Aunt Becky.

Rachel's long face grew longer. She had wanted the Apostle spoons. But Gay Penhallow got the Apostle spoons to her surprise and delight. They were quaint and lovely and would accord charmingly with a certain little house of dreams that was faintly taking place in her imagination. Aunt Becky looked at Gay's sparkling face with less grimness than she usually showed and proceeded to give her dinner set to Mrs. Howard Penhallow, who wanted the Chippendale sideboard.

"It was my wedding-set," said Aunt Becky. "There's only one piece broken. Theodore brought his fist down on the cover of one of the tureens one day when he got excited in an argument at dinner. I won out in the argument, though - at leats I got my own way, tureen or no tureen. Emily, you're to have the bed."

Mrs. Emily Frost, nee Dark, a gentle, faded little person, who also had yearned for the Apostle spoons, tried to look grateful for a bed that was too big for any of her tiny rooms. And Mrs. Alpheus Penhallow, who wanted the bed, had to put up with the Chippendale sideboard. Donna Dark got an old egg dish in the guise of a gaily coloure china hen sitting on a yellow china nest, and was glad because she had liked the old thing when she was a child. Joscelyn Dark got the claw-footed mahogany talbe Mrs. Palmer Dark had hope for, and Roger Dark got the Georgian candlesticks and Mrs. Denzil's eternal hatred. The beautiful old Queen Anne bookcase went to Murray Dark, who never read books, and Hugh Dark got the old hour-glass - early eighteenth century - and wondered bitterly what use it would be to a man for whom time had stopped ten years ago. He knew, none better, how long an hour can be and what devastating things can happen in it.

"Crosby, you're to have my old cut-glass whiskey decanter," Aunt Becky was saying. "There hasn't been any whiskey in it for many a year, more's the pity. It'll hold the water you're always drinking in the night. I heard you admire it once."

Old Crosby Penhallow, who had been nodding, wakened up and looked pleased. He really hadn't expected anything. It was kind of Becky to remember him. They had been young togehter.

Aunt Becky looked at him - at his smooth, shining bald head, his sunken blue eyes, his toothless mouth. Old Crosby would never have false teeth. Yet in spite of the bald head and faded eyes and shrunken mouth, Crosby Dark was not an ill-looking old man - quite the reverse.

"I have a mind to tell you something, Crosby," said Aunt Becky. "You never knew it - nobody ever knew it - but you were the only man I ever loved."

The announcement made a sensation. Everybody - so ridiculous is outworn passion - wanted to laugh but dared not. Crosby blushed painfully all over his wrinkled face. Hang it all, was old Becky making fun of him? And whether or no, how dared she make a show of him like this before everybody?

"I was quite mad about you," said Aunt Becky musingly. "Why? I don't know. You were handsomer sixty years ago than any man has a right to be, but you had no brains. Yet you were the man for me. And you never looked at me. You married Annette Dark - and I married Theodore. Nobody knows how much I hated him when I married him. But I got quite fond of him after a while. That's life, you know - though those three romantic young geese there - Gay and Donna and Virginia, think I'm telling rank heresy. I got over caring for you in time, even though for years after I did, my heart used to beat like mad everey time I saw you walk up the church aisle with your meek little Annette trotting behind you. I got a lot of thrills out of loving you, Crosby - many more I don't doubt than if I'd married you. And Theodore was really a much better husband for me than you'd have been - he had a sense of humour. And it doesnt' matter now whether he was or wasn't. I don't even wish now that you had loved me, though I wished it for so many years. Lord, the nights I couldn't sleep for thinking of you - and Theordore snoring beside me. But there it is. Somehow, I've always wanted you to know it and at last I've had the courage to tell you."

Old Crosby wiped his brow with his handkerchief. Erasmus would never let him hear the last of this - never. And suppose it got into the papers! If he had dreamed anything like this was going to happen, he would never have come to the levee. He glowered at the jug. It was to blame, durn it.

"I wonder how many of us will get out of this alive," whispered Stanton Grundy to Uncle Pippin.

But Aunt Becky had switched over to Penny Dark and was giving him her bottle of Jordan water.

"What the deuce do I care for Jordan water," thought Penny. Perhaps his face was too expressive, for Aunt Becky suddenly grinned dangerously.

"Mind the time, Penny, you moved a vote of thanks to Rob Dufferin on the death of his wife?"

There was a chorus of laughter of varying timbre, among which Drowned John's boomed like an earthquake. Penny's thoughts were as profane as the others' had been. That a little mistake betweent hanks and condolence, made in the nervousness of public speaking, should be everlastingly coming up against a man like this. From old Aunt Becky, too, who had just confessed that most of her life she had loved a man who wasn't her husband, the scandalous old body.

Mercy Penhallow sighed. She would have liked the Jordan water. Rachel Penhallow had one and Mercy had always envied her for it. There must be a blessing in any household that had a bottle of Jordan water. ASunt Becky heard the sigh and looked at Mercy.

"Mercy," she said apropos of nothing, "do you remember that forgotten pie you brought out after everybody had finished eating at the Stanley Penhallow's silver-wedding dinner?"

But Mercy was not afraid of Aunt Becky. She had a spirit of her own.

"Yes, I do. And do you remember, Aunt Becky, that the first time you killed and roasted a chicken after you were married, you brought it to the table with the insides still in it?"

Nobody dared to laugh but everybody was glad Mercy had the spunk. Aunt Becky nodded unperturbed.

"Yes, and I remember how it smelled! We had company, too. I don't think Theodore ever fully forgave me. I thoguht that had forgotten years ago. Is anything ever forgotten? Can people ever live anything down? The honours are to you, Mercy, but I must get square with somebody. Junius Penhallow, do you remember - since Mercy has started digging up the past - how drunk you were at your wedding?"

Junius Penhallow turned a violent crimson but couldn't deny it. Of what use was it, with Mrs. Junius at his elbow, to plead that he had been in such a blue funk on his wedding-morning that he'd never had had the courage to go throughwith it if he hadn't got drunk? He had never been drunk since, and it was hard to have it raked up now, when he was an elder in the church and noted for his avowed temperance principles.

"I'm not the only one who ever got drunk in this clan," he dared to mutter, despite the jug.

"No, to be sure. There's Artemas over there. Do you remember, Artemas, the evening you waled up the church aisle in your nightshirt?"

Artemas, a tall, raw-boned, red-haired fellow, had been too drunk on that occasion to remember it, but he always roared when reminded of it. He thought it the best joke ever.

"You should have all been thankful I had that much on myeslf," he said with a chuckle.

Mrs. Artemas wished she were dead. What was a joke to Artemas was a tragedy to her. She had never forgotten - could never forget - the humiliation of that unspeakable evening. She had forgiven Artemas certain violations of her marriage vow of which every one was aware. But she had never forgiven - could never forgive - the episode of the nightshirt. If it had been pajamas, it would not have been quite so terrible. But in those days pajamas were unknown.

Aunt Becky was at Mrs. Conrad Dark.

"I'm giving you my silver saltcellars. Alec Dark's mother gave them to me for a wedding-present. Do you remember the time your and Mrs. Clifford there quarreled over Alec Dark and she slapped your face? And neither of you got Alec after all. There, there, don't crack the spectrum. It's all dead and vanished, just like my affair with Crosby."

("As if there was ever any affair," thought Crosby piteously.)

"Pippin's to have my grandfather clock. Mrs. Digby Dark thinks she should have that because her father gave it to me. But no. Do you remember, Fanny, that you once put a tract in a book you leant me? Do you know what I did with it? I used it for curl papers. I've never forgive you for the insult. Tracts, indeed. Did I need tracts?"

"You -- weren't a member of the church," said Mrs. Digby, on the point of tears.

"No - nor am yet. Theodore and I could never agree which church to join. I wanted Rose River and he wanted Bay Silver. And after he died it seemed sort of disrespectful to his memory to join Rose River. Besides, I was so old than it would have seemed funny. Marrying and church-joining should be done in youth. But I was as good a Christian as any one. Naomi Dark."

Naomi, who had been fanning Lawson, looked up with a start as Aunt Becky hurled her name at her.

"You're to get my Wedgwood teapot. It's a pretty thing. Cauliflower pattern, as it's called, picked out with gold lustre. It's the only thing it really hurts me to give up. Letty gave it to me - she bought it at a sale in town with some of her first quarter's salary. Have you all forgotten Letty? It's forty years since she died. She would have been sixty if she were living now - as old as you, Fanny. Oh, I know you don't own to more than fifty, but you and Letty were born within three weeks of each other. IT seems funny to think of Letty being sixty - she was always so young - she was the youngest thing I ever knew. I used to wonder how Theodore and I ever produced her. She couldn't have been sixty ever - that's why she had to die. After all, it was better. It hurt me to have her die - but I think it would have hurt me more to see her sixty - wrinkled - faded - grey-haired - my pretty Letty, like a rose tossing in a breeze. Have you all forgotten that golden hair of hers - such living hair. Be good to her teapot, Naomi."

The Books: The Doctor's Sweetheart: The Girl and the Wild Race' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

The Doctor's Sweetheart and Other Stories - by L.M. Montgomery. This is another collection of short stories - all selected by Catherine McLay - in general these have higher quality than some of the other collections, which are made up of juvenilia, or things that Montgomery obviously wrote for money. The stories in this collection (with a couple exceptions) are juicy - the characters memorable, and her writing superb.

The story I'm excerpting today is one of Lucy Maud's amusing romantic comedies. Judith is 27 years old and lives with her aunt. Judith has never been married - which basically causes her aunt conniption fits every time she thinks about. 27! And never married! It's not that Judith isn't pretty, or wifely, or a good match ... it's that the guy she has been secretly in love with since she was a kid - is not approved of by her aunt - who has chosen somebody else for her. Judith will not settle - and it's not like the guy she loves has ever declared himself. So it's a stalemate. Judith - a lovely laughing pretty girl - sits at home with her aunt, listening to her aunt bemoan the shame of being 27 and unmarried. Judith takes it all rather philosophically - she's not a gloom and doom type.

But then one day - Judith snaps. She declares to her complaining aunt that she will "marry the first man who asks". Word gets out in the little town - and word eventually reaches the guy Judith secretly loves - as well as the suitor her aunt approves of (as a matter of fact, her aunt sends the man an urgent message telling him to COME OVER HERE QUICK). And the two men end up having a race to get to Judith first - involving buggies racing across fields and fording streams, etc. The entire town gets involved - people rooting for one or the other - and Judith, who made a big show of saying she didn't care WHO she married - of course waits, with baited breath, to see if HER chosen one will reach her first.

It's a fun story - and I really like Judith's spunky personality.

Anyway - here's the moment where Judith finally snaps!

Excerpt from The Doctor's Sweetheart and Other Stories - 'The Girl and the Wild Race' - by L.M. Montgomery.

The afternoon that Mrs. Tony Mack came in Mrs. Theodora felt more aggrieved than ever. Ellie McGregor had been married the previous week - Ellie, who was the same age as Judith and not half so good looking. Mrs. Theodora had been nagging Judith ever since.

"But I might as well talk to the trees down there in that hollow," she complained to Mrs. Tony. "That girl is so set and contrary minded. She doesn't care a bit for my feelings."

This was not said behind Judith's back. The girl herself was standing at the open door, drinking in all the delicate, evasive beauty of the spring afternoon. The Whitney house crested a bare hill that looked down on misty intervals, feathered with young firs that were golden green in the pale sunlight. The fields were bare and smoking, although the lanes and shadowy places were full of moist snow. Judith's face was aglow with the delight of mere life and she bent out to front the brisk, dancing wind that blew up from the valley, resinous with the odors of firs and damp mosses.

At her aunt's words the glow went out of her face. She listened with her eyes brooding on the hollow and a glowing flame of temper smouldering in them./ Judith's long patience was giving way. She had been flicked on the raw too often of late. And now her aunt was confiding her grievances to Mrs. Tony Mack - the most notorious gossip in Ramble Valley or out of it!

"I can't sleep at nights for worrying over what will become of her when I'm gone," went on Mrs. Theodora dismally. "She'll just have to live on alone here - a lonesome withered-up old maid. And her that might have had her pick, MRs. Tony, though I do say it as shouldn't. You must feel real thankful to have all your girls married off - especially when none of them was extry good-looking. Some people have all the luck. I'm tired of talking to Judith. Folks'll be saying soon that nobody ever really wanted her, for all her flirting. But she just won't marry."

"I will!"

Judith whirled about on the sun warm door step and came in. Her black eyes were flushing and her round cheeks were crimson.

"Such a temper you never saw!" reported Mrs. Tony afterwards. "Though 'tweren't to be wondered at. Theodora was most awful aggravating."

"I will," repeated Judith stormily. "I'm tired of being nagged day in and day out. I'll marry - and what is more I'll marry the first man that asks me - that I will, if it is old Widower Delane himself! How does that suit you, Aunt Theodora?"

Mrs. Theodora's mental processes were never slow. She dropped her knitting ball and stooped for it. In that time she had decided what to do. She knew that Judith would stick to her word, Stewart-like, and she must trim her sails to catch this new wind.

"It suits me real well, Judith," she said calmly, "you can marry the first man that asks you and I'll say no word to hinder."

The color went out of Judith's face, leaving it pale as ashes. Her hasty assertion had no sooner been uttered than it was repented of, but she must stand by it now. She went out of the kitchen without another glance at her aunt or the delighted Mrs. Tony and dashed up the stairs to her own little room which looked out over the whole of Ramble Valley. It was warm with the March sunshine and the leafless boughs of the creeper that covered the end of the house were tapping a gay tattoo on the window panes to the music of the wind.

Judith sat in her little rocker and dropped her pointed chin in her hands.

The Books: The Doctor's Sweetheart: 'Emily's Husband' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

The Doctor's Sweetheart and Other Stories - by L.M. Montgomery. This is another collection of short stories - all selected by Catherine McLay - in general these have higher quality than some of the other collections, which are made up of juvenilia, or things that Montgomery obviously wrote for money. The stories in this collection (with a couple exceptions) are juicy - the characters memorable, and her writing superb. I like this collection a lot.

First story I'll excerpt from is the one called "Emily's Husband". I like this one because of the characters. Emily is one of those classic Lucy Maud leads: she's a woman for whom pride is everything. This (of course) takes her into pretty much sinful territory. She's not just proud. She is hard. Who knows why. But that's the way she is. Lucy Maud writes such people so well - they're a common type in her work. She GETS the damage that such pride can wreak. She paid a price herself for her own pride - a price that she never stopped paying. Pride in these Lucy Maud archetypes often manifests itself in an imperious manner - a cold and haughty indifference ... even when beneath, the person is experiencing turmoil, rage, lust, whatever. The self-control that it takes - for these characters to save face - is often wrenching. You ache for them to just let go!

Emily's price that she paid is this: She married a man she loved - Stephen Fair. Stephen's mother lived with them - and this ended up being the thing that drove Emily away. Mrs. Fair was supposedly sweet and nice - but she was one of those types that Lucy Maud despises: sweet and kitteny on the outside, but vicious on the inside. Mrs. Fair set out to make Emily's life miserable - and she did. I don't remember what the issue was - maybe she thought Emily wasn't good enough for her son - but every word to Emily contained a barb, a dig, a hidden claw. Emily, with all her pride, and her sensitivity to insult - suffered in silence. Stephen felt the tension but didn't take sides. Of course Emily felt that in not taking sides - he was choosing his mother. So finally Emily burst - and told him to choose. Choose your mother or me. I refuse to live with that bitch one more second. (Of course she didn't say that, but it was implied!) Stephen, who was no slouch in the pride department, said - "Fine. Go home. If you leave though - don't come back!" Emily - in a rage - stalked across the fields to her family home, where she had grown up, and where her older sister now lived. And Emily never returned to her husband's home. 5 years went by. And over those years, Emily's rage did not soften - but hardened. It hardened her character. She became unyielding, unforgiving, and rather terrifying. It was her way of protection. Lucy Maud writes that Emily KNEW she had been in the wrong - but there was something in her that just could not give in. Lucy Maud, instead of judging such people, always has compassion for them. She aches for those who cannot express themselves, who let themselves harden up. She knows that pain. So it's a classic Lucy Maud situation. A fight leads to a long freeze. Even though the main parties live just across the way from each other - they never see each other, reference each other ... until ...

One day Emily comes home and gets some news ... I am excerpting the beginning of the story. I just like how Lucy Maud sets Emily up here - the voice, the haughtiness, the pale skin, the superior attitude ... It makes the end (which has Emily running over to her long-estranged husband's house - in a frenzy - through a rain storm - with branches slicing across her face - her hair tangled in the wind - and bursting in the door, begging him for forgiveness ...) SO much more satisfying. Because we know that she has never EVER let herself go like that.

Excerpt from The Doctor's Sweetheart and Other Stories - "Emily's Husband" - by L.M. Montgomery.

Emily Fair got out of Hiram Jameson's wagon at the gate. She took out her satchel and parasol and, in her clear, musical tones, thanked him for bringing her home. Emily had a very distinctive voice. It was very sweet always and very cold generally; sometimes it softened to tenderness with those she loved, but in it there was always an undertone of inflexibility and reserve. Nobody had ever heard Emily Fair's voice tremble.

"You are more than welcome, Mrs. Fair," said Hiram Jameson, with a glance of bold admiration. Emily met it with an unflinching indifference. She disliked Hiram Jameson. She had been furious under all her external composure because he had been at the station when she left the train.

Jameson perceived her scorn, but chose to disregard it.

"Proud as Lucifer," he thought as he drove away. "Well, she's none the worse of that. I don't like your weak women -- they're always sly. If Stephen Fair doesn't get better she'll be free and then --"

He did not round out the thought, but he gloated over the memory of Emily, standing by the gate in the harsh, crude light of the autumn sunset, with her tawny, brown hair curling about her pale, oval face and the scornful glint in her large, dark-grey eyes.

Emily stood at the gate for some time after Jameson's waggon had disappeared. When the brief burst of sunset splendour had faded out she turned and went into the garden where late asters and chrysanthemums still bloomed. She gathered some of the more perfect ones here and there. She loved flowers, but to-night the asters seemed to hurt her, for she presently dropped those she had gathered and deliberately set her foot on them.

A sudden gust of wind came over the brown, sodden fields and the ragged maples around the garden writhed and wailed. The air was raw and chill. The rain that had threatened all day was very near. Emily shivered and went into the house.

Amelia Phillips was bending over the fire. She came forward and took Emily's parcels and wraps with a certain gentleness that sat oddly on her grim personality.

"Are you tired? I'm glad you're back. Did you walk from the station?"

"No. Hiram Jameson was there and offered to drive me home. I'd rather have walked. It's going to be a storm, I think. Where is John?"

"He went to the village after supper," answered Amelia, lighting a lamp. "We needed some things from the store."

The light flared up as she spoke and brought out her strong, almost harsh features and deep-set black eyes. Amelia Phillips looked like an overdone sketch in charcoal.

"Has anything happened in Woodford while I've been away?" asked Emily indifferently. Plainly she did not expect an affirmative answer. Woodford life was not eventful.

Amelia glanced at her sharply. So she had not heard! Amelia had expected that Hiram Jameson would have told her. She wished that he had, for she never felt sure of Emily. The older sister knew that beneath that surface reserve was a passionate nature, brooking no restraint when once it overleaped the bounds of her Puritan self-control. Amelia Phillips, with all her naturally keen insight and her acquired knowledge of Emily's character, had never been able to fathom the latter's attitude of mind towards her husband. From the time that Emily had come back to her girlhood home, five years before, Stephen Fair's name had never crossed her lips.

"I suppose you haven't heard that Stephen is very ill," said Amelia shortly.

Not a feature of Emily's face changed. Only in her voice when she spoke was a curious jarring, as if a false note had been struck in a silver melody.

"What is the matter with him?"

"Typhoid," answered Amelia briefly. She felt relieved that Emily had taken it so calmly. Amelia hated Stephen Fair with all the intensity of her nature because she believed that he had treated Emily ill, but she had always been distrustful that Emily in her heart of hearts loved her husband still. That, in Amelia Phillips' opinion, would have betrayed a weakness not to be tolerated.

Emily looked at the lamp unwinkingly.

"That wick needs trimming," she said. Then, with a sudden recurrence of the untuneful note:

"Is he dangerously ill?"

"We haven't heard for three days. The doctors were not anxious about him Monday, though they said it was a pretty severe case."

A faint, wraith-like change of expression drifted over Emily's beautiful face and was gone in a moment. What was it - relief? Regret? It would have been impossible to say. When she next spoke her vibrant voice was as perfectly melodious as usual.

"I think I will go to bed, Amelia. John will not be back until late I suppose, and I am very tired. There comes the rain. I suppose it will spoil all the flowers. They will be beaten to pieces."

In the dark hall Emily paused for a moment and opened the front door to be cut in the face with a whip-like dash of rain. She peered out into the thickly gathering gloom. Beyond, in the garden, she saw the asters tossed about, phantom-like. The wind around the many-cornered old farmhouse was full of wails and sobs.

The clock in the sitting-room struck eight. Emily shivered and shut the door. She remembered that she had been married at eight o'clock that very morning seven years ago. She thought she could see herself coming down the stairs in her white dress with her bouquet of asters. For a moment she was glad that those mocking flowers in the garden would be all beaten to death before morning by the lash of wind and rain.

Then she recovered her mental poise and put the hateful memories away from her as she went steadily up the narrow stairs and along the hall with its curious slant as the house had settled, to her own room under the north-western eaves.

When she had put out the light and gone to bed she found that she could not sleep. She pretended to believe that it was the noise of the storm that kept her awake. Not even to herself would Emily confess that she was waiting and listening nervously for John's return home. That would have been to admit a weakness, and Emily Fair, like Amelia, despised weakness.

Every few minutes a gust of wind smote the house, with a roar as of a wild beast, and bombarded Emily's window with a volley of rattling drops. In the silences that came between the gusts she heard the soft, steady pouring of the rain on the garden paths below, mingled with a faint murmur that came up from the creek beyond the barns where the pine boughs were thrashing in the storm. Emily suddenly thought of a weird story she had once read years before and long forgotten - a story of a soul that went out in a night of storm and blackness and lost its way between earth and heaven. She shuddered and drew the counterpane over her face.

"Of all things I hate a fall storm most," she muttered. "It frightens me."

The Books: The Blue Castle (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

The Blue Castle - by L.M. Montgomery. Another excerpt! It will be the last. Sniff. We must leave our Blue Castle behind. Valancy and Barney go along with their lives - in a montage of the seasons ... and then comes the big moment. The revelation moment. Valancy had been told by her doctor that her heart was so bad that any sudden shock could kill her instantly. She is always aware of keeping her stress level down - which, of course, on Barney's island, is not hard at all. But one day - Valancy and Barney are walking home from town, along the railroad tracks, and Valancy's heel gets caught in the rails ... and naturally, at that moment, a train decides to suddenly appear around the corner, bearing down right at them. Valancy is stuck! Damsel in distress! She calls out to Barney - who drops everything and runs to her, desperately trying to get her heel loose. Valancy, panicked, begs Barney to save himself - let her die - she who is going to die soon anyway - but to save himself! Barney, of course, ignores this and keeps tugging at her foot. With seconds to spare - or milliseconds - Barney frees Valancy's foot and pulls her away - just as the train races by. Okay, so this is the big moment. The two of them stroll home, lost in their own thoughts. Valancy is thinking, with a sick kind of realization: I can't have a bad heart ... because if that moment didn't kill me ... if that moment wasn't a "sudden shock" I don't know what is ... the doctor must have made a mistake ... This makes her sick to her stomach because her whole marriage to Barney is based on the fact that she is going to die in about a year. If she's not going to die? Would Barney think she had tricked him into marrying her? Etc. Valancy feels ill. And Barney is lost in thought, too. Valancy assumes that he is thinking what she is thinking: If THAT didn't kill her, then she can't be all that sick ... However, it turns out (we find this out later) - that Barney is actually lost in thought, and kind of distant - because he realized, in a flash, at the prospect of losing Valancy - that he was in love with her. Instead of declaring himself, he instead becomes consumed by the thought that he must go talk to doctors about her heart condition, get the best specialists, try to save her, do anything ... ANYthing to save her! But he doesn't tell Valancy any of this. He just disappears into the night. The next day, Valancy goes to visit the doctor who gave her the diagnosis - and she asks him if there could be any error ... and blah blah ... turns out, he was flustered on that day he saw her - for personal reasons - and gave her the diagnosis meant for another woman, who had a similar name. Valancy had nothing wrong with her heart, then. And would probably live a very long and healthy life. Instead of jumping for joy at this news, Valancy is horrified. Full of dread. To avoid the confrontation with Barney, she writes him a note - telling him what happened - and that she didn't mean to trick him - and leaves her Blue Castle, and goes home to live with her horrible mother. Valancy is so changed now - she has known love and freedom - she has shed her old dowdy skin. She bobbed her hair. She bought a bathing suit. She tramps through the woods on snowshoes. She reads all day long if she feels like it. But now, there is nothing for her to do but go home. Her heart is broken. It is a defeat of her spirit. And her mother is so smugly self-satisfied when "Doss" returns. Her mother is a "serves you right" type of moron.

This last excerpt is Valancy, staring around her old room, saying good-bye to her happy life with Barney.

Naturally - through twists and turns of the plot - it all works out in the end ... but those chapters are more plot-driven than character-driven (as well they should be) ... and so not as excerpt-able, in my opinion.

Here is Valancy. "Home" again. Knowing she will not live a long long life ... and yet without Barney, without the beautiful island ... she will live a long life, trapped in the bosom of her horrible family. The dream is over.

Excerpt from The Blue Castle - by L.M. Montgomery.

Valancy looked dully about her old room. It, too, was so exactly the same that it seemed almost impossible to believe in the changes that had come to her since she had last slept in it. It seemed - somehow - indecent that it should be so much the same. There was Queen Louise everlastingly coming down the stairway, and nobody had let the forlorn puppy in out of the rain. Here was the purple paper blind and the greenish mirror. Outside, the old carriage-shop with its blatant advertisements. Beyond it, the station with the same derelicts and flirtatious flappers.

Here the old life waited for her, like some grim ogre that bided his time and licked his chops. A monstrous horror of it suddenly possessed her. When night fell and she had undressed and got into bed, the merciful numbness passed away and she lay in anguish and thought of her island under the stars. The camp-fires - all their little household jokes and phrases and catch words - their furry beautiful cats - the lights agleam on the fairy islands - canoes skimming over Mistawis in the magic of morning - white birches shining among the dark spruces like beautiful women's bodies - winter snows and rose-red sunset fires - lakes drunken with moonshine - all the delights of her lost paradise. She would not let herself think of Barney. Only of these lesser things. She could not endure to think of Barney.

Then she thought of him inescapably. She ached for him. She wanted his arms around her - his face against hers - his whispers in her ear. She recalled all his friendly looks and quips and jests - his little compliments - his caresses. She counted them all over as a woman might count her jewels - not one did she miss from the first day they had met. These memories were all she could have now. She shut her eyes and prayed.

"Let me remember every one. God! Let me never forget one of them!"

Yet it would be better to forget. This agony of longing and loneliness would not be so terrible if one could forget. And Ethel Traverse. That shimmering witch woman with her white skin and black eyes and shining hair. The woman Barney had loved. The woman whom he still loved. Hadn't he told her he never changed his mind? Who was waiting for him in Montreal. Who was the right wife for a rich and famous man. Barney would marry her, of course, when he got his divorce. How Valancy hated her! And envied her! Barney had said, "I love you," to her. Valancy had wondered what tone Barney would say "I love you" in - how his dark-blue eyes would look when he said it. Ethel Traverse knew. Valancy hated her for the knowledge - hated and envied her.

"She can never have those hours in the Blue Castle. They are mine," thought Valancy savagely. Ethel would never make strawberry jam or dance to old Abel's fiddle or fry bacon for Barney over a camp-fire. She would never come to the little Mistawis shack at all.

What was Barney doing - thinking - feeling now? Had he come home and found her letter? Was he still angry with her? Or a little pitiful. Was he lying on their bed looking out on stormy Mistawis and listening to the rain streaming down on the roof? Or was he still wandering in the wilderness, raging at the predicament in which he found himself? Hating her? Pain took her and wrung her like some great pitiless giant. She got up and walked the floor. Would morning never come to end this hideous night? And yet what could morning bring her? The old life without the old stagnation that was at least bearable. The old life with the new memories, the new longings, the new anguish.

"Oh, why can't I die?" moaned Valancy.

The Books: The Blue Castle (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

The Blue Castle - by L.M. Montgomery. Another excerpt!

Yet another Valancy/Barney montage.

I love this one because ... with the crisis at the end of the excerpt - you can see that Barney basically lets Valancy love him with all her heart. He may not love her back in the same way (not yet anyway) - and he may kind of tease her about her intensity - but he doesn't try to hold her back, or make her not love him, or keep her calm, or talk her down from her feelings ... I guess I'm just speaking from my own experience where ... you know. When I'm in love, I am in LOVE, man. I'm an old-fashioned girl. I am not a modern woman. And so it is devastating when a guy - who also has feelings for me - tries to get me to calm down, be more cool about it, and not "let" me just go there. Go hot and cold, put on the brakes, whatever. Perhaps Barney feels safe in letting Valancy "go there" because as far as the two of them are concerned - this is not for a lifetime. Valancy will soon die ... so maybe he figures: "in the meantime, I'll just let her be in love with me. It's okay that she loves me that way."

Oh, and girls: in this excerpt it is quite explicit that they sleep in the same bed. I can't imagine either of them could lie there and not ... you know. Not that it's all about the sex, but I know it's on ALL of our minds!!!

(I love the cat Banjo. Lucky's cool, too - but I especially love psychotic split-personality cats like Banjo. They crack me up.)

Also, sorry, one more thing:

"empery of silence"

Lucy Maud's words. Jesusmaryandjoseph, that is gorgeous. It gives me the "flash". "Empery of silence". I wish I had come up with that.

Oops, one last thing: Knowing the misery of Lucy Maud's marriage, the unrelenting misery, passages like these make me ache with sympathy. She never sat around and talked with her husband, for hours on end, about books, and the world, and life. He was barely interested in anything outside of his own feverish conviction that he would burn for eternity in hell. He was, obviously, a barrel of laughs. She married him because ... uhm ... why? But he was no companion. He was no mate. He had ZERO sense of humor. He resented her writing. Etc. The guy was a jackass, sorry. I know he was ill, but man. I'm on her side, completely. So these long passages of companionship have an intensity to them that perhaps might not have existed if that part of Lucy Maud were satisfied in her real life. At least that's what I like to believe. Lucy Maud's life was hell - in many ways. But if it had been easier, perhaps she wouldn't have written so much or so poetically? She taps right into our deepest longings, dreams ... and maybe that's because she lived mainly in her dream-land in her head, too.

Excerpt from The Blue Castle - by L.M. Montgomery.

New year. The old, shabby, inglorious outlived calendar came down. The new one went up. January was a month of storms. It snowed for three weeks on end. The thermometer went miles below zero and stayed there. But, as Barney and Valancy pointed out to each other, there were no mosquitoes. And the roar and crackle of their big fire drowned the howls of the north wind. Good Luck and Banjo waxed fat and developed resplendent coats of thick, silky fur. Nip and Tuck had gone.

"But they'll come back in spring," promised Barney.

There was no monotony. Sometimes they had dramatic little private spats that never even thought of becoming quarrels. Sometimes Roaring Abel dropped in - for an evening or a whole day - with his old tartan cap and his long red beard coated with snow. He generally brought his fiddle and played for them, to the delight of all except Banjo, who would go temporarily insane and retreat under Valancy's bed. Sometimes Abel and barney talked while Valancy made candy for them; sometimes they sat and smoked in silence a la Tennyson and Carlyle, until the Blue Castle reeked and Valancy fled to the open. Sometimes they played checkers fiercely and silently the whole night through. Sometimes they all ate the russet apples Abel had brought, while the jolly old clock ticked the delightful minutes away.

"A plate of apples, an open fire, and 'a jolly goode booke' are a fair substitute for heaven," vowed Barney. "Any one can have the streets of gold. Let's have another whack at Carman."

It was easier now for the Stirlings to believe Valancy of the dead. Not even dim rumours of her having been over at the Port came to trouble them, though she and Barney used to skate there occasionally to see a moive and eat hot dogs shamelessly at the corner stand afterwards. Presumably none of the Stirlings ever thought about her - except Cousin Georgiana, who used to lie awake worrying about poor Doss. Did she have enough to eat? Was that dreadful creature good to her? Was she warm enough at nights?

Valancy was quite warm at nights. She used to wake up and revel silently in the cosiness of those winter nights on that little island in the frozen lake. The nights of other winters had been so cold and long. Valancy hated to wake up in them and think about the bleakness and emptiness of the day that had passed and the bleakness and emptiness of the day that would come. Now she almost counted that night lost on which she didn't wake up and lie awake for half an hour just being happy, while Barney's regular breathing went on beside her, and through the open door the smouldering brands in the fireplace winked at her in the gloom. It was very nice to feel a little Lucky cat jump up on your bed in the darkness and snuggle down at your feet, purring; but Banjo would be sitting dourly by himself out in front of the fire like a brooding demon. At such moments Banjo was anything but canny, but Valancy loved his uncanniness.

The side of the bed had to be right against the window. There was no other place for it in the tiny room. Valancy, lying there, could look out of the window, through the big pine boughs that actually touched it, away up Mistawis, white and lustrous as a pavement of pearl, or dark and terrible in the storm. Sometimes the pine boughs tapped against the panes with friendly signals. Sometimes she heard the little whisper of snow against them right at her side. Some nights the whole outer world seemed given over to the empery of silence; then came nights when there would be a majestic sweep of wind in the pines; nights of dear starlight when it whistled freakishly and joyously around the Blue Castle; brooding nights before storm when it crept along the floor of the lake with a low, wailing cry of brooding and mystery. Valancy wasted many perfectly good sleeping hours in these delightful communings. But she could sleep as long in the morning as she wanted to. Nobody cared. Barney cooked his own breakfast of bacon and eggs and then shut himself up in Bluebeard's Chamber till supper time. Then they had an evening of reading and talk. They talked about everything in this world and a good many things in other worlds. They laughed over their own jokes until the Blue Castle reechoed.

"You do laugh beautifully," Barney told her once. "It makes me want to laugh just to hear you laugh. There's a trick about your laugh - as if there were so much more fun back of it that you wouldn't let out. Did you laugh like that before you came to Mistawis, Moonlight?"

"I never laughed at all - really. I used to giggle foolishly when I felt I was expected to. But now - the laugh just comes."

It struck Valancy more than once that Barney himself laughed a great deal oftener than he used to and that his laugh had changed. It had become wholesome. She rarely heard the little cynical note in it now. Could a man laugh like that who had crimes on his conscience? Yet Barney must have done something. Valancy had indifferently made up her mind as to what he had done. She concluded he was a defaulting bank cashier. She had found in one of Barney's books an old clipping cut from a Montreal paper in which a vanishing, defaulting cashier was described. The description applied to Barney - as well as to half a dozen other men Valancy knew - and from some casual remarks he had dropped from time to time she concluded he knew Montreal rather well. Valancy had it all figured out in the back of her mind. Barney had been in a bank. He was tempted to take some money to speculate - meaning, of course, to put it back. He had got in deeper and deeper, until he found there was nothing for it but flight. It had happened so to scores of men. He had, Valancy was absolutely certain, never meant to do wrong. Of course, the name of the man in the clipping was Bernard Craig. But Valancy had always thought Snaith was an alias. Not that it mattered.

Valancy had only one unhappy night that winter. It came in late March when most of the snow had gone and Nip and Tuck had returned. Barney had gone off in the afternoon for a long, woodland tramp, saying he would be back by dark if all went well. Soon after he had gone it had begun to snow. The wind rose and presently Mistawis was in the grip of one of the worst storms of the winter. It tore up the lake and struck at the little house. The dark angry woods on the mainland scowled at Valancy, menace in the toss of their boughs, threats in their windy gloom, terror in the roar of their hearts. The trees of the island crouched in fear. Valancy spent the night huddled on the rug before the fire, her face buried in her hands, when she was not vainly peering from the oriel in a futile effort to see through the furious smoke of wind and snow that had once been blue-dimpled Mistawis. Where was Barney? Lost on the merciless lakes? Sinking exhausted in the drifts of the pathless woods? Valancy died a hundred deaths that night and paid in full for all the happiness of her Blue Castle. When morning came the storm broke and cleared; the sun shone gloriously over Mistawis; and at noon Barney came home. Valancy saw him from the oriel as he came around a wooded point, slender and black against the glistening white world. She did not run to meet him. Something happened to her knees and she dropped down on Banjo's chair. Luckily Banjo got out from under in time, his whiskers bristling with indignation. Barney found her there, her head buried in her hands.

"Barney, I thought you were dead," she whispered.

Barney hooted.

"After two years of the Klondike did you think a baby storm like this could get me? I spent the night in that old lumber shanty over by Muskoka. A bit cold but snug enough. Little goose! Your eyes look like burnt holes in a blanket. Did you sit up here all night worrying over an old woodsman like me?"

"Yes," said Valancy. "I -- couldn't help it. The storm seemed so wild. Anybody might have been lost in it. When -- I saw you -- come round the point -- there -- something happened to me. I don't know what. It was as if I had died and come back to life. I can't describe it any other way."

The Books: The Blue Castle (L.M. Montgomery)

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The Blue Castle - by L.M. Montgomery. Another excerpt!

The heavenly third act of the book (first act: Valancy at home with her family, second act: Valancy living with Abel and Cissy) is when she moves out to Barney's island, after the death of Cissy Gay. It's shocking. Cissy dies - and so Valancy is faced with a choice. Or, seemingly, she has no choice. She has to go home and live with her disapproving family again. Go back to her old cringing shy spinster self. But too much has changed. She now only has 8 months to live, or whatever it is ... and so ... she makes up her mind. And she asks Barney Snaith to marry her. I mean - go, Lucy Maud, with the shocking-ness!! Valancy tells the truth to Barney: Look, I only have 8 months left to live, and I love you. I know you don't love me ... but would you be willing to marry me and be with me until I die? Would you do that for me? And he contemplates it ... and he finally says to her, "You know I don't love you ... I've never thought of being in love. But you do that I have always thought you were a bit of a dear." And he agrees. So Valancy marries Barney Snaith. To the absolute HORROR of her family, who all remain convinced that Snaith is some sort of embezzler, or murderer, or man on the run. Lucy Maud does not, of course, take us into the marriage bed - but she suggests it ... and it's an interesting situation because: Valancy loves Barney but Barney does not love Valancy. However, he accepts her fully into his life - there's one room in his cottage that he will not allow her to go into (this all becomes clear later - he calls it Bluebeard's Chamber, as a joke) - but other than that - Valancy is perfectly free to do whatever she wants. And they obviously have a romantic relationship. Her family catches glimpses of her riding around town in the jalopy with Barney. Or - HORRORS! - eating out at a Chinese restaurant. There is a whimsy in the relationship ... which just comes off as so appealing. It reminds me a bit (without the neuroses and the torture, of course) of the love affair in Notorious. Ingrid Bergman says to Cary Grant, "This is a very interesting love affair." He asks, "Why?" She says, "Because you don't love me." He says, "Actions speak louder than words." Valancy and Barney are unconventional. Completely.

So here's an excerpt (the book has a lot of chapters like this ... almost like montage shots ... Valancy's time on the island, her marriage to Barney, what the two of them do together, how easy it is between them - but Lucy Maud is so good at this kind of writing - It's a montage, yes - but it never loses its specificity. We never feel like, as in some montages, that this is an author being LAZY, being unable to get us from point A to point B logically - so they resort to a montage. Lucy Maud uses these montage sequences very deliberately - and you really get the sense of this relationship. Of the seasons passing, of their feeling for each other growing, etc.)

These montage-chapters are absolutely sensuous.

Excerpt from The Blue Castle - by L.M. Montgomery.

Valancy toiled not, neither did she spin. There was really very little work to do. She cooked their meals on a coal-oil stove, performing all her little domestic rites carefully and exultingly, and they ate out on the verandah that almost overhung the lake. Before them lay Mistawis, like a scene out of some fairy tale of old time. And Barney smiling his twisted, enigmatical smile at her across the table.

"What a view old Tom picked out when he built this shack!" Barney would say exultantly.

Supper was the meal Valancy liked best. The faint laughter of winds was always about them and the colours of Mistawis, imperial and spiritual, under the changing clouds, were something that cannot be expressed in mere words. Shadows, too. Clustering in the pines until a wind shook them out and pursued them over Mistawis. They lay all day along the shores, threaded by ferns and wild blossoms. They stole around the headlands in the glow of the sunset, until twilight wove them all into one great web of dusk.

The cats, with their wise, innocent little faces, would sit on the verandah railing and eat the tidbits Barney flung them. And how good everything tasted! Valancy, amid all the romance of Mistwis, never forgot that men had stomachs. Barney paid her no end of compliments on her cooking.

"After all," he admitted, "there's something to be said for square meals. I've mostly got along by boiling two or three dozen eggs hard at once and eating a few when I got hungry, with a slice of bacon once in a while and a jorum of tea."

Balancy poured tea out of Barney's little battered old pewter teapot of incredible age. She had not even a set of dishes - only Barney's mismatched chipped bits - and a dear, big, pobby old jug of robin's-egg blue.

After the meal was over they would sit there and talk for hours - or sit and say nothing, in all the languages of the world, Barney pulling away at his pipe, Valancy dreaming idly and deliciously, gazing at the far-off hills beyond Mistawis where the spires of firs came out against the sunset. The moonlight would begin to silver the Mistawis. Bats would begin to swoop darkly against the pale, western gold. The little waterfall that came down on the high bank not far away would, by some whim of the wildwood gods, begin to look like a wonderful white woman beckoning through the spicy, fragrant evergreens. And Leander would begin to chuckle diabolically on the mainland shore. How sweet it was to sit there and do nothing in the beautiful silence, with Barney at the other side of the table, smoking!

There were plenty of other islands in sight, though none were near enough to be troublesome as neighbours. There was one little group of islets far off to the west which they called the Fortunate Isles. At sunrise they looked like a cluster of emeralds, at sunset like a cluster of amethysts. They were too small for houses; but the lights on the larger islands would bloom out all over the lake, and bonfires would be lighted on their shores, streaming up into the wood shadows and throwing great, blood-red ribbons over the waters. Music would drift to them alluringly from boats here and there, or from the verandahs on the big house of the millionaire on the biggest island.

"Would you like a house like that, Moonlight?" Barney asked her once, waving his hand at it. He had taken to calling her Moonlight, and Valancy loved it.

"No," said Valancy, who had once dreamed of a mountain castle ten times the size of the rich man's "cottage" and now pitied the poor inhabitants of palaces. "No. It's too elegant. I would have to carry it with me everywhere I went. On my back like a snail. It would own me - possess me, body and soul. I like a house I can love and cuddle and boss. Just like ours here. I don't envy Hamilton Gossard 'the finest summer residence in Canada.' It is magnificent, but it isn't my Blue Castle."

Away down the far end of the lake they got every night a glimpse of a big, continual train rushing through a clearing. Valancy liked to watch its lighted windows flash by and wonder who was on it and what hopes and fears it carried. She also amused herself by picturing Barney and herself going to the dances and dinners at the houses on the islands, but she did not want to go in reality. Once they did go to a masquerade dance in the pavilion at one of the hotels up the lake, and had a glorious evening, but slipped away in their canoe, before unmasking time, back to the Blue Castle.

"It was lovely - but I don't want to go again," said Valancy.

So many hours a day Barney shut himself up in Bluebeard's Chamber. Valancy never saw the inside of it. From the smells that filtered through at times she concluded he must be conducting chemical experiments - or counterfeiting money. Valancy supposed there must be smelly processes in counterfeiting money. But she did not trouble herself about it. She had no desire to peer into the locked chambers of Barney's house of life. His past and his future concerned her not. Only this rapturous present. Nothing else matterred.

Once he went away and stayed away two days and nights. He had asked Valancy if she would be afraid to stay alone and she had said she would not. He never told her where he had been. She was not afraid to be alone, but she was horribly lonely. The sweetest sound she had ever heard was Lady Jane's clatter through the woods when Barney returned. And then his signal whistle from the shore. She ran down to the landing rock to greet him - to nestle herself into his eager arms - they did seem eager.

"Have you missed me, Moonlight?" Barney was whispering.

"It seems a hundred years since you went away," said Valancy.

"I won't leave you again."

"You must," protested Valancy, "if you want to. I'd be miserable if I thought you wanted to go and didn't because of me. I want you to feel perfectly free."

Barney laughed - a little cynically.

"There is no such thing as freedom on earth," he said. "Only different kinds of bondages. And comparative bondages. You think you are free now because you've escaped from a peculiarly unbearable kind of bondage. But are you? You love me - that's a bondage."

"Who said or wrote that 'the prison unto which we doom ourselves no prison is'?" asked Valancy dreamily, clinging to his arm as they climbed up the rock steps.

"Ah, now you have it," said Barney. "That's all the freedom we can hope for - the freedom to choose our prison. But, Moonlight" -- he stopped at the door of the Blue Castle and looked about him - at the glorious lake, the great, shadowy woods, the bonfires, the twinkling lights -- "Moonlight, I'm glad to be home again. When I came down through the woods and saw my home lights - mine - gleaming out under the old pines - something I'd never seen before - oh, girl, I was glad - glad!"

But in spite of Barney's doctrine of bondage, Valancy thought they were splendidly free. It was amazing to be able to sit up half the night and look at the moon if you wanted to. To be late for meals if you wanted to - she who had always been rebuked so sharply by her mother and so reproachfully by Cousin Stickles if she were one minute late. Dawdle over meals as long as you wanted to. Leave your crusts if you wanted to. Not come home at all for meals if you wanted to. Sit on a sun-warm rock and paddle your bare feet in the hot sand if you wanted to. Just sit and do nothing in the beautiful silence if you wanted to. In short, do any fool thing you wanted to whenever the notion took you. If that wasn't freedom, what was?

The Books: The Blue Castle (L.M. Montgomery)

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The Blue Castle - by L.M. Montgomery. Another excerpt!

One of my favorite parts of the book is the following excerpt. It stands out, as far as I'm concerned - in Lucy Maud's work. It's pure conversation ... meandering ... nowhere to go, nowhere to be ... and yet you can feel something blossoming beneath the words. It's beautiful.

Valancy is at a dance "up back" - meaning: "rough" - and things get a bit crazy and, in the world of Lucy Maud, scary. A bunch of drunken rowdy guys show up - and they all start wanting to dance with her, and she starts to feel a little bit threatened actually. (This is actually one of the only times that any threat of male violence against women ever shows up in her books. Rape is just not a thing discussed in Lucy Maud's books ... but the threat of it is there at the dance in Blue Castle.) And thank goodness - Barney Snaith, Valancy's secret crush, shows up - and basically drags her away to take her home. Abel Gay has to stay on, because he's part of the "band" (basically a trio of fiddlers) - so Snaith rescues her. And drives her home in his beat-up jalopy that he calls "Lady Jane" who, naturally, breaks down. So they sit and wait for another car to drive by (they're in the woods, basically) - and they have never been alone before, these two ... and Valancy obviously has a huge crush on the guy (in a kind of adolescent fan-worship way - his life, and how he bucks convention, really means something to her).

The excerpt below is the two of them sitting in the car, waiting. I find this excerpt strangely sad. Or maybe it's just my mood. Perhaps bittersweet is a better word choice than "sad".

Excerpt from The Blue Castle - by L.M. Montgomery.

"We'll just sit here," said Barney, "and if we think of anything worthwhile saying we'll say it. Otherwise, not. Don't imagine you're bound to talk to me."

"John Foster says," quoted Valance, " 'If you can sit in silence with a person for half an hour and yet be entirely comfortable, you and that person can be friends. If you cannot, friends you'll never be and you need not waste time in trying."

"Evidently John Foster says a sensible thing once in a while," conceded Barney.

They sat in silence for a long while. Little rabbits hopped across the road. once or twice an owl laughed out delightfully. The road beyond them was fringed with the woven shadow lace of trees. Away off to the southwest the sky was full of silvery little cirrus clouds above the spot where Barney's island must be.

Valancy was perfectly happy. Some things dawn on you slowly. Some things come by lightning flashes. Valancy had had a lightning flash.

She knew quite well now that she loved Barney. Yesterday she had been all her own. Now she was this man's. Yet he had done nothing - said nothing. He had not even looked at her as a woman. But that didn't matter. Nor did it matter what he was or what he had done. She loved him without any reservations. Everything in her went out wholly to him. She had no wish to stifle or disown her love. She seemed to be his so absolutely that thought apart from him - thought in which he did not predominate - was an impossibility.

She had realised, quite simply and fully, that she loved him, in the moment when he was leaning on the car door, explaining that Lady Jane had no gas. She had looked deep into his eyes in the moonlight and had known. In just that infinitesimal space of time everything was changed. Old things passed away and all things became new.

She was no longer unimportant, little old maid Valancy Stirling. She was a woman, full of love and therefore rich and significant - justified to herself. Life was no longer empty and futile, and death could cheat her of nothing. Love had cast out her last fear.

Love! What a searing, torturing, intolerably sweet thing it was - this possession of body, soul and mind! With something at its core as fine and remote and purely spiritual as the tiny blue spark in the heart of the unbreakable diamond. No dream had ever been like this. She was no longer solitary. She was one of a vast sisterhood - all the women who had ever loved in the world.

Barney need never know it - though she would not in the least have minded his knowing. But she knew it and it made a tremendous difference to her. Just to love! She did not ask to be loved. It was rapture enough just to sit there beside him in silence, alone in the summer night in the white splendour of moonshine, with the wind blowing down on them out of the pine woods. She had always envied the wind. So free. Blowing where it listed. Through the hills. Over the lakes. What a tang, what a zip it had! What a magic of adventure! Valancy felt as if she had exchanged her shop-worn soul for a fresh one, fire-new from the workshop of the gods. As far back as she could look, life had been dull - colourless - savourless. Now she had come to a little patch of violets, purple and fragrant - hers for the plucking. No matter who or what had been in Barney's past - no matter who or what might be in his future - no one else could ever have this perfect hour. She surrendered herself utterly to the charm of the moment.

"Ever dream of ballooning?" said Barney suddenly.

"No," said Valancy.

"I do - often. Dream of sailing through the clouds - seeing the glories of sunset - spending hours in the midst of a terrific storm with lightning playing above and below you - skimming above a silver cloud floor under a full moon - wonderful!"

"It does sound so," said Valancy. "I've stayed on earth in my dreams."

She told him about her Blue Castle. It was so easy to tell Barney things. One felt he understood everything - even the things you didn't tell him. And then she told him a little of her existence before she came to Roaring Abel's. She wanted him to see why she had gone to the dance "up back".

"You see - I've never had any real life," she said. "I've just - breathed. Every door has always been shut to me."

"But you're still young," said Barney.

"Oh, I know. Yes, I'm 'still young' - but that's so different from young," said Valancy bitterly. For a moment she was tempted to tell Barney why her years had nothing to do with her future; but she did not. She was not going to think of death tonight.

"Though I never was really young," she went on - "until tonight," she added in her heart. "I never had a life like other girls. You couldn't understand. Why" -- she had a desperate desire that Barney should know the worst about her -- "I didn't even love my mother. Isn't it awful that I don't love my mother?"

"Rather awful -- for her," said Barney drily.

"Oh, she didn't know it. She took my love for granted. And I wasn't any use or comfort to her or anybody. I was just a -- a -- vegetable. And I got tired of it. That's why I came to keep house for Mr. Gay and look after Cissy."

"And I suppose your people thought you'd gone mad."

"They did -- and do -- literally," said Valancy. "But it's a comfort to them. They'd rather believe me mad than bad. There's no other alternative. But I've been living since I came to Mr. Gay's. It's been a delightful experience. I suppose I'll pay for it when I have to go back -- but I'll have had it."

"That's true," said Barney. "If you buy your experience it's your own. So it's no matter how much you pay for it. Somebody else's experience can never be yours. Well, it's a funny old world."

"Do you think it really is old?" asked Valancy dreamily. "I never believe that in June. It seems so young tonight - somehow. In that quivering moonlight - like a young, white girl - waiting."

"Moonlight here on the verge of up back is different from moonlight anywhere else," agreed Barney. "It always makes me feel so clean, somehow - body and soul. And of course the age of gold always comes back in spring."

It was ten o'clock now. A dragon of black cloud ate up the moon. The spring air grew chill -- Valancy shivered. Barney reached back into the innards of Lady Jane and clawed up an old, tobacco-scented overcoat.

"Put that on," he ordered.

"Don't you want it yourself?" protested Valancy.

"No. I'm not going to have you catching cold on my hands."

"Oh, I won't catch cold. I haven't had a cold since I came to Mr. Gay's - though I've done the foolishest things. It's funny, too - I used to have them all the time. I feel so selfish taking your coat."

"You've sneezed three times. No use winding up your 'experience' up back with grippe or pneumonia."

He pulled it up tight about her throat and buttoned it on her. Valancy submitted with secret delight. How nice it was to have some one look after you so! She snuggled down into the tobaccoey folds and wished the night could last forever.

The Books: The Blue Castle (L.M. Montgomery)

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The Blue Castle - by L.M. Montgomery. Another excerpt! So. Valancy is now behaving like a lunatic (according to her family). She is (gasp) speaking her mind, doing what she wants, not living by her mother's silly rules. But this is not even the beginning of the upset precipiated by Valancy learning she only has one year to live. Valancy is vaguely fascinated by a man named Abel Gay - a drunken free-spirit - who careens thru the upstanding town in his smoking bellowing jalopy. She somehow likes him. He seems to not live by society's rules. Valancy is jealous. Abel Gay (nicknamed "Roaring Abel" for obvious reasons) has a daughter - a young woman - who is dying of tuberculosis. Her name is Cissy. Cissy is a "fallen" woman - had a child out of wedlock (nobody knows who the father was) - and the child died. Because of this "sin" - Abel cannot get a nurse to come out and take care of Cissy. He does the best he can, in between bacchanalian binges. In conversing briefly with Abel - an idea suddenly comes into Valancy's head. She will go live with Abel and Cissy, and take care of Cissy in her final illness. And so that is what she does. Her family is beyond shocked. It's almost like - they didn't notice her for 29 years - and now she is all they can think about.

Valancy, meanwhile, goes off to the cabin in the woods - and settles in to her new free life. Barney Snaith (a supposed reprobate - mysterious, handsome) is a common visitor - he's as much of an outcast as Abel Gay. Valancy has had a crush-from-afar on Snaith for a while ... so suddenly she finds herself in his company and finds herself really falling for him. He remains mysterious, the opposite of an open book ... but even that Valancy doesn't mind. She's never had a beau. And she doesn't want one now - because she's dying. But she finally allows herself to just fantasize like crazy about Barney. She no longer is ashamed of imagining what he's thinking about, or what it would be like to kiss him ...

Valancy really starts to blossom, out there in the woods with the rejects.

And she just loves Cissy. A sweet bed-ridden woman, who just loves having Valancy there - loves the female company, and loves Valancy's sympathetic presence.

Here's an excerpt from the "living with Abel Gay" section of the book.

Excerpt from The Blue Castle - by L.M. Montgomery.

When Abel Gay paid Valancy her first month's wages - which he did promptly, in bills reeking with the odour of tobacco and whiskey - Valancy went into Deerwood and spent every cent of it. She got a pretty green crepe dress with a girdle of crimson beads, at a bargain sale, a pair of silk stockings to match, and a little crinkled green hat with a crimson rose in it. She even bought a foolish little beribboned and belaced nightgown.

She passed the house on Elm Street twice - Valancy never even thought about it as "home" - but saw no one. No doubt her mother was sitting in the room this lovely June evening playing solitaire - and cheating. Valancy knew that Mrs. Frederick always cheated. She never lost a game. Most of the people Valancy met looked at her seriously and passed her with a cool nod. Nobody stopped to speak to her.

Valancy put on her green dress when she got home. Then she took it off again. She felt so miserably undressed in its low neck and short sleeves. And that low, crimson girdle around the hips seemed positively indecent. She hung it up in the closet, feeling flatly that she had wasted her money. She would never have the courage to wear that dress. John Foster's arraignment of fear had no power to stiffen her against this. In this one thing habit and custom were still all-powerful. Yet she sighed as she went down to meet Barney Snaith in her old snuff-brown silk. That green thing had been very becoming - she had seen so much in her one ashamed glance. Above it her eyes had looked like odd brown jewels and the girdle had given her flat figure an entirely different appearance. She wished she could have left it on. But there were some things John Foster did not know.

Every Sunday evening Valancy went to the little Free Methodist church in a valley on the edge of "up back" - a spireless little grey building among the pines, with a few sunken graves and mossy gravestones in the small, paling-encircled, grass-grown square beside it. She liked the minister who preached there. He was so simple and sincere. An old man, who lived in Port Lawrence and came out by the lake in a little disappearing propeller boat to give free service to the people of the small, stony farms back of the hills, who would otherwise never have heard any gospel message. She liked the simple service and the fervent singing. She liked to sit by the open window and look out into the pine woods. The congregation was always small. The Free Methodists were few in number, poor and generally illiterate. But Valancy loved those Sunday evenings. For the first time in her life she liked going to church. The rumour reached Deerwood that she had "turned Free Methodist" and sent Mrs. Frederick to bed for a day. But Valancy had not turned anything. She went to the church because she liked it and because in some inexplicable way it did her good. Old Mr. Towers believed exactly what he preached and somehow it made a tremendous difference.

Oddly enough, Roaring Abel disapproved of her going to the hill church as strongly as Mrs. Frederick herself could have done. He had "no use for Free Methodists. He was a Presbyterian." But Valancy went in spite of him.

"We'll hear something worse than that about her soon," Uncle Benjamin predicted gloomily.

They did.

Valancy could not quite explain, even to herself, just why she wanted to go to that party. It was a dance "up back" at Chidley Corners; and dances at Chidley Corners were not, as a rule, the sort of assemblies where well-brought-up young ladies were found. Valancy knew it was coming off, for Roaring Abel had been engaged as one of the fiddlers.

But the idea of going had never occurred to her until Roaring Abel himself broached it at supper.

"You come with me to the dance," he ordered. "It'll do you good - put some colour in your face. You look peaked - you want something to liven you up."

Valancy found herself suddenly wanting to go. She knew nothing at all of what dances at Chidley Corners were apt to be like. Her idea of dances had been fashioned on the correct affairs that went by that name in Deerwood and Port Lawrence. Of course she knew the Corners' dance wouldn't be just like them. Much more informal, of course. But so much the more interesting. Why shouldn't she go? Cissy was in a week of apparent health and improvement. She wouldn't mind staying alone in the least. She entreated Valancy to go if she wanted to. And Valancy did want to go.

She went to her room to dress. A rage against the snuff-brown silk seized her. Wear that to a party! Never. She pulled her green crepe from its hanger and put it on feverishly. It was nonsense to feel so -- so -- naked -- just because her neck and arms were bare. That was just her old-maidishness. She would not be ridden by it. On went the dress - the slippers.

It was the first time she had worn a pretty dress since the organdies of her early teens. And they had never made her look like this.

If she only had a necklace or something. She wouldn't feel so bare then. She ran down to the garden. There were clovers there - great crimson things glrowing in the long grass. Valancy gathered handfuls of them and strung them on a cord. Fastened above her neck they gave her the comfortable sensation of a collar and were oddly becoming. Another circlet of them went round her hair, dressed in the low puffs that became her. Excitement brought those faint pink stains to her face. She flung on her coat and pulled the little, twisty hat over her hair.

"You look so nice and -- and -- different, dear," said Cissy. "Like a green moonbeam with a gleam of red in it, if there could be such a thing."

Valancy stooped to kiss her.

"I don't feel right about leaving you alone, Cissy."

"Oh, I'll be all right. I feel better tonight than I have for a long while. I've been feeling badly to see you sticking here so closely on my account. I hope you'll have a nice time. I never was at a party at the Corners, but I used to go sometimes, long ago, to dances up back. We always had good times. And you needn't be afraid of Father being drunk tonight. He never drinks when he engages to play for a party. But -- there may be -- liquor. What will you do if it gets rough?"

"Nobody would molest me."

"Not seriously, I suppose. Father would see to that. But it might be noisy and -- and unpleasant."

"I won't mind. I'm only going as a looker-on. I don't expect to dance. I just want to see what a party up back is like. I've never seen anything except decorous Deerwood."

Cissy smiled rather dubiously. She knew much better than Valancy what a party "up back" might be like if there should be liquor. But again there mightn't be.

"I hope you'll enjoy it," she repeated.

Valancy enjoyed the drive there. They went early, for it was twelve miles to Chidley Corners, and they had to go in Abel's old, ragged top-buggy. The road was rough and rocky, like most Muskoka roads, but full of the austere charm of northern woods. It wound through beautiful, purring pines that were ranks of enchantment in the June sunset, and over the curious jade-green rivers of Muskoka, fringed by aspens that were always quivering with some supernal joy.

Roaring Abel was excellent company, too. He knew all the stories and legends of the wild, beautiful "up back," and he told them to Valancy as they drove along. Valancy had several fits of inward laughter over what Uncle Benjamin and Aunt Wellington, et al., would feel and think and say if they saw her driving with Roaring Abel in that terrible buggy to a dance at Chidley Corners.

The Books: The Blue Castle (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

The Blue Castle - by L.M. Montgomery.

Excerpt 2! Of our favorite book, ladies! Yay!!! Spinsters everywhere: take hope! Valancy finds her Blue Castle! So can we!

Okay. So the next excerpt is hilarious. Valancy has gotten her "you have one life to live" letter. She has told no one. She doesn't inform her horrible mother that she is deathly ill. And although Valancy is scared, and sad ... that her life will end ... she suddenly wakes up to her own misery. She is no longer a victim. She starts to do things she has always wanted to do. Small at first: like sliding down the bannister. Her family is uptight enough that they are horrified by things like that. Then comes some kind of big family dinner. This is the moment. The entire Stirling realizes, at this dinner, that "something is wrong with Valancy". Of course the funny thing is (for this reader) that you start to realize that no, nothing is wrong with Valancy - her behavior at this dinner is perfectly rational. These people are annoying repetitive bores. Any right-minded person would be bored by their pompous irritating personalities. Valancy suddenly, at this dinner, without being cruel - or vicious - stops "playing nice". It's just that she suddenly sees with clear eyes - she has always been afraid of her family. And looking around at this dinner, she realizes: I was afraid of these boobs? Are you kidding me?

The story of the dinner goes on for multiple chapters - it's so funny - so I'll excerpt just a part of it.

Oh - and one of the jokes here - is that every time Valancy sneezes - every time - her mother reprimands her. And says, "A person should always be able to suppress their sneezes." These people are morons.

The moment when Valancy calls her uncle "old dear" and the response that gets makes me laugh out loud. Again: Lucy Maud is merciless with these people. They do not deserve mercy, in the context of this story. We don't try to understand the Wicked Stepmother, or try to see her side of things. Nope. She's evil. Get away from the beeyotch. This is the kind of story Lucy Maud is telling here. I particularly despise Uncle James. I know people like that. Horrible.

Excerpt from The Blue Castle - by L.M. Montgomery.

Meanwhile the dinner in its earlier stages was dragging its slow length along true to Stirling form. The room was chilly, in spite of the calendar, and Aunt Alberta had the gas-logs lighted. Everybody in the clan envied her those gas-logs, except Valancy. Glorious open fires blazed in every room of her Blue Castle when autumnal nights were cool, but she would have frozen to death in it before she would have committed the sacrilege of a gas-log. Uncle Herbert made his hardy perennial joke when he helped Aunt Wellington to the cold meat - "Mary, will you have a little lamb?" Aunt Mildred told the same old story of once finding a lost ring in a turkey's crop. Uncle Benjamin told his favourite prosy tale of how he had once chased and punished a now famous man for stealing apples. Second Cousin Jane described all her sufferings with an ulcerating tooth. Aunt Wellington admired the pattern of Aunt Alberta's silver teaspoons and lamented the fact that one of her own had been lost.

"It spoiled the set. I could never get it matched. And it was my wedding-present from dear old Aunt Matilda."

Aunt Isabel thought the seasons were changing and couldn't imagine what had become of our good, old-fashioned springs. Cousin Georgiana, as usual, discussed the last funeral and wondered, audibly, "which of us will be the next to pass away." Cousin Georgiana could never say anything as blunt as "die". Valancy thought she could tell her, but didn't. Cousin Gladys, likewise as usual, had a grievance. Her visiting nephew had nipped all the buds off her house-plants and chivied her brood of fancy chickens --"squeezed some of them to death, my dear."

"Boys will be boys," reminded Uncle Herbert tolerantly.

"But they needn't be ramping, rampageous animals," retorted Cousin Gladys, looking round the table for appreciation of her wit. Everybody smiled except Valancy. Cousin Gladys remembered that. A few minutes later, when Ellen Hamilton was being discussed, Cousin Gladys spoke of her as "one of those shy, plain girls who can't get husbands," and glanced significantly at Valancy.

Uncle James thought the conversation was sagging to a rather low plane of personal gossip. He tried to elevate it by starting an abstract discussion on "the greatest happiness." Everybody was asked to state his or her idea of "the greatest happiness".

Aunt Mildred thought the greatest happiness - for a woman - was to be "a loving and beloved wife and mother." Aunt Wellington thought it would be to travel in Europe. Olive thought it would be to a great singer like Tetrazzini. Cousin Gladys remarked mournfully that her greatest happiness would be to be free - absolutely free - from neuritis. Cousin Georgiana's greatest happiness would be "to have her dear, dead brother Richard back." Aunt Alberta remarked vaguely that the greatest happiness was to be found in "the poetry of life" and hastily gave some directions to her maid to prevent any one asking her what she meant. Mrs. Frederick said the greatst happiness was to spend your life in loving service for others, and Cousin Stickles and Aunt Isabel agreed with her - Aunt Isabel with a resentful air, as if she thought Mrs. Frederick had taken the wind out of her sails by saying it first. "We are all too prone," continued Mrs. Frederick, determined not to lose so good an opportunity, "to live in selfishness, worldliness, and sin." The other women all felt rebuked for their low ideals, and Uncle James had a conviction that the conversation had been uplifted with a vengeance.

"The greatest happiness," said Valancy suddenly and distinctly, "is to sneeze when you want to."

Everybody stared. Nobody felt it safe to say anything. Was Valancy trying to be funny? It was incredible. Mrs. Frederick, who had been breathing easier since the dinner had progressed so far without any outbreak on the part of Valancy began to tremble again. But she deemed it the part of prudence to say nothing. Uncle Benjamin was not so prudent. He rashly rushed in where Mrs. Frederick feared to tread.

"Doss," he chuckled, "what is the difference between a young girl and an old maid?"

"One is happy and careless and the other is cappy and hairless," said Valancy. "You have asked that riddle at least fifty times in my recollection, Uncle Ben. Why don't you hunt up some new riddles if riddle you must? It is such a fatal mistake to try to be funny if you don't succeed."

Uncle Benjamin stared foolishly. Never in his life had he, Benjamin Stirling, of Stirling and Frost, been spoken to so. And by Valancy of all people! He looked feebly around the table to see what the others thought of it. Everybody was looking rather blank. Poor Mrs. Frederick had shut her eyes. And her lips moved tremblingly - as if she were praying. Perhaps she was. The situation was so unprecedented that nobody knew how to meet it. Valancy went on calmly eating her salad as if nothing out of the usual had occurred.

Aunt Alberta, to save her dinner, plunged into an account of how a dog had bitten her recently. Uncle James, to back her up, asked her where the dog had bitten her.

"Just a little below the Catholic church," said Aunt Alberta.

At that point Valancy laughed. Nobody else laughed. What was there to laugh at?

"Is that a vital part?" asked Valancy.

"What do you mean?" said bewildered Aunt Alberta and Mrs. Frederick was almost driven to believe that she had served God all her years for naught.

Aunt Isabel concluded that it was up to her to suppress Valancy.

"Doss, you are horribly thin," she said. "You are all corners. Do you ever try to fatten up a little?"

"No." Valancy was not asking quarter or giving it. "But I can tell you where you'll find a beauty parlour in Port Lawrence where they can reduce the number of your chins."

"Val-an-cy!" The protest was wrung from Mrs. Frederick. She meant her tone to be stately and majestic, as usual but it sounded more like an imploring whine. And she did not say "Doss".

"She's feverish," said Cousin Stickles to Uncle Benjamin in an agonised whisper. "We've thought she seemed feverish for several days."

"She's gone dippy, in my opinion," growled Uncle Benjamin. "If not, she ought to be spanked. Yes, spanked."

"You can't spank her." Cousin Stickles was much agitated. "She's twenty-nine years old."

"So there is that advantage, at least, in being twenty-nine," said Valancy, whose ears had caught this aside.

"Doss," said Uncle Benjamin, "when I am dead you may say what you please. As long as I am alive I demand to be treated with respect."

"Oh, but you know we're all dead," said Valancy, "the whole Stirling clan. Some of us are buried and some aren't - yet. That is the only difference."

"Doss," said Uncle Benjamin, thinking it might cow Valancy, "do you remember the time you stole the raspberry jam?"

Valancy flushed scarlet - with suppressed laughter, not shame. She had been sure Uncle Benjamin would drag that jam in somehow.

"Of course I do," she said. "It was good jam. I've always been sorry I hadn't time to eat more of it before you found me. Oh, look at Aunt Isabel's profile on the wall. Did you ever see anything so funny?"

Everybody looked, including Aunt Isabel herself which, of course, destroyed it. But Uncle Herbert said kindly, "I -- I wouldn't eat any more if I were you, Doss. It isn't that I grudge it -- but don't you think it would be better for yourself? Your -- your stomach seems a little out of order."

"Don't worry about my stomach, old dear," said Valancy. "It is all right. I'm going to keep right on eating. It's seldom I get the chance of a satisfying meal."

It was the first time any one had been called "old dear" in Deerwood. The Stirlings thought Valancy had invented the phrase and they were afraid of her from that moment. There was something so uncanny about such an expression. But in poor Mrs. Frederick's opinion the reference to a satisfying meal was the worst thing Valancy had said yet. Valancy had always been a disappointment to her. Now she was a disgrace. She thought she would have to get up and go away from the table. Yet she dared not leave Valancy there.

Aunt Alberta's maid came in to remove the salad plates and bring in the dessert. It was a welcome diversion. Everybody brightened up with a determination to ignore Valancy and talk as if she wasn't there. Uncle Wellington mentioned Barney Snaith. Eventually somebody did mention Barney Snaith at every Stirling funciton, Valancy reflected. Whatever he was, he was an individual that could not be ignored. She resigned herself to listen. There was a subtle fascination in the subject for her, though she had not yet faced this face. She could feel her pulses beating to her finger-tips.

Of course they abused him. Nobody ever had a good word to say of Barney Snaith. All the old, wild tales were canvassed - the defaulting cashier-counterfeiter-infidel-murderer-in-hiding legends were thrashed out. Uncle Wellington was very indignant that such a creature should be allowed to exist at all in the neighbourhood of Deerwood. He didn't know what the police at Port Lawrence were thinking of. Everybody would be murdered in their beds some night. It was a shame that he should be allowed to be at large after all that he had done.

"What has he done?" asked Valancy suddenly.

Uncle Wellington stared at her, forgetting that she was to be ignored.

"Done! Done! He's done everything."

"What has he done?" repeated Valancy inexorably. "What do you know that he has done? You're always running him down. And what has ever been proved against him?"

"I don't argue with women," said Uncle Wellington. "And I don't need proof. When a man hides himself up there on an island in Muskoka, year in and year out, and nobody can find out where he came from or how he lives or what he does there, that's proof enough. Find a mystery and you find a crime."

"The very idea of a man named Snaith!" said Second Cousin Sarah. "Why, the name itself is enough to condemn him!"

"I wouldn't like to meet him in a dark lane," shivered Cousin Georgiana.

"Murder me," said Cousin Georgiana solemnly.

"Just for the fun of it?" suggested Valancy.

"Exactly," said Cousin Georgiana unsuspiciously. "When there is so much smoke there must be some fire. I was afraid he was a criminal when he came here first. I felt he had something to hide. I am not often mistaken in my intuitions."

"Criminal! Of course he's a criminal," said Uncle Wellington. "Nobody doubts it" -- glaring at Valancy. "Why, they say he served a term in the penitentiary for embezzlement. I don't doubt it. And they say he's in with that gang that are perpetrating all those bank robberies round the country."

"Who say?" asked Valancy.

Uncle Wellington knotted his ugly forehead at her. What had got into this confounded girl, anyway? He ignored the question.

"He has the identical look of a jail-bird," snapped Uncle Benjamin. "I noticed it the first time I saw him."

"'A fellow by the hand of nature marked,
Quoted and sighed to do a deed of shame.'"

declaimed Uncle James. He looked enormously pleased over the managing to work that quotation in at last. He had been waiting all his life for the chance.

"One of his eyebrows is an arch and the other is a triangle," said Valancy. "Is that why you think him so villainous?"

Uncle James lifted his eyebrows. Generally when Uncle James lifted his eyebrows the world came to an end. This time it continued to function.

"How do you know his eyebrows so well, Doss?" asked Olive, a trifle maliciously. Such a remark would have covered Valancy with confusion two weeks ago, and Olive knew it.

"Yes, how?" demanded Aunt Wellington.

"I've seen him twice and I looked at him closely," said Valancy composedly. "I thought his face the most interesting one I ever saw."

"There is no doubt there is something fishy in the creature's past life," said Olive, who began to think she was decidedly out of the conversation, which had centred so amazingly around Valancy. "But he can hardly be guilty of everything he's accused of, you know."

Valancy felt annoyed with Olive. Why should she speak up in even this qualified defence of Barney Snaith? What had she to do with him? For that matter, what had Valancy? But Valancy did not ask herself this question.

"They say he keeps dozens of cats in that hut up back on Mistawis," said Second Cousin Sarah Taylor, by way of appearing not entirely ignorant of him.

Cats. It sounded quite alluring to Valancy, in the plural. She pictured an island in Muskoka haunted by pussies.

"That alone shows there is something wrong with him," decreed Aunt Isabel.

"People who don't like cats," said Valancy, attacking her dessert with a relish, "always seem to think that there is some peculiar virtue in not liking them."

"The man hasn't a friend except Roaring Abel," said Uncle Wellington. "And if Roaring Abel had kept away from him, as everybody else did, it would have been better for - for some members of his family."

Uncle Wellington's rather lame conclusion was due to a marital glance from Aunt Wellington reminding him of what he had almost forgotten -- that there were girls at the table.

"If you mean," said Valancy passionately, "that Barney Snaith is the father of Cecily Gay's child, he isn't. It's a wicked lie."

In spite of her indignation Valancy was hugely amused at the expression of the faces around that festal table. She had not seen anything like it since the day, seventeen years ago, when at Cousin Gladys's thimble party, they discovered that she had got - SOMETHING - in her head at school. Lice in her head! Valancy was done with euphemisms.

Poor Mrs. Frederick was almost in a state of collapse. She had believed - or pretended to believe - that Valancy still supposed that children were found in parsley beds.

"Hush -- hush!" implored Cousin Stickles.

"I don't mean to hush," said Valancy perversely. "I've hush-hushed all my life. I'll scream if I want to. Don't make me want to. And stop talking nonsense about Barney Snaith."

Valancy didn't exactly understand her own indignation. What did Barney Snaith's imputed crimes and misdemeanors matter to her? And why, out of them all, did it seem most intolerable that he should have been poor, pitiful little Cecily Gay's false lover? For it did seem intolerable to her. She did not mind when they called him a thief and a counterfeiter and jail-bird; but she could not endure to think that he had loved and ruined Cecily Gay. She recalled his face on the two occasions of their chance meetings - his twisted, enigmatic, engaging smile, his twinkle, his think, sensitive, almost ascetic lips, his general air of daredeviltry. A man with such a smile and lips might have murdered or stolen but he could not have betrayed. She suddenly hated every one who said it or believed it of him.

"When I was a young girl I never thought or spoke about such matters, Doss," said Aunt Wellington, crushingly.

"But I'm not a young girl," retorted Valancy, uncrushed. "Aren't you always rubbing that into me? And you are all evil-minded, senseless gossips. Can't you leave poor Cissy Gay alone? She's dying. Whatever she did, God or the Devil has punished her enough for it. You needn't take a hand, too. As for Barney Snaith, the only crime he has been guilty of is living to himself and minding his own business. He can, it seems, get along without you. Which is an unpardonable sin, of course, in your little snobocracy." Valancy coined that concluding word suddenly and felt that it was an inspiration. That was exactly what they were and not one of them was fit to mend another.

"Valancy, your poor father would turn over in his grave if he could hear you," said Mrs. Frederick.

"I dare say he would like that for a change," said Valancy brazenly.

"Doss," said Uncle James heavily, "the Ten Commandments are fairly up to date still - especially the fifth. Have you forgotten that?"

"No," said Valancy, "but I thought you had - especially the ninth. Have you ever thought, Uncle James, how dull life would be without the Ten Commandments? It is only when things are forbidden that they become fascinating."

But her excitement had been too much for her. She knew, by certain unmistakable warnings, that one of her attacks of pain was coming on. It must not find her there. She rose from her chair.

"I am going home now. I only came for the dinner. It was very good, Aunt Alberta, although your salad-dressing is not salt enough and a dash of cayenne would improve it."

None of the flabbergasted silver wedding guests could think of anything to say until the lawn gate clanged behind Valancy in the dusk.

The Books: The Blue Castle (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf:

The Blue Castle - by L.M. Montgomery.

OH, how I love this novel. OH GOD. It's one of my escapes, a true fairy-romance that I find transportive ... If I ever find myself stuck, or feeling sorry for myself, or like a spinster (ha! let's retire that word, please) - all I need to do is pick up this magical novel. I find it intensely pleasurable to read - and in a weird way, this is my favorite thing that Lucy Maud has ever written. It is singular. It is its own thing. She never wrote another book like it. It feels like an exorcism ... and it also feels like it transported her. I love the Emily books - but they don't do for me what Blue Castle does - it's just a different experience. I really want this to come out right - because I think Lucy Maud does some of her best writing in this book, and I don't want to make the book sound trivial. In Blue Castle, we have some of her funniest writing, her most intensely gorgeous nature writing, her most brilliant characterizations ... but for me, personally, this book works the way watching, say, Notting Hill does. Or ... Kate & Leopold. I'm listing these romantic comedies that I absolutely LOVE ... movies that have the ability to really put a little hope in my heart, a little ... pep-talk "hang in there, Sheila, hang in there" ... There are many movies that work on me on that primal level, the level that aches for a mate, that doesn't want to give up, that wants to hope ... and for me Blue Castle works on that level.

It makes me feel like a teenager. A lovesick teenager.

The story is simple. And also cliched. But the beauty of it is not in the plot points ... but in HOW we get to the end of the story, the people we meet, the twists and turns ... It's almost archetypal, like a folk tale - if that makes any sense.

Valancy Stirling (her family calls her "Doss" and she despises the name - but they won't stop) is an unhappy 29 year old woman - unmarried, seriously on the shelf, as it were ... and completely dominated by her thoroughly unpleasant family. God, has Lucy Maud ever created such a bunch of relentless ignorant boring nincompoops in her writing career? She's merciless (and yet in a very funny way - I laugh out loud reading about these terrible people). Usually "bad" characters have SOME redeeming qualities in Lucy Maud's world. It's rare the truly bad seed. Miss Browning in Emily of New Moon comes to mind - she is truly a nasty human being, and she balances out the more humanistic approach to other "villains". Because you know what? Some people really ARE just assholes. But in Blue Castle, Lucy Maud takes the gloves off and turns her viciousness on people like Valancy's horrendous family. They are prudish, thin-lipped with decency and decorum ... and look at any sign of individuality (especially in Valancy) as the sign of the coming apocalypse. The book takes place in the 1920s, obviously - because there are mentions of bobbed hair (also seen by her family as harbingers of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse) and jalopies and stuff like that - but Valancy's stick-up-the-ass family clings to the Victorian ways. Valancy has zero freedom when the book opens. She doesn't have a job. She has to do everything her mother says, or else she will get the silent treatment, and Valancy has never before questioned the supremacy of her mother. Valancy is completely cowed by her family. She is who they say she is. She was always a plain little girl, never fit in, couldn't dance, had no social graces, was a dreamy odd-looking girl ... and was always compared unfavorably to her golden-haired smooth-mannered cousin Olive. Valancy could never win the Olive vs. Valancy battle - so she gave up. Valancy is, admittedly, quite a self-pitying thing when the book opens. She feels victimized by everything. And she has no sense of agency in her own destiny. She is victimized by her mother. She is victimized by her entire ridiculous judgmental family. She is single - and she feels victimized by this circumstance. She cannot imagine her way out of this kind of life. She is stuck. Big time. But she doesn't even see that she is stuck. According to Valancy, this is just her "lot" in life. This is the hand she has been dealt.

Until ...

She goes to the doctor (sneaking to the doctor SHE wants to go to, as opposed to going to the family doctor - who will then, naturally, gossip about her physical ailments to her whole family) to ask him about these shortness of breath "attacks" that she has. He examines her. And then tells her, via letter, that she is dying, she has some heart condition, and she only has a year to live. The letter is very blunt and perfunctory - but it is the catalyst. It is what, ironically, sets Valancy free.

She has a horrible night of the soul ... realizing that her life is going to end ... and suddenly she realizes how much she has wasted her life. All she has experienced (from parents, peers, men) has been rejection. She has had a second-hand life. Olive gets the beaux. Olive gets the pretty dresses. And Valancy sits on the sidelines. She has had ZERO first-hand experiences in her life. She has spent her entire time on the planet in a quivery state of fear and anxiety - fear of annoying her mother, fear of what people will say, fear of rejection .... And after that one "night of the soul" - Valancy literally throws out her old self, which was a lie anyway, erected to please her prudish ignorant mother, and begins to act like herself.

And it goes off like an atom bomb through the Stirling family.

Even small things - like Valancy not laughing at her uncle's stupid jokes ... It was always Valancy's role to laugh, obligingly - but she stops. Because she doesn't think the jokes are funny, and she actually thinks her uncle is kind of a stupid man who has never been particularly nice to her. Enough with conventions.

But the changes go deeper than internal ones ... Valancy starts taking some huge risks. She walks away from her family - without looking back - and goes out to live with Abel Gay and his daughter - Abel Gay is a drunken reprobate (and yet somehow a very likable character too) who spends his nights carousing and drinking and whoring (presumably) - and he needs help with his frail daughter, who had a baby out of wedlock - and is now dying (the daughter). So Valancy offers her services as a nursemaid - and goes out to live with these people who have been completely rejected and judged by society. And once she is in the bosom of these rejects, these supposed "losers" (who, naturally, are not that at all - they are warmer, more real, more "moral" than the nasty-minded Christians back home who have only JUDGED anjd shunned them - typical.) ... Valancy really starts to blossom.

It's a great story.

I'm going to do a bunch of excerpts, just because I love this book so much.

First excerpt is from the first chapter - where we meet the cast of characters - Valancy's horrible family.

Excerpt from The Blue Castle - by L.M. Montgomery.

She was glad it was raining - or rather, she was drearily satisfied that it was raining. There would be no picnic that day. This annual picnic, whereby Aunt and Uncle Wellington - one always thought of them in that succession - inevitably celebrated their engagement at a picnic thirty years before, had been, of late years, a veritable nightmare to Valancy. By an impish coincidence it was the same day as her birthday and, after she had passed twenty-five, nobody let her forget it.

Much as she hated going to the picnic, it would never have occurred to her to rebel against it. There seemed to be nothing of the revolutionary in her nature. And she knew exactly what every one would say to her at the picnic. Uncle Wellington, whom she disliked and despised, even though he had fulfilled the highest Stirling aspiration, "marrying money," would say to her in a pig's whisper, "Not thinking of getting married yet, my dear?" and then go off into the bellow of laughter with which he invariably concluded his dull remarks. Aunt Wellington, of whom Valancy stood in abject awe, would tell her about Olive's new chiffon dress and Cecil's last devoted letter. Valancy would have to look as pleased and interested as if the dress and letter had been hers or else Aunt Wellington would be offended. And Valancy had long ago decided that she would rather offend God than Aunt Wellington, because God might forgive her but Aunt Wellington never would.

Aunt Alberta, enormously fat, with an amiable habit of always referring to her husband as "he", as if he were the only male creature in the world, who could never forget that she had been a great beauty in her youth, would condole with Valancy on her sallow skin --

"I don't know why all the girls of today are so sunburned. When I was a girl my skin was roses and cream. I was counted the prettiest girl in Canada, my dear."

Perhaps Uncle Herbert wouldn't say anything - or perhaps he would remark jocularly, "How fat you're getting, Doss!" And then everybody would laugh over the excessively humorous idea of poor, scrawny little Doss getting fat.

Handsome, solemn Uncle James, whom Valancy disliked but respected because he was reputed to be very clever and was therefore the clan oracle - brains being none too plentiful in the Stirling connection - would probably remark with the owl-like sarcasm that had won him his reputation, "I suppose you're busy with your hope-chest these days?"

And Uncle Benjamin would ask some of his abominable conundrums, between wheezy chuckles, and answer them himself.

"What is the difference between Doss and a mouse?"

"The mouse wishes to harm the cheese and Doss wishes to charm the he's."

Valancy had heard him ask that riddle fifty times and every time she wanted to throw something at him. But she never did. In the first place, the Stirlings simply did not throw things; in the second place, Uncle Benjamin was a wealthy and childless old widower and Valancy had been brought up in the fear and admonition of his money. If she offended him he would cut her out of his will - supposing she were in it. Valancy did not want to be cut out of Uncle Benjamin's will. She had been poor all her life and knew the galling bitterness of it. So she endured his riddles and even smiled tortured little smiles over him.

Aunt Isabel, downright and disagreeable as an east wind, would criticize her in some way - Valancy could not predict just how, for Aunt Isabel never repeated a criticism - she found something new with which to jab you every time. Aunt Isabel prided herself on saying what she thought, but didn't like it so well when other people said what they thought to her. Valancy never said what she thought.

Cousin Georgiana - named after her great-great-grandmother, who had been named after George the Fourth - would recount dolorously the names of all relatives and friends who had died since the last picnic and wonder "which of us will be the first to go next."

Oppressively competent, Aunt Mildred would talk endlessly of her husband and her odious prodigies of babies to Valancy, because Valancy would be the only one she could find to put up with it. For the same reason, Cousin Gladys - really First Cousin Gladys once removed, according to the strict way in which the Stirlings tabulated relationship - a tall, thin lady who admitted she had a sensitive disposition, would describe minutely the tortures of her neuritis. And Olive, the wonder girl of the whole Stirling clan, who had everything Valancy had not - beauty, popularity, love - would show off her beauty and presume on her popularity and flaunt her diamond insignia of love in Valancy's dazzled envious eyes.

There would be none of all this today. And there would be no packing up of teaspoons. The packing up was always left for Valancy and Cousin Stickles. And once, six years ago, a silver teaspoon from Aunt Wellington's wedding set had been lost. Valancy never heard the last of that silver teaspoon. Its ghost appeared Banquo-like at every subsequent family feast.

Oh, yes, Valancy knew exactly what the picnic would be like and she blessed the rain that had saved her from it. There would be no picnic this year. If Aunt Wellington could not celebrate on the sacred day itself she would have no celebration at all. Thank whatever gods there were for that.

The Books: Akin to Anne: 'Jane Lavinia' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Akin to Anne - 'Jane Lavinia' by L.M. Montgomery

I like this story in the "orphan collection" as well. It doesn't rest its entire plot on an implausible coincidence ("Oh my lord, you have my mother's eyes ... oh my gosh, you must be my long-lost second cousin thrice removed!") This is a story of a young orphan named Jane Lavinia. She is 11 years old. She has some talent as an artist - her paintings have promise, and she loves to paint. It is something she does to lose herself in fantasy. She lives with her Aunt Rebecca - who is tough as nails (supposedly), unsympathetic towards artistic endeavors, and keeps Jane Lavinia very busy, milking cows, doing chores, etc. Jane Lavinia loves Aunt Rebecca, because she is family ... but Jane Lavinia is never sure if Rebecca loves her back. She has a sneaking suspicion that she might be a burden on her aunt ... that her aunt has taken her in as a duty. (Echoes of Emily here ... with her feelings about Aunt Elizabeth). 'Jane Lavinia' was published in 1906 - so it's pretty early, in terms of Lucy Maud's career - maybe 5 or 6 years in ... but there's a nice feel here, a really nice characterization - a dreamy sweet little orphan ... and a terrific literary character in Aunt Rebecca. It's all a cliche, of course - but whatever - the catharsis at the end always gets me.

Here's the ending. Jane Lavinia's artistic talents have been noticed by some city woman who offers to take Jane Lavinia away from Aunt Rebecca and get her to a good school in far off New York - get her art lessons - give her a chance to be a success. Jane Lavinia will have no shot at success if she stayed with Rebecca on the farm. Jane Lavinia is just a little girl but she decides to go with the city woman ... and Aunt Rebecca allows it.

Excerpt from Akin to Anne - 'Jane Lavinia' by L.M. Montgomery

On the morning of departure Jane Lavinia was up and ready early. Her trunk had been taken over to Mr. Whittaker's the night before, and she was to walk over in the morning and go with Mr. and Mrs. Stephens to the station. She put on her chiffon hat to travel in, and Aunt Rebecca did not say a word of protest. Jane Lavinia cried when she said good-by, but Aunt Rebecca did not cry. She shook hands and said stiffly, "Write when you get to New York. You needn't let Mrs. Stephens work you to death either."

Jane Lavinia went slowly over the bridge and up the lane. If only Aunt Rebecca had been a little sorry! But the morning was perfect and the air clear as crystal, and she was going to New York, and fame and fortune were to be hers for the working. Jane Lavinia's spirits rose and bubbled over in a little trill of song. Then she stopped in dismay. She had forgotten her watch - her mother's little gold watch; she had left it on her dressing table.

Jane Lavinia hurried down the lane and back to the house. In the open kitchen doorway she paused, standing on a mosaic of gold and shadow where the sunshine fell through the morning-glory vines. Nobody was in the ktichen, but Aunt Rebecca was in the little bedroom that opened off it, crying bitterly and talking aloud between her sobs, "Oh, she's gone and left me all alone - my girl has gone! Oh, what shall I do? And she didn't care - she was glad to go - glad to get away. Well, it ain't any wonder. I've always been too cranky with her. But I loved her so much all the time, and I was so proud of her! I liked her picture-making real well, even if I did complain of her wasting her time. Oh, I don't know how I'm ever going to keep on living now she's gone!"

Jane Lavinia listened with a face from which all the sparkle and excitement had gone. Yet amid all the wreck and ruin of her tumbling castles in air, a glad little thrill made itself felt. Aunt Rebecca was sorry - Aunt Rebecca did love her after all!

Jane Lavinia turned and walked noiselessly away. As she went swiftly up the wild plum lane, some tears brimmed up in her eyes, but there was a smile on her lips and a song in her heart. After all, it was nicer to be loved than to be rich and admired and famous.

When she reached Mr. Whittaker's, everybody was out in the yard ready to start.

"Hurry up, Jane Lavinia," said Mr. Whittaker. "Blest if we hadn't begun to think you weren't coming at all. Lively now."

"I am not going," said Jane Lavinia calmly.

"Not going?" they all exclaimed.

"No, I'm very sorry, and very grateful to you, Mr. Stephens, but I can't leave Aunt Rebecca. She'd miss me too much."

"Well, you little goose!" said Mrs. Whittaker.

Mrs. Stephens said nothing, but frowned codly. perhaps her thoughts were less of the loss to the world of art than of the difficulty of hunting up another housemaid. Mr. Stephens looked honestly regretful.

"I'm sorry, very sorry, Miss Slade," he said. "You have exceptional talent, and I think you ought to cultivate it."

"I am going to cultivate Aunt Rebecca," said Jane Lavinia.

Nobody knew just what she meant, but they all understood the firmness of her tone. Her trunk was taken down out of the express wagon, and Mr. and Mrs. Stephens drove away. Then Jane Lavinia went home. She found Aunt Rebecca washing the breakfast dishes, with big tears rolling down her face.

"Goodness me!" she cried, when Jane Lavinia walked in. 'What's the matter? You ain't gone and been too late!"

"No, I've just changed my mind, Aunt Rebecca. They've gone without me. I am not going to New York - I don't want to go. I'd rather stay at home with you."

For a moment Aunt Rebecca stared at her. Then she stepped forward anf flung her arms about the girl.

"Oh, Jane Lavinia," she said with a sob, "I'm so glad! I couldn't see how I was going to get along without you, but I thought you didn't care. You can wear that chiffon hat everywhere you want to, and I'll get you a pink organdy dress for Sundays."

The Books: Akin to Anne: 'Charlotte's Quest' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Akin to Anne - 'Charlotte's Quest' by L.M. Montgomery

Akin to Anne is a collection of Lucy Maud's stories - all having to do with orphans, people (mostly women) who are alone in the world and - at the end of a 10 page story - have discovered that their mother's second cousin is actually alive ... so ... family DOES exist. It's the same story (for the most part) over ... and over ... and over. It was one of Lucy Maud's ongoing themes, of course. The importance of family. This from a woman who was pretty much abandoned by her mother (who died) and then by her father (who left her behind with grandparents - moved out west - and started a new life out there, with a new wife - and never "called for" Lucy Maud) Lucy Maud was raised by stern cold grandparents - who ... sound rather exacting, and unsympathetic - and as they got older, much more difficult to deal with. Cranky, particular, aches and pains, demanding. Lucy Maud had an 11 year engagement because she was waiting for them to die - and her sense of duty would not let her abandon them. !!! Knowing what a disaster her marriage ended up being, I almost wish that Ewan had gotten sick of waiting. But no. He knew that he would never get another wife, because who the hell would marry that jackass except a woman who had had a disappointment in love when she was young, never got over it, and buried her heart forever? Nobody. So he waited. For 11 years. This just goes to show that Lucy Maud, even though she had a prickly relationship with her grandparents who probably would have preferred her to be a normal person - instead of a writer - horrors!! - she cherished them, because they were family. She was all alone in the world. She never dwelled on it, and she never said a bad word about her father in her journals. She made excuses for him. She rhapsodized over his rare letters. She went out there to visit his new family maybe ... twice? In her whole life? So he basically discarded his first child - started up again - and left her to fend for herself with the stern relatives of his dead first wife.

That dark belly underbelly of abandonment rarely makes it directly into Lucy Maud's stories. Anne is an orphan - but her imagination helps her to bear her years before Green Gables ... and her parents died when she was a baby, so she has romanticized them. She doesn't actively miss them. We don't have a depressive little Oliver Twist with Anne Shirley - we have a plucky little girl who has created an intense fantasy life to deal with her hard little life.

So these stories, monotonous as they can be when read all together, are very revealing. It's the most important thing in the world to know that you are not alone ... that you have people around you ... who are of your blood.

We have story after story about a poor work-hardened woman, living in a bleak boarding-house - (these characters are all the same, no individuality), and then discovering - through a random coincidence - that the rich man who just moved to town is actually her long lost brother - thought to be dead in the Klondike! So now she has family! Hooray!!! Etc. Over and over and over again ...

I won't bore you with those repetitive stories - only Lucy Maud die-hard fans would read all of them - but I actually find them kind of beautiful. I can really sense her personality, her concerns, her ... worries ... in these stories. There are a couple in the collection that do not follow the same pattern - and some that have a higher level of narrative prose - so I'll post excerpts from those.

The first story in the collection is "Charlotte's Quest" - published in the Family Herald in 1933. You can tell it was published at a late date. Her writing is strong, sure, and self-contained. The characters, while broad sketches, are clear, you know who they are ... They are individuals. They seem to have a breath of life to them, unlike the monotonous cardboard cutouts of many of the other stories.

Charlotte is 8 years old, and her mother is dead and her father only sees her as a "hindrance to his mountain-climbing". Her father has dropped her off at her aunt's and uncle's and has never been seen again. Charlotte is a serious rather ugly little girl with thick bushy black eyebrows - she is not cute, or sweet, like other little girls - she likes to read, and imagine things, and think by herself ...her aunt and uncle are loud, boisterous, social people and completely do not understand their niece. They want her to be like them. Charlotte has to share a bedroom with her loud cousins ... and she lives her life in complete misery. She is misunderstood, and totally alone in the world. She hears that there is a witch in the next town who will grant your wishes. So Charlotte sets out to find this witch - and ask the witch for a mother.

This is the scene where she finds the witch's house. I love the many levels in this scene. You can see where "Witch Penny" is coming from ... you can see the whole thing through her eyes too ... Very well done.

Oh, and also it's one of her rare sympathetic portraits of an Irish person. Normally they are drunk and filthy in her stories, little better than caricatures. Father Cassidy is a VERY sympathetic Irishman, in Emily of New Moon - and Judy Plum, in the interminable Pat books [excerpts here and here], is Irish - she's sympathetic too, even though gotta be honest: Judy Plum annoys me. If I had a housemaid like her, I'd want to slit my throat. Like: SHUT UP, PLUM. GIMME A MOMENT'S REST, FOR GOD'S SAKE. Speaking of "Pat" - this episode in the story below with the witch shows up in Pat of Silver Bush almost word for word, except that Pat is looking for a lost dog, not her mother.

Excerpt from Akin to Anne - 'Charlotte's Quest' by L.M. Montgomery

The Witch Penny's house was a little grey one nestling against the steep hill that rose from the pond about half a mile west of the small town. The gate hung slackly on its hinges. The house itself was shabby and old, with sunken window sills and a much-patched roof. Charlotte reflected that being a witch didn't seem to be a very profitable business.

For a moment Charlotte hesitated. She was not a timid child, but she did feel a little frightened. Then she thought of Mrs. Barrett rocking fiercely in her rocker and forever talking in her high, cheerful voice. "Mother is always so bright," Aunt Florence always said. Charlotte shuddered. No witch could be worse. She knocked resolutely on the door.

A thumping sound inside ceased. Had she interrupted Witch Penny in the weaving of a spell? ... and footsteps seemed to be coming down a stair. Then the door opened and Witch Penny appeared. Charlotte took her all in with one of her straight, deliberate looks.

She was grey as an owl, with a broad rosy face and tiny black eyes surrounded by cushions of fat. Charlotte thought she looked too jolly for a witch. But no doubt there were all kinds. Certainly the big black cat with fiery golden eyes that sat behind her on the lower step of the stair looked his reputed part.

"Now who may ye be and what may ye be wanting with me?" said Witch Penny a bit gruffly.

Charlotte never wasted breath, words or time. "I am Charlotte Laurence and I have come to ask you to find me a mother - that is, if you really are a witch. Are you?"

Witch Penny's look suddenly changed. It grew secretive and mysterious.

"Whist, child," she whispered. "Don't be talking of witches in the open daylight like this. Little ye know what might happen."

"But are you?" persisted Charlotte. If Witch Penny wasn't a witch, she wasn't going to bother with her.

"To be sure, I am. But come in, come in. Finding a mother ain't something to be done on the durestep. Better come right upstairs. I'm weaving a tablecloth for the fairies up there. All the witches in the countryside promised to do one apiece for them. The poor liddle shiftless craturs left all their tablecloths out in the frost last Tuesday night, and 'twas their ruination. But I've got far behind me comrades and mustn't be losing any more time. Ye'll excuse me if I kape on with me work while ye're telling me your troubles. It's the quane's own cloth I'm weaving, and it's looking sour enough her majesty will be if it's not finished on time."

Charlotte thought that Witch Penny's old loom looked very big and clumsy for the weaving of fairy tablecloths, and the web in it seemed strangely like rather coarse grey flannel. But no doubt witches had their own way of blinding the eyes of ordinary mortals. When Witch Penny finished it, she would weave a spell over it and it would become a thing of gossamer light and loveliness.

Witch Penny resumed her work and Charlotte sat down on a stool beside her. They were on a little landing above the stairs, with one low, cobwebby window and a stained ceiling with bunches of dried tansy and yarrow hanging from it. The cat had followed them up and sat on the top step, staring at Charlotte. Its eyes shone uncannily through the dusk of the staircase.

"Now, out with your story," said Witch Penny. "Ye're wanting a mother, ye tell me, and ye're Charlotte Laurence. Ye'll be having Edward Laurence for your father, I'm thinking?"

"Yes. But he's gone west to climb mountains," explained Charlotte. "He's always wanted to, but Mother died when I was three, and as long as I was small he couldn't. I'm eight now, so he's gone."

"And left ye with your Uncle Tom and your Aunt Florence. Oh, I've heard all about it. Your Aunt Florence's cat was after telling mine the whole story at the last dance we had. Your Aunt Florence do be too grand for the likes of us, but it's little she thinks where her cat do be going. Ye don't look like the Laurences - ye haven't got your father's laughing mouth - ye've got a proud mouth like your old Grandmother Jasper. Did ye ever see her?"

Charlotte shook her head. She knew nothing of her Grandmother Jasper beyond the fact of her existence, but all at once shhe knew who You-Know-Who was.

"No, it ain't likely ye would. She was real mad at your mother for marrying Ned Laurence. I've heard she never would forgive her, never would set foot in her house. But ye have her mouth. And what black hair ye've got. And what big eyes. And what little ears. And ye have a mole on your neck. 'Tis the witch's mark. Come now, child dear, wouldn't ye like to be a witch? 'Tis a far easier job than the one ye've set me. Think av the fun av riding on the broomstick."

Charlotte thought of it. Flying over the steeples and dark spruces at night. "I think I'm too young to be a witch," she said.

Witch Penny's eyes twinkled.

"Sure, child dear, 'tis the young witches that do be having the most power. Mind ye, everybody can't be a witch. We're that exclusive ye'd never belave. But I'll not press ye. And ye want me to find you a mother?"

"If you please. Nita Gresham got a new mother. So why can't I?"

"Well, the real mothers are hard to come by. All the same, mebbe it can be managed. It's lucky ye've come in the right time of the moon. I couldn't have done a think for ye next wake. And mind ye, child, I'm not after promising anything for sartin. But there's a chanct, there's a chanct ... seeing as ye've got your grandmother's mouth. If ye'd looked like your father, it wouldn't be Witch Penny as'd help ye to a mother. I'd no use for him."

Witch Penny chuckled. "What kind of a mother do ye be wanting?"

"A quiet mother who doesn't laugh too much or ask too many questions."

Witch Penny shook her head.

"A rare kind. It'll take some conniving. Here ..." Witch Penny dropped her shuttle, leaned forward and extracted from a box beside the loom a handful of raisins ... "stow these away in your liddle inside while I do a bit av thinking."

Charlotte ate her raisins with a relish while Witch Penny wove slowly and thoughtfully. She did not speak until Charlotte had finished the last raisin.

"It come into me mind," said Witch Penny, "that if ye go up the long hill ... and down it ... then turn yourself about three times, nather more nor less, ye'll find a road that goes west. Folly your nose along it till ye come to a gate with a liddle lane that leads down to the harbour shore. Turn yourself about three times more ... if ye forget that part of it, ye may look till your eyes fall out of your head, but niver a mother ye'll see. Then go down the lane to a stone house with a red door in it like a cat's tongue. Knock three times on the door. If there's a mother in the world for ye, ye'll find her there. That's all I can be doing for ye."

Charlotte got up briskly.

"Thank you very much. It sounds like a good long walk, so I ought to start. What am I to pay you for this?"

Witch Penny chuckled again. Something seemed to amuse her greatly.

"How much have ye got?" she asked.

"A dollar."

"How'd ye come by it?"

Charlotte thought witches were rather impertinent. However, if you dealt with them ...

"Mrs. Beckwith gave it to me before she went away."

"And how come ye didn't spend it for swaties and ice cream?"

"I like to feel I've something to fall back on," said Charlotte gravely.

Witch Penny chuckled for the third time.

"Says your grandmother. Oh, ye're Laurence be name but it goes no daper. Kape your liddle bit av a dollar. Ye've got a mole on your neck. We can't charge folks as have moles anything. It's clane against our rules. Now run along or it'll be getting too late."

"I'm very much obliged to you," said Charlotte, putting her money back in her pocket and offering her thin brown hand.

"Ye do be a mannerly child at that," said Witch Penny.

Witch Penny stood on her sunken doorstep and watched the little, erect figure out of sight.

"Sure, and I do be wondering if I've done right. But she'd never fit in up at the Laurences with their clatter. And once the old leddy lays eyes on her!"

Charlotte had disappeared around the bend in the road. Then Witch Penny said a queer thing for a witch. She said: "God bless the liddle cratur."

The Books: Magic for Marigold (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Magic for Marigold - by L.M. Montgomery

This is a novel - published in 1929. It is one of her few stand-alone novels, there is no Marigold: The Sequel. And you know, there are hints throughout the book that Marigold might not be made for adulthood. There's something fragile about her. She was a weak baby, and she takes everything very hard as a young girl. I can't remember where in the text Lucy Maud gives hints - but I know they were there.

All of that being said - I guess I'm not too wacky about Marigold. She just wasn't that compelling a heroine for me. She seemed to have a good imagination (which all of Lucy Maud's heroines do - except for stupid Pat of Silver Bush who couldn't imagine her way out of a paper sack. What a boring nitwit. She should be hospitalized. I think there's something actually wrong with her.) But anyway, back to Marigold. She sees the trees as creatures like fairies or wizards, she adores the hills on the horizon, she makes up a fantasy world - what is over that hill? A land of magic and rainbows and blah blah blah. I guess, to be honest, I've heard it all before. Lucy Maud has done this story - and much better - with Emily in the wind barrens in the spruce bush, and Anne with the White Way of Delight ... I guess Marigold just doesn't stand out, for me. However, there are some hilarious episodes in this book. Like when Marigold hears a missionary talk at a prayer meeting - and becomes so suffused with the desire to become holy - that she prays 14 hours a day, she stops eating, she wants to be pale and holy ... her family just tolerates this pious ridiculousness, knowing it's a fanatical phase. That's rather amusing. Some of the Lesley family members are quite memorable. I love Uncle Klondike. The woman-hater. Who then, naturally, turns around and marries the feisty female doctor named Marigold. Marigold is named after her. Marigold's mother is a pale sad nonentity. Lucy Maud didn't write parents very well. She had no experience with them herself - so whenever there are parents in her books - she either kills them off immediately (like in Emily) - or they are long dead by the time the book starts (like in Anne). In the few books where the parents live - Marigold, the Pat books - they're just ... not convincing. The mothers are usually saintly, sickly, and basically sit back and watch everyone else live their lives. And the fathers are jolly, twinkley, and rather detached from the main family action. The REAL characters are always people like the aunts, the uncles, the servants, the relatives, the extended family. Lucy Maud wrote about THEM like nobody's business. These people LIVE.

The excerpt I've chosen below is - well, it's a long one - and to be honest, it's some of my favorite writing that Lucy Maud has ever done. In her whole career. It's all just one woman talking - an extended monologue. But ... God, it's Lucy Maud shining, at her very very best.

Marigold, a little girl, is hanging out with her ancient great-grandmother - who is 99 years old. Great-Grandmother (referred to as "Old grandmother") is crotchety, bedridden, with laser-beam eyes that don't miss a thing, everyone lives in fear of her, she says what's on her mind, she is intolerant of foolishness, she is unpredictable ... and she has also lived for a bazillion years - so nobody can imagine her dying. It seems fine to let Marigold, a 6 year old, a 7 year old, stay at home with the great-grandmother while all the adults go out to a dinner party. Marigold can keep her company, and everything will be fine.

But Great-grandmother has other plans. She hasn't been outside for years. She is surrounded by younger generations, who all treat her as though she is ancient, and feeble and barely human. She hasn't been out in the garden for 20 years.

So when the house is empty - excpet for Marigold - Great-Grandmother decides. She wants to go out into the garden and see the moonlight. And not only that: but after she has done so, she will go back to her bed and die. With as little fuss as possible. By herself. She will choose her moment when she will go.

And that's what happens.

But it's the time in the garden - with Marigold, the 7 year old girl who is kind of afraid of her great-grandmother, and Great-Grandmother, the 99 year old terrifying bossy old fossil ... that I want to excerpt. The thing about it is: The Great-Grandmother has been set up in the chapters before this one as the opposite of a poetic or a ... contemplative personality. She's not mean - she's just hard as nails, she is not a lot of fun, she makes Marigold memorize Bible verses even though it's a bright sunny day out and Marigold wants to play - she's so old that everyone is alienated by her - and she tells the truth even if it's terrible - and everyone cowers when she is around. That is how she has been set up.

But now comes her last night on earth. She has decided it is going to be her last night. Marigold doesn't know this. But we, the reader, can tell. She's moving towards the boundary between life and death.

Lucy Maud shows her genius in this excerpt. Parts very poignant, parts laugh out loud funny (the bees at the wedding! the icing on the cake!), parts profound, and parts just plain old good story-telling ... It's what I find so damn compelling about her writing.

I only read Magic for Marigold in its entirety once. But I have read this excerpt many many many times. It's one of the pieces of writing I go to, regularly, if I need strength, or comfort, or perspective. I cherish it. And the last moment of the excerpt - the "Edith" moment - never fails to bring tears to my eyes.

Excerpt from Magic for Marigold - by L.M. Montgomery

Old Grandmother sank down on the stone bench with a grunt. She sat there silent and motionless for what seemed to Marigold a very long time. The moon rose over the cloud of spruce and the orchard became transfigured. A garden of flowers in moonlight is a strange, enchanted thing with a touch of diablerie, and Marigold, sensitive to every influence, felt its charm long years before she could define it. Nothing was the same as in daylight. She had never been out in the orchard so late as this before. The June lilies held up their cups of snow; the moonlight lay silver white on the stone steps. The perfume of the lilacs came in little puffs on the crystal air; beyond the orchard lay old fields she knew and loved, mysterious misty spaces of moonshine now. Far, far away was the murmur of the sea.

And still Old Grandmother dreamed on. Did she see faces long under the mould bright and vivid again? Were there flying feet, summoning voices, that only she could hear in that old moonlit orchard? What voices were calling to her out of the firs? Marigold felt a funny little prickling along her spine. She was perfectly sure that she and Old Grandmother were not alone in the orchard.

"Well, how have you been since we came out here?" demanded Old Grandmother at last.

"Pretty comf'able," said Marigold, rather startled.

"Good," said Old Grandmother. "It's a good test - the test of silence. If you can sit in silence with any one for half an hour and feel 'comfortable', you and that person can be friends. If not, friends you'll never be and you needn't waste time trying. I've brought you out here to-night for two reasons, Marigold. The first is to give you some hints about living, which may do you some good and may not. The second was to keep a tryst with the years. We haven't been alone here, child."

No; Marigold had known that. She drew a little closer to Old Grandmother.

"Don't be frightened, child. The ghosts that walk here are friendly, homey ghosts. They wouldn't hurt you. They are of your race and blood. Do you know you look strangely like a child who died seventy years before you were born? My husband's niece. Not a living soul remembers that little creature but me - her beauty - her charm - her wonder. But I remember her. You have her eyes and mouth - and that same air of listening to voices only she could hear. Is that a curse or a blessing I wonder. My children played in this orchard - and then my grandchildren - and my great-grandchildren. Such a lot of small ghosts! To think that in a house where there were once fourteen children there is now nobody but you."

"That isn't my fault," said Marigold, who felt as if Old Grandmother were blaming her.

"It's nobody's fault, just as it's nobody's fault that your father died of pneumonia before you were born. Cloud of Spruce will be yours some day, Marigold."

"Will it?" Marigold was startled. Such a thing had never occurred to her.

"And you must always love it. Places know when they're loved - just the same as people. I've seen houses whose hearts were actually broken. This house and I have always been good friends. I've always loved it from the day I came here as a bride. I planted most of those trees. You must marry some day, Marigold, and fill those old rooms again. But not too young - not too young. I married at seventeen and I was a grandmother at thirty-six. It was awful. Sometimes it seems to me that I've always been a grandmother.

"I could have been married at sixteen. But I was determined I wouldn't be married till I had finished knitting my apple-leaf bedspread. Your great-grandfather went off in such a rage I didn't know if he'd ever come back. But he did. He was only a boy himself. Two children - that's what we were. Two young fools. That's what everybody called us. And yet we were wiser then than I am now. We knew things then I don't know now. I've stayed up too late. Don't do that, Marigold - don't live till there's nothing left of life but the Pope's nose. Nobody will be sorry when I die."

Suddenly Marigold gasped.

"I will be sorry," she cried - and meant it. Why, it would be terrible. No Old Grandmother at Cloud of Spruce. How could the world go on at all?

"I don't mean that kind of sorriness," said Old Grandmother. "And even you won't be sorry long. Isn't it strange? I was once afraid of Death. He was a foe then - now he is a lover. Do you know, Marigold, it is thirty years since anyone has called me by my name? Do you know what my name is?"

"No-o," admitted Marigold. It was the first time she had ever realised that Old Grandmother must have a name.

"My name is Edith. Do you know I have an odd fancy I want to hear some one call me that again. Just once. Call me by my name, Marigold."

Marigold gasped again. This was terrible. It was sacrilege. Why, one might almost as well be expected to call God by His name to His face.

"Say anything - anything - with my name in it," said Old Grandmother impatiently.

"I -- I don't know what to say, --- Edith," stammered Marigold. It sounded dreadful when she had said it. Old Grandmother sighed.

"It's no use. That isn't my name -- not as you say it. Of course it couldn't be. I should have known better." Suddenly she laughed.

"Marigold, I wish I could be present at my own funeral. Oh, wouldn't it be fun! The whole clan will be here to the last sixth cousin. They'll sit around and say all the usual kind, good, dull things about me instead of the interesting truth. The only true thing they'll say will be that I had a wonderful constitution. That's always said of any Lesley who lives to be over eighty. Marigold --" Old Grandmother's habit of swinging a conversation around by its ears was always startling, "what do you really think about the world?"

Marigold, though taken by surprise, knew exactly what she thought about the world.

"I think it's very int'resting," she said.

Old Grandmother stared at her, then laughed.

"You've hit it. 'Whether there be tongues they shall fail - whether there be prophecies they shall vanish away' -- but the pageant of human life goes on. I've never tired watching it. I've lived nearly a century - and when all's said and done there's nothing I'm more thankful for than that I've always found the world and people in it interesting. Yes, life's been worth living. Marigold, how many little boys are sweet on you?"

"Sweet on me." Marigold didn't understand.

"Haven't you any little beau?" explained Old Grandmother.

Marigold was quite shocked. "Of course not. I'm too small."

"Oh, are you? I had two beaux when I was your age. Can you imagine me being seven years old and having two little boys sweet on me?"

Marigold looked at Old Grandmother's laughter-filled and moonlight-softened black eyes and for the first time realised that Old Grandmother had not always been old. Why, she might even have been Edith.

"For that matter I had a beau when I was six," said Old Grandmother triumphantly. "Girls were born having beaux in my day. Little Jim Somebody - I've forgotten his last name if I ever knew it - walked three miles to buy a stick of candy for me. I was only six, but I knew what that meant. He has been dead for eighty years. And there was Charlie Snaith. He was nine. We always called him Froggy-face. I'll never forget his huge round eyes staring at me as he asked, 'Can I be your beau?' Or how he looked when I giggled and said 'no'. There were a good many 'no's' before I finally said 'yes'." Old Grandmother laughed reminiscently, with all the delight of a girl in her teens.

"It was Great-Grandfather you first said 'yes' to, wasn't it?" asked Marigold.

Old Grandmother nodded.

"But I had some narrow escapes. I was crazy about Frank Lister when I was fifteen. My parents wouldn't let me have him. He wanted me to run away with him. I've always been sorry I didn't. But then if I had I'd have been sorry for that, too. I was very near taking Bob Clancy - and now all I can remember about him was that he got drunk once and varnished his mother's kitchen with maple-syrup. Joe Benson was in love with me. I had told him I thought he was magnificent. If you tell a certain kind of man he's magnificent, you can have him - if you really want that kind of a man. Peter March was a nice fellow. He was thought to be dying of consumption, and he pleaded with me to marry him and give him a year of happiness. Just suppose I had. He got better and lived to be seventy. Never take a risk like that with a live man, Marigold. he married Hilda Stuart. A pretty girl but too self-conscious. And every time Hilda spent more than five cents a week Peter took neuralgia. He always sat ahead of me in church, and I was always tormented with a desire to slap a spot on his bald head that looked like a fly."

"Was Great-grandfather a handsome man?" asked Marigold.

"Handsome? Handsome? Everyone was handsome a hundred years ago. I don't know if he was handsome or not. I only know he was my man from the moment I first set eyes on him. It was at a dinner-party. He was there with Janet Churchill. She thought she had him hooked. She always hated me. I had gold slippers on that night that were too tight for me. I kicked them off under the table for a bit of ease. Never found one of them again. I knew Janet was responsible for it. But I got even with her. I took her beau. It wasn't hard. She was a black velvet beauty of a girl - far prettier than I was - but she kept all her goods in the show-window. Where there is no mystery there is no romance. Remember that, Marigold."

"Did you and Great-Grandfather live here when you were married?"

"Yes. He built Cloud of Spruce and brought me here. We were quite happy. Of course we quarreled now and then. And once he swore at me. I just swore back at him. It horrified him so he never set me such a bad example again. The worst quarrel we ever had was when he spilled soup over my purple silk dress. I always believed he did it on purpose because he didn't like the dress. He has been dead up there in South Harmony graveyard for forty years, but if he were here now I'd like to slap his face for that dress."

"How did you get even with him?" asked Marigold, knowing very well Old Grandmother had got even.

Old Grandmother laughed until she had hardly enough breath left to speak.

"I told him that since he had ruined my dress I'd go to church next Sunday in my petticoat. And I did."

"Oh, Grandmother." Marigold thought this was going too far.

"Oh, I wore a long silk coat over it. He never knew till we were in our pew. When he sat down the coat fell open in front and he saw the petticoat - a bright Paddy-green it was. Oh, his face - I can see it yet."

Old Grandmother rocked herself to and fro on the stone bench in a convulsion of mirth.

"I pulled the coat together. But I don't think your great-grandfather got much good of that sermon. When it was over he took me by the arm and marched me down the aisle and out to our buggy. No hanging round to talk gossip that day. He never spoke all the way home - sat there with his mouth primmed up. In face he never said a word about it at all - but he never could bear green the rest of his life. And it was my color. But the next time I got a green dress he gave our fat old waserwoman a dress off the same piece. So of course I couldn't wear the dress and I never dared to get green again. After all, it took a clever person to get the better of your great-grandfather in the long run. But that was the only serious quarrel we ever had, though we used to squabble for a few years over the bread. He wanted the slices cut thick and I wanted them thin. It spoiled a lot of meals for us."

"Why couldn't you have each cut them to suit yourselves?"

Old Grandmother chuckled.

"No, no. That would have been giving in on a trifle. It's harder to do that than give in on something big. Of course we worked it out like that after we had so many children the question was to get enough bread for the family, thick or thin. But to the end of his life there were times when he would snort when I cut a lovely think paper-like slice, and times when I honestly couldn't help sniffing wh en he carved off one an inch thick."

"I like bread thin," said Marigold, sympathising with Old Grandmother.

"But if you marry a man who likes it thick - and I know now that every proper man does - let him have it thick from the start. Don't stick on trifles, Marigold. The slices of bread didn't worry me when your great-grandfather fell in love with his second cousin, Mary Lesley. She always tried to flirt with every male craeture in sight. Simply couldn't leave the men alone. She wasn't handsome but she carried herself like a queen, so people thought she was one. It's a useful trick, Marigold. You might remember it. But don't flirt. Either you hurt yourself or your hurt some one else."

"Didn't you flirt?" asked Marigold slyly.

"Yes. That's why I'm telling you not to. For the rest - take what God sends you. That was a bad time while it lasted. But he came back. They generally come back if you have sense enough to keep still and wait - as I had, glory be. The only time I broke loose was the night of Charlie Blaisdell's wedding. Alec sat in a corner and talked to Mary all the evening. I flew out of the house and walked the six miles home in a thin evening dress and satin shoes. It was in March. It should have killed me, of course - but here I am at ninety-nine tough and tasty. And Alec never missed me! Thought I'd gone home with Abe Lesley's crowd. Oh, well, he came to his senses when Mary dropped him for something fresher. But I can't say I was ever very fond of Mary Lesley after that. She was a mischief-maker, anyhow, always blowing old jealousies into a flame for the fun of it.

"I got on very well with the rest of the clan, though my in-laws were mostly very stupid, poor things. Alec's mother didn't approve of us having such a big family. She said it kept Alec's nose to the grindstone. I had twins twice just to spite her, but we got on very well for all that. And Alec's brother Sam was a terrible bore. Nothing ever happened to him. He never even fell in love. Died when he was sixty, in his sleep. It used to make me mad to see any one wasting life like that. Paul was a black sheep. Always got drunk on every solemn or awful occasion. Got drunk at Ruth Lesley's wedding - she was married from here - and upset two stands of bees over there by the apple-barn just as the bridal party came out here to the orchard to be married. That was the liveliest wedding I was ever at. Never shall I forget old Minister Wood flying up those steps pursued by bees. Talk about ghosts!"

Old Grandmother laughed until she had to wipe tears from her eyes.

"Poor Ruth. She was so stung up she looked like a bride with the smallpox. Oh, well, she had only about half a brain, anyway. She always threw her arms about her husband in public when she wanted to ask him some small favor. How red and furious he got! And he always refused. You'd have thought she'd have learned some sense in time. Some women never do. Be sure you have some sense, Marigold, when it comes to handling the men."

"Tell me some more stories, Grandmother," entreated Marigold.

"Child, I could tell you stories all night. This orchard is full of them. Up there by the scabby apple-tree Bess Lesley swooned because Alexander McKay asked her to marry him too suddely. People 'swooned' in my day - 'fainted' in your grandmother's. Now they don't do either. But what a lot of fun they miss. Alexander thought Bess was dead - that he'd killed her with his abruptness. We found him on his knees by her, tearing his hair and shrieking blue murder. He thought I was a brute because I threw a dipperful of water over her. She came to very quickly - her curls were only paper ones - and such a looking creature as she was, with them hanging limp about her face and a complexion like a tallow candle. But she had a wonderful figure. It seems to me the girls look like sticks nowadays. Alexander clasped her in his arms and implored her to forgive him. She forgave him - and married him - but she never forgave me. Talking of ghosts - they had a haunted door in their house. Always found open no matter how it was shut and locked."

"Do you really believe that, Grandmother?"

"Of course. Always believe things like that. If you don't believe things you'll never have any fun. The more things you can believe the more interesting life is, as you say yourself. Too much incredulity makes it a poor thing. as for the ghosts, we had another haunted house in the clan - Garth Lesley's-over-the-bay. It was haunted by a white cat."

"Why?"

"Nobody knew. But there it was. The Garth Lesleys were rather proud of it. Lots of people saw it. I saw it. At least, I saw a white cat washing its face on the stairs."

"But was it the ghost cat?"

"Oh, there you go again. I prefer to believe it was. Otherwise I could never say I'd seen a real ghost. Over there in that corner where the three pines are, Hilary and Kate Lesley agreed to tell each other what they really thought of each other. They thought it would be fun - but they never 'spoke' again. Kate was engaged at one time to her third cousin, Ben Lesley-over-the-bay. It was broken off and later she found her photograph in his mother's album adorned with horns and a moustache. There was a terrible family row over that. In the tail of the day she married Dave Ridley. A harmless creature - only he would eat the icing off his wife's piece of cake whenever they went anywhere to tea. Kate didn't seem to mind - she hated icing - but I always wanted to choke him with gobs of icing until he had enough of it for once. Ben's sister Laura was jilted by Turner Reed. He married Josie Lesley and when they appeared out in church the first Sunday Laura Lesley went too, in the dress that was to have been her wedding one, and sat down on the other side of Ben. Alec said she should have been tarred and feathered, but I tell you I liked her spunk. There's a piece of that very dress in my silk log-cabin quilt in the green chest in the garret. You are to have it - and my pearl ring. Your great-grandfather found the pearl in an oyster the day we were engaged and had it set for me. It was reckoned worth five hundred dollars. I've left it to you in my will so none of the others can raise a rumpus or do you out of it. Edith-over-the-bay has had her eye on it for years. Thinks she should have it because she was my first namesake. She owes me more than her name if she but knew it. She wouldn't exist at all if it hadn't been for me. I made the match between her father and mother. I was quite a matchmaker in my time. They really didn't want to marry each other a bit but they were just as happy as if they had. All the same, Marigold, don't ever let any one make a match for you."

Old Grandmother was silent for a few moments, thinking over, maybe, more old, forgotten loves of the clan. The wind swayed the trees and the shadows danced madly. Were they only shadows ----?

"Annabel Lesley and I used to sit under the syrup apple-tree over there and talk," said Old Grandmother - in a different voice. A gentle, tender voice. "I loved Annabel. She was the only one of the Lesley clan I really loved. A sweet woman. The only woman I ever knew who would keep secrets. A woman who would really burn a letter if you asked her to. It was safe to empty your soul out to her. Learn to keep a secret, Marigold. And she was just. Learn to be just, Marigold. The hardest thing in the world is to be just. I never was just. It was so much easier to be generous."

"I could sit here all night and hear you tell about these people," whispered Marigold.

Old Grandmother sighed. "Once I could have stayed up all night - talking - dancing - and then laugh in the sunrise. But you can't do those things at ninety-nine. I must leave my ghosts and go in. After all they were a pretty decent lot. We've never had a real scandal in thhe clan. Unless that old affair about Adela's husband and the arsenic could be called one. You'll notice when Adela's books are spoken of, she's 'our cousin'. But when the porridge mystery comes up she's 'a third cousin'. Not that I ever believed she did it. Marigold, will you forgive me for all the pills I've made you take?"

"Oh, they were good for me," protested Marigold.

Old Grandmother chuckled.

"Those are the things we have to be forgiven for. But I don't ask you to forgive me for all the Bible verses I made you learn. You'll be grateful to me for them some day. It's amazing what beautiful things there are in the Bible. 'When all the morning stars sang together.' And that speech of Ruth's to Naomi. Only it always enraged me, too, because no daughter-in-law of mine would ever have said the like to me. Ah, well, they're all gone now except Marian. It's time - it's high time for me to go, too."

Marigold felt it was such a pity Old Grandmother had to die just when she had got really acquainted with her. And besides Marigold had something on her conscience.

"Grandmother," she whispered, "I -- I've made faces at you when you weren't looking."

Old Grandmother touched Marigold's little round cheek with the tip of her finger.

"Are you so sure I didn't see your faces? I did - often. They weren't quite as impish as the ones I made at your age. I'm glad I've lived long enough for you to remember me, little child. I'm leaving off - you're beginning. Live joyously, little child. Never mind the old traditions. Traditions don't matter in a day when queens have their pictures in magazine advertisements. But play the game of life according to the rules. You might as well, because you can't cheat life in the end.

"And don't think too much about what people will say. For years I wanted to do something but I was prevented by the thought of what my cousin Evelina would say. At last I did it. And she said, 'I really didn't think edith had so much spunk in her.' Do anything you want to, Marigold - as long as you can go to your looking-glass afterwards and look yourself in the face. The oracle has spoken. And after all, is it any use? You'll make your own mistakes and learn from them as we all do. Hand me my cane, child. I'm glad I came out. I haven't had a laugh for years till to-night when I thought of poor Minister Wood and the bees."

"Why, I've heard you laugh often, Grandmother," said Marigold, wonderingly.

"Cackling over the mistakes of poor humanity isn't laughing," said Old Grandmother. She rose easily to her feet and walked through the orchard, leaning very lightly on her cane. At the gate she paused and looked back, waving a kiss to the invisible presences behind her. The moonlight made jewels of her eyes. The black scarf wound tightly round her head looked like a cap of sleek black hair. Suddenly the years were bridged. She was Edith - Edith of the gold slippers and the Paddy-green petticoat. Before she thought, Marigold cried out,

"Oh - Edith - I know what you looked like now."

"That had the right sound," said Old Grandmother. "You've given me a moment of youth, Marigold. And now I'm old again and tired - very tired. Help me up the steps."

The Books: Against the Odds: 'The Strike at Putney' (L.M. Montgomery)

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Against the Odds - 'The Strike at Putney' - by L.M. Montgomery

This story is kind of cute. It's a relatively early one - 1903 - and it's pretty simple. It's about a small town - Putney - (kind of Avonlea-ish) - and it has to do with the ladies going on strike. The church in Putney is the pride of the area. It has a great minister, a devoted congregation, and it does a lot of good works. It has a Missions Aid society, a lecture series, a Ladies Aid society - it's very big on societies. Everyone is very involved.

Then comes the big tragedy.

I think a visiting minister was going to come and speak at an evening prayer meeting. He canceled at the last minute. Meanwhile: the Missions Aid Society had sent out an invitation for a female missionary, a famous one, to come speak at their meeting. Because the minister canceled - the Missions Aid Society voted to hold their meeting on that night - and have the missionary speak from the pulpit. It was going to be a great evening. But oh no no - to have a female in the pulpit? This cannot be!! (Sexist mo-fos. They deserve what they get.) All hell broke loose. The Missions Aid Society was told they could NOT hold their meeting that night ... and suddenly - the congregation ruptured. Men on one side, women on another.

So the women - just as devoted to their church as the men - decide to go on strike. Because naturally (naturally!!) all of the day to day stuff at the church (flowers, cleaning, supplies) is done by the women. Oh yes, it's fine for women to just serve men - but let them get out of line? Let them overstep their bounds? This cannot be! The ladies of Putney have had enough. They go on strike. Good. I wish they would have gone on strike forever. Get some REAL change going.

It's funny because Lucy Maud ended up marrying a minister - so all of this stuff ended up being her LIFE - not just her faith. She had to head up all of the societies, and missions aid teas, and luncheons ... Her life was almost totally taken up with that kind of stuff - a minister's wife was a big deal - she was always like a local celebrity (member Mrs. Allan in Anne of Green Gables??). So Lucy Maud is already writing about what she knows here.

It's a cute story.

Here's the moment when all the men realize that the women have struck.

Poor Eben Craig.

Against the Odds - 'The Strike at Putney' - by L.M. Montgomery

On Sunday morning the men were conscious of a bare, deserted appearance in the church. Mr. Sinclair perceived it himself. After some inward wondering he concluded that it was because there were no flowers anywhere. The table before the pulpit was bare. On the organ a vase held a sorry, faded bouquet left over from the previous week. The floor was unswept. Dust lay thickly on the pulpit Bible, the choir chairs, and the pew backs.

"This church looks disgraceful," said John Robbins in an angry undertone to his daughter Polly, who was president of the Flower Band. "What in the name of common sense is the good of your Flower Banders if you can't keep the place looking decent?"

"There is no Flower Band now, Father," whispered Polly in turn. "We've disbanded. Women haven't any business to meddle in church matters. You know the session said so."

It was well for Polly that she was too big to have her ears boxed. Even so, it might not have saved her if they had been anywhere else than in church.

Meanwhile the men who were sitting in the choir - two basses and two tenors - were beginning to dimly suspect that there was something amiss here too. Where were the sopranos and the altos? Myra Wilson and Alethea Craig and several other members of the choir were sitting down in their pews with perfectly unconscious faces. Myra was looking out of the window into the tangled sunlight and shadow of the great maples. Alethea Craig was reading her Bible.

Presently Frances Spenslow came in. Frances was organist, but today, instead of walking up to the platform, she slipped demurely into her father's pew at one side of the pulpit. Eben Craig, who was the Putney singing master and felt himself responsible for the choir, fidgeted uneasily. He tried to catch Frances's eye, but she was absorbed in reading the mission report she had found in the rack, and Eben was finally forced to tiptoe down to the Spenslow pew and whisper, "Miss Spenslow, the minister is waiting for the doxology. Aren't you going to take the organ?"

Frances looked up calmly. Her clear, placid voice was audible not only to those in the nearby pews, but to the minister.

"No, Mr. Craig. You know if a woman isn't fit to speak in the church she can't be fit to sing in it either."

Even Craig looked exceedingly foolish. He tiptoed gingerly back to his place. The minister, with an unusual flush on his thin, ascetic face, rose suddenly and gave out the opening hymn.

Nobody who heard the singing in Putney church that day ever forgot it. Untrained basses and tenors, unrelieved by a single female voice, are not inspiring.

There were no announcements of society meetings for the forthcoming week. On the way home from church that day irate husbands and fathers scolded, argued, or pleaded, according to their several dispositions. One and all met with the same calm statement that if a noble, self-sacrificing woman like Mrs. Cotterell were not good enough to speak in the Putney church, ordinary, everyday women could not be fit to take any part whatever in its work.

Sunday School that afternoon was a harrowing failure. Out of all the corps of teachers only one was a man, and he alone was at his post. In the Christian Endeavour meeting on Tuesday night the feminine element sat dumb and unresponsive. The Putney women never did things by halves.

The Books: Against the Odds: 'A Substitute Journalist' (L.M. Montgomery)

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Against the Odds - 'A Substitute Journalist' - by L.M. Montgomery

This is an example of one of the more plot-driven stories in the collection. It was published in 1903, I think, so it has more of a utilitarian feel to it than her later stories, which she could write just because she felt like it, being under no financial pressure. But still - there are some moments which have the true Lucy Maud stamp - it makes reading all of these stories really worthwhile, moments like these.

Clifford and Patty Baxter are brother and sister (adults). Only their mother is living - and she is a weak woman, weakened by too much hard work, and too much going it alone. They struggle to get by - and there is much anxiety. Lucy Maud writes about those folks as well - not just ancestral families with huge houses and a lot of pride (the Murrays). She writes about penny-pinching working girls who live in little flats, and have to scrimp and save. Clifford is in training with a local newspaper. No pay in the position - but it is expected that his internship as a journalist will lead to a salaried position. He's a reporter. Patty, the sister, is a homemaker at heart. She has no skills, and would like nothing more than to have the free time to cook, clean, sew, keep a nice house, etc. But during the course of this story, she is forced, by circumstances, to come out into the world ... and, naturally, it ends up working out very well for them. Clifford has a very important assignment for the newspaper - he has to go interview some big railroad magnate. Of course Lucy Maud puts the fire under the situation, upping the stakes. I can't remember exactly what the stakes are but it's something along the lines of: If Clifford doesn't interview this guy on this one particular day, then the moment will be lost. Maybe the guy is leaving town, who knows. So it's VERY important. Not just for the story - but for Clifford's future at the newspaper. If he can come through with this interview - then he will be added to the newspaper staff. And not sure what happens - but I do know that Clifford, who was out of town on some other story, missed his train - and wouldn't be able to get home until the next day - but that would be too late. He would miss his appointment to interview the railroad magnate. All will be lost! They NEED that potential income from the newspaper job - Clifford must not blow it! What should they do??? Well, little shy homemaker Patty makes a choice. A bold choice. She - who has no experience (with writing, journalism, or interviewing) will go and interview Railroad Man in Clifford's place. Patty doesn't even know the ISSUES behind the situation - like: why he needs to be interviewed, what questions to ask, what are the issues on the table ... but she figures that just showing up and feeling her way would be better than canceling outright.

So she picks up pen and paper and goes to meet the man at the appointed time.

Naturally, it all works out in the end. Not only does Clifford keep his job - but Patty's interview ends up being such a scoop that the newspaper offers HER a job as well. happy ending!

But here is the excerpt with the interview. I like how Lucy Maud draws character in quick bold strokes. They are immediately recognizable. And, in my opinion, even in a superficial story like this one - they have the breath of life. Like when Mr. Reefer suddenly looks at Patty - and recognizes her. Not like he knows her from somewhere - but that he SEES her. It's a beautiful moment.

Against the Odds - 'A Substitute Journalist' - by L.M. Montgomery

Patty had just time to seat herself at the table, spread out her paper imposingly, and assume a businesslike air when Mr. Reefer came in. He was a tall, handsome old man with white hair, jet-black eyes, and a mouth that made Patty hope she wouldn't stumble on any questions he wouldn't want to answer. Patty knew she would waste her breath if she did. A man with a mouth like that would never tell anything he didn't want to tell.

"Good afternoon. What can I do for you, madam?" inquired Mr. Reefer with the air and tone of a man who means to be courteous, but has no time or information to waste.

Patty was almost overcome by the "Madam". For a moment, she quailed. She couldn't ask that masculine sphinx questions! Then the thought of her mother's pale, careworn face flashed across her mind, and all her courage came back with an inspiriting rush. She bent forward to look eagerly into Mr. Reefer's carved, granite face, and said with a frank smile:

"I have come to interview you on behalf of the Chronicle about the railroad bill. It was my brother who had the assignment, but he has missed his train and I ahve come in his place because, you see, it is so important to us. So much depends on this assignment. Perhaps Mr. Harmer will give Clifford a permanent place on the staff if he turns in a good article about you. He is only a handyman now. I just couldn't let him miss the chance - he might never have another. And it means so much to us and Mother."

"Are you a member of the Chronicle staff yourself?" inquired Mr. Reefer with a shade more geniality in his tone.

"Oh, no! I've nothing to do with it, so you won't mind my being inexperienced, will you? I don't know just what I should ask you, so won't you please just tell me everything about the bill, and Mr. Harmer can cut out what doesn't matter?"

Mr. Reefer looked at Patty for a few moments with a face about as expressive as a graven image. Perhaps he was thinking about the bill, and perhaps he was thinking what a bright, vivid, pluckky little girl this was with her waiting pencil and her air that strove to be businesslike, and only succeeded in being eager and hopeful and anxious.

"I'm not used to being interviewed myself," he said slowly, "so I don't know very much about it. We're both green hands together, I imagine. But I'd like to help you out, so I don't mind telling you what I think about this bill, and its bearing on certain important interests."

Mr. Reefer proceeded to tell her, and Patty's pencil flew as she scribbled down his terse, pithy sentences. She found herself asking questions too, and enjoying it. For the first time, Patty thought she might rather like politics if she understood them - and they did not seem so hard to understand when a man like Mr. Reefer explained them. Patty was in full possession of his opinion on the famous railroad bill in all its aspects.

"There now, I'm talked out," said Mr. Reefer. "You can tell your news editor that you know as much about the railroad bill as Andrew Reefer knows. I hope you'll succeed in pleasing him, and that your brother will get the position he wants. But he shouldn't have missed that train. You tell him that. Boys with important things to do mustn't miss trains. Perhaps it's just as well he did in this case though, but tell him not to let it happen again."

The Books: Against the Odds: 'A Question of Acquaintance' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Against the Odds - 'A Question of Acquaintance' - by L.M. Montgomery

This story was written in 1929 and you can just feel Lucy Maud's mastery of the form. I mean, she's beyond a "master" - what I get from this is her absolute certainty and her seemingly effortless skill at telling a story. You don't see the strings here. This seems to be true from her short stories after a certain point (and makes this one stand out in this particular collection, which is full of creaky here-is-the-moral type stories). A lot of the stories in this collection, while they have the Lucy Maud tone that I love so much, are also little more than their plot structures. She wrote a lot of those. They paid the bills. But by 1929, her bills were more than taken care of, and she wrote what pleased her. Sadly, this means she also wrote Pat of Silver Bush and Mistress Pat which I have yet to get to in this book excerpt series - but don't worry, we'll get there! Anyway, what I'm trying to say is - stories like 'A Question of Acquaintance' are a joy. It's about the characters. The plot is simple: A father with a daughter (no mother in the picture) - freaking out about his daughter's marriage prospects - and does NOT approve of his daughter flirting with the man next door. The father wants her to marry somone HE approves of. Naturally, the father is WAY out of date ... and is so crotchety and judgmental that everyone pretty much just humors him, and then goes ahead and does whatever they want to do.

Dr. Dimma lives with his daughter Merle. He is an old-fashioned man - and while he is scandalized by the fact that his daughter wears makeup, plays golf, and wears short skirts (it is, after all, the 1920s) - he knows that she is a CATCH and he has his heart set on a man named Clark Fairweather. The main thing that Dr. Dimma likes about Clark Fairweather is that he is a doctor, and Dr. Dimma thinks that it is the only profession worthy of respect. Merle, his lovely daughter, has a horrible habit of tossing roses over the fence at their next door neighbor - his roses! That he worked so hard at! She also goes to dances with the man, plays golf with him, and - in general - dates him. Dr. Dimma is out of his mind with apoplectic rage. Merle keeps trying to tell him the name of the next door neighbor (he just moved there) and how wonderful he is - but Dr Dimma will hear none of it. He doesn't like the next door neighbor because he isn't a doctor, also because he plays the violin at 2 in the morning, also because he is good-looking as a movie star, also because sometimes his pigs get loose and go into Dr. Dimma's yard, also because one day when Dr. Dimma came back from an unsuccessful fishing trip the neighbor called out from his porch, "Caught anything yet?" The nerve! But Merle, who is sweet and obliging, and yet obviously does whatever she wants, is now staying out at all hours of the night with the man ... and this must stop!! Dr. Dimma must stop it! She must marry Clark Fairweather!

Anyway, this whole thing ends up working itself out, of course ... but it's not about the plot - it's about the WAY Lucy Maud gets us to the conclusion. It's just fun, that's all.

Here's an excerpt.

Excerpt from Against the Odds - 'A Question of Acquaintance' - by L.M. Montgomery

Dr. Dimma worshiped his own profession. No other counted for much in his eyes. He had always hoped Merle would marry a doctor. To have a son-in-law with whom he could discuss germs and operations and cancers would have been the height of bliss in his eyes. And there had been no lack of candidates. Merle could even have had Cleaver Robinson, whose researches into various elusive bacilli had already put him in the limelight. To be sure, poor Cleaver looked rather like a magnified bacilli himself. No wonder Merle couldn't bear him. Dr. Dimma was not an unreasonable parent. But there was no fault to be found with Clark Fairweather personally, and it was high time Merle stopped her shilly-shallying with all the boys in Sangamo and settled down.

And no more roses over the fence. He'd see to that at once. Was he growing roses to see them wasted that way on a fellow who couldn't tell a Gloire de Dijon from a cabbage rose? Weren't they enough trouble and worriment without that? He didn't see why he wasted time and energy over the beastly things. Slugs - and spiders - and blight - and mildew! Any man was a fool who made a hobby of rose-growing. Any man was a fool to give his daughter so much of her own way. He'd show her!

And Dr. Dimma, who worshipped Merle and would have died if he couldn't grow roses, went down to breakfast in an atrocious humour with everything and everybody, and determined to make them feel it.

To make things worse, Merle was ten minutes late and told him his watch was wrong. It infuriated Dr. Dimma ever to be told his watch was wrong. He pounded the table and glared at her. Not that Merle cared. She was not in the least afraid of her father, though she had spent the most of her young life luring him to make up his mind as she wanted it made up, and explaining away his insulting remarks to her friends. Even now, behind his glare his pride in her was fairly sticking out of his bulging blue eyes. Not another girl in Sangamo was a patch on her. That trim, shining little black head of her! Those black eyebrows like little wings! Those fan-lashed velvety eyes! That dimple just below the red delightful mouth of her! That creamy throat above the linen collar of her pretty green sweater! A thoroughbred, every inch of her! Acres of family behind her. Showed her knees too much, of course. But at any rate they were knees that could be shown.

"My watch isn't wrong," he shouted. Dr. Dimma always believed that if he contradicted loud enough, people would be convinced. "Here I am, worn out after a sleepless night, and in a hurry to get down to the hospital. Do you realize that I have an important consultation at ten? And you keep me waiting for hours for my breakfast?"

Merle didn't ask why he didn't go ahead without her. She knew no meal had any pleasure for him if she were not facing him across the table. To him she was not only Merle - she was youth, beauty, mystery, romance - everything that had deserted the life of a rotund, bald-headed, elderly doctor. Instead, she went round and kissed him.

"Now, Daddy dearest, don't be cross," she pleaded.

Generally this placated the doctor. He liked to feel that his womankind felt the need of placating him. But the iron had bitten too deeply. A fiddle at three o'clock played by a nobody! "Caught any yet?"

"Never mind standing there in a skirt that is a sheer impertinence. Go and sit down."

Merle sat meekly enough. Trouble of some kind was brewing. Perhaps she, too had heard the fiddle! And understood better than the doctor what had been played.

"Did I," said Dr. Dimma impressively, "see you throwing a rose at that fellow next door last night?"

"You're only asking that for rhetorical effect, Daddy," said Merle coolly. "Of course you saw me throw a rose."

Dr. Dimma snorted ironically.

"Of course," he mimicked. "Well, this has got to stop."

"What has got to stop?"

"Everything - everything. I won't have you running around with that fellow. We don't know him."

"I do," said Merle.

"Ah, you do. What do you know about him, miss? What's his pedigree?"

"Daddy dear, he isn't a horse. He's very nice. He plays a beautiful game - such a pity you don't care for golf, Daddy - and - and - pehaps he's your future son-in-law. So you really ought to know him."

Dr. Dimma glared at her and banged the table. He knew Merle was only trying to tease him, but still!

"Son-in-law! No, thank you!" The doctor's sarcasm was terrible. "No son-in-law for me who plays the fiddle when decent people should be asleep."

"But, Daddy, he was overseas and he's been subject to insomnia ever since. Besides, it helps him to think."

"Oh, blame everything on the war. That fellow never smelled powder. As for thinking - don't tell me he thinks. A he-doll like that couldn't even try to think."

"You're unjust, Daddy. It isn't his fault that he's good-looking. And - and," Merle added dreamily, "you have no idea how divinely he can kiss!"

Dr. Dimma almost choked over the mouthful of coffee he had just taken in.

"What do you know - has he dared - has he dared -"

"Daddy, you'll have apoplexy. Now, dearest, stop spluttering. I haven't made up my mind yet that I really want him. But he's such a relief after Clark."

"What's the matter with Clark?" glared Dr. Dimma. "He's clever and rich and good-looking, isn't he? And he'll make you an affectionate husband."

"An affectionate husband. Oh, Daddy, you're so Victorian," groaned Merle. "Affectionate husbands are outmoded. We like the cavemen. The only thing I really have against Clark is the fact that his face demands side-whiskers a generation too late."

"Look here, Merle, I'm serious and I want you to be. You've got to stop associating with this - this -"

"His name is -"

"I know his name. It's all I do know about him, except the self-evident fact that he's an idler and a --"

"He's been -"

"Not a word. The Dimmas have been in Sangamo for six generations. You'll be good enough to remember what I say, Merle. I mean every word of it. And you'll find I'm firm."

Merle stood up. It was time to put an end to the interview. She felt a little anxious, though she didn't show it. There had been one or two times in her life when she couldn't wheedle her father. When Dr. Dimma really did make up his mind on any point, he had never been known to change it. And she knew his reverence for ancestry and pedigrees only too well.

"You'd be more convincing, Daddy love, if you weren't so cross. Being a tyrant isn't being firm, you know. Now, don't let's quarrel this lovely morning."

"Merle, remember what I say -"

"Of course I'll remember it. How can I help remembering when you're shouting at me like that! And glaring! You're such a nice-looking father when you don't glare. I've tried to bring you up properly, darling, but I can't seem to break you of glaring. Now, run along to your little hospital. I'm going out to the club with the Benson girls. We're the committee for the dance tomorrow night, you know."

Dr. Dimma snorted. He didn't approve of the Benson girls - though their pedigree equalled the Dimmas'. But for that matter he approved of none of those silky sophisticated creatures Merle ran with - snaky, hipless things, with shingle-bobs, and mouths that looked as if they had been making a meal of blood, and legs that might as well be naked, who powdered their noses publicly with the engaging unconcern of a cat washing its face in the gaze of thousands. Where were the girls of yesteryear? Girls that were girls - ah! But times had changed. Still, had a father no righst at all? This was all it came to - all your years of sacrifice and care. They flouted you - just flouted you in their slim insolence. Well, he'd show them - he'd show her, the darned little fool, playing fast and loose with a man like Clark Fairweather. It was time somebody brought her up with a round turn, even an outmoded father who had worshipped her and slaved for her, and was now told for his reward that a man he objected to could kiss divinely!

The Books: Against the Odds: 'Their Girl Josie' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Against the Odds - 'Their Girl Josie' - by L.M. Montgomery

Time to start with the daily excerpt again. More Lucy Maud. Another story from the collection Against All Odds (which is not my favorite of the posthumous collections.) It's not my favorite because many of the stories seem made to order. They're plot heavy, and many of them depend on a completely unbelievable coincidence for the resolution of the story. I'm more into her character-based stories ... of which today's excerpt is one.

Cyrus and Deborah Morgan were not only horrified when their son - THEIR SON - married an actress - AN ACTRESS - but it put in their staunch Presbyterian hearts a hatred of "play-acting" and theatre for all time. They are rigid, unforgiving - and although they have never actually gone to see a play, it doesn't matter. Anyone who is involved in theatre is pretty much evil and not respectable. They pretty much disowned their son - who went off in a huff - leaving them with silence, no news of him. Then came word that within a short period of time their son and his wife had died - and they left behind their child, now an orphan - a baby girl with the actress-y name of Joscelyn. Cyrus and Deborah, now elderly, stepped up - and took the child in. (The actress mother's actress sister had wanted to take the baby but the grandparents refused. Their grandchild should not be raised by an actress.) Their granddaughter. They did not approve of her parents - and they certainly did not approve of her name ... but they raised Joscelyn, and of course, they love her DEARLY. However, Cyrus has let Joscelyn know from a very early age that she will NOT be an actress, like her mother. He watches over Joscelyn nervously, for any signs of "play-acting" tendencies. It is his worst fear that she will go into the theatre. So Joscelyn was forced to have a very narrow rigid childhood - but even with those limitations, she blossomed into a beautiful young woman. She was a voracious reader. She had the signs of a great beauty. Cyrus and Deborah were proud of her, proud of her smarts, her cleverness ... they hemmed her in for her own good (or so they thought.)

Eventually, though, there is a revelation (and that's the scene below): Cyrus and Deborah surprise Joscelyn one day, they come home when they were not expected - and they find Joscelyn (age 17) dressed up in a costume of some kind - declaiming a monologue, acting up a storm through the old-fashioned sitting room - completely lost in her fantasy.

Cyrus and Deborah are HORRIFIED. You have to take this seriously. Theatre is still seen as a barely respectable way to spend your time, even when you make money at it. Even with all of their warnings and limits ... here is the "acting gene" come out.

Eventually there is a confrontation - and Joscelyn, who knows her own mind, runs away and goes into theatre. This, of course, means that Cyrus and Deborah completely cut her off, they want to hear no more of her, she has completely betrayed them. The end of the story comes, though, when Cyrus (not a bad old chap, really - he's just strict and kind of close-minded) hears that Joscelyn will be appearing in a play in a nearby town. She has since become famous ... and it is an event - Local girl come back to her hometown, etc. Cyrus, who has never been to a play, who truly thinks that theatre is Satanic, can't help himself. He buys a ticket and he goes to see it. And he sits in the theatre and watches Joscelyn - in this part - not a lascivious evil part, not a Satanic part - but a wife and mother, and instead of finding himself confronted with evil ... Cyrus gets swept away in the sweet normal story, about sweet normal people. He forgets that Joscelyn is Joscelyn. He roots for her. He weeps tears for her. He laughs when she gets the better of someone. He glowers with rage when she is treated badly. Etc. And by the end of the play, he is overwhelmed with pride for her gift ... and he sees what her gift is. That it is, indeed, a gift - and she MUST share it.

End of story.

I do like this story, of course, because of the theatrical nature of it - she's written a couple of stories about performers - usually singers - but there are a couple of stories about actresses (Sophie Sinclair in Windy Poplars?) - and I always love those - just because Lucy Maud "gets" it. She gets what the whole thing is about. It's a gift, like any other - like a painter, a writer, a poet.

So anyway, here's the moment when Cyrus and Deborah catch Joscelyn in the act.

Excerpt from Against the Odds - 'Their Girl Josie' - by L.M. Montgomery

When Joscelyn was seventeen Deborah Morgan noticed a change in her. The girl became quieter and more brooding, falling at times into strange, idle reveries, with her hands clasped over her knee and her big eyes fixed unseeingly on space; or she would creep away for solitary rambles in the beech wood, going away droopingly and returning with a dusky glowing cheeks and a nameless radiance, as of some newly discovered power, shining through every muscle and motion. Mrs. Morgan thought the child needed a tonic and gave her sulphur and molasses.

One day the revelation came. Cyrus and Deborah had driven across the valley to visit their married daughter. Not finding her at home they returned. Mrs. Morgan went into the house while her husband went to the stable. Joscelyn was not in the kitchen, but the grandmother heard the sound of voices and laughter in the sitting room across the hall.

"What company has Josie got?" she wondered, as she opened the hall door and paused for a moment on the threshold to listen. As she listened her old face grew grey and pinched; she turned noiselessly and left the house, and flew to her husband as one distracted.

"Cyrus, Josie is play-acting in the room ... laughing and reciting and going on. I heard her. Oh, I've always feared it would break out in her and it has! Come you and listen to her."

The old couple crept through the kitchen and across the hall to the open parlour door as if they were stalking a thief. Joscelyn's laugh rang out as they did so ... a mocking triumphant peal. Cyrus and Deborah shivered as if they had heard sacrilege.

Joscelyn had put on a trailing, clinging black skirt which her aunt had sent her a year ago and which she had never been permitted to wear. It transformed her into a woman. She had cast aside her waist of dark plum-coloured homespun and wrapped a silken shawk about herself until only her beautiful arms and shoulders were left bare. Her hair, glossy and brown, with burnished red lights where the rays of the dull autumn sun struck on it through the window, was heaped high on her head and held in place by a fillet of pearl beads. Her cheeks were crimson, her whole body from head to foot instinct and alive with a beauty that to Cyrus and Deborah, as they stood mute with horror in the open doorway, seemed akin to some devilish enchantment.

Joscelyn, rapt away from her surroundings, did not perceive her grandparents. Her face was turned from them and she was addressing an unseen auditor in passionate denunciation. She spoke, moved, posed, gesticulated, with an inborn genius shining through every motion and tone like an illuminating lamp.

"Josie, what are you doing?"

It was Cyrus who spoke, advancing into the room like a stern, hard impersonation of judgment. Joscelyn's outstretched arm fell to her side and she turned sharply around; fear came into her face and the light went out of it. A moment before she had been a woman, splendid, unafraid; now she was again the schoolgirl, too confused and shamed to speak.

"What are you doing, Josie?" asked her grandfather again, "dressed up in that indecent manner and talking and twisting to yourself?"

Joscelyn's face, that had grown pale, flamed scarlet again. She lifted her head proudly.

"I was trying Aunt Annice's part in her new play," she answered. "I have not been doing anything wrong, Grandfather."

'Wrong! It's your mother's blood coming out in you, girl, in spite of all our care! Where did you get that play?"

"Aunt Annice sent it to me," answered Joscelyn, casting a quick glance at the book on the table. Then, when her grandfather picked it up gingerly, as if he feared contamination, she added quickly, "Oh, give it to me, please, Grandfather. Don't take it away."

"I am going to burn it," said Cyrus Morgan sternly.

"Oh, don't, Grandfather," cried Joscelyn, with a sob in her voice. "Don't burn it, please. I ... I ... won't practise out of it anymore. I'm sorry I've displeased you. Please give me my book."

"No," was the stern reply. "Go to your room, girl, and take off that rig. There is to be no more play-acting in my house, remember that."

He flung the book into the fire that was burning in the grate. For the first time in her life Joscelyn flamed out into passionate defiance.

"You are cruel and unjust, Grandfather. I have done no wrong ... it is not doing wrong to develop the one gift I have. It's the only thing I can do ... and I am going to do it. My mother was an actress and a good woman. So is Aunt Annice. So I mean to be."

"Oh, Josie, Josie," said her grandmother in a scared voice. Her grandfather only repeated sternly, "Go, take that rig off, girl, and let us hear no more of this."

Joscelyn went but she left consternation behind her. Cyrus and Debirah could not have been more shocked if they had discovered the girl robbing her grandfather's desk. They talked the matter over bitterly at the kitchen hearth that night.

"We haven't been strict enough with the girl, Mother," said Cyrus angrily. "We'll have to be stricter if we don't want to have her disgracing us. Did you hear how she defied me? 'So I mean to be,' she says. Mother, we'll have trouble with that girl yet."

"Don't be too harsh with her, Pa ... it'll maybe only drive her to worse," sobbed Deborah.

"I ain't going to be harsh. What I do for her is for her own good, you know that, Mother. Josie is as dear to me as she is to you, but we've got to be stricter with her."

They were. From that day Josie was watched and distrusted. She was never permitted to be alone. There were no more solitary walks. She felt herself under the surveillance of cold, unsympathetic eyes every moment and her very soul writhed. Joscelyn Morgan, the high-spirited daughter of high-spirited parents, could not long submit to such treatment. It might have passed with a child; to a woman, thrilling with life and conscious power to her very fingertips, it was galling beyond measure. Joscelyn rebelled, but she did nothing secretly ... that was not her nature. She wrote to her Aunt Annice, and when she received her reply she went straight and fearlessly to her grandparents with it.

"Grandfather, this letter is from my aunt. She wishes me to go and live with her and prepare for the stage. I told her I wished to do so. I am going."

Cyrus and Deborah looked at her in mute dismay.

"I know you despise the profession of an actress," the girl went on with heightened colour. "I am sorry you think so about it because it is the only one open to me. I must go ... I must."

"Yes, you must," said Cyrus cruelly. "It's in your blood ... your bad blood, girl."

"My blood isn't bad," cried Joscelyn proudly. "My mother was a sweet, true, good woman. You are unjust, Grandfather. But I don't want you to be angry with me. I love you both and I am very grateful for all your kind ness to me. I wish that you could understand what ..."

"We understand enough," interrupted Cyrus harshly. "This is all I have to say. Go to your play-acting aunt if you want to. Your grandmother and me won't hinder you. But you'll come back here no more. We'll have nothing further to do with you. You can choose your own way and walk in it."

With this dictum Joscelyn went from Spring Valley. She clung to Deborah and wept at parting, but Cyrus did not even say goodbye to her.

The Books: Against the Odds: 'Dorinda's Desperate Deed' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Against the Odds - 'Dorinda's Desperate Deed' - by L.M. Montgomery

Against the Odds is yet another one of Rea Wilmhurst's edited collections. The focus of this book is "tales of achievement" - each story has something to do with bucking the odds, going for what you want despite difficulties, etc. Lucy Maud made a nice little living from selling short stories - to magazines in Canada, but also in the States. She would sometimes write stories to order. If she knew a certain magazine liked Sunday School morals, then she'd write in a Sunday school moral. If a magazine was read only by women, she'd go for the romance. If a magazine focused on ghost stories and paranormal stories, she'd write that. It's amazing the variety within these stories. Yes, she keeps coming back to some of the same characters, the archetypes, but still - reading them all, as a whole, I am just left with admiration at how much she actually DID. And this is along with being married to a bozo, having 2 kids, and having a role as a busy (busy busy) minister's wife. She didn't just sit in a garret and write all day long. She had other obligations. So it's amazing.

The first story I want to excerpt in this collection is called 'Dorinda's Desperate Deed' - it was written in 1906, and I think it's charming.

Dorinda Page is 15 years old. She has spent a couple of years away with her Aunt Mary - but she is now back with her mother and her 5 siblings. Her father is dead, and her mother has had a helluva time going it alone. Money troubles torment her. There are mouths to feed, schooling to consider ... clothes, etc. It's overwhelming. Dorinda has been out of the fray for a couple of years so she comes home and is kind of shocked at the change in her mother, how worn out she is, how worried. Dorinda is a young woman with a very good attitude, you can tell - she talks to her mother one day and says, "Okay - so let's talk about our priorities. What is the main list of things we have to pay for? And we'll figure something out ... but let's list them first." So Mrs. Page lists what she thinks is most important: Leicester Page's college tuition, Jean Page's music lessons, roof needs to be shingled ... and Dorinda also says that her mother needs a new coat. During this conversation, it comes up that they have a rich uncle Eugene - and Dorinda asks her mother why don't they borrow the money from him? Turns out that Eugene apparently hates this branch of the family - some old feud (you know, Lucy Maud is big on those) and has not spoken to Mrs. Page in a bazillion years. He's stubborn, he's scary, and apparently he hates the Pages. So that settles that. But Dorinda, determined to help her mother, decides to do the unthinkable - she decides to go to her Uncle Eugene's, and ask him to lend them the money. This is a terrifying prospect, but Dorinda is (as the title says) "desperate".

This is one of Lucy Maud's show-pieces: a young girl going to confront a supposedly terrifying crotchety old man. She uses it often to great effect.

Here's what happens.

Excerpt from Against the Odds - 'Dorinda's Desperate Deed' - by L.M. Montgomery

Oaklawn, where Uncle Eugene lived, was two miles away. It was a fine old place in beautiful grounds. But Dorinda did not quail before its splendours, nor did her heart fail her, even after she had rung the bell and had been shown by a maid inot a very handsome parlour, but it still continued to beat in that queer fashion halfway up her throat.

Presently Uncle Eugene came in, a tall, black-eyed old man, with a fine head of silver hair that should have framed a ruddy, benevolent face, instead of Uncle Eugene's hard-lipped, bushy-browed countenance.

Dorinda stood up, dusky and crimson, with brave, glowing eyes. Uncle Eugene looked at her sharply.

"Who are you?" he said bluntly.

"I am your niece, Dorinda Page," said Dorinda steadily.

"And what does my niece, Dorinda Page, want with me?" demanded Uncle Eugene, motioning to her to sit down and sitting down himself. But Dorinda remained standing. It is easier to fight on your feet.

"I want you to do four things, Uncle Eugene," she said, as calmly as if she were making the most natural and ordinary request in the world. "I want you to lend us the money to send Leicester to Blue Hill Academy, he will pay it back to you when he gets through college. I want you to lend Jean the money for music lessons, she will pay you back when she gets far enough along to give lessons herself. And I want you to lend me the money to shingle our house and get Mother a new dress and fur coat for the winter. I'll pay you back sometime for that, because I am going to set up as a dressmaker pretty soon."

"Anything more?" said Uncle Eugene, when Dorinda stopped.

"Nothing more just now, I think," said Dorinda reflectively.

"Why don't you ask for something for yourself?" said Uncle Eugene.

"I don't want anything for myself," said Dorinda promptly. "Or - yes, I do, too. I want your friendship, Uncle Eugene."

"Be kind enough to sit down," said Uncle Eugene.

Dorinda sat.

"You are a Page," said Uncle Eugene. "I saw that as soon as I came in. I will send Leicester to college and I shall not ask or expect to be paid back. Jean shall have her music lessons, and a piano to practise them on as well. The house shall be shingled, and the money for the new dress and coat shall be forthcoming. You and I will be friends."

"Thank you," gasped Dorinda, wondering if, after all, it wasn't a dream.

"I would have gladly assisted your mother before," said Uncle Eugene, "if she had asked me. I had determined that she must ask me first. I knew that half the money should have been your father's by rights. I was prepared to hand it over to him or his family, if I were asked for it. But I wished to humble his pride, and the Carter pride, to the point of asking for it. Not a very amiable temper, you will say? I admit it. I am not amiable and I never have been amiable. You must be prepared to find me very unamiable. I see that you are waiting for a chance to say something polite and pleasant on that score, but you may save yourself the trouble. I shall hope and expect to have you visit me often. If your mother and your brothers and sisters see fit to come with you, I shall welcome them also. I think that this is all it is necessary to say just now. Will you stay to tea with me this eveing?"

Dorinda stayed to tea, since she knew that Jean was at home to attend to matters there. She and Uncle Eugene got on famously. When she left, Uncle Eugene, grim and hard-lipped as ever, saw her to the door.

"Good evening, Niece Dorinda. You are a Page and I am proud of you. Tell your mother that many things in this life are lost through not asking for them. I don't think you are in need of the information for yourself."

The Books: At the Altar: 'What Aunt Marcella Would Have Called It' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

At the Altar - 'What Aunt Marcella Would Have Called It' - by L.M. Montgomery

This one was written in 1935 - I'm always interested to read Lucy Maud's short stories that she wrote AFTER she became an internationally known novelist. It's fascinating to read her stuff from before "Anne" as well - just to see her developing her craft - I love all of that - but she kept writing short stories throughout her life. It's amazing the output of this woman, it just boggles the mind. Once you get into the late 1930s, Lucy Maud is starting to break down. Her troubles begin to escalate (although I have to say - reading her journals - often I read her despair at this or that circumstance and I think: "WHY is this upsetting her so much??" That's totally not fair of me - I'm not justifying myself - I'm just saying that that's my response. So you had a fender-bender. Is that any reason to walk the floor at night, wringing your hands? So your son married someone you don't really like. Fine. That sucks. But is it an unspeakable tragedy?)

I'm not sure what was going on with Lucy Maud, I mean in an uber sense - I have a couple of theories, because - for the most part in her journals - she doesn't say: HERE is why I am so depressed all the time. Because who would say that? She was married to an imbecile (literally - he went mad a couple of years into their marriage and was never well again - she had to take care of him, almost like a baby). She had loved someone passionately in her youth - a hearty young handsome farmer - and it seems like she never really recovered from it (he died). Her kindred spirit cousin had died in 1918 in the influenza epidemic - and she basically decided to never have another friend. She was a once-in-a-lifetime type person. Also, World War I had completely changed her (as it completely changed the majority of that generation). She never "bounced back" from it, from the horror of it, the horrifying birth of the 20th century. And as the 30s moved on and it became apparent that another world war was approaching, her health eventually broke down completely. She could not face it.

Her work was her anchor, and also her escape. Not to mention her income! But deeper than that: her life as a minister's wife went so against her own inclinations. Her life had to be social, filled with small talk, and filled with little tiny lies. ha. Ironic, right? But to be a successful minister, you had to get on the good side of everyone in the town - even if they were bitchy assholes ... and the minister's wife is like a celebrity - watched at every turn, criticized - criticized if she dresses too dowdy, criticized if she dresses too flowery ... No matter what you do, you are on display. You kind of can't win. Lucy Maud's temperament was not a small-talk temperament and yet she married a man where small talk would be a requirement of her married life. Having teas, and socials, and quiltings, and Ladies Aid meetings, and having to head up little committees - and all that shit. Lucy Maud was an artist, for God's sake, and she had to go off and do all this petty crap to keep up appearances. Her married life and its obligations (because she certainly didn't love Ewan - this wasn't a partnership - especially not after he went mad) left her almost no room to breathe. And yet still, with all of that - she managed to write practically a novel a year. It's extraordinary.

So I look at this prose in this story - written in 1935 - when Lucy Maud's journals start to get very fragmented - all she does is give updates on how anxious she is, and how horrible things are, and how she can't talk about it ... and I read this story and what I see is the triumph of her artistic spirit. It is truly beautiful to me. Sad, too - because i wish she had been happier - but who knows. A happy peaceful Lucy Maud might not have written so much and so well. She really NEEDED her writing. Not just for the money. But for spiritual and emotional reasons. If writing had been illegal in Canada, she would have gone underground. It was that essential to her mental health. And, I don't know - I could be reading into this (ha - Yes, I think you are, Sheila) - but there's something about her writing that shows all of this to me. It's good writing on its own, don't get me wrong ... but I think one of the reasons it resonates is because Lucy Maud HAD to do this. There is an urgency and a drive in all of her prose. It shimmers with life. Also - that more often than not - her stories are FUNNY. This is not a woman who poured her tragic outlook on life into her work. This is a woman who believed, in all her soul, that a happy ending had as much worth as a sad. That a sad ending does not make you a better artist. She was a fierce believer in things working out. It's amazing. What a life force. What hope.

Bless you, Lucy Maud.

Here's the opening of this story 'What Aunt Marcella Would Have Called It'.

Excerpt from At the Altar - 'What Aunt Marcella Would Have Called It' - by L.M. Montgomery

If Aunt Marcella had allowed Glen to bob her hair this story would never have been told because there would have been no story to tell. But Aunt Marcella did not approve of bobbed hair at all. It was flying in the face of Providence for a girl to bob her hair, and ... so Aunt Marcella said ... she would be bald in her old age for her sins.

"You will thank me when you are sixty," she told Glen.

"That is a long time to wait for gratitude," said Glen darkly.

But Aunt Marcella was adamant, and Glen continued to wear her lovely golden-brown braid hanging down her back like a twelve-year-old schoolgirl of the century's teens, when she would be eighteen in another month and every bit as modern as Aunt Marcella would let her be.

Aunt Marcella would not even allow her to put it up. It was intolerable. If she could even put her hair up in a lovely soft knot at the back of her neck ... well, it might dawn on Dudley Wyatt's perception that she was really grown-up and not the schoolgirl, devoted to dolls, that he considered her and, as seemed likely, would go on considering her until she was that mythical sixty of Aunt Marcella's warnings.

It seemed to Glen that she had always been in love with Dudley Wyatt, although she had known him only from the age of twelve, when he had come to live next door to them at Nokomis Lodge. Glen always avowed that her legs trembled the first time she saw him, by which token she knew that she had fallen in love. But Dudley took no notice of her. He was all for Isabel. Not that he was in love with Isabel at all. To him, sixteen-year-old Isabel was just one of the two children at the Lindens. But she was a very clever child and he liked to talk to her. Nobody thought Glen had any brains because she hardly ever talked. And at twelve she had been anything but pretty ... a gaunt, scrawny creature with two sunburned pigtails. Glen would go hatless, to Aunt Marcella's mid-Victorian horror.

"What kind of complexion will you have when you are sixty?" she asked. "Besides, I call it 'Brazen' to go about without a hat."

Aunt Marcella never pronounced an adjective without making you see it spelled with a capital.

But even at sixteen Isabel was a beauty ... a tall, willowy thing with golden-brown hair and big owlish eyes that were the tint of a copper-grey sea. And, although Dudley Wyatt did not seem to have any kind of eyes for women at all, Glen believed in her secret soul that, if Isabel hadn't been so pretty, Dudley would not have detected her cleverness so quickly. As it was, he thought her a wonder. Aunt Marcella didn't. Aunt Marcella did not believe in a woman having brains.

"I call it 'Unwomanly' to be so clever," she told Isabel severely. "Aping the men!"

"But most men are really very stupid," said Isabel.

"I call that 'Flippant'," said Aunt Marcella, "and I dislike flippancy above all things."

"Besides, if you are not clever you bore the men after your novelty wears off," persisted Isabel.

"I have never been a man," said Aunt Marcella superfluously, "but I think it takes some time for them to tire of beauty. And 'bore' was not considered a nice word when I was a girl."

And then Uncle Maurice's daughter had died and Uncle Mauriece had come home and taken Isabel out west with him. That was five years ago and she had never been back since. But she was still tremendously clever and had graduated with highest honours. Aunt Marcella called that very 'Unfeminine' but Dudley exulted.

He wrote to Isabel occasionally and took the keenest interest in her career. He also made quite a bit of Glen, but still only as a child who was a dear little thing, rather dumb. Glen knew she was dumb when Dudley was about. She wasn't going to talk to him as a child and when she tried to talk to him as a grown-up her tongue clave to the roof of her mouth. She had a horrible feeling that if she did talk to him like a grown-up Dudley would smile kindly, as at a precocious child, and tell her to run away and tuck up her doll-babies.

Oh ... Glen clenched her hands ... life wasn't fair to women! Why ... why ... were men so blind? Couldn't he see she wasn't a child any longer? Couldn't he see the love she had to give him? It was bitter to have such a gift to give and nobody wanting to take it. Glen wouldn't have minded so much if Dudley had hated her ... if only he hated her as a woman. She couldn't go on being regarded as a child.

"I love him, and he doens't even know that I exist," she sighed. "He thinks me somebody who doesn't exist ... the twelve-year-old arms-and-legs I was when he came here first. Why can't I make him see? He won't see! He looks at me with the condescending kindness one shows a child ... and then I feel exactly like a caterpillar someone has stepped on."

That night he strolled past as she sat on the porch and called out teasingly, "Tell me what you are thinking of, Glennie?"

Good heavens, suppose she did tell him? Suppose she called back, "I'm thinking of you and how heavenly it would be if you came in here and sat down beside me and said, 'I love you, Glen,' and ... and ... kissed me."

Just what would happen? Well, she knew one thing that would. Aunt Marcella, by the living-room window, would die of frustration because she woudl not be able to find an adjective strong enough to describe such behaviour. But even thn Dudley would probably only say something like, "You've mistaken me for Clark Adams."

Clark Adams! That immature creature of twenty!

"I don't care for boys ... I get on better with men," Glen heard herself calling back.

But of course she had really said nothing when he asked her that question. He hadn't expected her to say anything. If only she could have thought of something quite daring to say! Something that a child couldn't think of saying. Isabel, now, could have said a dozen provocative things. Even she herself could have said them to Clark Adams. But she had said nothing ... had only given a foolish little giggle ... and Dudley had gone on, his dog slouching at his heels, on one of those long hikes of his that she longed to share. But Dudley had asked her only once and Aunt Marcella disapproved, tilting her hawk nose.

"I call it 'Unladylike' to go striding over the country like a man, or like one of those dreadful girls in knickerbockers," said Aunt Marcella. "I suppose you hardly class yourself among them, Glen."

The joke was that Glen was dying to wear knickers, or do anything else that might make Dudley realize that she was grown-up and beautiful ... hair just as glossy and golden-brown as Isabel's, eyes just the same coppery grey, shoulders just as smooth and delicious. But of what use was it? Dudley never saw her shoulders.

The Books: At the Altar: 'The Touch of Fate' (L.M. Montgomery)

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At the Altar - 'The Touch of Fate' - by L.M. Montgomery

This is one of Lucy Maud's stories that takes place out in the wild west of the Canadian prairies. Even though her main childhood was in PEI - she did spend a number of years out in the prairies with her father (before he decided: "You know what? I'm not really into being a father. At least not to THIS child.") ... and I think she writes about it quite eloquently. Civilization is thin out there. The Indians are a problem. It's hard to get to. The whites cluster together in small communities. 'The Touch of Fate' takes place in the Canadian northwest. Violet Thayer, a beautiful coquettish young woman (kind of vain, if the truth must be told) comes out to this particular town to visit an old friend who is a schoolteacher there. There is a huge battalion of MPs there, and Mrs. Hill (wife of the head of the MPs) is thrilled at the advent of Violet - she wants to set her up with at least ONE of the eligible men in town. She gets to work. Violet, being a coquette, slays pretty much everybody. It's a tiny town, with no new faces. Mrs. Hill throws a party to welcome her to town - and Violet finds herself surrounded by men at all times. She loves it. She loves the attention. However ... there's one man who somehow does not fall under her spell. And naturally, he's the one who eventually gets her attention.

I really like the dialogue in their first conversation.

Excerpt from At the Altar - 'The Touch of Fate' - by L.M. Montgomery

Violet was talking to Madison and watching John Spencer out of the tail of her eye. Spencer was not an M.P. He had some government post at Dufferin Bluff and this was his first call at Lone Poplar Villa since Miss Thayer's arrival. He did not seem to be dazzled by her at all, and after his introduction had promptly retired to a corner with Major Hill, where they talked the whole evening about the trouble on the Indian reservation at Loon Lake.

Possibly this indifference piqued Miss Thayer. Possibly she considered it refreshing after the servile adulation of the M.P.s. At any rate, when all the latter were gathered about the piano singing a chorus with gusto, she shook Madison off and went over to the corner where Spencer, deserted by the Major, whose bass was wanted, was sitting in solitary state.

He looked up indifferently as Violet shimmered down on the divan beside him. Sergeant Robinson, who was watching them jealously from the corner beyond the palms, and would have given his eyes, or at least one of them, for such a favour, mentally vowed that Spencer was the dullest fellow he had ever put those useful members on.

"Don't you sing, Mr. Spencer?" asked Violet by way of beginning a conversation, as she turned her splendid eyes full upon him. Robinson would have lost his head under them, but Spencer kept his heroically.

"No," was his calmly brief reply, given without any bluntness, but with no evident intention of saying anything more.

In spite of her social experience Violet felt disconcerted.

"If he doesn't want to talk to me I won't try to make him," she thought crossly. No man had ever snubbed her so before.

Spencer listened immovably to the music for a time. Then he turned to his companion witih a palpable effort to be civilly sociable.

"How do you like the west, Miss Thayer?" he said.

Violet smiled - the smile most men found dangerous.

"Very much, so far as I have seen it. There is a flavour about the life here that I like, but I dare say it would soon pall. It must be horribly lonesome here most of the time, especially in winter."

"The M.P.s are always growling that it is," returned Spencer with a slight smile. "For my own part I never feel it so."

Violet decided that his smile was ver becoming to him, and that she liked the way his dark hair grew over his forehead.

"I don't think I've seen you at Lone Poplar Villa before?" she said.

"No. I haven't been here for some time. I came up tonight to see the Major about the Loon Lake trouble."

"Otherwise you wouldn't have come," thought Violet. "Flattering - very!" Aloud she said, "Is it serious?"

"Oh, no. A mere squabble among the Indians. Have you ever visited the Reservation, Miss Thayer? No? Well, you should get some of your M.P. friends to take you out. It would be worth while."

"Why don't you ask me to go yourself?" said Violet audaciously.

Spencer smiled again. "Have I failed in politeness by not doing so? I fear you would find me an insufferably dull companion."

So he was not going to ask her after all. Violet felt piqued. She was also conscious of a sensation very near akin to disappointment. She looked across at Madison. How trim and dapper he was!

"I hate a bandbox man," she said to herself.

Spencer meanwhile had picked up one of Mrs. Hill's novels from the stand beside him.

"Fools of Habit," he said, glancing at the cover. "I see it is making quite a sensation down east. I suppose you've read it?"

"Yes. It is very frivolous and clever - all froth but delightful froth. Did you like it?"

Spencer balanced the novel reflectively on his slender brown hand.

"Well, yes, rather. But I don't care for novels as a rule. I don't understand them. The hero of this book, now - do you believe that a man in love would act as he did?"

"I don't know," said Violet amusedly. "You ought to be a better judge than I. You are a man."

"I have never loved anybody, so I am no position to decide," said Spencer.

There was as little self-consciousness in his voice as if he were telling her a fact concerning the Loon Lake trouble. Violet rose to the occasion.

"You have an interesting experience to look forward to," she said.

Spencer turned his deep-set grey eyes squarely upon her.

"I don't know that. When I said I had never loved, I meant more than the love of a man for some particular woman. I meant love in every sense. I do not know what it is to have an affection for any human being. My parents died before I can remember. My only living relative was a penurious old uncle who brought me up for shame's sake and kicked me out on the world as soon as he could. I don't make friends easily. I have a few acquaintances whom I like, but there is not a soul on earth for whom I care, or who cares for me."

"What a revelation love will be to you when it comes," said Violet softly. Again he looked into her eyes.

"Do you think it will come?" he asked.

Before she could reply Mrs. Hill pounced upon them. Violet was wanted to sing. Mr. Spencer would excuse her, wouldn't he? Moreover, he got up and bade his hostess good night. Violet gave him her hand.

"You will call again?" she asked.

Spencer looked across at Madison - perhaps it was accidental.

"I think not," he said. "If, as you say, love will come sometime, it would be a very unpleasant revelation if it came in hopeless guise, and one never knows what may happen."

The Books: At the Altar: 'The Way of the Winning of Anne' (L.M. Montgomery)

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At the Altar - 'The Way of the Winning of Anne' - by L.M. Montgomery

Another story with one of Lucy Maud's thematic standbys: a long-ass courtship of 15 years ... not really going anywhere ... until one member of the couple takes drastic measures (pretends to start seeing someone else) ... and the other member of the couple is jealous, and suddenly realizes: I can't live without this person! Like 'The Hurrying of Ludovic'. Or 'The Pursuit of the Ideal'. These are romances between practical middle-aged people. Lucy Maud so knows how to write about that.

In 'The Way of the Winning of Anne' - Jerome has been "seeing" Anne for 15 years. I would say, in a less charitable way, that Anne has been stringing Jerome along - but I suppose she has her reasons. He asks her to marry him once a year, and she continuously turns him down. And yet every week they walk home from prayer meeting together. That is their main date. It is a declaration of commitment to a relationship (as anyone who reads Lucy Maud's books knows. Walking home from prayer meeting with a member of the opposite sex is as good as being engaged.) Jerome figures that if he just keeps asking she'll eventually cave. But 15 years is a long time. So one night - Jerome has had enough. He starts to see a woman named Harriet Warren - even going so far as taking her to a social in the next town. A gossipy neighbor informs Anne of this. The very next night, Jerome is not at prayer meeting. He has gone to prayer meeting at another church with Harriet Warren.

Excerpt from At the Altar - 'The Way of the Winning of Anne' - by L.M. Montgomery

When she got home she looked at her face in the glass more critically than she had done for years. Anne Stockard at her best had never been pretty. When young she had been called "gawky". She was very tall and her figure was lank and angular. She had a long, pale face and dusky hair. Her eyes had been good - a glimmering hazel, large and long-lashed. They were pretty yet, but the crow's feet about them were plainly visible. There were brackets around her mouth too, and her cheeks were hollow. Anne suddenly realized, as she had never realized before, that she had grown old - that her youth was left far behind. She was an old maid, and Harriet Warren was young and pretty. Anne's long, thin lips suddenly quivered.

"I declare, I'm a worse fool than Jerome," she said angrily.

When Saturday night came Jerome did not. The corner of the big, old-fashioned porch where he usually sat looked bare and lonely. Anne was short with octavia and boxed the cat's ears and raged at herself. What did she care if Jerome Irving never came again? She could have married him years ago if she had wanted to - everybody knew that!

At sunset she saw a buggy drive past her gate. Even at that distance she recognized Harriet Warren's handsome, high-coloured profile. It was Jerome's new buggy and Jerome was driving. The wheel spokes flashed in the sunlight as they crept up the hill. Perhaps they dazzled Anne's eyes a little; at least, for that or some other reason she dabbed her hand viciously over them as she turned sharply about and went upstairs. Octavia was practising her music lesson in the parlour below and singing in a sweet shrill voice. The hired men were laughing and talking in the yard. Anne slammed down her window and banged her door and then lay down on her bed; she said her head ached.

The Deep Meadow people were amused and made joking remarks to Anne, which she had to take amiably because she had no excuse for resenting them. In reality they stung her pride unendurably. When Jerome had gone she realized that she had no other intimate friend and that she was a very lonely woman whom nobody cared about. One night - it was three weeks afterward - she met Jerome and Harriet squarely. She was walking to church with Octavia, and they were driving in the opposite direction. Jerome had his new buggy and a crimson lap robe. His horse's coat shone like satin and had rosettes of crimson on his bridle. Jerome was dressed extremely well and looked quite young, with his round, ruddy, clean-shaven face and clear blue eyes.

Harriet was sitting primly and consciously by his side; she was a very handsome girl with bold eyes and was somewhat overdressed. She wore a big flowery hat and a white lace veil and looked at Anne with a supercilious smile.

Anne felt dowdy and old; she was very pale. Jerome lifted his hat and bowed pleasantly as they drove past. Suddenly Harriet laughed out. Anne did not look back, but her face crimsoned darkly. Was that girl laughing at her? She trembled with anger and a sharp, hurt feeling. When she got home that night she sat a long while by her window.

Jerome was gone - and he let Harriet Warren laugh at her - and he would never come back to her. Well, it did not matter, but she had been a fool. Only it had never occurred to her that Jerome could act so.

"If I'd thought he would I mightn't have been so sharp with him," was as far as she would let herself go even in thought.

The Books: At the Altar: 'The Dissipation of Miss Posonby' (L.M. Montgomery)

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At the Altar - 'The Dissipation of Miss Posonby' - by L.M. Montgomery

I love when she has these old-fashioned Victorian titles. 'The Dissipation of Miss Posonby'. Wonderful.

Miss Posonby is one of Lucy Maud delightful old-maid characters. She's prim, tidy, proper - and completely trapped by her circumstances (her father is a tyrant) ... Eventually, this story is about how Miss Posonby hears that an old beau of hers has returned to town - after 20 years being away - and someone is throwing a party for him ... and she wants to go, but her father refuses and, I believe, locks Miss Posonby in her room. What eventually happens is the two young girls next door (19, 18 years old) get all invested in Miss Posonby's old romance - she says she doesn't have a dress to go to the party anyway ... she says all of this out of her bedroom window, where she is locked in ... and the girls live across the way. Eventually, they lend her one of their dresses - and climb it up to her in the old oak tree outside her window. Miss Posonby, once she puts on the pretty dress, is revealed to be a beautiful ripe woman in her 40s, not the silly old maid who lives like Emily Dickinson in her tower-room. She goes to the party, is reunited with her old beau, and is happy! In her utter dissipation.

Here is the opening of the story. I love the tone Lucy Maud takes. It's comedic.

Excerpt from At the Altar - 'The Dissipation of Miss Posonby' - by L.M. Montgomery

Miss Posonby sat and sewed at her window for hours at a time, but she never looked our way, partly, I suppose, from habit induced by modesty, since the former occupants of our room had been two gay young bachelors, whose names Jerry and I found cut all over our window-panes with a diamond.

Jerry and I sat a great deal at ours, laughing and talking, but Miss Posonby never lifted her head or eyes. Jerry couldn't stand it long; she declared it got on her nerves; besides, she felt sorry to see a fellow creature wasting so many precious moments of a fleeting lifetime at patchwork. So one afternoon she hailed Miss Posonby with a cheerful "hello", and Miss Posonby actually looked over and said "good afternoon," as prim as an eighteen-hundred-and-forty fashion plate.

Then Jerry, whose name is Geraldine only in the family Bible, talked to her about the weather. Jerry can talk interestingly about anything. In five minutes she had performed a miracle - she had made Miss Posonby laugh. In five minutes more she was leaning half out of the window showing Miss Posonby a new, white, fluffy, frivolous, chiffony waist of hers, and Miss Posonby was leaning halfway out of hers looking at it eagerly. At the end of a quarter of an hour they were exchanging confidences about their favourite books. Jerry was a confirmed Kiplingomaniac, but Miss Posonby adored Laura Jean Libbey. She said sorrowfully she supposed she ought not to read novels at all since her father disapproved. We found out later on that Mr. Posonby's way of expressing disapproval was to burn any he got hold of, and storm at his daughter about them like the confirmed old crank he was. Poor Miss Posonby had to keep her Laura Jeans locked up in her trunk, and it wasn't often she got a new one.

Friom that day dated our friendship with Miss Posonby, a curious friendship, only carried on from window to window. We never saw Miss Posonby anywhere else; we asked her to come over but she said her father didn't allow her to visit anybody. Miss Posonby was one of those meek women who are ruled by whomsoever happens to be nearest them, and woe be unto them if that nearest happen to be a tyrant. Her meekness fairly infuriated Jerry.

But we liked Miss Posonby and we pitied her. She confided to us that she was very lonely, and that she wrote poetry. We never asked to see the poetry, although I think she would have liked to show it. But, as Jerry says, there are limits.

We told Miss Posonby all about our dances and picnics and beaus and pretty dresses; she was never tired of hearing of them; we smuggled her library novels - Jerry got our cook to buy them - and boxes of chocolates, from our window to hers; we sat there on moonlit nights and communed with her while other girls down the street were enteretaining callers on their verandahs; we did everything we could for her except to call her Alicia, although she beggued us to do so. But it never came easily to our tongues; we thought she must have been born and christened Miss Posonby; "Alicia" was something her mother could only have dreamed about her.

We thought we knew all about Miss Posonby's past; but even pale, drab, china-blue women can have their secrets and keep them. It was a full half year before we discovered Miss Posonby's.

The Books: At the Altar: 'Them Notorious Pigs' (L.M. Montgomery)

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At the Altar - 'Them Notorious Pigs' - by L.M. Montgomery

Okay - so let's get back into the daily excerpt thingie. Lucy Maud still chugging away!!

This story is really cute (and you can tell it will be funny by that ridiculous title). John Harrington is a well-to-do bachelor farmer - who pretty much despises women. He has no use for them at all. This story was originally published in 1904 with the name "The Nuisance of Women". Poor Harrington. Trapped in a world of women. Silly little things. So anyway - Mary Hayden, a young widow with 2 small children, has moved in next door. Harrington doesn't pay much attention to them - until ... Mary's pigs keep escaping from their pen, and running over into Harrington's yard, wreaking their pig havoc. Harrington is in a blind rage about this. Why can't that dern woman figure out how to keep her pigs locked up? He sends messages to her through his hired man - "could you please keep your pigs out of my garden?" Meanwhile, what he's thinking is: This is what happens when women try to run farms. She sends apologies back to him through her hired man, and says that it won't happen again. Then, whaddya know, the next day, the pigs get out, run into Harrington's yard, and totally kick up the dirt in his brand-new vegetable garden. So now Harrington has had it.

He stomps over there to give her a piece of his mind. And you can pretty much tell what is going to happen from their first encounter, although they take a while to get to it.

Here's what happens:

Excerpt from At the Altar - 'Them Notorious Pigs' - by L.M. Montgomery

Harrington had never seen his neighbour at close quarters beforte. Now he could not help seeing that she was a very pretty little woman, with wistful, dark blue eyes and an appealing expression. Mary Hayden had been next to a beauty in her girlhood, and she had a good deal of her bloom left yet, although hard work and worry were doing their best to rob her of it. But John Harrington was an angry man and he did not care whether the woman in question was pretty or not. Her pigs had rooted up his garden - that fact filled his mind.

"Mrs. Hayden, those pigs of yours have been in my garden again. I simply can't put up with this any longer. Why in the name of reason don't you look after your animals better? If I find them in again, I'll set my dog on them, I give you fair warning."

A faint colour had crept into Mary Hayden's soft milky-white cheeks during this tirade, and her voice trembled as she said, "I'm very sorry, Mr. Harrington. I suppose Bobbles forgot to shut the gate of their pen again this morning. He is so forgetful."

"I'd lengthen his memory then, if I were you," returned Harrington grimly, supposing that Bobbles was the hired man. "I'm not going to have my garden ruined just because he happens to be forfetful. I am speaking my mind plainly, madam. If you can't keep your stock from being a nuisance to other people you ought not to try to run a farm at all."

Then did Mary Hayden sit down upon the doorstep and burst into tears. Harrington felt, as Sarah King would have expressed it, "every which way at once." Here was a nice mess! What a nuisance women were - worse than the pigs!

"Oh, don't cry, Mrs. Hayden," he said awkwardly. "I didn't mean - well, I suppose I spoke too strongly. Of course I know you didn't mean to let the pigs in. There, do stop crying! I beg your pardon if I've hurt your feelings."

"Oh, it's isn't that," sobbed Mrs. Hayden, wiping away her tears. "It's only - I've tried so hard - and everything seems to go wrong. I make such mistakes. As for your garden, sir, I'll pay for the damage my pigs have done if you'll let me know what it comes to."

She sobbed again and caught her breath like a grieved child. Harrington felt like a brute. He had a queer notion that if he put his arm around her and told her not to worry over things women were not created to attend to he would be expressing his feelings better than in any other way. But of course he couldn't do that. Instead, he muttered that the damage didn't amount to much after all, and he hoped she wouldn't mind what he said, and then he got himself away and strode through the orchard like a man in a desperate hurry.

Mordecai had gone home and the pigs were not to be seen, but a chubby little face peeped at him from between two scrub, bloom-white cherry trees.

"G'way, you bad man!" said Bobbles vindictively. "G'way! You made my mommer cry - I saw you. I'm only Bobbles now, but when I grow up I'll be Charles Henry Hayden and you won't dare to make my mommer cry then."

Harrington smiled grimly. "So you're the lad who forgets to shut the pigpen gate, are you? Come out here and let me see you. Who is in there with you?"

"Ted is. He's littler than me. But I won't come out. I don't like you. G'way home."

Harrington obeyed. He went home and to work in his garden. But work as hard as he could, he could not forget Mary Hayden's grieved face.

"I was a brute!" he thought. "Why couldn't I have mentioned th ematter gently? I daresay she has enough to trouble her. Confound those pigs!"

The Books: At the Altar: 'The Wooing of Bessy' (L.M. Montgomery)

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At the Altar - 'The Wooing of Bessy' - by L.M. Montgomery

Lucy Maud wrote a really good dominating female character. Sometimes she was benign, even though she bosses everybody around - like Judith in 'The Miracle at Carmody' - she's a dominant boss-type lady but you love her anyway. And sometimes she is malignant - like Emmeline in 'The Courting of Prissy Strong'. I wrote about this a bit here. She's a type that comes up again and again in Lucy Maud's work - taking on different forms, attitudes - but she obviously was very interested in (and understood) rigid stubbornness and pride. (Think of the gravestone in Emily: "Here I stay".) Pride is a sin. Lucy Maud understood it well. I think she writes about pride-ful characters almost better than anyone.

So this particular story 'The Wooing of Bessy' features one of those not-so-benign dominant boss-ladies. It's a creepy story - at least psychologically. It has elements of 'The Son of His Mother' in it - the mother who cannot let go of her son - who is even willing to destroy her son's chance at happiness - to keep him with her. Ew. It's creepy. But you can tell - at least in 'Son of His Mother' - that Lucy Maud has some sympathy for these female characters who hold on so tight to things, and can't let go. You love Thyra. You're glad she's not YOUR mother, but you love her.

In 'The Wooing of Bessy' - Mrs. Eastman, mother of Lawrence Eastman - a young man - not even a teenager - he's 20 - but Mrs. Eastman hovers. Hovers. There is no father in the picture - I believe he is dead. Lawrence has started to see a girl named Bessy Houghton. She's 25 years old, and unmarried - which makes her an old maid in the town's eyes. Also, she always had a kind of mature older personality. Her parents are both dead - she inherited their huge farm - and she runs it, a capable businesswoman. And Lawrence takes a fancy to her, is falling in love with her, you can tell. But something in him knows he shouldn't tell his mother. He isn't openly devious - he just keeps his heart private (which is not an easy thing with such an intrusive mother). Mrs. Eastman gets wind of the romance at a quilting circle - she has never liked Bessy Houghton, thought she "put on airs" - and she is convinced that she is just toying with her son. Also she's 25!! First of all, that's ancient. Second of all, she's 5 years older than Lawrence and everyone knows that the MAN should be older! Oh no no, this must stop.

So Mrs. Eastman goes home and proceeds to stir up trouble.

You know, it occurs to me: reading Lucy Maud's journals - the ones where she has her 2 sons, and they're growing up - sometimes I want to reach in and say to her: Maud, you have to back off. You have to let go. If Chester fails an exam, he fails an exam - there's no need for you to literally take to your bed with a sick stomach over how much you're worrying. It's nuts!

She OBSESSES over them. Every quiz they take - her own ego and pride of them is on the line. Poor lady.

But she really understands that type of thing - this story was written in 1906 - long before she had children - but she understood that type of woman intimately.

Excerpt from At the Altar - 'The Wooing of Bessy' - by L.M. Montgomery

Lawrence was brushing his pet mare's coat until it shone like satin, and whistling "Annie Laurie" until the rafters rang. Bessy had sung it for him the night before. He could see her plainly still as she had looked then, in her gown of vivid red - a colour peculiarly becoming to her - with her favourite laces at wrist and throat and a white rose in her hair, which was dressed in the high, becoming knot she had alwars worn since the night he had shyly told her he liked it so.

She had played and sung many of the sweet old Scotch ballads for him, and when she had gone to the door with him he had taken both her hands in his and, emboldened by the look in her brown eyes, he had stooped and kissed her. Then he had stepped back, filled with dismay at his own audacity. But Bessy had said no word of rebuke, and only blushed hotly crmson. Sge must care for him, h e thought happily, or else she would have been angry.

When his mother came in at the stable door her face was hard and uncompromising.

"Lawrie," she said sharply, "where are you going again tonight? You were out last night."

"Well, Mother, I promise you I wasn't in any bad company. Come now, don't quiz a fellow too close."

"You are going to dangle after Bessy Houghton again. It's time you were told what a fool you were making of yourself. She's old enough to be your mother. The whole settlement is laughing at you."

Lawrence looked as if his mother had struck him a blow in the face. A dull, purplish flush crept over his brow.

"This is some of George's work," he broke out fiercely. "He's been setting you on me, has he? Yes, he's jealous - he wanted Bessy himself, but she would not look at him. He thinks nobody knows it, but I do. Bessy marry him? It's very likely!"

"Lawrie Eastman, you are daft. George hasn't said anything to me. You surely don't imagine Bessy Houghton would marry you. And if she would, she is too old for you. Now, don't you hang around her any longer."

"I will," said Lawrence flatly. "I don't care what anybody says. You needn't worry over me. I can take care of myself."

Mrs. Eastman looked blankly at her son. He had never defied or disobeyed her in his life before. She had supposed her word would be law. Rebellion was something she had not dreamed of. Her lips tightened ominously and her eyes narrowed.

"You're a bigger fool than I took you for," she said in a voice that trembled with anger. "Bessy Houghton laughs at you everywhere. She knows you're just after her money, and she makes fun--"

"Prove it," interrupted Lawrence undauntedly. "I'm not going to put any faith in Lynnfield gossip. Provie it if you can."

"I can prove it. Maggie Hatfield told me what Bessy Houghton said to her about you. She said you were a lovesick fool, and she only went with you for a little amusement, and that if you thought you had nothing to do but marry her and hang up your hat there you'd find yourself vastly mistaken."

Possibly in her calmer moments Mrs. Eastman might have shrunk from such a deliberate falsehood, although it was said of her in Lynnfield that she was not one to stick at a lie when the truth would not serve her purpose. Moreover, she felt quite sure that Lawrence would never ask Maggie Hatfield anything about it.

Lawrence turned white to the lips. "Is that true, Mother?" he asked huskily.

"I've warned you," replied his mother, not choosing to repeat her statement. "If you go after Bessy any more you can take the consequences."

She drew her shawl about her pale, malicious face and left him with a parting glance of contempt.

"I guess that'll settle him," she thought grimly. "Bessy Houghton turned up her nose at George, but she shan't make a fool of Lawrence too."

Alone in the stable Lawrence stood staring out at the dull red ball of the winter sun with unseeing eyes. He had implicit faith in his mother, and the stab had gone straight to his heart. Bessy Houghton listened in vain that night for his well-known footfall on the verandah.

The next night Lawrence went home with Milly Fiske from prayer meeting, taking her out from a crowd of other girls under Bessy Houghton's very eyes as she came down the steps of the little church.

Bessy walked home alone. The light burned low in her sitting-room and in the mirror over the mantel she saw her own pale face, with its tragic, pain-stricken eyes. Annie Hillis, her "help", was out. She was alone in the big house with her misery and despair.

The Books: At the Altar: 'The Pursuit of the Ideal' (L.M. Montgomery)

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At the Altar - 'The Pursuit of the Ideal' - by L.M. Montgomery

The plot-line of this sweet little story has a lot of similarties to "The Hurrying of Ludovic". Published in 1904 - pre-dating the publication of Anne - this story already shows Lucy Maud's strengths. She doesn't try to re-invent the wheel. Her stories (her good ones) have simple plots - and they are character-based. She's already in her stride here as a writer. Freda and Roger are good friends. The opening scene gives you their relationship in a matter of 2 or 3 exchanges. Roger is kind of a dreamer, likes to come hang out at Freda's house, which is cozy, and talk about his dreams. Freda is NOT really a dreamer - she's got a bit more fun in her. But she also is fond of Roger, likes making him hot chocolate, and likes teasing him about his dreams. Until one day .... Roger comes to her and declares that he has seen "his ideal". Meaning: woman. Freda doesn't respond - but also - for the first time - she doesn't tease. She just goes kind of quiet. Roger begins to rave about this woman he saw, a new woman in town ... with the face of a Madonna, with golden hair, eyes blue as the sky, whatever .... he goes on and on and on. Freda just listens. Freda is rosy and plump and twinkley. She is NOT his ideal. But Freda holds her counsel. Roger starts to pursue "his ideal" - and he comes over to Freda's to give her updates. The man is quite clueless. You never know what's going on in Freda's head, though - because the story is told from Roger's point of view. We, the reader, can definitely see what's going on with her - because of how Lucy Maud writes about her behavior ... but still, it's Roger's journey, not Freda's.

So one day, Roger moseys on over to Freda's, to jabber on, yet again, about "his ideal".

Only to find ....

Excerpt from At the Altar - 'The Pursuit of the Ideal' - by L.M. Montgomery

One day when Roger came he found six feet of young man reposing at ease in his particular chair. Freda was sipping chocolate in her corner and looking over the rim of her cup at the intruder just as she had been wont to look at Roger. She had on a new dark red gown and looked vivid and rose-hued.

She introduced the stranger as Mr. Grayson and called him Tim. They seemed to be excellent friends. Roger sat bolt upright on the edge of a fragile, gilded chair which Freda kept to hide a shabby spot in the carpet, and glared at Tim until the latter said goodbye and lounged out.

"You'll be over tomorrow?" said Freda.

"Can't I come this evening?" he pleaded.

Freda nodded. "Yes - and we'll make taffy. You used to make such delicious stuff, Tim."

"Who is that fellow, Freda?" Roger inquired crossly, as soon as the door closed.

Freda began to make a fresh pot of chocolate. She smiled dreamiliy as if thinking of something pleasant.

"Why, that was Tim Grayson - dear old Tim. He used to live next door to us when we were children. And we were such chums - always together, making mud pies, and getting into scrapes. He is just the same old Tim, and he is home from the west for a long visit. I was so glad to see him again."

"So it would appear," said Roger grumpily. "Well, now that 'dear old Tim' is gone, I suppose I can have my own chair, can I? And do give me some chocolate. I didn't know you made taffy."

"Oh, I don't. It's Tim. He can do everything. He used to make it long ago, and I washed up after him and helped him eat it. How is the pursuit of the Ideal coming on, Roger-boy?"

Roger did not feel as if he wanted to talk about the Ideal. He noticed how vivid Freda's smile was and how lovable were the curves of her neck where the dusky curls were caught up from it. He had also an inner vision of Freda making taffy with Tim and he did not approve of it.

He refused to talk about the Ideal. On his way back to town he found himself thinking that Freda had the most charming, glad little laugh of any girl he knew. He suddenly remembered that he had never heard the Ideal laugh. She smiled placidly - he had raved to Freda about that smile - but she did not laugh. Roger began to wonder what an ideal without any sense of humour would be like when translated into the real.

He went to Lowlands the next afternoon and found Tim there - in his chair again. He detested the fellow but he could not deny that he was good-looking and had charming manners. Freda was very nice to Tim. On his way back to town Roger decided that Tim was in love with Freda. He was furious at the idea. The presumption of the man!

The Books: At the Altar: 'The Gossip of Valley View' (L.M. Montgomery)

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At the Altar - 'The Gossip of Valley View' - by L.M. Montgomery

I think this might be my favorite TYPE of Lucy Maud romance: involving two maybe middle-aged people ... not too romantic ... but either good companions ... or ... who knows. I like when she writes about people past the first flush of youth, having romances. She always gets so much of it right (in my opinion). Like the wonderful story 'The Hurrying of Ludovic'. It's what happnes when people can no longer afford to be all romantic and dreamy-creamy, moonlight and roses ... it's what happens when that stuff fades ... and yet still you find yourself in love. And this story, 'The Gossip of Valley View', is very funny - true Lucy Maud:

A rumor starts in a small town - that Young Thomas Everett and Adelia Williams are going to be married. Now ... the two are not even courting ... Young Thomas Everett, a confirmed old bachelor who lives out on a farm with a grumpy housekeeper, hears the news about himself at the blacksmith one day and bursts into laughter. Adelia Williams? Nice little lady ... but he has no intention of getting married. But because of the laugh - and because neither of them out and out deny it - the gossip spreads. And spreads. I love how Lucy Maud describes this. The growing belief in the story ... people stopping Thomas on the street to congratulate him. He thinks it's all rather silly - he barely knows Adelia - but when the minister and his wife stop by Thomas' house and mention his engagement - Young Thomas gets a bit perturbed. This is getting far too serious. It's no longer a rumor - everyone believes it. Meanwhile, in the story - there has been NO contact with this Adelia Williams. He glances over at her in church during this whole thing - and she's glancing at him too. They both look away. So she obviously has heard the rumors too. Thomas does have the presence of mind to admire her rosy cheeks, and to think: She doesn't look like an old maid at all. But still: he has no idea who she is. All he knows about her is that she has the reputation of being a fantastic home-maker and house-keeper and cook and all that. That's it. The rumor keeps growing. People start just making shit up. Young Thomas hears whispered rumors about Adelia's trousseau - what color her hat will be - it's starting to not be funny. It's starting to be downright annoying. Finally, Young Thomas has had enough. His brother Charlie - who lives in - Manitoba? Winnipeg? Somewhere far from PEI, I'll tell you that - writes him a letter congratulating him on his upcoming engagement, and says, "Give Adelia a kiss for me!"

Young Thomas (who has also been having problems with his grumpy housekeeper) has now had enough. Enough of the rumors. And enough of the messy house. What they hey ... He goes over to see Adelia. This is the excerpt below. It's the end of the story.

This is our first time meeting Adelia. And I just LOVE her reaction. It makes me laugh - makes me feel like we could be friends. Also: it's just typical Lucy Maud.

Excerpt from At the Altar - 'The Gossip of Valley View' - by L.M. Montgomery

Young Thomas shaved and put on his Sunday suit. As soon as it was safely dark, he hied him away to Adelia Williams. He felt very doubtful about his reception, but the remembrance of the twinkle in Adelia's brown eyes comforted him. She looked like a woman who had a sense of humour; she might not take him, but she would not feel offended or insulted because he asked her.

"Dang it all, though, I hope she will take me," said Young Thomas. "I'm in for getting married now and no mistake. And I can't get Adelia out of my head. I've been thinking of her steady ever since that confounded gossip began."

When he knocked at Adelia's door he discovered that his face was wet with perspiration. Adelia opened the door and started when she saw him, then she turned very red and stiffly asked him in. Young Thomas went in and sat down, wondering if all men felt so horribly uncomfortable when they were courting.

Adelia stooped low over the woodbox to put a stick of wood in the stove, for the May evening was chilly. Her shoulders were shaking; the shaking grew worse; suddenly Adelia laughed hysterically and, sitting down on the woodbox, continued to laugh. Young Thomas eyed her with a friendly grin.

"Oh, do excuse me," gasped poor Adelia, wiping tears from her eyes. "This is - dreadful - I didn't mean to laugh - I don't know why I'm laughing - but - I - can't help it."

She laughed helplessly again. Young Thomas laughed too. His embarrassment vanished in the mellowness of that laughter. Presently Adelia composed herself and removed from the woodbox to a chair, but there was still a suspicious twitching about the corners of her mouth.

"I suppose," said Young Thomas, determined to have it over with before the ice could form again, "I suppose, Adelia, you've heard the story that's been going about you and me of late?"

Adelia nodded. "I've been persecuted to the verge of insanity with it," she said. "Every soul I've seen has tormented me about it, and people have written me about it. I've denied it till I was black in the face, but nobody believed me. I can't find out how it started. I hope you believe, Mr. Everett, that it couldn't possibly have arisen from anything I said. I've felt dreadfully worried for fear you might think it did. I heard that my cousin, Lucilla Barrett, said I told her, but Lucilla vowed to me that she never said such a thing or even dreamed of it. I've felt dreadful bad over the whole affair. I even gave up the idea of making a quilt after a lovely new pattern I've got, because they made such a talk about my brown dress."

"I've been kind of supposing that you must be going to marry somebody, and folks just guessed it was me," said Young Thomas - he said it anxiously.

"No, I'm not going to be married to anybody," said Adelia with a laugh, taking up her knitting.

"I'm glad of that," said Young Thomas gravely. "I mean," he hastened to add, seeing the look of astonishment on Adelia's face, "that I'm glad there isn't any other man - because - because I want you myself, Adelia."

Adelia laid down her knitting and blushed crimson. But she looked at Young Thomas squarely and reproachfully.

"You needn't think you are bound to say that because of the gossip, Mr. Everett," she saidq uietly.

"Oh, I don't," said Young Thomas earnestly. "But the truth is, the story set me to thinking about you, and from that I got to wishing it was true - honest, I did - I couldn't get you out of my head, and at last I didn't want to. It just seemed to me that you were the very woman for me if you'd only take me. Will you, Adelia? I've got a good farm and house, and I'll try to make you happy."

It was not a very romantic wooing, perhaps. But Adelia was forty and had never been a romantic little body even in the heyday of her youth. She was a practical woman, and Young Thomas was a fine looking man of his age with abundance of worldly goods. Besides, she liked him, and the gossip had made her think a good deal about him of late. Indeed, in a moment of candour she had owned to herself the very last Sunday in church that she wouldn't mind if the story were true.

"I'll - I'll think of it," she said.

This was practically an acceptance, and Young Thomas so understood it. Without loss of time he crossed the kitchen, sat down beside Adelia, and put his arms about her plump waist.

"Here's a kiss Charlie sent me to give you," he said, giving it.

The Books: At the Altar: 'A Dinner of Herbs' (L.M. Montgomery)

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At the Altar - 'A Dinner of Herbs' - by L.M. Montgomery

Speaking of maiden aunts! 'A Dinner of Herbs' is about a maiden aunt - who has elements of many other Lucy Maud heroines - Valancy from Blue Castle, Pat (stupid Pat) in her later years in Mistress Pat, and also Margaret in Tangled Web who ends up adopting a little boy and buying her own house - just to get away from being a maiden aunt in her bossy sister's house.

Robin Lyle is a maiden aunt. She lives with her brother, his bossy wife - and their clattering chattering family of loud bossy horrible children. Robin is put-upon, bossed within an inch of her life, and has no privacy. She is just expected to be grateful that she has a roof over her head. However, naturally, Robin is a PERSON and has secret desires of her own. For example, she's in love with Michael Stanislaws - the next-door neighbor - a guy who lives alone (well, he has 2 cats who follow him everywhere) - and has never married. They are good friends ... in a kind of aloof way. Typical Lucy Maud: they never say just what they mean until the very last second. Michael is a very PROUD person - he's poor, and I believe he's lame? The story was written in 1928 - a post World War I story - so I believe he fought in the war and came home changed from it. He's bitter. But Robin really likes him.

Anyhoo ... at the time the story opens, Robin has been proposed to by Irving Keyes - a pompous asswipe - but she feels she must say yes because ... she's a maiden aunt ... what other choice does she have? Oh - and she has also been informed by her horrible sister-in-law that she will now have to share a room with Gladys, her teenage niece. They need the room - they no longer can give Robin her own room. This is the main reason that she actually considers marrying the odious Irving Keyes - so she won't have to endure yet another chipping away of her privacy.

There's something I really like about the writing in this story. I can see why she used most of this stuff in later novels - it's good. The dialogue is good, the characters clear ... good writing.

Excerpt from At the Altar - 'A Dinner of Herbs' - by L.M. Montgomery

Robin went to her room - the only spot on earth she had ever been able to call her own. And, as always when she went into it, the peace and dignity and beauty of it seemed to envelop her like a charm. She was in a different world - a world where George and Myra could not quarrel or the hired girl be impertinent to her; and the everlasting noise and racket of the household died away at its threshold like the spent wave of a troubled sea. For years all that had supported her through the drudgery of days spent waiting on a querulous invalid was the certainty of finding herself alone in her dear room at night where dreams gae some mysterious strength for another day.

The north window looked down on leagues of ripped sea and distant, misty, fairy-like coasts. Between it and the sand-dunes was only a dwindling grove of ragged old spruces.

The west window looked out on Owl's Roost, with its orchard and garden, where First and Second Peter prowled darkly, and Michael himself played the violin at hours when all decent people should be in bed. Sometimes, too, he ate his slender meals in the orchard, under an enormous apple tree, never dreaming that Robin Lyle was watching him from her window, and wishing shamelessly that she might play "Thou" to his crust of bread and jug of milk. Nor was the book of verse wanting. Michael read as he ate, propping his book up against the jug.

And now all this would be taken from her. She knew exactly what rooming with Gladys and her shrieking chums would mean. No more dreaming; no more shadowy hours of listening to Michael's stormy music in the orchard; no more early dawns watching the silent mysterious ships drift by the dunes to the harbour; never again alone with the night.

No, she could not endure it. Even sleek, prosperous Irving Keyes would be better than that.

"Life isn't fair," said Robin drearily, as if there was any use in saying it.

She went to the glass and looked at herself. She looked at her straight, black, bobbed hair, dark blue eyes and white, heart-shaped face; at her wide mouth quirked up at the corners so that she always seemed to be laughing even when very sad. And she thought of Blanche Foster's red-gold hair and flashing black eyes and brilliant complexion. Blanche Foster, who had always made Robin feel old and dowdy and silly. It was amazing that Irving Keyes didn't prefer her, but since he didnt ...

Robin shivered a little and sat down by the west window in the moonlight. The window was open, and the faint, cold, sweet perfumes of night drifted in - blent with the whiff of Michael Stanislaw's pipe, neither faint nor sweet, but very alluring. Once, when she was eighteen, she had had a fleeting fancy for Irving Keyes - and he knew it. Even yet he was attractive - until he spoke. But his funny vulgar stories and his great haw-haws! And his love for practical jokes! He still thought it a joke to stick o ut his foot and trip somebody up. And he still thought it wit to call eggs cackleberries.

Irving Keyes had been heard to boast that he had got everything he wanted in life. And now he wanted Robin Lyle. Robin thought he would get that too, despite his roars of laughter and the jigarees on his house.

What else was there for her? Arnold Clive? No! She shivered again. Austere, religious Arnold with the face of a fanatic: high, narrow brow, deep-set intolerant eyes, merciless mouth - quite out of the question! And, after all, she liked Irving very well.

She looked over at Owl's Roost. What a nice, gentle little old house it was; a nice lazy old house - a house that had folded its hands and said "I will rest." It had none of the Lyle efficiency and up-to-dateness about it, with a sly little eyebrow window above the porch roof and the magic of trees around it. She loved the trees around Owl's Roost. There were no trees around George's house. Myra thought shade unsanitary.

Michael was smoking his pipe at the fence with an orchard full of mysterious moonlit delights behind him. Robin wished she could go down and talk with him. She had sometimes talked with him over the fence. Not often, and yet she felt curiously well acquainted with him. They had laughed together the first time they had talked, and when two peoplel have laughed - really laughed - together they are good friends for life.

Though Michael did not laugh much. If anything, he was bitter. But there was something stimulating and pungent about his bitterness - like choke-cherries. They puckered your mouth horribly, but still you hankered for them.

"I wonder what he is thinking of," thought Robin.

She knew she only thought it. Yet a voice drifted up to her from the orchard.

"I'm thinking how very silvery that dark cloud must be on the moon side," said the voice. "Come down here and help me watch it leaving the moon. It's as good as an eclipse."

Robin flew downstairs, out of the side door and along the brick walk, worn by many feet. Michael was hanging over the fence. First Peter sat hunched up beside him, and Second Peter smoothed about his shoulder. First Peter always let Robin stroke him, but Second Peter swore at her. Second Peter was not to be hoodwinked.

Robin stood beside Michael on the other side of the fence, where the moonlight would lie white as snow on the flagged walk when the cloud passed. She had never been through the fence. There was no gate between the Lyle yard and the old orchard, lying fragrant and velvety under the enchantment of night.

They stood there together in a wonderful silence until the cloud had passed.

" 'He who has seen the full moon break forth from behind a dark cloud at night, has been present like an archangel at the creation of light and of the world,' " quoted Michael, whacking his pipe on the fence and putting it in his pocket. "Wasn't it worth watching, Miss Lyle?"

If there was one thing she hated more than another, it was having Michael call her "Miss Lyle". She hated it so much that she answered "Yes", stiffly and unenthusiastically.

"It's impossible to avoid the conclusion that something is bothering you," said Michael. "Tell First Peter about it and I'll listen in."

A perfectly crazy impulse mastered Robin. She would tell him. She had to tell soembody.

"I can't make up my mind which of two men to marry," she said bluntly.

Michael was silent for an appreciable space. All the soundsaudible were First Peter purring and a dog taking the countryside into his confidence two farms away. His silence got on Robin's nerves.

"That wasn't quite true," she said crossly. "There are two - but there's only one I could really consider possible. And the trouble is I don't want to marry him - or anyone," she added hastily, telling a second tarradiddle.

"Then why marry him?" said Michael. "Why marry at all if you don't want to, in this day of woman's emancipation?"

"The trouble is - I'm not emancipated," sighed Robin, wishing that First Peter would stop purring. It was outrageous that a cat should be so blatantly happy. Though why shouldn't he be happy? Couldn't he sit on Michael's shoulder and snuggle his nose against Michael's face? Wasn't he doing it now, darn him? Yet she was still talking on. "I'm twenty years behind the times. I'm thirty-three and I'm not trained to do anything. I've no special gift. I can't sew or teach or pound a typewriter. All I can do, or want to do, is keep house. And I must marry - or room witih Gladys."

"Do you think Irving Keyes would be a more agreeable room-mate?" said Michael sarcastically - though she had not said anything about Irving Keyes.

"Well, he won't plaster my dressing table with powder - or raise Cain when he can't find his hairpins - or yell to Baal if he has chilblains - or look in the mirror the same time I do - purposely," said Robin defiantly.

"I think I see what you're up against," said Michael, beginning to fill his pipe again.

"You don't - not fully - a man couldn't," snapped Robin. "Gladys will talk me to death about her beaus. Gladys thinks there's no fun in having a beau unless you can tell everybody about him and what he said and what he did. She'll laugh at my funny old pictures with big sleeves and hats high on the head. She'll come in and wake me up in the wee sma's. She'll insist on having the most awful silver pig with a blue velvet pincushion on his back on my table. She'll bring her rampageous school chums in and chitter-chatter for hours. And everything will be either wonderful or priceless. I'll never be alone any more," concluded Robin pathetically.

"That gets me," said Michael. "And the alternative is Irving Keyes. A handsome fellow with gobs of money. Why don't you like him?"

"I do. But I don't feel like marrying him, for several reasons."

"For instance ..."

"He likes bread thick, and I like it thin," said Robin flippantly. She felt she had been absurd in telling Michael as much as she had.

"Every proper man likes bread thick. I've no sympathy with you there."

"Our taste in jokes is entirely different."

"Ah, that's serious," said Michael, not sounding serious.

"And ..." Robin looked at another cloud that was creeping over the moon. "I - I want someone else."

"Oh!" Second Peter snarled, as if he had been pushed aside with a foot.

"He's the only man in the world for me," said Robin, looking straight at Michael.

"That's a large order out of approximately five hundred million men," said Michael drily.

He began to smoke insolently. The cloud was over the moon, and the world was dark. Robin felt cold and old and silly and empty.

"I must go in," she said.

"Wait a sec." Michael was rummaging in his pocket. "Here's something for your rose-jar."

He handed her over a paper bag full of dried rose-leaves.

"All I can give any woman now - withered rose leaves," he said lightly. "Irving's a good fellow. Perhaps you can teach him to laugh in the right place. I'd have a try."

The Books: At the Altar: 'Aunt Philippa and the Men' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

At the Altar - 'Aunt Philippa and the Men' - by L.M. Montgomery

At the Altar is another one of the collections put together by Rea Wilmhurst in the 90s of Lucy Maud's work - her short stories, published throughout her life ... but never before compiled. Rea Wilmhurst put different stories together thematically - and all of these have to do with (obviously) getting married.

"Aunt Philippa and the Men" is a very funny story - a Lucy Maud romance with that tone of COMEDY that I love so much - none of that sentimental stuff. She's more interested in the absurdity. "Aunt Philippa" was published in Redbook in 1915 ... and Aunt Philippa is a clear rehearsal for Miss Cornelia in Anne's House of Dreams (which came out in 1917). They are very nearly the same character. The man-hating thing, the Methodist-hating thing, and also the good heart, the no-nonsense heart.

Ursula Goodwin is her niece and she has come to stay with Aunt Philippa for the summer. Ursula is in a bit of a crisis. She's in love with someone - and her father does not approve of the match because of some age-old feud with the guy's family. At least that's what I think it is. She has been forbidden to marry him. Meanwhile, she has quarreled with him as well ... so she thinks the whole thing might be off anyway ... but her parents are terrified that she will make up with this person whom they do NOT want her to marry ... so they ship her off to PEI and Aunt Philippa for the summer. Philippa picks her up at the ferry in her buggy and as they drive home, Philippa chats and rants and raves about the things that bug her. She gossips about the neighbor and the new minister ("I am of the opinion that he smokes"). She says that there are no good Methodists. Ursula protests: "My stepmother is a Methodist!" Philippa replies, "I would believe anything of a stepmother." You know, it's pure Lucy Maud comedy. Great stuff. So the summer goes by - and Ursula settles in to the slow PEI life ... but she misses Mark (her guy) and wonders what will happen with them. Oh, and Philippa has NO sympathy for romantic problems of any kind because she hates men and thinks they are all despicable and are not worth ONE DROP of your tears. So Ursula can't really confide in Philippa. She suffers in silence. But then - one day - Mark shows up at Aunt Philippa's door. His firm is going to send him to South Africa in a month. He will be gone indefinitely. Will Ursula marry him? Now?? Ursula hesitates ... she hates the thought of a quickie wedding like this ... it feels like running away ... and suddenly Aunt Philippa, the man-hater, swoops in and takes care of everything. Surprising everybody. There WILL be a wedding, and she will have it at her house ... and everything will be fine.

I'll post an excerpt from the wedding itself just because Philippa's one comment after they become man and wife is so hilarious. Just great stuff.

Excerpt from At the Altar - 'Aunt Philippa and the Men' - by L.M. Montgomery

For the next three weeks she was a blissfully excited, busy woman. I was allowed to choose the material and fashion of my wedding suit and hat myself, but almost everything else was settled by Aunt Philippa. I didn't mind; it was a relief to be rid of all responsibility; I did protest when she declared her intention of having a big wedding and asking all the cousins and semi-cousins on the island, but Aunt Philippa swept by objections lightly aside.

"I'm bound to have one good wedding in this house," she said. "Not likely I'll ever have another chance."

She found time amid all the baking and concocting to warn me frequently not to take it too much to heart if Mark failed to come after all.

"I know a man who jilted a girl on her wedding day. That's the men for you. It's best to be prepared."

But Mark did come, getting there the evening before our wedding day. And then a severe blow fell on Aunt Philippa. Word came from the manse that Mr. Bentwell had been suddenly summoned to Nova Scotia to his mother's deathbed; he had started that night.

"That's the men for you," said Aunt Philippa bitterly. "Never can depend on one of them, not even on a minister. What's to be done down?"

"Get another minister," said Mark easily.

"Where'll you get him?" demanded Aunt Philippa. "The minister at Cliftonville is away on his vacation, and Mercer is vacant, and that leaves none nearer than town. It won't do to depend on a town minister being able to come. No, there's no help for it. You'll have to have that Methodist man."

Aunt Philippa's tone was tragic. Plainly she thought the ceremony would scarcely be legal if that Methodist man married us. But neither Mark nor I cared. We were too happy to be disturbed by any such trifles.

The young Methodist minister married us the next day in the presence of many beaming guests. Aunt Philippa, splendid in black silk and point-lace collar, neither of which lost a whit of dignity or lustre by being made ten years before, was composure itself while the ceremony was going on. But no sooner had the minister pronounced us man and wife than she spoke up.

"Now that's over I want someone to go right out and put out the fire on the kitchen roof. It's been on fire for the last ten minutes."

Minister and bridegroom headed the emergency brigade, and Aunt Philippa pumped the water for them. In a short time the fire was out, all was safe, and we were receiving our deferred congratulations.

The Books: Along the Shore - 'Young Si' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Along the Shore - 'Young Si' - by L.M. Montgomery

So this is the last story I will excerpt from this collection and then I'll move on to yet another one of Lucy Maud's books. Young Si is a simple little story that just works. No fireworks, no clunky plot ... no florid language!! A young woman named Agnes (who, from Lucy Maud's description - with her orange hair and violet eyes and creamy skin - is quite a looker) has gone to spend the summer at a boarding house near the sea. She is staying with a kindly family - who welcome her. There is a young daughter, Agnes - who is about 16 - who has a kind of girl-crush on Ethel and wants to show her around. Ethel is polite, sweet ... and yet there is something sad about the look in her eyes. We don't hear the story about why she is sad until halfway into the story. The first half of the story is from Agnes' eyes, basically. Ethel arrives at the house. The Bentley family take her in ... and start to tell her a bit about the town, and the characters who live there, etc. - and a man named Young Si comes up. Everyone seems fascinated by this person. Young Si suddenly appeared in their fishing village at some point last year - from out of nowhere - he stays by himself in a little fishing shack and works out on a boat. He quickly has gained the respect of all the fishermen for his brawn, his skill, and his cooperative nature - and yet there's something aloof about him. If you ask him where he is from, or anything about his past, he clams up. And yet Mr. Bentley (the man Ethel is staying with) can't hold back his admiration for this person's character.

On that first day - Agnes takes Ethel down to the beach to see the sights, to see the fishermen coming in with their catches. It is during this first walk - that Ethel comes face to face with this Young Si ... and ... well ... let's just say he is NOT who he says he is.

Excerpt from Along the Shore - 'Young Si' - by L.M. Montgomery

When she came out they started off, and presently found themselves walking down a grassy deep-rutted lane that ran through mown hay fields, green with their rich aftergrowth, and sheets of pale ripening oats and golden-green wheat, until it lost itself in the rolling sand hills at the foot of the slope.

Beyond the sand hills stretched the shining expanse of the ocean, of the faint, bleached blue of hot August seas, and reaching out into a horizon laced with long trails of pinkish cloud. Numberless fishing boats dotted the shimmering reaches.

"That furthest-off boat is Young Si's," said Agnes. "He always goes to that particular spot."

"Is he really all your father says?" asked Miss Lennox curiously.

"Indeed he is. He isn't any more like the rest of the shore men than you are. He's queer, of course. I don't believe he's happy. It seems to me he's worrying over something, but I'm sure it is nothing wrong. Here we are," she added, as they passed the sand hills and came out on the long, level beach.

To their left the shore curved around in a semi-circle of dazlling whiteness; at their right stood a small grey fish-house.

"That's Young Si's place," said Agnes. "He lives there night and day. Wouldn't it make anyone melancholy? No wonder he's mysterious. I'm going to get his spyglass. He told me I might always use it."

She pushed open the door and entered, followed by Ethel. The interior was rough but clean. It was a small room, lighted by one tiny window looking out on the water. In one corner a rough ladder led up to the loft above. The bare lathed walls were hung with fishing jackets, nets, mackerel lines and other shore appurtenances. A little stove bore a kettle and a frying pan. A low board table was strewn with dishes and the cold remnants of a hasty repast; benches were placed along the walls. A fat, bewhiskered kitten, looking as if it were cut out of black velvet, was dozing on the window sill.

"This is Young Si's cat," explained Agnes, patting the creature, which purred joyously and opened its sleepy green eyes. "It's the only thing he cares for, I believe. Witch! Witch! How are you, Witch? Well, here's the spyglass. Let's go and have a look. Si's catching mackerel," announced Agnes a few minutes later, after she had scrutinized each boat in turn, "and he won't be in for an hour yet. If you like, we have time for a walk up the shore."

The sun slipped lower and lower in the creamy sky, leaving a trail of sparkles that ran across the water and lost itself in the west. Sea gulls soared and dipped, and tiny "sand peeps" flitted along the beach. Just as the red rim of the sun dipped in the purpling sea, the boats began to come in.

"Most of them will go around to the Point," explained Agnes, with a contemptuous sweep of her hand towards a long headland running out before them. "They belong there and they're a rough crowd. You don't catch Young Si associating with the Pointeres. There, he's getting up sail. We'll just have time to get back before he comes in."

They hurried back across the dampening sand as the sun disapeared, leaving a fiery spot behind him. The shore was no longer quiet and deserted. The little spot where the fishing house stood had suddenly started into life. Roughly clad boys were running hither and thither, carrying fish or water. The boats were hauled up on the skids. A couple of shaggy old tars, who had strolled over from the Point to hear about Young Si's catch, were smoking their pipes at the corner of his shanty. A mellow afterlight was shining over sea and shore. The whole scene delighted Ethel's artist eyes.

Agnes nudged her companion.

"There! If you want to see Young Si," she whispered, pointing to the skids, where a busy figure was discernible in a large boat, "that's him, with his back to us, in the cream-colored boat. He's counting out mackerel. If you go over to that platform behind him, you'll get a good look when he turns around. I'm going to coax a mackerel out of that stingy old Snuffy, if I can."

She tripped off, and Ethel walked slowly over to the boats. The men stared at her in open-mouthed admiration as she passed them and walked out on the platform behind Young Si. There was no one near the two. The others were all assembled around Snuffy' boat. Young Si was throwing out the mackerel with marvelous rapidity, but at the sound of a footstep behind him he turned and straightened up his tall form. They stood face to face.

"Miles!"

"Ethel!"

Young Si staggered back against the mast, letting two silvery bloaters slip through his hands overboard. His handsome sunburned face was very white.

Ethel Lennox turned abruptly and silently and walked swiftly across the sand. Agnes felt her arm touched and turned to see Ethel standing, pale and erect, beside her.

"Let us go home, " said the latter unsteadily. "It is very damp here - I feel chilled."

"Oh, dear!" exclaimed Agnes penitently. "I ought to have told you to bring a shawl. It is always damp on the shore after sunset. Here, Snuffy, give me my mackerel. Thank you. I'm ready now, Miss Lennox."

They reached the lane before Agnes remembered to ask the question Ethel dreaded.

"Oh, did you see Young Si? And what do you think of him?"

Ethel turned her face away and answered with studied carelessness. "He seems to be quite a superior fishermen so far as I could see in the dim light. It was very dusky there, you know. Let us walk a little faster. My shoes are quite wet."

When they reached home, Miss Lennox excused herself on the plea of weariness and went straight to her room.

The Books: "Along the Shore - 'The Waking of Helen'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Along the Shore - 'The Waking of Helen' - by L.M. Montgomery

Okay, so after the TERRIBLE story from yesterday - now we come to 'The Waking of Helen' which is one of my favorites of this collection - and it's interesting, in and of itself, because it is one of the only stories of hers I can think of - that has a truly tragic ending. Tragedy (or at least long-lasting tragedy) was never Lucy Maud's bag ... but this story is sad. And you know what? Lucy Maud is amazing here. It's completely believable. It actually reminds me of a short story by, oh, Doris Lessing. It has that kind of bleak outlook ... and it ends with a suicide. A woman who gladly embraces death. It is her only option and she throws herself at it with open arms. But this story has no melodrama to it. You know how some of her stories are ONLY the plot? They're my least favorites of her stories ... but when she focuses on the CHARACTER - she's at her best. And that's what's going on in this story. It's about this Helen girl. She's quite different from any of her other heroines - I can't think of anyone analogous in any of Lucy Maud's other stories or novels. Helen stands alone. She is a sulky sullen unattractive misfit. And yet - with Lucy Maud's insight and compassion - we see what it is like for her, who she is, what is going on inside of this misfit ... and we know ... we just know that she is not going to make it.

The story is this:

A man named Robert Reeves has gone to spend the summer at a place like the Bay of Fundy (uhm - Siobhan??) - a place "noted for its tides". Reeves is a painter. He has heard about the beauty of light and shadow on this large bay and wants to spend the summer painting them. He boards with a local farmer and his wife - the Frasers. They are quiet rough people. No soft edges. They have a niece who lives with them, her parents are dead - Helen. She's probably 20 years old. She's unattractive, not at all verbal - never speaks ... and sits at the table, staring down at her plate. The girl has no future, really ... she lives in this isolated area, her uncle and aunt are gruff and unloving towards her ... and she's no beauty. But she knows the bay inside and out - so she accompanies Reeves on one of his jaunts. Reeves also wants to do a painting of her - standing on the shore. He just needs her as a figure in the painting ... he will pay for her time ... she says yes. She tells him stories of people getting trapped in some of the coves - and drowning - because they can't get out, and the tides are extreme ... they rise 20 feet at times ... So she warns him about certain areas, and when the tides come in and out ...

Reeves is kind to Helen, not realizing how dangerous this will be. He's kind to her not because he's interested in her romantically. He's kind to her because he is a kind man. And he likes her stories about the shore - and he actually finds her to be kind of an interesting person once she gets away from her uncle and aunt. But oh no ... what happens when a girl like this "wakes up", like the title says? She "wakes up" ... and falls in love with him ... (none of this is said - she never declares herself - but Reeves eventually intuits that she has become too attached to him ... just from one look she gives him, a look where her face is full and lit-up with emotion and love for him.) Reeves is horrified. He realizes he has been playing with fire. The girl has woken up ... and now he must crush her. So he tries to be gentle and kind ... and casually mentions his fiance in conversation ... "I'm looking forward to getting back to the city ... my fiance misses me ..." or whatever. Helen doesn't freak. She sits beside him, silently, listening. (The point of view of this story is mainly from Reeves' side ... although the narrator is rather omniscent - but we are never inside Helen's head). Anyway, Helen listens, quiet, nothing happens. And Reeves is relieved. He thinks maybe he mistook the look he saw on her face. Maybe she wasn't in love with him. He can now leave with a clear conscience. And on the day he leaves, Helen goes off for a walk on the shore, walks into one of the coves - one of the dangerous coves she had warned him about - and sits down, and waits for the tide. Waits for the tide to come in, and rise. The last image in the story is chilling: as the water starts to lap at Helen's skirt, higher by the minute ... Helen smiles.

That's the end of the story.

It's wonderful work - I think Lucy Maud is at her best here. And this story stands alone in all of her work. It has a different feel, it really does. And yet it doesn't seem artificial, or like Lucy Maud is "experimenting" in a form and doesn't really know her way around. It feels quite natural.

Here's an excerpt from the beginning of the story:

Excerpt from Along the Shore - 'The Waking of Helen' - by L.M. Montgomery

Reeves told Helen of his plan himself, meeting her in the evening as she was bringing the cows home from the low shore pastures beyond the marsh. He was surprised at the sudden illumination of her face. It almost transfigured her from a plain sulky-looking girl into a beautiful woman.

But the glow passed quickly. She assented to his plan quietly, almost lifelessly. He walked home with her behind the cows and talked of the sunset and the mysterious beauty of the bay and the purple splendour of the distant coasts. She listened in silence. Only once, when he spoke of the distant murmur of the open sea, she lifted her head and looked at him.

"What does it say to you?" she asked.

"It speaks of eternity. And to you?"

"It calls me," she answered simply, "and then I want to go out and meet it - and it hurts me too. I can't tell how or why. Sometimes it makes me feel as if I were asleep and wanted to wake and didn't know how."

She turned and looked out over the bay. A dying gleam of sunset broke through a cloud and fell across her hair. For a moment she seemed the spirit of the shore personified - all its mystery, all its uncertainty, all its elusive charm.

She has possibilities, thought Reeves.

Next day he began his picture. At first he had thought of painting her as the incarnation of a sea spirit, but decided that her moods were too fitful. So he began to sketch her as "Waiting" - a woman looking out across the bay with a world of hopeless longing in her eyes. The subject suited her well, and the picture grew apace.

When he was tired of work he made her walk around the shore with him, or row up the head of the bay in her own boat. He tried to draw her out, at first with indifferent success. She seemed to be frightened of him. He talked to her of many things - the far outer world whose echoes never reached her, foreign lands where he had traveled, famous men and women whom he had met, music, art, and books. When he spoke of books he touched the right chord. One of those transfiguring flashes he delighted to evoke now passed over her plain face.

"That is what I've always wanted," she said hungrily, "and I never get them. Aunt hates to see me reading. She says it is a waste of time. And I love it so. I read every scrap of paper I can get hold of, but I hardly ever see a book."

The next day Reeves took his Tennyson to the shore and began to read the Idylls of the King to her.

"It is beautiful," was her sole verbal comment, but her rapt eyes said everything.

After that he never went out with her without a book - now one of the poets, now some prose classic. He was surprised by her quick appreciation of and sympathy with the finest passages. Gradually, too, she forgot her shyness and began to talk. She knew nothing of his world, but her own world she knew and knew well. She was a mine of traditional history about the bay. She knew the rocky coast by heart, and every old legend that clung to it. They drifted into making excursions along the shore and explored its wildest retreats. The girl had an artist's eye for scenery and colour effect.

"You should have been an artist," Reeves told her one day when she had pointed out to him the exquisite loveliness of a shaft of light falling through a cleft in the rocks across a dark-green pool at their base.

"I would rather be a writer," she said slowly, "if I could only write something like those books you have read to me. What a glorious destiny it must be to have something to say that the whole world is listening for, and to be able to say it in words that will live forever! It must be the noblest human lot."

"Yet some of those men and women were neither good nor noble," said Reeves gently, "and many of them were unhappy."

Helen dismissed the subject as abruptly as she always did when the conversation touched too nearly on the sensitive edge of her soul dreams.

"Do you know where I am taking you today?" she said.

"No - where?"

"To what the people here call the Kelpy's Cave. I hate to go there. I believe there is something uncanny about it, but I think you will like to see it. It is a dark little cave in the curve of a small cove, and on each side the headlands of rock run far out. At low tide we can walk right around, but when the tide comes in it fills the Kelpy's Cave. If you were there and let the tide come past the points, you would be drowned unless you could swim, for the rocks are so steep and high it is impossible to climb them."

Reeves was interested.

"Was anyone ever caught by the tide?"

"Yes," returned Helen, with a shudder. "Once, long ago, before I was born, a girl went around the shore to the cave and fell asleep there - and the tide came in and she was drowned. She was young and very pretty, and was to have been married the next week. I've been afraid of the place ever since."

The treacherous cave proved to be a picturesque and innocent-looking spot, with the beach of glittering sand before it and the high gloomy walls of rock on either hand.

"I must come here some day and sketch it," said Reeves enthusiastically, "and you must be the Kelpy, Helen, and sit in the cave with your hair wrapped about you and seaweed clinging to it."

"Do you think a kelpy would look like that?" said the girl dreamily. "I don't. I think it is a wild, wicked little sea imp, malicious and mocking and cruel, and it sits here and watches for victims."

"Well, never mind your sea kelpies," Reeves said, fishing out his Longfellow. "They are a tricky folk, if all tales be true, and it is supposed to be a very rash thing to talk about them in their own haunts. I want to read you 'The Building of the Ship.' You will like it, I'm sure."

When the tide turned they went home.

"We haven't seen the kelpy after all," said Reeves.

"I think I shall see him some day," said Helen gravely. "I think he is waiting for me there in that gloomy cave of his, and some time or other he will get me."

Reeves smiled at the gloomy fancy, and Helen smiled back at him with one of her sudden radiances. The tide was creeping swiftly up over the white sands. The sun was low and the bay was swimming in a pale blue glory. They parted at Clam Point, Helen to go for the cows and Reeves to wander on up the shore. He thought of Helen at first, and the wonderful change that had come over her of late; then he began to think of another face - a marvellously lovely one with blue eyes as tender as the waters before him. Then Helen was forgotten.

The Books: "Along the Shore - 'A Strayed Allegiance'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Along the Shore - 'A Strayed Allegiance' - by L.M. Montgomery

Okay - this story is HYSTERICAL - but not intentionally so. As a matter of fact - you know the "Averil" story that Anne wrote in Anne of Avonlea? This is like that. The language is like that. It was written in 1897 - a good 11 years before Anne came out - so perhaps she was still working on her craft? Or maybe she is just OBVIOUSLY writing for money here - writing a story to fit the needs of a certain magazine. But the language of this florid torrid romance is hilarious - and absolutely unrecognizable as Lucy Maud's prose. This is one of the reasons why it's interesting. There are a couple more stories like this - usually written early on - in the late 1800s - where it's almost baffling to think that this is the same writer who thought up the whole dyeing hair green episode, or getting Diana drunk episode, or any of the other episodes which eventually made Lucy Maud famous.

A Strayed Allegiance - I mean, even look at the title. Isn't it just soooo serious and melodramatic? I love it. Everybody in this story is an asshole. I guess Marian is KIND of not an asshole ... because she ends up having SOME commonsense and releasing Esterbrook Elliott (yes, his name is ESTERBROOK ELLIOTT - ha!!! Maud, come on!) from his engagement to her - so that he would be free to ruin his life and pursue Magdalen Crawford, the gorgeous and yet poor fishing girl with whom he is obsessed - like a man about to be driven out of his mind. (And uhm, yes, her name is MAGDALEN Crawford.) I mean, there's just so much that is funny about all of this - and it's a very enjoyable read, merely because the whole time you're thinking: "Okay, Maud, you're gonna have to eventually give this up ... and write what YOU want to write ..."

So Esterbrook Elliott is a total asshole, who uses words like "bequeath" and says stuff like, "My time, as you well know, is completely at your disposal." Like - nobody talks like a normal person in this story. It's all heightened and flowery. Marian and Esterbrook are engaged. Marian is a gentle kindly charitable woman who spends her days helping out the poor families who live in the fishing shacks by the beach. She brings them food, blankets, helps them with medical issues. In short, a freakin' saint. You know, just setting the stage for MAGDALEN to enter. The whore with the glowing deep eyes!!

And one day Esterbrook accompanies his beloved Marian on one of her charitable visits. There's a sick kid or something. And there - in the corner of the fishing shack - is the most beautiful woman Esterbrook Elliott has ever seen. Not only that, but the way Lucy Maud describes her -she's the most beautiful woman the world has ever known. She's like a freak supermodel. And yet she is sullen, imperious, etc. Esterbrook immediately practically wets his pants at the sight of her. It's love at first sight. (Although I have my doubts on that score. I think it's more like lust - and after these two knock boots - they will have NOTHING to talk about - and Esterbrook will have ruined his life for a hot piece of fish-wife ass.)

Marian, because she's a freaking saint, and doesn't understand anything about REAL life ... does not notice the blithering idiot her fiance has become. They leave and walk home - and he is distracted - lost in thought (blah blah. Get a grip on yourself, Esterbrook Elliott. Also, get a new name. Thanks.)

And then .... after he drops Marian off ... he cannot help himself ... he goes back to find Magdalen ...

Their first encounter is the excerpt below. I mean, just listen to the prose!!

Go, Lucy Maud with your florid torrid self!

Excerpt from Along the Shore - 'A Strayed Allegiance' - by L.M. Montgomery

But the desire to see Magdalen Crawford once more and to look into the depths of her eyes was stronger than all else, and overpowered every throb of duty and resistance.

He saw nothing of her when he reached the Cove. He could think of no excuse for calling at the Barrett cottage, so he rode slowly past the hamlet and along the shore.

The sun, red as a smouldering ember, was half buried in the silken violet rim of the sea; the west was a vast lake of saffron and rose and ethereal green, through which floated the curved shallop of a thin new moon, slowly deepening from lusterless white, through gleaming silver, into burnished gold, and attended by one solitary, pearl-white star. The vast concave of sky above was of violet, infinite and flawless. Far out dusky amethystine islets clustered like gems on the shining breast of the bay. The little pools of water along the low shores glowed like mirrors of polished jacinth. The small, pine-fringed headlands ran out into the water, cutting its lustrous blue expanse like purple wedges.

As Esterbrook turned one of them he saw Magdalen standing out on the point of the next, a short distance away. Her back was towards him, and her splendid figure was outlined darkly against the vivid sky.

Esterbrook sprang from his horse and left the animal standing by itself while he walked swiftly out to her. His heart throbbed suffocatingly. He was conscious of no direct purpose save merely to see her.

She turned when he reached her with a slight start of surprise. His footsteps had made no sound on the tide-rippled sand.

For a few moments they faced each other so, eyes burning into eyes with mute soul-probing and questioning. The sun had disappeared, leaving a stain of fiery red to mark his grave; the weird, radiant light was startlingly vivid and clear. Little crisp puffs and flakes of foam scurried over the point like elfin things. The fresh wind, blowing up the ba, tossed the lustrous rings of hair about Magdalen's pale face; all the routed shadows of the hour had found refuge in her eyes.

Not a trace of colour appeared in her face under Esterbrook Elliott's burning ggaze. But when he said, "Magdalen!" a single, hot scorch of crimson flamed up into her cheeks protestingly. She lifted her hand with a splendid gesture, but no word passed her lips.

"Magdalen, have you nothing to say to me?" he asked, coming closer to her with an imploring passion in his face never seen by Marian Lesley's eyes. He reached out his hand, but she stepped back from his touch.

"What should I have to say to you?"

"Say that you are glad to see me."

"I am not glad to see you. You have no right to come here. But I knew you would come."

"You knew it? How?"

"Your eyes told me so today. I am not blind - I can see further than those dull fisher folks. Yes, I knew you wopuld come. That is why I came here tonight - so that you would find me alone and I could tell you that you were not to come again."

"Why must you tell me that, Magdalen?"

"Because, as I have told you, you have no right to come."

"But if I will not obey you? If I will come in defiance of your prohibition?"

She turned her steady luminous eyes on his pale, set face.

"You would stamp yourself as a madman, then," she said coldly. "I know that you are Miss Lesley's promised husband. Therefore, you are either false to her or insulting to me. In either case the companionship of Magdalen Crawford is not what you must seek. Go!"

She turned away from him with an imperious gesture of dismissal. Esterbrook Elliott stepped forward and caught one firm, white wrist.

"I shall not obey you," he said in a low intense tone; his fine eyes burned into hers. "You may send me away, but I will come back, again and yet again until you have learned to welcome me. Why should you meet me like an enemy? Why can we not be friends?"

The girl faced him once more.

"Because," she said proudly, "I am not your equal. There can be no friendship between us. There ought not to be. Magdalen Crawford - the fisherman's niece - is no companion for you. You will be foolish, as well as disloyal, if you ever try to see me again. Go back to the beautiful, high-bred woman you love and forgget me. Perhaps you think I am talking strangely. Perhaps you think me bold and unwomanly to speak so plainly to you, a stranger. But there are some circumstances in life when plain-speaking is best. I do not want to see you again. Now, go back to your own world."

Esterbrook Elliott slowly turned from her and walked in silence back to the shore. In the shadows of the point he stopped to look back at her, standing out like some inspired prophetess against the fiery background of the sunset sky and silver-blue water. The sky overhead was thick-sown with stars; the night breeze was blowing up from its lair in distant, echoing sea caves. On his right the lights of the Cove twinkled out through the dusk.

"I feel like a coward and a traitor," he said slowly. "Good God, what is this madness that has come over me? Is this my boasted strength of manhood?"

A moment later the hoof beats of his horse died away up the shore.

Magdalen Crawford lingered on the point until the last dull red faded out into the violet gloom of the June sea dusk, than which nothing can be rarer or divine, and listened to the moan and murmur of the sea far out over the bay with sorrowful eyes and sternly set lips.

The Books: "Along the Shore - 'The Unhappiness of Miss Farquhar'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Along the Shore - 'The Unhappiness of Miss Farquhar' - by L.M. Montgomery

The moral of this story is: If you stop thinking about yourself so much, and start to do things for other people, then maybe you'll be much happier! Kind of simple - but I like the story. Frances Farquhar (Maud: what the hell kind of name is that) is a gorgeous girl, she lives in the city, she has a big family with kind of an illustrious name, and she has just been jilted. Her fiance dumped her, flat. And she, being gorgeous and rich, has no coping skills for rejection ... so she just plummets into the abyss of despair. Her brother tries to tell her, "He was horrible! A cad! A bounder!" She will hear none of it. Frances very very quickly becomes in love with her own grief. She finally goes to visit her aunt, in a quiet seaside town - an aunt she always felt was sympathetic, and also would just leave her alone. Frances basically wants to go somewhere where she can cry all day, and cry all night - and not have anybody get in her way. She doesn't want to be cheered up. She wants to wallow in the greatest tragedy ever known to man: SHE was rejected.

So this is what she does. She lies in bed at her aunt's and cries for 2 straight weeks.

Until finally her aunt intervenes. But she does so gently, and subversively - telling her that the minister's sister, Corona Sherwood (Corona, Maud??? What the hell?) is recovering from some long illness and aunt had promised to take her for a drive but she can't now - and would Frances mind going over and taking her out for a drive??

So - through meeting Corona - who is not at all what Frances pictured - she's a vibrant young pretty woman, like herself - and they immediately click ... so through Corona, Frances ends up getting involved with the community - through all the good works that the minister's family does. She befriends a sick little boy. She helps people. Blah blah. And by the end of the summer - she can't even remember why she was so damn sad about that popinjay who blew her off. Oh - and she falls in love with the minister. Here's the scene of their first encounter:

Excerpt from Along the Shore - 'The Unhappiness of Miss Farquhar' - by L.M. Montgomery

When morning came Frances went home. It was raining, and the sea was hidden in mist. As she walked along the wet road, Elliott Sherwood came splashing along in a little two-wheeled gig and picked her up. He wore a raincoat and a small cap, and did not look at all like a minister - or, at least, like Frances's conception of one.

Not that she knew much about ministers. Her own minister at home - that is to say, the minister of the fashionable uptown church which she attended - was a portly, dignified old man with silvery hair and gold-rimmed glasses, who preached scholarly, cultured sermons and was as far removed from Frances's personal life as a star in the Milky Way.

But a minister who wore rubber coats and little caps and drove about in a two-wheeled gig, very much mud-bespattered, and who talked about the shore people as if they were household intimates of his, was absolutely new to Frances.

She could not help seeing, however, that the crisp brown hair under the edges of the unclerical-looking cap curled around a remarkably well-shaped forehead, beneath which flashed out a pair of very fine dark-grey eyes; he had likewise a good mouth, which was resolute and looked as if it might be stubborn on occasion; and, although he was not exactly handsome, Frances decided that she liked his face.

He tucked the wet, slippery rubber apron of his conveyance about her and then proceeded to ask questions. Jacky Hart's case had to be reported on, and then Mr. Sherwood took out a notebook and looked over its entries intently.

"Do you want any more work of that sort to do?" he asked her abruptly.

Frances felt faintly amused. He talked to her as he might have done to Corona, and seemed utterly oblivious of the fact that her profile was classic and her eyes delicious. His indifference piqued Frances a little in spite of her murdered heart. Well, if there was anything she could do she might as well do it, she told him briefly, and he, with equal brevity, gave her directions for finding some old lady who lived on the Elm Creek road and to whom Corona had read tracts.

"Tracts are a mild dissipation of Aunt Clorinda's," he said. "She fairly revels in them. She is half blind and has missed Corona very much."

There were other matters also - a dozen or so of factory girls who needed to be looked after and a family of ragged children to be clothed. Frances, in some dismay, found herself pledged to help in all directions, and then ways and means had to be discussed. The long, wet road, sprinkled with houses, from whose windows people were peering to see "what girl the minister was driving," seemed very short. Frances did not know it, but Elliott Sherwood drove a full mile out of his way that morning to take her home, and risked being late for a very important appointment - from which it may be inferred that he was not quite so blind to the beautiful as he had seemed.

Frances went through the rain that afternoon and read tracts to Aunt Clorinda. She was so dreadfully tired that night that she forgot to cry, and slept well and soundly.

The Books: "Along the Shore - 'A Sandshore Wooing'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Along the Shore - 'A Sandshore Wooing' - by L.M. Montgomery

This story is adorable. I love it. It has that Lucy Maud sense of the absurd - even in the middle of a love story - that I find so attractive. I guess it's how I see life. I'm not really a romantic person. I mean, I have been in love and all that, but the whole ROMANCE thing is not really my bag. My sense of humor gets in the way. This is why books by, uhm, Nicholas Sparks, for example, do nothing for me. The folks in them seem to lack a sense of humor ... and they're too unabashedly romantic. Even in the middle of my greatest love affair which shot through the sky of my life like a freakin' COMET ... I was never romantic like that. I am blunt. Detached. Snarky. I don't know - there's something in Lucy Maud's humor that really appeals to me. This story, especially - and in its own simple way it is my favorite in this particular collection.

It's written in diary-form - Marguerite Forrester, a young woman, living in a repressed way with her extremely strict aunt - keeps a journal about their summer vacation on the sandshore. Marguerite's parents died when she was a baby, so her aunt has brought her up and keeps her on the tightest leash imaginable. The whole story is about Marguerite trying to conduct this romance without her aunt knowing ... her aunt, too, despises men and thinks that they all are after only one thing and must be avoided at all costs. Marguerite is a good girl, she is not a rebel ... but in this case, she feels she must sneak around behind her aunt's back.

The way it happens is: Marguerite sits on the sandshore with her aunt, bored out of her mind. She picks up a pair of binoculars that they have - for bird-watching or whatever - and stares up and down the beach thru the binocs for sometime. Eventually - she sees a man - on a jetty of rocks at the edge of the beach. And he is looking directly at her, waving. She is horrified. She is busted! She puts the binocs down, terrified that her aunt will notice. A couple more days go by like this - with Marguerite looking around the beach with the binocs - and the man is always in the same place (and of course, he is young and handsome) - and he waits for her to rest the binoc-gaze on him - and he will wave, and smile. Marguerite's aunt would have a fit if she knew her niece was having secret "meetings" with a man like this. Marguerite writes in her journal with terror. And yet she starts to look forward to seeing him. Eventually - the man spells something out to her in the deaf-mute alphabet. It's a gamble - maybe she won't know sign language? But strangely enough - Marguerite does know the alphabet. Her roommate at boarding school had taught it to her - so that they could communicate their secrets to one another without the other girls finding out what they were talking about.

So Marguerite begins this "long-distance" communication with this strange man (whom she ends up knowing: he is the brother of her beloved roommate at school - and she had heard many stories about how great he was) - and they talk back and forth in deaf-mute - all behind the dozing aunt's back. If Marguerite is discovered "flirting" with a strange man - she will be in the deepest shit of her life!

But why this story is adorable - and so funny - is that ... this courtship is carried on via ALPHABET - so try to imagine saying, "I'm really attracted to you" but you have to spell it out. That would take too much time. So they end up boiling down their feelings into blunt short statements which won't take too much time to sign. It's kind of like the early 20th century version of IM or text messaging.

So here's their first "conversation".

Excerpt from Along the Shore - 'A Sandshore Wooing' - by L.M. Montgomery

July Twelfth

Something has happened at last. Today I went to the shore as usual, fully resolved not even to glance in the forbidden direction. But in the end I had to take a peep, and saw him on the rocks wiht his glass levelled at me. When he saw that I was looking he laid down the glass, held up his hands, and began to spell out something in the deaf-mute alphabet. Now, I know that same alphabet. Connie taught it to me last year, so that we might hold communication across the schoolroom. I gave one frantic glance at Aunt Martha's rigid back, and then watched him while he deftly spelled: "I am Francis Shelmardine. Are you not Miss Forrester, my sister's friend?"

Francis Shelmardine! Now I knew whom he resembled. And have I not heard endless dissertations from Connie on this wonderful brother of hers, Francis the clever, the handsome, the charming, until he has become the only hero of dreams I have ever had? It was too wonderful. I could only stare dazedly back through my glass.

"May we know each other?" he went on. "May I come over and introduce myself? Right hand, yes, left, no."

I gasped! Suppose he were to come? What would happen? I waved my left hand sorrowfully. He looked quite crestfallen and disappointed as he spelled out: "Why not? Would your friends disapprove?"

I signalled: "Yes."

"Are you displeased at my boldness?" was his next question.

Where had all Aunt Martha's precepts flown to then? I blush to record that I lifted my left hand shyly and had just time to catch his pleased expression when Aunt Martha came up and said it was time to go home. So I picked myself meekly up, shook the sand from my dress, and followed my good aunt dutifully home.

July Thirteenth

When we went to the shore this morning I had to wait in spasms of remorse and anxiety until Aunt got tired of reading and set off along the shore with Mrs. Saxby. Then I reached for my glass.

Mr. Shelmardine and I had quite a conversation. Under the circumstances there could be no useless circumlocution in our exchange of ideas. It was religiously "boiled down," and ran something like this:

"You are not displeased with me?"

"No - but I should be."

"Why?"

"It is wrong to deceive Aunt."

"I am quite respectable."

"That is not the question."

"Cannot her prejudices be overcome?"

"Absolutely no."

"Mrs. Allardyce, who is staying at the hotel, knows her well. Shall I bring her over to vouch for my character?"

"It would not do a bit of good."

"Then it is hoepless."

"Yes."

"Would you object to knowing me on your own account?"

"No."

"Do you ever come to the shore alone?"

"No. Aunt would not permit me."

"Must she know?"

"Yes. I would not come wihtout her permission."

"You will not refuse to chat with me thus now and then?"

"I don't know. Perhaps not."

I had to go home then. As we went Mrs. Saxby complimented me on my good colour. Aunt Martha looked her disapproval. If I were really ill Aunt would spend her last cent in my behalf, but she would be just as well pleased to see me properly pale and subdued at all times, and not looking as if I were too well contented in this vale of tears.

The Books: "Along the Shore - 'Four Winds'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Along the Shore - 'Four Winds' - by L.M. Montgomery

This story (much longer than many of her others) was written in 1908 - and Lucy Maud fans will recognize many elements which show up in other books, written later:

1. There's a Kilmeny of the Orchard feel to it - the most beautiful girl in the world - basically living like a prisoner in this out of the way house - with a grim-faced aunt and also her father.

2. Lynde Oliver (the heroine of our story - the most beautiful girl in the world) is walking along the lake shore one day - sees a flower just out of reach - tries to grab it, and then basically falls over the side of a cliff, hanging on to the edge for dear life. If she lets go - she will plummet to the rocks below. Then who saunters along but Alan Douglas - the guy who is the main character, the story is through his point of view. Anyway - he runs off to wherever - gets a rope - comes back - and saves Lynde. Any Emily fan worth her salt will recognize this entire episode.

3. And the plot-twist - the big ol' secret that Lynde Oliver is carrying around - is akin to the Leslie Moore situation in House of Dreams - only the man SHE was sold into marriage to is MIA. Not dead or alive - nothing known about his whereabouts - so I guess it's that she is STUCK, unable to live a free life - and so a whiff of scandal surrounds her. But then the plot is resolved - when - MIRACULOUSLY - the very man she was married to ends up being shipwrecked on the rocks RIGHT OUTSIDE LYNDE'S HOUSE. You know. It's one of those endings.

So this book is full of episodes which became well-known Lucy Maud set pieces some years later. Even though there's a lot that is really sentimental about this story (I find this to be the case when she lets a MAN be the lead character - a romantic man, that is. Think of the offensive stupidity of Kilmeny and his stupid sexist romantic longings. The guy's a boob, a vain boob. It's much better, I think, when Lucy Maud has the woman be the lead character - whether or not it's first person narratioin or no ... It just seems to come out of her with much more ease. My opinion, but I'm stickin' to it. I get annoyed with her male characters when they're in love - only NOT when the point-of-view is from the female. I am never annoyed with Gilbert Blythe's love for Anne, his courting of her, his feelings for her. But if she had written the story from his point of view - I might have been. Anyhoo.)

The story is this: Alan Douglas is a young minister who is new to the town of Rexton. And apparently - just from the way Lucy Maud describes him - the dude is movie-star gorgeous. Of course. But the story opens with him having trouble working on this one sermon - and he suddenly feels really cooped up. Like he needs a break. Like Rexton, with its neat orchards and trim homes, is too domestic for him. So he goes for a long walk - through the woods - and then out onto the lake shore.

Along the way he basically runs into Lynde Oliver (the first encounter is the excerpt below). She, naturally, is the most beautiful woman in the world - but that's not why he's gobsmacked by her - oh no!! It's because he's never seen her in church before. Why doesn't she come to church???? He becomes obsessed with the matter. Get a life, jagoff. But I digress. He asks his housekeeper who is gossipy and knows everything - and for some reason that entire family doesn't go to church and Lynde's father, a retired sea captain, is a fierce atheist and has literally thrown missionaries and tract-peddlers off his property. So now they're left alone.

But Alan cannot get that face out of his mind!!!! So he goes back!

And a "friendship" develops - but honestly, there is so little humor between these two, all they do is be tormented and vaguely mysterious, with their matinee idol good looks, that I think: You two bores are welcome to each other.

Don't get me wrong - the writing is good. Lucy Maud has found her stride. It is recognizable Lucy Maud here. But I am not sure that there is one funny moment in this whole story - and her stories suffer when she goes that way. (Think Kilmeny).

But here's the excerpt.

Excerpt from Along the Shore - 'Four Winds' - by L.M. Montgomery

With a half guilty glance at the futile sermon, he took his hat and went out. The sun of the cool spring evening was swinging low over the lake as he turned into the unfrequented, deep-rutted road leading to the shore. It was two miles to the lake, but half way there Alan came to where another road branched off and struck down through the pines in a northeasterly direction. He had sometimes wondered where it led but he had never explored it. Now he had a sudden whim to do so and turned into it. It was even rougher and lonelinr than the other; between the ruts the grasses grew long and thickly; sometimes the pine boughs met overhead; again, the trees broke away to reveal wonderful glimpses of gleaming water, purple islets, dark feathery coasts. Still, the road seemed to lead nowhere and Alan was half repenting the impulse which had led him to choose it when he suddenly came out from the shadow of the pines and found himself gazing on a sight which amazed him.

Before him was a small peninsula running out into the lake and terminating in a long sandy point. Beyond it was a glorious sweep of sunset water. The peninsula itself seemed barren and sandy, covered for the most part with scrub firs and spruces, through which the narrow road wound on to what was the astonishing feature in the landscape - a grey and weather-beaten house built almost at the extremity of the point and shadowed from the western light by a thick plantation of tall pines behind it.

It was the house which puzzled Alan. He had never known there was any house near the lake shore - had never heard mention made of any; yet here was one, and one which was evidently occupied, for a slender spiral of smoke was curling upward from it on the chilly spring air. It could not be a fisherman's dwelling, for it was large and built after a quaint tasteful design. The longer Alan looked at it the more his wonder grew. The people living here were in the bounds of his congregation. How then was it that he had never seen or heard of them?

He sauntered slowly down the road until he saw that it led directly to the house and ended in the yard. Then he turned off in a narrow path to the shore. He was not far from the house now and he scanned it observantly as he went past. The barrens swept almost up to its door in front but at the side, sheltered from the lake winds by the pines, was a garden where there was a fine show of gay tuliips and golden daffodils. No living creature was visible, and, in spite of the blossoming geraniums and muslin curtains at the windows and the homely spiral of smoke, the place had a lonely, almost untenanted, look.

When Alan reached the shore he found that it was of a much more open and less rocky nature than the part which he had been used to frequent. The beach was of sand and the scrub barrens dwindled down to it almost insensibly. To right and left fir-fringed points ran out into the lake, shaping a little cove with the house in its curve.

Alan walked slowly towards the left headland, intending to follow the shore around to the other road. As he passed the point he stopped short in astonishment. The second surprise and mystery of the evening confronted him.

A little distance away a girl was standing - a girl who turned a startled face at his unexpected appearance. Alan Douglas had thought he knew all the girls in Rexton, but this lithe, glorious creature was a stranger to him. She stood with her hand on the head of a huge, tawny collie dog; another dog was sitting on his haunches beside her.

She was tall, with a great braid of shining chestnut hair, showing ruddy burnished tints where the sunlight struck it, hanging over her shoulder. The plain dark dress she wore emphasized the grace and strength of her supple form. Her face was oval and pale, with straight black brows and a finely cut crimson mouth - a face whose beauty bore the indefinable stamp of race and breeding mingled wiht a wild sweetness, as of a flower growing in some lonely and inaccessible place. None of the Rexton girls looked like that. Who, in the name of all that was amazing, could she be?

As the thought crossed Alan's mind the girl turned, with an air of indifference that might have seemed slightly overdone to a calmer observer than was the young minister at that moment and, with a gesture of command to her dogs, walked quickly away into the scrub spruces. She was so tall that her uncovered head was visible over them as she followed some winding footpath, and Alan stood like a man rooted to the ground until he saw her enter the grey house. Then he went homeward in a maze, all thought of sermons, doctrinal or otherwise, for the moment knocked out of his head.

The Books: "Along the Shore - 'A Soul That Was Not at Home'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Along the Shore - "A Soul That Was Not at Home" - by L.M. Montgomery

So this is the story of Paul and his Rock People in embryo. This story came out in 1909 (as did Anne of Avonlea) - so obviously this was a dress rehearsal. Many elements have changed once he appears in the Anne stories - but the character is exactly the same. And you know how Paul writes that letter to Anne and describes, in detail, his rock people? That shows up here in this story, word for word - only Paul is speaking it, rather than writing it. All of the Rock People are identical - Nora, the twin sailors ... you will recognize all of them. Beautiful - I love Paul.

In this story however, his circumstances are a bit different. Paul is an orphan (doesn't he have kind of an absentee father in the Anne books?) - and he is being raised by Stephen, a taciturn (that's putting it mildly) fisherman who used to be a beau of Paul's dead mother. So imagine THAT. Stephen may be taciturn - but his heart ... oh. my. God. He was in love with Paul's mother. But Paul's mother fell in love with someone else - whom she married - and he took her away from the little seaside town where she lived. And apparently she pined so for the sea that she became ill. (It happens, you know.) Her husband died - and she returned to her hometown, with her baby of 2 - but it was too late. She died within a couple of months. There was no one to look after baby Paul ... but Stephen, who had loved only one woman, and that was Paul's mother - stepped up and took the boy. And the two have been living in quiet restful harmony for 6 years. Stephen plays the violin at night. Paul sits on the beach in the day and writes stories about his Rock People in his big foolscap book. They are everything to each other. (It's a similar relationship to the one in "Each His Own Tongue" - that kind of intense unspoken bond between an older man and a young boy. It's almost painful.)

Anyway - a Miss Trevor stops to stay in the town, during the summer. I can't remember why she's there - but she's from the "city" (which probably means Charlottetown - not like Paris or anything like that). She comes, though, with the glamour of the outside world, and also artistic pretensions. She's also alone in the world. Anyhoo - she meets Paul one day on the beach and is completely taken by him. By his guilelessness, his beauty, and also his obvious gift of imagination. He immediately divulges about the Rock People, et al. To Miss Trevor, he looks like a prince - and is shocked to find that he lives in the bleached fisherman's shack over the dunes. Surely he should have better? (There's snobbery in Miss Trevor. You can feel it. When she meets Stephen, she patronizes him a bit. And it just kinda makes you really mad, reading it.) But she does get it in her head that Paul needs to have better schooling than could be offered here - and she wants to take him to live with her in town. She also is kind of obsessed with Paul's foolscap book and all the writing in it. She thinks Paul is a genius. A genius needs a better environment than a shack! (So she thinks.) So she asks Stephen if it would be all right ... and Stephen says, taciturn, you just don't know what's going on inside of him, he's too quiet and reserved - that she should ask Paul. If Paul wants to go, he can go. Paul is torn - he goes through some really bad moments. He loves Stephen. Loves him dearly ... but ... Stephen doesn't seem to care one way or the other if he stays or goes ... and Miss Trevor is so nice and so pretty ... but ... but ... how could he leave the Rock People??? Needless to say - Paul ends up going with Miss Trevor. And Stephen shows no emotion when he says goodbye. We, the reader, know that it is because he feels too much - but Paul thinks he doesn't care.

The excerpt below is from what happens when he gets to town. And goes to the end of the story. The Stephen moment that gets me in the throat is here.

Excerpt from Along the Shore - "A Soul That Was Not at Home" - by L.M. Montgomery

At first Paul lay very still on his luxurious perfrumed pillows. It was the first night he had ever spent away from the little seaward-looking loft where he could touch the rafters with his hands. He thought of it now and a lump came into his throat and a strange, new, bitter longing came into his heart. He missed the sea plashing on the rocks below him - he could not sleep without that old lullaby. He turned his face into the pillow, and the longing and loneliness grew worse and hurt him until he moaned. Oh, he wanted to be back home! Surely had had not left it - he could never have meant to leave it. Out there the stars would be shining over the harbour. Stephen would be sitting at the door, all alone, with his violin. But he would not be playing it - all at once Paul knew he would not be playing it. He would be sitting there with his head bowed and the loneliness in his heart calling to the loneliness in Paul's heart all the miles between them. Oh, he could never have really meant to leave Stephen.

And Nora? Nora would be down on the rocks waiting for him - for him, Paul, who would never come to her more. He could see her elfin little face peering around the point, watching for him wistfully.

Paul sat up in bed, choking with tears. Oh, what were books and strange countries? -- what was even Miss Trevor, the friend of a month? - to the call of the sea and Stephen's kind, deep eyes and his dear rock people? He could not stay away from them - never - never.

He slipped out of bed very softly and dressed in the dark. Then he lighted his lamp timidly and opened the little brown chest Stephen had given him. It held his books and his treasures, but he took out only a pencil, a bit of paper, and the foolscap book. With a hand shaking in his eagerness, he wrote:

dear miss Trevor

Im going back home, dont be fritened about me because I know the way. Ive got to go, something is calling me. dont be cross. I love you, but I cant stay. Im leaving my foolscap book for you, you can keep it always but I must go back to stephen and nora

Paul

He put the note on the foolscap book and laid them on the table. Then he blew out the light, took his cap and went softly out. The house was very still. Holding his breath, he tiptoed downstairs and opened the front door. Before it ran the street which went, he knew, straight out into the country road that led home. Paul closed the door and stole down the steps, his heart beating painfully, but when he reached the sidewalk he broke into a frantic run under the limes. It was late and no one was out on that quiet street. He ran until his breath gave out, then walked miserably until he recovered it, and then ran again. He dared not stop running until he was out of that horrible town, which seemed like a prison closing around him, where the houses shut out the stars and the wind could only creep in a narrow space like a fettered, cringing thing, instead of sweeping grandly over great salt wastes of sea.

At last the houses grew few and scattered, and finally he left them behind. He drew a long breath; this was better - rather smothering yet, of course, with nothing but hills and fields and dark woods all about him, but at least his own sky was bove him, looking just the same as it looked out home at Noel's Cove. He recognized the stars as friends; how often Stephen had pointed them out to him as they sat at night by the door of the little house.

He was not at all frightened now. He knew the way home and the kind night was before him. Every step was bringing him nearer to Stephen and Nora and the Twin Sailors. He whistled as he walked silently along.

The dawn was just breaking when he reached Noel's Cove. The eastern sky was all pale rose and silver, and the sea was mottled over with dear grey ripples. In the west over the harbour the sky was a very fine ethereal blue and the wind blew from there, salt and bracing. Paul was tired, but he ran lightly down the shelving rocks to the cove. Stephen was getting ready to launch his boat. When he saw Paul he started and a strange, vivid, exultant expression flashed across his face.

Paul felt a sudden chill - the upspringing fountain of his gladness was checked in mid-leap. He had known no doubt on the way home - all that long, weary walk he had known no doubt - but now?

"Stephen," he cried. "I've come back! I had to! Stephen, are you glad - are you glad?"

Stephen's face was as emotionless as ever. The burst of feeling which had frightened Paul by its unaccustomedness had passed like a fleeting outbreak of sunshine between dull clouds.

"I reckon I am," he said. "Yes, I reckon I am. I kind of - hoped - you would come back. You'd better go in and get some breakfast."

Paul's eyes were as radiant as the deepening dawn. He knew Stephen was glad and he knew there was nothing more to be said about it. They were back just where they were before Miss Trevor came - back to their perfect, unmarred, sufficient comradeship.

"I must just run around and see Nora first," said Paul.

The Books: "Along the Shore - 'The Light on the Big Dipper'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Along the Shore - "The Light on the Big Dipper" - by L.M. Montgomery

This story is told from the point of view of a very resourceful 12 year old, and in typical and beautiful Lucy Maud fashion, she can get right into the psychology of a child. I love it when she does that. Lucy Maud, as an adult, can see how absurd some things are - how children deal with things ... and yet - and I think this is why she is so hugely successful with children, to this day - she takes them seriously. She respects them. She writes about them with respect. It's so fun to read these stories, even now, because of that.

Mary Margaret Campbell is 12 years old. Her father is a sea captain and has been gone for 2 long years on a voyage. While Captain Campbell is gone - Mary Margaret, her mother, and her younger sister Nellie - all go to live on an island out in the bay called Little Dipper. Mary Margaret's uncle has a lobster fishing operation out there - and wants someone to keep house for him. There's another island - in sight of Little Dipper - and it's called Big Dipper - and Mary Margaret's Uncle George runs the lighthouse there. Mary Margaret has spent many happy afternoons there - and Uncle George showed her how to light the light, and give the distress signal, and all that.

But now - happiness! Captain Campbell is finally coming home! Mrs. Campbell is going to pick up her husband on the mainland - and leaves Mary Margaret in charge of little Nellie. Mary Margaret is 12 years old, can cook, can do everything - she is very responsbile. So there are no worries about her being by herself.

All the grownups leave the island. Mary Margaret and Nellie have a nice afternoon. Mary Margaret makes dinner. She lights the fire. She gets Nellie ready for bed. All very responsible. Meanwhile, though - a storm is coming up. A bad one. Darkening sky, and it begins to SNOW - heavily. Mary Margaret sits down by the window, and waits for the light to blaze out of the lighthouse at Big Dipper. Once the sun has gone down, I mean. Mary Margaret knows Uncle George's routine, so she sits down to watch the light come on across the water. Only ... no light comes on. And now the storm is raging. Waves, rain, chaos ... still no light!

Mary Margaret knows that something is horribly wrong. And ... she doesn't know what to do! Responsible little Mary Margaret is in a panic! What about all the ships out on the water right now? How would they know where they were? Everyone was in mortal danger!!!! Why won't the light come on?

Finally, Mary Margaret knows that there is only one thing to do. She must row across the water to the lighthouse and light the lamp herself, see if Uncle George is all right. But what to do with Nellie?? The small 4 year old sister? Mary Margaret is afraid ... she doesn't know what to do ... so she ties her sister in a chair ... so at least she can't get free and hurt herself ... and then goes to row across the water.

Also: having grown up in a seaside town, surrounded by fisherfolk, with lighthouses being a daily part of my life ... I love Lucy Maud's description of the community here. The importance of lighthouses, the URGENCY of lighthouses, etc. The entire community being aware of the lighthouse, and invested in it working properly.

Excerpt from Along the Shore - "The Light on the Big Dipper" - by L.M. Montgomery

Mary Margaret put on her jacket, hood and mittens, and took Uncle Martin's lantern. As she went out and closed the door, a little wail from Nellie sounded on her ear. For a moment she hesitated, then the blackness of the Big Dipper confirmed her resolution. She must go. Nellie was really quite safe and comfortable. It would not hurt her to cry a little, and it might hurt somebody a great deal if the Big Dipper light failed. Setting her lips firmly, Mary Margaret ran down to the shore.

Like all the Harbour girls, Mary Margaret could row a boat from the time she was nine years old. Nevertheless, her heart almost failed her as she got into the little dory and rowed out. The snow was getting thick. Could she pull across those black two miles between the Dippers before it got so much thicker that she would lose her way? Well, she must risk it. She had set the light in the kitchen window; she must keep it fair behind her and then she would land on the lighthouse beach. With a murmured prayer for help and guidance she pulled staunchly away.

It was a long hard row for the little twelve-year-old arms. Fortunately there was no wind. But thicker and thicker came the snow; finally the kitchen light was hidden in it. For a moment Mary Margaret's heart sank in despair; the next it gave a joyful bound, for, turning, she saw the dark tower of the lighthouse directly behind her. By the aid of her lantern she rowed to the landing, sprang out and made her boat fast. A minute later she was in the lighthouse kitchen.

The door leading to the tower stairs was open and at the foot of the stairs lay Uncle George, limp and white.

"Oh, Uncle George," gasped Mary Margaret, "what is the matter? What has happened?"

"Mary Margaret! Thank God! I was just praying to Him to send somebody to 'tend the light. Who's with you?"

"Nobody ... I got frightened because there was no light and I rowed over. Mother and Uncle Martin are away."

"You don't mean to say you rowed yourself over here alone in the dark and snow! Well, you are the pluckiest little girl about this harbour! It's a mercy I've showed you how to manage the light. Run up and start it at once. Don't mind about me. I tumbled down those pesky stairs like the awkward old fool I am and I've broke my leg and hurt my back so bad I can't crawl an inch. I've been lying here for three mortal hours and they've seemed like three years. Hurry with the light, Mary Margaret."

Mary Margaret hurried. Soon the Big Dipper light was once more gleaming cheerfully athwart the stormy harbour. Then she ran back to her uncle. There was not much she could do for him beyond covering him warmly with quilts, placing a pillow under his head, and brewing him a hot drink of tea.

"I left a note for Mother telling her where I'd gone, Uncle George, so I'm sure Uncle Martin will come right over as soon as they get home."

"He'll have to hurry. It's blowing up now ... hear it ... and snowing thick. If your mother and Martin haven't left the Harbour Head before this, they won't leave it tonight. But, anyhow, the light is lit. I don't mind my getting smashed up compared to that. I thought I'd go crazy lying here picturing to myself a vessel out on the reefs."

That night was a very long and anxious one. The storm grew rapidly worse, and snow and wind howled around the lighthouse. Uncle George soon grew feverish and delirious, and Mary Margaret, between her anxiety for him and her dismal thoughts of poor Nellie tied in her chair over at the Little Dipper, and the dark possibility of her mother and Uncle Martin being out in the storm, felt almost distracted. But the morning came at last, as mornings blessedly will, be the nights never so long and anxious, and it dawned fine and clear over a white world. Mary Margaret ran to the shore and gazed eagerly across at the Little Dipper. No smoke was visible from Uncle Martin's house!

She could not leave Uncle George, who was raving wildly, and yet it was necessary to obtain assistance somehow. Suddenly she remembered the distress signal. She must hoist it. How fortunate that Uncle George had once shown her how!

Ten minutes later there was a commotion over at Harbour Head where the signal was promptly observed, and very soon - although it seemed long enough to Mary Margaret - a boat came sailing over to the Big Dipper. When the men landed they were met by a very white-faced little girl who gasped out a rather disjointed story of a light that hadn't been lighted and an uncle with a broken leg and a sister tied in her chair, and would they please see to Uncle George at once, for she must go straight over to the other Dipper?

The Books: "Along the Shore - 'Fair Exchange and No Robbery'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Along the Shore - "Fair Exchange and No Robbery" - by L.M. Montgomery

Next story I'll excerpt (in this book that, er, nobody else appears to have read but me!!) is a really funny story -I like it a lot - it's a romance, but it's written in that way that Lucy Maud has - that really human voice, with an eye towards the comedy in any situation. She doesn't always use that tone - but it's one of my favorites of her narrative voices. Because - I get it. I get her sense of humor. Her impression that life is kind of abSURD. This story is like that.

There are two dear friends - who are in college. Katherine and Edith. Both are seriously involved with someone -Katherine with a guy named Ned and Edith with a guy named Sidney. But neither has met the others beau ... Ned goes to a different college, and Sidney is already out of college. The story opens with Katherine and Edith both getting ready for summer holidays. Katherine is going to spend the summer with her Aunt Elizabeth in a remote seashore town - and Edith is staying on the campus for the summer. But, through a random coincidence, Ned has transferred to Katherine's college and will be there - on campus for the summer - taking courses - and Katherine is bummed and kind of pissed that it should happen just as she is going away. Edith says that she will look out for Ned, and make him feel welcome, not to worry, not to worry. The girls also briefly exchange thoughts about their boyfriends - and you can see that both of them, while fond of their men, have a couple complaints. Katherine is bookish, and loves poetry. Ned laughs at poetry and thinks "women writers are an abomination". Edith's Sidney is VERY bookish - and kind of plain-faced. Katherine admires plain-faced men because they are not vain. Ned, on the other hand, is gorgeous - and very vain - so she has to take him down a peg. And yet she loves him, obviously - it's just two girls kind of complaining about their men and what they lack. Then it's off to vacation! Toodle-oo!!

We follow Katherine on her vacation - where she thinks she will die of boredom in this little seaside town with nothing to do. She ends up meeting a random man (their meeting is the excerpt below) ... and somehow they end up CLICKING. Not romantically - or, of course that is underneath - but ... they just have a good time together. It turns out that he is, actually, Edith's boyfriend - he is writing a book and needed a quiet place for the summer .. so they befriend each other ... and they can't admit what is REALLY going on because they are both involved with someone else. It is very hard for Katherine to say good-bye to him. She is devastated, frankly.

She goes back to the campus town - dreary, sad, not at all looking forward to seeing Ned ... and she comes back to the room she shares with Edith and overhears Edith and Ned inside, having a tormented conversation about what they should do ... how should they "break the news" to Katherine ... Oh, it's so awful ... Edith has STOLEN Katherine's boyfriend! Oh, what a tragedy this is!!

Naturally, to Katherine, it is not a tragedy at all. Because now she will be free to steal EDITH'S boyfriend ... and they can all stay friends ... it will be a fair exchange and no robbery.

This all sounds very prosaic when I write it out like that - but I just love how this story is written - the TONE. I love when she ponders that maybe he is a revivalist.

It was written in 1907 - a year before Anne of Green Gables was published.

Excerpt from Along the Shore - "Fair Exchange and No Robbery" - by L.M. Montgomery

To pass the time Katherine took to collecting seaweeds, and this involved long tramps along the shore. On one of these occasions she met with an adventure. The place was a remote spot far up the shore. Katherine had taken off her shoes and stockings, tucked up her skirt, rolled her sleeves high above her dimpled elbows, and was deep in the absorbing process of fishing up seaweeds off a craggy headland. She looked anything but dignified while so employed, but under the circumstances dignity did not matter.

Presently she heard a shout from the shore and, turning around in dismay, she beheld a man in the rocks behind her. He was evidently shouting at her. What on earth could the creature want?

"Come in," he called, gesticulating wildly. "You'll be in the bottomless pit in another moment if you don't look out."

"He certainly must be a lunatic," said Katherine to herself, "or else he's drunk. What am I to do?"

"Come in, I tell you," insisted the stranger. "What in the world do you mean by wading out to such a place? Why, it's madness."

Katherine's indignation got the bettero f her fear.

"I do not think I am trespassing," she called back as icily as possible.

The stranger did not seem to be satisfied at all. He came down to the very edge of the rocks where Katherine could see him plainly. He was dressed in a somewhat well-worn grey suit and wore spectacles. He did not look like a lunatic, and he did not seem to be drunk.

"I implore you to come in," he said earnestly. "You must be standing on the very brink of the bottomless pit."

He is certainly off his balance, thought Katherine. He must be some revivalist who has gone insane on one point. I suppose I'd better go in. He looks quite capable of wading out here after me if I don't.

She picked her steps carefully back with her precious specimens. The stranger eyed her severely as she stepped on the rocks.

"I should think you would have more sense than to risk your life in that fashion for a handful of seaweeds," he said.

"I haven't the faintest idea what you mean," said Miss Rangely. "You don't look crazy, but you talk as if you were."

"Do you mean to say you don't know that what the people hereabouts call the Bottomless Pit is situated right off that point - the most dangerous spot along the whole coast?"

"No, I didn't," said Katherine, horrified. She remembered now that Aunt Elizabeth ahd warned her to be careful of some bad hole along shore, but she had not been paying much attention and had supposed it to be in quite another direction. "I am a stranger here."

"Well, I hardly thought you'd be foolish enough to be out there if you knew," said the other in mollified accents. "The place ought not to be left without warning, anyhow. It is the most careless thing I ever heard of. There is a big hole right off that point and nobody has ever been able to find the bottom of it. A person who got into it would never be heard of again. The rocks there form an eddy that sucks everything right down."

"I am very grateful to you for calling me in," said Katherine humbly. "I had no idea I was in such danger."

"You have a very find bunch of seaweeds, I see," said the unknown.

But Katherine was in no mood to converse on seaweeds. She suddenly realized what she must look like - bare feet, draggled skirts, dripping arms. And this creature whom she had taken for a lunatic was undoubtedly a gentleman. Oh, if he would only go and give her a chance to put on her shoes and stockings!

Nothing seemed further from his intentions. When Katherine had picked up the aforesaid articles and turned homeward, he walked beside her, still discoursing on seaweeds as eloquently as if he were commonly accustomed to walking with barefooted young women. In spite of herself, Katherine couldn't help listening to him, for he managed to invest seaweeds with an absorbing interest. She finally decided that as he didn't seem to mind her bare feet, she wouldn't either.

He knew so much about seaweeds that Katherine felt decidedly amateurish beside him. He looked over her specimens and pointed out the valuable ones. He explained the best method of preserving and mounting them, and told her of other and less dangerous places along the shore where she might get some new varieties.

When they came in sight of Harbour Hill, Katherine began to wonder what on earth she would do with him. It wasn't exactly permissible to snub a man who had practically saved your life, but, on the other hand, the prospect of walking through the principal street of Harbour Hill barefooted and escorted by a scholarly looking gentleman discoursing on seaweeds was not to be calmly contemplated.

The unknown cut the Gordian knot himself. He said that he must really go back or he would be late for dinner, lifted his hat politely, then sat down on the sand and put on her shoes and stockings.

"Who on earth can he be?" she said to herself. "And where have I seen him before? There was certainly something familiar about his appearance. He is very nice, but he must have thought me crazy. I wonder if he belongs to Harbour Hill."

The Books: "Along the Shore - 'Mackereling Out In the Gulf'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Along the Shore - "Mackereling Out In the Gulf" - by L.M. Montgomery

Another seafaring story - this one about fishermen. Although it's also a romance. Benjamin Selby has always loved Mary Stella - since he was little. They were childhood friends. He has cherished a dream, a hope that someday .... and because of that, she has factored into his plans, and the man he has become. He is trying to be a good enough man to deserve her, etc. You get this within a couple paragraphs. Mary Stella is a sweet girl, and kind to Benjamin. These are all fisher-folk - Benjamin is a big swarthy dude who works out on his boat all day. Anyhoo ... suddenly a new guy comes to town - a Frank Braithwaite - and he's a city person, or ... at least he's not one of THEM. But he's handsome, nice ... and he falls for Mary Stella. He does realize that he has a rival in Benjamin Selby - he understands that ... but Mary Stella (you kind of don't know what's going on with her. She seems rather insipid, if you ask me) ends up choosing Frank. Benjamin ends up seeing them in a romantic moment along the shore one day ... and it is so upsetting to him that it's practically anguish. This is his whole LIFE! A couple days later, Frank Braithwaite goes out in a boat with two French Canadian boys (who are, as they always are in Lucy Maud's world, almost minstrel show-y in their behavior) ... none of them are really competent sailors. So they're idiots, basically. And a storm comes up. A horrible storm. People gather on the shore, terrified ... looking out to sea for the boats to come back in ... and all of them do, except for the one with Frank in it. That boat is struggling mightily - and panic rises along the shore ... are they going to drown? So now Benjamin has to make a choice ... he could go out and save them, or he could let his hated rival die ... and maybe then he could have Mary Stella ...

Naturally, Benjamin makes the right choice.

The story itself is kind of simplistic, I guess - there's not much to it - but I'm excerpting it because of the ending which I think is quite touching and very well done.

Excerpt from Along the Shore - "Mackereling Out In the Gulf" - by L.M. Montgomery

Braithwaite came to the shore next day somewhat pale and shaky. He went straight to Benjamin and held out his hand.

"Thank you," he said simply.

Benjamin bent lower over his work.

"You needn't thank me," he said gruffly. "I wanted to let you drown. But I went out for Mary Stella's sake. Tell me one thing - I couldn't bring myself to ask it of anyone else. When are you to be - married?"

"The 12th of September."

Benjamin did not wince. He turned away and looked out across the sea for a few moments. The last agony of his great renunciation was upon him. Then he turned and held out his hand.

"For her sake," he said earnestly.

Frank Braithwaite put his slender white hand into the fisherman's hard brown palm. There were tears in both men's eyes. They parted in silence.

On the morning of the 12th of September Benjamin Selby went out to the fishing grounds as usual. The catch was good, although the season was almost over. In the afternoon the French Canadians went to sleep. Benjamin intended to row down the shore for salt. He stood by his dory, ready to start, but he seemed to be waiting for something. At last it came: a faint train whistle blew, a puff of white smoke floated across a distant gap in the sandhills.

Mary Stella was gone at last - gone forever from his life. The honest blue eyes looking out over the sea did not falter; bravely he faced his desolate future.

The white gulls soared over the water, little swishing ripples lapped on the sand, and through all the gentle, dreamy noises of the shore came the soft, unceasing murmur of the gulf.

The Books: "Along the Shore - 'The Magical Bond of the Sea'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Along the Shore - by L.M. Montgomery

Okay, so I leave Emily behind with some regret ... she's my favorite ... but it's time to do some MORE Lucy Maud Montgomery excerpts. Her books take up 2 enter shelves - and since I'm also posting from short stories I like, from her collections, this is taking some time. But I'm in no rush.

Recently - through the 1990s - as Lucy Maud Montgomery's journals were being published - and as there was a resurgent interest in her (due to the television show, the movie, etc.) - a lot of her, uhm, "juvenilia" was dug up and published. Actually, not all of the collections were made up of her early short stories - some were the short stories that she continued to write throughout her career. She was always working on something - if not a novel, then these stories. Some are 5 or 6 pages long - others are more like novellas. Rea Wilmhurst, the editor, is someone we all owe a GREAT debt to. She's the one who put together all of these collections - and she did so SO beautifully, I think. Here's how she organized the stories (and it truly makes you in awe of Lucy Maud's output ... this was a woman who PRODUCED, man ... a workaholic): She identified some of Lucy Maud's more common themes - oh, and also genres - (orphans finding happiness and home, long-deferred romantic happiness, ghost stories/paranormal experiences, stories based on correspondence, romantic stories ending in marriage) and put together collections of stories in each of these themes. I love how she did it. There's an entire collection about stories that have something to do with the ocean - because the ocean was such a huge part of Lucy Maud's consciousness. For most of her life she ended up living away from the ocean - and she missed it so much that her heart nearly broke. She wrote a lot of stories about sea-faring folks, storms at sea, fishermen, etc. So there's an entire collection of those stories (that's the collection I'm gonna start with).

Some pre-date the publication of Anne of Green Gables - and so you can kind of feel her finding her way as a writer. Some of the stories are pretty bad - Lucy Maud wrote them for cash. She wrote them to order, too. Many of the stories depend on an outrageous coincidence which turns out making everything right (a la Dickens) ... but sometimes the story is just is its plot, and you can feel it creaking along. Sometimes they are way melodramatic. Sometimes they are treacly and would belong in a Sunday School pamphlet. But I loved reading them all because you can feel, first of all, Lucy Maud's work ethic. And I always found that so admirable. And also because - you can feel her working out some of the stories that she would later put into novels. Earlier versions of events show up in these stories all the time. If you're an autistic Lucy Maud freak, like I am, you will even recognize certain sentences: "Oh, she ended up using that sentence in House of Dreams ... oh, I remember that phrase, she put it into the grandmother's mouth in Magic for Marigold ..." Yes, it's that way with me. How entire books sit in my mind, word for word, I will never know ... but they do. So it's fun to read. In the Along the Shore collection there's a story called The Life Book of Uncle Jesse - which is, almost word for word, the story that ends up in House of Dreams - with "lost Margaret" and everything. Word for word. The story that ends up closing the collection, "A House Divided Against Itself" is almost word for word one of the plot-lines in her wonderful book Tangled Web - the two brothers arguing about the statue of Venus and one ends up getting caught in this hole in a rock in the shore - and the waves are coming in - and etc. etc. Word for word. Lucy Maud's books are often quite episodic - so these short stories acted as dress rehearsals. I love that. I love the little moment of recognition when I start to read one of them. I can feel her process, I can feel HER, if you will ... as a writer. It's really neat.

So yes, there is a lot of drivel here. But there's a lot that is truly wonderful as well, and I am thankful to Rea Wilmhurst for putting them all together. Oh, and even better: you get publication dates for the stories. So you can put together your own timeline ... and see where, in her life, she was working on it. Was it between Emily books? Was it BEFORE Anne? Rea Wilmhurst has even dug up stories from the late 1800s ... stuff Lucy Maud had published when she was 19, 20 ... and this stuff is hysterical - really melodramatic - some of it with Gothic horror overtones - she hasn't found her groove yet - but even that is really interesting, if you're a fan of her writing as a whole.

I won't excerpt every one of the stories - and not the ones that show up in novels later - but I will excerpt the ones I like, or ones I find interesting, in terms of Lucy Maud's development.

So. Along the Shore. A collection of stories about the ocean.

First story in the collection has the insipid title "The Magical Bond of the Sea" - but it's a lovely little story. Nora Shelley is a fisherman's daughter, she lives with her big rowdy family in a tiny 3 room shack on the shore (always Prince Edward Island in these stories, you don't even have to ask). And somehow - a rich aunt swoops in and says that Nora, a beautiful girl, age 15 or so, should have a chance at a better life - she should get some education - maybe marry a rich man. But she needs to be groomed for that ... and Nora, in her heart, wants to have a chance to see the big world as well. (This plot reminds me a bit of Cathy being taken away in Wuthering Heights - and coming back a nicely groomed lady). Nora loves her family ... and doesn't want to hurt her parents, her father and mother, by rejecting the life they provide ... but she does want to take this chance. So they let her go. There's a little going-away party - and you get the sense, with one of the guys hovering on the outskirts, that someone has a crush on her, her childhood friend ... who is now working as a fisherman, a nice boy. But now he must watch her go. (Melodramatic chords ensue). So Nora goes off ... and she is gone for almost a year. She writes letters home about her brilliant life of parties and travel and balls ... and the letters are read outloud by her family and by neighbors crowding in to listen. Her father, a "grizzled" old fisherman, can feel that Nora is changing. That she is no longer one of them. It makes him sad but on some level ... he knew he needed to let her go. Nora doesn't even come home for a visit. She immerses herself in this rich world. But then ... (dum da DUM) ... one summer they return, and Nora is staying at the big house across the bay ... and apparently she is slated to go home and visit the next day ... and there is a millionaire named Clark Bryant who supposedly is "courting" her and is stayiing a bit at the big house ... and everything is kind of hectic, etc. Nora is kind of unconscious of her deepest desires (a typical Lucy Maud heroine: unaware of what she wants until THE MOMENT ARRIVES WHEN SHE REALIZES IT ... ) ... she's there in the big house, she just arrived ... when suddenly she looks out the window ... and sees the bay right there ... and sees the little fishermen's town across the water ... and then ...

Here's the excerpt. I love it because of her response to being out on the water ... and how Lucy Maud writes that part. It's glorious.

"The Magical Bond of the Sea" was published in The Springfield Republican in September of 1903.

So this pre-dates Anne by about 5 years. But, in my opinion, you can feel her certainty as a writer here, in a way that you cannot feel in some of the earlier stories. She's writing in HER way ... it is obviously Lucy Maud Montgomery writing - any fan of hers would recognize this prose right away. In some of the earlier stories (the ghost stories, for example) - it is not as apparent who is writing. Lucy Maud didn't put her STAMP on some of those. But her stamp is here.

Excerpt from Along the Shore - "The Magical Bond of the Sea" - by L.M. Montgomery

At sunset on the day of her arrival Nora Shelley looked out cross the harbour to the fishing villagae. She was tired after her journey, and she had not meant to go over until the morning, but now she knew she must go at once. Her mother was over there; the old life called to her; the northwest wind swept up the channel and whistled alluringly to her at the window of her luxurious room. It brought to her the tang of the salt wastes and filled her heart with a great, bitter-sweet yearning.

She was more beautiful than ever. In the year that had passed she had blossomed out to a gracious fulfillment of womanhood. Even the Camerons had wondered at her swift adaptation to her new surroundings. She seemed to have put Racicot behind her as one puts by an old garment. In everything she had held her own royally. Her adopted parents were proud of her beauty and her nameless, untamed charm. They had lavished every indulgence upon her. In those few short months she had lived more keenly and fully than in all her life before. The Nora Shelley who went away was not, so it would seem, the Nora Shelley who came back.

But when she looked from her window to the waves and saw the star of the lighthouse and the blaze of the sunset in the window of the fishing-houses and heard the summons of the wind, something broke loose in her soul and overwhelmed her, like a wave of the sea. She must go at once -- at once -- at once. Not a moment could she wait.

She was dressed for dinner, but with tingling fingers she threw off her costly gown and put on her dark travelling suit again. She left her hair as it was and knotted a crimson scarf about her head. She would slip away quietly to the boathouse, get Davy to launch the little sailboat for her - and then for a fleet skim over the harbour before that glorious wind! She hoped not to be seen, but Mrs. Cameron met her in the hall.

"Nora!" she said in astonishment.

"Oh, I must go, Aunty! I must go!" the girl cried feverishly. She was afraid Mrs. Cameron would try to prevent her going, and all at once she knew that she could not bear that.

"Must go? Where? Dinner is almost ready, and --"

"Oh, I don't want any dinner. I'm going home - I will sail over."

"My dear child, don't be foolish. It's too late to go over the harbour tonight. They won't be expecting you. Wait until the morning."

"No -- oh, you don't understand. I must go -- I must! My mother is over there."

Something in the girl's last sentence or the tone in which it was uttered brought a look of pain to Mrs. Cameron's face. But she made no further attempt to dissuade her.

"Well, if you must. But you cannot go alone - no, Nora, I cannot allow it. The wind is too high and it is too late for you to go over by yourself. Clark Bryant will take you."

Nora would have protested but she knew it would be in vain. She submitted somewhat sullently and walked down to the shore in silence. Clark Bryant strode beside her, humoring her mood. He was a tall, stout man, with an ugly, clever, sarcastic face. He was as clever as he looked, and was one of the younger millionaires whom John Cameron drew around him in the development of his huge financial schemes. Bryant was in love with Nora. This was why the Camerons had asked him to join their August house party at Dalveigh, and why he had accepted. It had occurred to Nora that this was the case, but as yet she had never troubled to think the situation over seriously.

She liked Clark Bryant well enough, but just at the moment he was in the way. She did not want to take him over to Racicot - just why she could not have explained. There was in her no snobbish shame of her humble home. But he did not belong there; he was an alien, and she wished to back to it for the first time alone.

At the boathouse Davy launched the small sailboat and Nora took the tiller. She knew every inch of the harbour. As the sail filled before the wind and the boat sprang across the upcurling waves, her brief sullenness fell away from her. She no longer resented Clark Bryant's presence - she forgot it. He was no more to her than the mast by which he stood. The spell of the sea and the wind surged into her heart and filled it with wild happiness and measureless content. Over yonder, where the lights gleamed on the darkening shore under the high-sprung arch of pale golden sky, was home. How the wind whistled to welcome her back! The lash of it against her face - the flick of salt spray on her lips - the swing of the boat as it cut through the racing crests - how glorious it all was!

Clark Bryant watched her, understanding all at once that he was nothing to her, that he had no part or lot in her heart. He was as one forgotten and left behind. And how lovely, how desirable she was! He had never seen her look so beautiful. The shawl had slipped down to her shoulders and her head rose out of it like some magnificent flower out of a crimson calyx. The masses of her black hair lifted from her face in the rush of the wind and swayed back again like rich shadows. Her lips were stung scarlet with the sea's sharp caresses, and her eyes, large and splendid, looked past him unseeing to the harbour lights of Racicot.

When they swung in by the wharf Nora sprang from the boat before Bryant had time to moor it. Pausing for an instant, she called down to him, carelessly, "Don't wait for me. I shall not go back tonight."

Then she caught her shawl around her head and almost ran up the wharf and along the shore. No one was abroad, for it was supper hour in Racicot. In the Shelley kitchn the family was gathered around the table, when the door was flung open and Nora stood on the threshold. For a moment they gazed at her as at an apparition. They had not known the precise day of her coming, and were not aware of the Camerons' arrival at Dalveigh.

"It's the girl herself. It's Nora," said old Nathan, rising from his bench.

"Mother!" cried Nora. She ran across the room and buried her face in her mother's breast, sobbing.

The Books: "Emily's Quest" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Emily's Quest - by L.M. Montgomery

This excerpt is near the end of the book - and it is some of my favorite prose of Lucy Maud's ever. It's practically elegiac. We're about 3 pages from the end of the novel here - and it feels like it will end this way. Which - I still remember my sensation the first time I read this book. I read it - and I read about the wedding that never was - and I was SHOCKED and yet somehow unbelievably thrilled, too - like: maybe now? Maybe now Emily's loneliness will end? Maybe now Emily and Teddy can say what needs to be said? FINALLY?? But then came this section and then came the chilling words: "Year after year ..." and I just remember finding it so unutterably sad when I first read it. And I still do ... but now that I know the ending ... the sadness doesn't feel quite so intense. Because I know that she will get a break soon. There will be a respite. To quote the Little River Band, help is on its way. But dammit, help doesn't arrive until the last damn page ... thanks for putting me through the wringer, Lucy Maud!

To me, this section proves that those who blithely say, "It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all" are full of shit. Or, to be kinder - they are not fully thinking about what they are saying. They either think that that cliche is true ... or they do not know what to say, and that cliche seems to fit the bill. So I would respond to someone who made the mistake of saying that to me with: "Try it." (stealing a line from Men in Black). TRY it before you say that to me. If you can say that - and if you can say that so easily - then it says to me 2 things. 1. We are not the same kind of person. Maybe for SOME people it is "better to have loved and lost" blah blah ... but this is not true for EVERYBODY. And #2, which is meaner: it says to me that you do not know what you are talking about, and frankly, nobody likes someone who blabbers on as though they are an expert in a subject they know nothing about. If I sound angry, then it's because I am. I mean, not really right now - but anyone who has suffered a loss of any kind will know what I'm talking about. The stupid shit that people say to you. Now, yes, yes, people are well-meaning, people say things because they don't know what to say, people rely on cliche to get their point across - and I have cut these people slack for many years. Thank God this is my blog and I don't have to cut anyone slack here. I can take a break here from having to be a good sport, and nice, and polite.

Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all my ASS.

And finally - this section moves me so much because of Emily's continuing commitment to her love for Teddy. Or - bah - that's a horrible way to say it. It's all in the last paragraph of the excerpt - which still, after reading it so many times, over so many years, brings me to tears. I don't really write in the margins of novels (I do in all my non-fiction books - I bracket stuff, write question marks, underline ... but not in novels or fiction.) but at some point in my life - I put a bracket around that last paragraph. It obviously means a lot to me. It helped me to make sense of what I was doing in my own life ... after I had loved and lost. And no - the cavalry did not run in on the very last page to save me. Help was NOT on its way in my case. But still: the sentiment expressed there, while very difficult, is something dear to my heart.

Many people who get rejected - or not even rejected - who just have things not work out - then turn that into anger and bitterness towards the one who did the rejecting. I call them the "Love/Hate People". As in: "You love me? Oh, I love you too! Oh - now you hate me? Then I hate you too!" You see it all the time. Love turned to hate. This kind of switch-over doesn't really work for me, even though I've been rejected and even though ... sometimes it's even warranted! Like with this dude. If anyone deserves to be scorned and hated by Sheila, it's that dude. But ... I just can't do it. I'm not carrying a torch for him or anything ... it's just that I can't HATE him ... I can't suddenly think he's a bad person, just because he acted like an ass. He's not a bad person. And I can't help but WISH HIM WELL. And his response to me - on that hot sidewalk - as I wished him well - tells me that he was expecting me to be yet another Love/Hate Person. He was baffled by my good will towards him. But I just ... sometimes I have WISHED that I was a Love/Hate Person. That I could just switch off the love - when someone disses me - or hurts me - that I could say, "Okay then - FUCK. YOU." And then I would get to be all pissed and self-righteous. But I can't do that. Sometimes I should, believe me, sometimes I should.

But it's the sentiment in that last paragraph below ...

I guess it's one of my ... credos, maybe you'd call it. I believe in love like that. I really do. Invisible ... not recognized by the rest of the world ... and yet real.

This'll be the last excerpt of the Emily books. sniff, sniff. We will move on to yet another Lucy Maud book after this one - but I have SO enjoyed hanging out with all the Emily fans over these past couple weeks. It's been a total joy.

Excerpt from Emily's Quest - by L.M. Montgomery

II

That summer was a hard time for Emily. The very anguish of her suffering had filled life and now that it was over she realised its emptiness. Then, too, to go anywhere meant martyrdom. Every one talking about the wedding, asking, wondering, surmising. But at last the wild gossip and clatter over Ilse's kididoes had finally died away and people found something else to talk about. Emily was left alone.

Alone? Ay, that was it. Always alone. Love -- friendship gone forever. Nothing left but ambition. Emily settled herself resolutely down to work. Life ran again in its old accustomed grooves. Year after year the seasons walked by her door. Violet-sprinkled valleys of spring - blossom-script of summer - minstrel-firs of autumn - pale fires of the Milky Way on winter nights - soft, new-mooned skies of April - gnomish beauty of dark Lomardies against a moonrise - deep of sea calling to deep of wind - lonely yellow leaves falling in October dusks - woven moonlight in the orchard. Oh, there was beauty in life still - always would be. Immortal, indestructible beauty beyond all the stain and blur of mortal passion. She had some very glorious hours of inspiration and achievement. But mere beauty which had once satisfied her soul could not wholly satisfy it now. New Moon was unchanged, undisturbed by the changes that came elsewhere. Mrs. Kent had gone to live with Teddy. The old Tansy Patch was sold to some Halifax man for a summer home. Perry went to Montreal one autumn and brought Ilse back with him. They were living happily in Charlottetown, where Emily often visited them, astutely evading the matrimonial traps Ilse was always setting for her. It was becoming an accepted thing in the clan that Emily would not marry.

"Another old maid at New Moon," as Uncle Wallace said gracefully.

"And to think of all the men she might have had," said Aunt Elizabeth bitterly. "My Wallace -- Aylmer Vincent - Andrew -"

"But if she didn't -- love -- them," faltered Aunt Laura.

"Laura, you need not be indelicate."

Old Kelly, who still went his rounds -- "and will till the crack of doom," declared Ilse -- had quite given up teasing Emily about getting married, though he occasionally made regretful, cryptic allusions to "toad ointment". There was none of his significant nods and winks. Instead, he always gravely asked her what book she did be working on now, and drove off shaking his spiky grey head. "What do the men be thinking of, anyway? Get up, my nag, get up."

Some men were still thinking of Emily, it appeared. Andrew, now a brisk youn widower, would have come back at the beck of a finger Emily never lifted. Graham Mitchell, of Shrewsbury, unmistakably had intentions. Emily wouldn't have him because he had a slight cast in one eye. At least, that was what the Murrays supposed. They could think of no other reason for her refusal of so good a match. Shrewsbury people declared that he figured in her next novel and that she had only been "leading him on" to "get material". A reputed Klondike "millionaire" pursued her for a winter, but disappeared as briefly in the spring.

"Since she has published those books she thinks no one good enough for her," said Blair Water folks.

Aunt Elizabeth did not regret the Klondike man - he was only a Derry Pond Butterworth, to begin with, and what were the Butterworths? Aunt Elizabeth always contrived to give the impression that Butterworths did not exist. They might imagine they did, but the Murrays k new better. But she did not see why Emily could not take Mooresby, of the firm of Mooresby and Parker, Charlottetown. Emily's explanation that Mr. Mooresby could never live down the fact that he had once had his picture in the papers as a Perkins' Food Baby struck Aunt Elizabeth as very inadequate. But Aunt Elizabeth at last admitted that she could not understand the younger generation.

III

Of Teddy Emily never heard, save from occasional items in newspapers which represented him as advancing steadily in his career. He was beginning to have an international reputation as a portrait painter. The old days of magazine illustrations were gone and Emily was never now confronted with her own face - or her own smile - or her own eyes - looking out at her from some casual page.

One winter Mrs. Kent died. Before her death she sent Emily a brief note - the only word Emily had ever had from her.

"I am dying. When I am dead, Emily, tell Teddy about the letter. I've tried to tell him, but I couldn't tell my son I had done that. Tell him for me."

Emily smiled sadly as she put the letter away. It was too late to tell Teddy. He had long since ceased to care for her. And she -- she would love him forever. And even though he knew it not, surely such love would hover around him all his life like an invisible benediction, not understood but dimly felt, guarding him from ill and keeping from him all things of harm and evil.

The Books: "Emily's Quest" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Emily's Quest - by L.M. Montgomery

So all this sad stuff happens ... Emily breaks off her engagement - scandalizing her entire family (they were scandalized by the engagement itself, but then when she broke it off!!) - and then the Teddy second-sight moment - and then he and Ilse come home for the summer and there's all this ... unrequited unspoken stuff going on. Emily is haughty with Teddy - and to my eyes, he is being SO obvious with her. He is giving her an opening. He is saying I'M INTERESTED IN YOU. And she misinterprets a lot of it ... or she's afraid to even MENTION the second-sight moment ... she's afraid that will mean he will KNOW ... etc etc. So there's all this pent-up stuff during the summer, and Ilse is having her own rageful unrequited situation with Perry. All she can talk about is Perry. And yet in one chilling moment she confides in Emily that she has never liked Teddy so much as now. Then there's the dinner party ... Emily was looking forward to it ... and she sees by accident a really intimate look and conversation pass between Ilse and Teddy and it is like her heart has been smashed to the floor like a piece of crockery. Ilse and Teddy leave - and Emily then starts in to have the worst autumn of her life. She obviously is having some sort of depressive response to things. She writes in her journal that life, during that autumn, was unlivable. But of course life goes on ... we read her journal entries, and interestingly enough - more and more they are about nature. She writes about the snow, the stars, the pumpkins, the sunset ... These entries also reflect her MOOD (Lucy Maud is always so good at that - how the landscape can somehow express the mood of the main character) ... but she's trying not to be introspective. She's just trying to survive.

And then comes the next summer - Teddy and Ilse do NOT come home. And Emily has a series of ridiculous love affairs that mean absolutely nothing - she is pretty much just amusing herself - and (of course) her entire family is completely scandalized. Especially when she is being courted by a visiting Japanese prince, and she seems to take it seriously!! She accepts gifts from him! She walks in the garden with him at night! A Japanese prince!

But some of the suitors are just freakin'; hysterical - and you can see how Emily's breezy unconcern for their feelings, and for the opinion of her prudish clan - drives everyone nuts.

My favorite of all of the "love affairs" (and it doesn't even qualify) is the excerpt below. To me, the almost SLAPSTICK energy here - the sense that you are in the presence of a CRAZY person - is classic Lucy Maud. I love how she pits sanity against insanity, she pits civilization against chaos ... and the results are always comedic (I wrote about that here somewhere before).

Anyway, here's one of the funniest episodes. I just LOVE this guy who shows up. He's such a loon.

Background: an editor friend of Emily's asks her to help him out of a bind. He has a story he has been publishing, serial-fashion - and he lost the last chapter. Not to be found anywhere. Editor is furious - beside himself - turns to Emily for help: could she read the rest of the story, and figure out a concluding chapter, and write it? He would pay her. Emily thinks it would be an amusing task so she does. She reads the story (it sounds like a Gothic torrid romance - and it's all about kings and queens - which Emily finds amusing. Does the writer KNOW any kings or queens?) - but Emily does a good job - she comes up with an ingenious ending, a way to tie together all the threads of the plot ... the editor is happy - and the piece is published. Yay! Emily forgets all about it.

Until ...

Excerpt from Emily's Quest - by L.M. Montgomery

"I wonder if any of the readers will notice where the seam comes in," reflected Emily amusedly. "And I wonder if Mark Greaves will ever see it and if so what he will think."

It did not seem in the least likely she would ever know and she dismissed the matter from her mind. Consequently when, one afternoon two weeks later, Cousin Jimmy ushered a stranger into the sitting-room where Emily was arranging roses in Aunt Elizabeth's rock-crystal goblet with its ruby base - a treasured heirloom of New Moon - Emily did not connect him with A Royal Betrothal, though she had a distinct impression that the caller was an exceedingly irate man.

Cousin Jimmy discreetly withdrew and Aunt Laura, who had come in to place a glass dish full of strawberry preserves on the table to cool, withdrew also,w ondering a little who Emily's odd-looking caller could be. Emily herself wondered. She reamined standing by the table, a slim, gracious thing in her pale-green gown, shining like a star in the shadowy, old-fashioned room.

"Won't you sit down?" she questioned, with all the aloof courtesy of New Moon. But the newcomer did not move. He simply stood before her staring at her. And again Emily felt that, while he had been quite furious when he came in, he was not in the least angry now.

He must have been born, of course, because he was there - but it was incredible, she thought, he would ever have been a baby. He wore audacious clothes and a monocle, screwed into one of his eyes - eyes that seemed absurdly like little black currants with black eyebrows that made right-angled triangles above them. He had a mane of black hair reaching to his shoulders, an immensely long chin and a marble-white face. In a picture Emily thought he would have looked rather handsome and romantic. But here in the New Moon sitting-room he looked merely weird.

"Lyrical creature," he said, gazing at her.

Emily wondered if he were by any chance an escaped lunatic.

"You do not commit the crime of ugliness," he continued fervently. "This is a wonderful moment - very wonderful. 'Tis a pity we must spoil it by talking. Eyes of purple-grey, sprinkled with gold. Eyes that I have looked for all my life. Sweet eyes, in which I drowned myself eons ago."

"Who are you?" said Emily crisply, now entirely convinced that he was quite mad. He laid his hand on his heart and bowed.

"Mark Greaves - Mark D. Greaves - Mark Delage Greaves."

Mark Greaves! Emily had a confused idea that she ought to know the name. It sounded curiously familiar.

"Is it possible you do not recognize my name! Verily this is fame. Even in this remote corner of the world I should have supposed --"

"Oh!" cried Emily, light suddenly breaking in on her. "I -- I remember now. You wrote A Royal Betrothal."

"The story you so unfeelingly murdered - yes."

"Oh, I'm so sorry," Emily interrupted. "Of course you would think it unpardonable. It was this way -- you see --"

He stopped her by a wave of a very long, very white hand.

"No matter. No matter. It does not interest me at all now. I admit I was very angry when I came herre. I am stopping at the Derry Pond Hotel ofThe Dunes -- ah, what a name - poetry - mystery - romance - and I saw the special edition of The Argus this morning. I was angry - had I not a right to be? - and yet more sad than angry. My story was barbarously mutilated. A happy ending. Horrible. My ending was sorrowful and artistic. A happy ending can never be artistic. I hastened to the den of The Argus. I dissembled my anger - I discovered who was responsible. I came here - to denounce - to upbraid. I remain to worship."

Emily simply did not know what to say. New Moon traditions held no precedent for this.

"You do not understand me. You are puzzled - your bewilderment becomes you. Again I say a wonderful moment. To come enraged - and behold divinity. To realise as soon as I saw you that you were meant for me and me alone."

Emily wished somebody would come in. This was getting nightmarish.

"It is absurd to talk so," she said shortly. "We are strangers --"

"We are not strangers," he interrupted. "We have loved in some other life, of course, and our love was a violent, gorgeous thing - a love of eternity. I recognized you as soon as I entered. As soon as you have recovered from your sweet surprise you will realise this, too. When can you marry me?"

To be asked by a man to marry him five minutes after the first moment you have laid eyes on him is an experience more stimulating than pleasant. Emily was annoyed.

"Don't talk nonsense, please," she said curtly. "I am not going to marry you at any time."

"Not marry me? But you must! I have never before asked a woman to marry me. I am the famous Mark Greaves. I am rich. I have the charm and romance of my French mother and the common sense of my Scotch father. With the French side of me I feel and acknowledge your beauty and mystery. With the Scotch side of me I bow in homage to your reserve and dignity. You are ideal -- adorable. Many women have loved me but I loved them not. I enter this room a free man. I go out a captive. Enchanting captivity! Adorable captor! I kneel before you in spirit."

Emily was horribly afraid he would kneel before her in the flesh. He looked quite capable of it. And suppose Aunt Elizabeth should come in.

"Please go away," she said desperately. "I'm -- I'm very busy and I can't stop talking to you any longer. I'm sorry about the story - if you would let me explain -"

"I have said it does not matter about the story. Though you must learn never to write happy endings - never. I will teach you. I wil teach you the beauty and artistry of sorrow and incompleteness. Ah, what a pupil you will be! What bliss to teach such a pupil! I kiss your hand."

He made a step nearer as if to seize upon it. Emily stepped backward in alarm.

"You must be crazy," she exclaimed.

"Do I look crazy?" demanded Mark Greaves.

"You do," retorted Emily flatly and cruelly.

"Perhaps I do - probably I do. Crazy - intoxicated with wine of the rose. All lovers are mad. Divine madness! Oh, beautiful, unkissed lips!"

Emily drew herself up. This absurd interview must end. She was by now thoroughly angry.

"Mr. Greaves," she said - and such was the power of the Murray look that Mr. Greaves realised she meant exactly what she said. "I shan't listen to any more of this nonsense. Since you won't let me explain about the matter of the story I bid you good-afternoon."

Mr. Greaves looked gravely at her for a moment. Then he said solemnly:

"A kiss? Or a kick? Which?"

Was he speaking metaphorically? But whether or no --

"A kick," said Emily disdainfully.

Mr. Greaves suddenly seized the crystal goblet and dashed it violently against the stove.

Emily uttered a faint shriek - partly of real horror - partly of dismay. Aunt Elizabeth's treasured goblet.

"That was merely a defence reaction," said Mr. Greaves, glaring at her. "I had to do that - or kill you. Ice-maiden! Chill vestal! Cold as your northern snows! Farewell."

He did not slam the door as he went out. He merely shut it gently and irrevocably, so that Emily might realise what she had lost. When she saw that he was really out of the garden and marching indignantly down the lane as if he were crushing something beneath his feet, she permitted herself the relief of a long breath - the first she had dared to draw since his entrance.

"I suppose," she said, half hysterically, "that I ought to be thankful he did not throw the dish of strawberry preserves at me."

Aunt Elizabeth came in.

"Emily, the rock-crystal goblet! Your Grandmother Murray's goblet! And you have broken it!"

"No, really, Aunty dear, I didn't. Mr. Greaves - Mr. Mark Delage Greaves did it. He threw it at the stove."

"Threw it at the stove!" Aunt Elizabeth was staggered. "Why did he throw it at the stove?"

"Because I wouldn't marry him," said Emily.

"Marry him! Did you ever see him before?"

"Never."

Aunt Elizabeth gathered up the fragments of the crystal goblet and went out quite speechless. There was - there must be - something wrong with a girl when a man proposed marriage to her at first meeting. And hurled heirloom goblets at inoffensive stoves.

The Books: "Emily's Quest" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Emily's Quest - by L.M. Montgomery

The whole 'furnishing of the Disappointed House' section is fantastically written. It's so domestic, so SPECIFIC - Lucy Maud gets into the decorating details with exquisite details ... the mirrors, the china, the knick knacks Dean brings in from all over the world, the pictures on the wall, the sofas ... Elizabeth's opinion on all of it ... and it's that very specificity that (to me) gives the whole section its eerie quality. Emily is putting all of her energy into furniture and wallpaper because what is WRONG is so wrong that to even look at it would seem like a betrayal. There's a moment where she admits to herself, at 3 a.m., that the house means more to her than Dean does ... but then Lucy Maud writes that she said that to herself and 'then refused to believe it the next morning.' Poor Emily. She knows the truth - her subconscious knows the truth - but she is REFUSING to look at it. And so she has moments of terrible haunting. Moments when she looks at the fireplace in the Disappointed House and remembers Teddy ... moments when she feels trapped by her engagement ring and like she wants to fling it away ...

It's depressing, yes, but Lucy Maud is at her best. Seriously. She's never been so successfully DARK as in this book. (She TRIED to be dark at points during Mistress Pat but by that point I am so annoyed at stupid freakin' Pat that I think she deserves what she gets. You're scared and haunted, Pat? Well, good. Maybe THAT will snap you out of your immature attachment to nothing ever changing. You need psychological HELP, Pat. Seriously. Get it, and soon. Ooooh, I can't wait to excerpt THOSE 2 books! The only ones where Lucy Maud fails - that's gonna be fun!!) But back to Emily: There are images from Emily's Quest that just stay with me - Emily pacing up and down the seashore in the middle of the night, in psychic agony. Staring at the emerald ring on her finger, hating it, thinking of it as a "fetter". Poor Dean - throwing himself into the fun of homemaking, for the first time in his life. And she sits beside him, staring into the fire, wondering if she will ever stop thinking of Teddy. Dean, now that he has captured her, relaxes a bit. He doesn't realize that the price Emily has had to pay to get to this point is too high. Her writing is done. She has lost interest in it. This may have made Dean happy ... but he didn't realize that this will come back to "get" him in the end. Nobody can give up a dream like that without serious repercussions. It has to be dealt with openly. You cannot force someone to downgrade or give up their dear dreams. Emily is not at that point yet ... she is just kind of listless and indifferent to the thought of all that ambition. The only thing she cares about is getting the right china for her house ... the house she loves so much. It is all she CAN care about.

It's an extremely eerie section.

And then it all culminates with Emily's last (at least in the books!!) second-sight experience. Each book has some kind of paranormal event ... where Emily is not just experiencing it, but changing the course of people's lives. Ilse Burnley's mother is found - after years of her whole family thinking she has run off with another man. Allan Bradshaw is found - he was trapped in an empty house for 4 days - he wouldn't have lived much longer - and Emily saw where he was in a dream. And now ... this moment. Where she reaches across the ocean - across the space-time continuum - to warn Teddy of impending disaster.

That's the excerpt below.

Excerpt from Emily's Quest - by L.M. Montgomery

II

But that letter from Ilse that day. Teddy was coming home. He was to sail on the Flavian. He was going to be home most of the summer.

"If it could have been all over - before he came," muttered Emily.

Always to be afraid of to-morrow? Content - even happy with to-day - but always afraid of to-morrow. Was this to be her life? And why that fear of tomorrow?

She had brought the key of the Disappointed House with her. She had not been in it since November and she wanted to see it - beautiful, waiting, desirable. Her home. In its charm and sanity vague, horrible fears and doubts woudl vanish. The soul of that happy last summer would come back to her. She paused at the garden gate to look lovingly at it - the dear little house nestled under the old trees that sighed softly as they had sighed to her childhood visions. Below, Blair Water was grey and sullen. She loved Blair Water in all its changes - its sparkle of summer, its silver of dusk, its miracle of moonlight, its dimpled rings of rain. And she loved it now, dark and brooding. There was somehow a piercing sadness in that sullent, waiting landscape all around her - as if - the odd fancy crossed her mind - as if it were afraid of spring. How this idea of fear haunted her! She looked up beyond the spires of the Lombardies on the hill. And in a sudden pale rift between the clouds a star shone down on her - Vega of the Lyre.

With a shiver Emily hurriedly unlocked the door and stepped in. The house seemed to be vacant - waiting for her. She fumbled through the darkness to the matches she knew were on the mantelpiece and lighted the tall, pale-green taper beside the clock. The beautiful room glimmered out at her in the flickering light - just as they had left it that last evening. There was Elizabeth Bas, who could never have known the meaning of fear - Mona Lisa, who mocked at it. But the Lady Giovanna, who never turned her saintly profile to look squarely at you. Had she ever known it - this suble, secret fear that one could never put in words? - that would be so ridiculous if one could put it in words? Dean Priest's sad lovely mother. Yes, she had known fear; it looked out of her pictured eyes now in that dim, furtive light.

Emily shut the door and sat down in the armchair beneath Elizabeth Bas' picture. She could hear the dead, dry leaves of a dead summer rustling eerily on the beach just outside the window. And the wind - rising - rising - rising. But she liked it. "The wind is free - not a prisoner like me." She crushed the unbidden thought down sternly. She would not think such things. Her fetters were of her own forging. She had put them on willingly, even desirously. Nothing to do but wear them gracefully.

How the sea moaned down there below the fields! But here in the little house what a silence there was! Something strange and uncanny about the silence. It seemed to hold some profound meaning. She would not have dared to speak lest something should answer her. Yet fear suddenly left her. She felt dreamy - happy - far away from life and reality. The walls of the shadowy room seemed slowly to fade from her vision. The pictures withdrew themselves. There seemed to be nothing before her but Great-aunt Nancy's gazing-ball hung from the old iron lantern - a big, silvery, gleaming globe. In it she saw the reflected room, like a shining doll's-house, with herself sitting in the old, low chair and the taper on the mantelpiece like a tiny, impish star. Emily looked at it as she leaned back in her chair - looked at it till she saw nothing but that tiny point of light in a great misty universe.

III

Did she sleep? Dream? Who knows? Emily herself never know. Twice before in her life - once in delirium - once in sleep she had drawn aside the veil of sense and time and seen beyond. Emily never liked to remember those experiences. She forgot them deliberately. She had not recalled them for years. A dream - a fancy fever-bred. But this?

A small cloud seemed to shape itself within the gazing-ball. It dispersed - faded. But the reflected doll's-house in the ball was gone. Emily saw an entirely different scene - a long lofty room filled with streams of hurrying people - and among them a face she knew.

The gazing-ball was gone - the room in the Disappointed House was gone. She was no longer sitting in her chair looking on. She was in that strange, great room - she was among those throngs of people - she was standing by the man who was waiting impatiently before a ticket-window. As he turned his face and their eyes met she saw that it was Teddy - she saw the amazed recognition in his eyes. And she knew, indisputably, that he was in some terrible danger - and that she must save him.

"Teddy. Come."

It seemed to her that she caught his hand and pulled him away from the window. Then she was drifting back from him - back - back - and he was following - running after her - heedless of the people he ran into - following - following - she was back on the chair - outside of the gazing-ball - in it she still saw the station-room shrunk again to play-size - and that one figure running - still running - the cloud again - filling the ball - whitening - wavering - thinning - clearning. Emily was lying back in her chair staring fixedly into Aunt Nancy's gazing-ball, where the living-room was reflected calmly and silverly, with a dead-white spot that was her face and one solitary taper-light twinkling like an impish star.

IV

Emily, feeling as if she had died and come back to life, got herself out of the Disappointed House, and locked the door. The clouds had cleared away and the world was dim and unreal in starlight. Hardly realising what she was doing she turned her face seaward through the spruce wood - down the long, windy, pasture-field - over the dunes to the sandshore - along it like a haunted, driven creature in a weird, uncanny half-lit kingdom. The sea afar out was like grey satin half hidden in a creeping fog but it washed against the sands as she passed in little swishing, mocking ripples. She was shut in between the misty sea and the high, dark sand-dunes. If she could only go on so forever - never have to turn back and confront the unanswerable question the night had put to her.

She knew, beyond any doubt or cavil or mockery, that she had seen Teddy - had saved, or tried to save him, from some unknown peril. And she knew, just as simply and just as surely that she loved him - had always loved him, with a love that lay at the very foundation of her being.

And in two months' time she was to be married to Dean Priest.

What could she do? To marry him now was unthinkable. She could not live such a lie. But to break his heart - snatch from him all the happiness possible to his thwarted life - that, too, was unthinkable.

Yes, as Ilse had said, it was a very devilish thing to be a woman.

"Particularly," said Emily, filled with bitter self-contempt, "a woman who seemingly doesn't know her own mind for a month at a time. I was so sure last summer that Teddy no longer meant anything to me - so sure that I really cared enough for Dean to marry him. And now to-night - and that horrible power or gift or curse coming again when I thought I had outgrown it - left it behind forever."

Emily walked on that eerie sandshore half the night and slipped guiltily and stealthily into New Moon in the wee sma's to fling herself on her bed and fall at last in the absolute slumber of exhaustion.

The Books: "Emily's Quest" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Emily's Quest - by L.M. Montgomery

Now the Emily books start getting really really sad. The whole unspoken unrequited love thing with Teddy really speaks to me - even though it's frustrating to read it. I want to tell her to give up her pride - to make herself more available to him - to not make Teddy have to WORK so hard. But if she did any of those things, she would not be Emily. But more than that: the hope of her little book she wrote - having the hopes crushed by rejection letters - and then totally crushed by Dean. Dean, in his gentle way, goes right for the jugular - and basically says, "Stop hoping that you can DO anything with your writing, Emily." Emily is grief-stricken. She has no Teddy. All she has is her writing. What would life be without her writing? How can she stop hoping? She burns up her book - and then almost immediately afterwards - regrets it. She can never get her book back (of course she doesn't have a copy ... this is 1914 or whatever - NOW she would have to erase it off her hard drive as well!) ... and her sadness is so intense that she feels she must go outside, she must get OUT, she is trapped, a trapped creature - so she runs out into the hall, trips on something, falls down the stairs, and her foot is pierced by Laura's sewing scissors which had been left on the landing. The injury is so serious that it is thought Emily will never walk again. She tries to recover. But everything is different now.

Anyhoo. Here's an excerpt from this section. It's all really bleak and sad. Great writing, though, as always. Oh - and this excerpt good because we had that big discussiong about the merits of Dean yesterday.

And, I don't know ... these books always feel, to me, like Lucy Maud's most personal ... and the darkness in them is a reflection of that. Lucy Maud had a sad life. Sometimes reading her journals (especially from about 1918 on) are unbearable. Her sadness is so huge, and she can't express it. She must remain calm, and quiet ... because her husband's mental illness is a secret, and obviously stigmatized ... and he would lose his livelihood if it "got out" that he was a nutjob. I often wonder if people in those towns knew about him ... I am SURE they did. Lucy Maud can't have been the only one. He was a reverend - which means he was a public figure. It's not like he could just hang out in the house, and be all insane and stuff. He was out, about, visiting, heading committees, giving services, giving sermons ... I wonder about the remembrances of others in that town (probably too late now to find out) ... But Lucy Maud still bore that up all on her own. Thank God she was a famous woman, with her own money, and her own life ... she was not reliant upon him for anything. It wasn't a real marriage. She suffered in silence for, oh, 30 years? You want to tell her to share with someone, to talk about it, to not be ashamed ... but if she did then she would not be Lucy Maud.

There are a lot of similarities in that situation to Emily's. Not the FACTS of the situation ... but the energy behind it.

Lucy Maud, when she lost her cousin Frede in the 1918 influenza epidemic - lost her only confidante. The only friend she had. Her kindred spirit. She probably could have talked to frede about this stuff ... She could at least have not felt so alone. When Frede died, that was it for Lucy Maud, in terms of friends. She was a one-friend type of person, she could not have another.

At this point in Emily's life - Ilse seems so far away, so ... unreachable. She swoops into town on her vacations, she's dressed insanely well but also really glamorously - with earrings, and silks ... she parties hard, dances all night long, etc. She seems to be having FUN all the time ... and so there is a barrier between Ilse and Emily. Emily now has this darkness within her ... a loneliness, a sadness. She feels she MUST hide it ... she can no longer confide in Ilse. (She probably COULD, come to think of it ... Ilse is probably just as baffled by the distance between them as Emily is ... but neither of them break the ice ...) They are too distant.

It's all just really sad.

Excerpt from Emily's Quest - by L.M. Montgomery

From October to April Emily Starr lay in bed or on the sitting-room lounge watching the interminable windy drift of clouds over the long white hills or the passionless beauty of winter trees around quiet fields of snow, and wondering if she would ever walk again - or walk only as a pitiable cripple. There was some obscure injury to her back upon which the doctors could not agree. One said it was negligible and would right itself in time. Two others shook their heads and were afraid. But all were agreed about the foot. The scissors had made two cruel wounds - one by the ankle, one on the sole of the foot. Blood-poisoning set in. For days Emily hovered between life and death, then between the scarcely less terrible alternative of death and amputation. Aunt Elizabeth prevented that. When all the doctors agreed that it was the only way to save Emily's life she said grimly that it was not the Lord's will, as understood by the Murrays, that people's limbs should be cut off. Nor could she be removed from this position. Laura's tears and Cousin Jimmy's pleadings and Dr. Burnley's execrations and Dean Priest's agreements budged her not a lot. Emily's foot should not be cut off. Nor was it. When she recovered unmaimed Aunt Elizabeth was triumphant and Dr. Burnley confounded.

The danger of amputation was over, but the danger of lasting and bad lameness remained. Emily faced that all winter.

"If I only knew one way or the other," she said to Dean. "If I knew, I could make up my mind to bear it - perhaps. But to lie here - wondering - wondering if I'll ever be well."

"You will be well," said Dean savagely.

Emily did not know what she would have done without Dean that winter. He had given up his invariable winter trip and stayed in Blair Water that he might be near her. He spent the days with her, reading, talking, encouraging, sitting in the silence of perfect companionship. When he was with her Emily felt that she might even be able to face a lifetime of lameness. But in the long nights when everything was blotted out by pain she could not face it. Even when there was no pain her nights were often sleepless and very terrible when the wind wailed drearily about the old New Moon eaves or chased flying phantoms of snow over the hills. When she slept she dreamed, and in her dreams she was forever climbing stairs and could never get to the top of them, lured upward by an odd little whistle - two higher notes and a low one - that ever retreated as she climbed. It was better to lie awake than to have that terrible, recurrent dream. Oh, those bitter nights! Once Emily had not thought that the Bible verse declaring that there would be no night in heaven contained an attractive promise. No night? No soft twilight enkindled with stars? No white sacrament of moonlight? No mystery of velvet shadow and darkness? No ever-amazing miracle of dawn? Night was as beautiful as day and heaven would not be perfect without it.

But now in these dreary weeks of pain and dread she shared the hope of the Patmian seer. Night was a dreadful thing.

People said Emily Starr was very brave and patient and uncomplaining. But she did not seem so to herself. They did not know of the agonies of rebellion and despair and cowardice behind her outward calmness of Murray pride and reserve. Even Dean did not know - though perhaps he suspected.

She smiled gallantly when smiling was indicated, but she never laughed. Not even Dean could make her laugh, though he tried with all the powers of wit and humour at his command.

"My days of laughter are done," Emily said to herself. And her days of creation as well. She could never write again. The "flash" never came. No rainbow spanned the gloom of that terrible winter. People came to see her continuously. She wished they would stay away. Especially Uncle Wallace and Aunt Ruth, who were sure she would never walk again and said so every time they came. Yet they were not so bad as the callers who were cheerfully certain she would be all right in time and did not believe a word of it themselves. She had never had any intimate friends except Dean and Ilse and Teddy. Ilse wrote weekly letters in which she rather too obviously tried to cheer Emily up. Teddy wrote once when he heard of her accident. The letter was very kind and tactful and sincerely sympathetic. Emily thought it was the letter any indifferent friendly acquaintance might have written and she did not answer it though he had asked her to let him know how she was getting on. No more letters came. There was nobody but Dean. He had never failed her - never would fail her. More and more as the interminable days of storm and gloom passed she turned to him. In that winter of pain she seemed to herself to grow so old and wise that they met on equal ground at last. Without him life was a bleak, grey desert devoid of colour or music. When he came the desert would - for a time at least - blossom like the rose of joy and a thousand flowerets of fancy and hope and illusion would fling their garlands over it.

The Books: "Emily's Quest" (L.M. Montgomery)

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Emily's Quest - by L.M. Montgomery

In a weird way, even with all its ... sadness and tragedy and thwarted passion (God almighty! The thwarted passion!!) - sometimes I think Emily's Quest is my favorite of the 3 Emily books (it's my least favorite of the titles though. It doesn't give a sense of the feel of the book at all.) I love this one because it, like all the others, is a blend of comedy and tragedy - we have her diary entries, we learn about her successes in writing ... we get the small domestic dramas (some second cousin the next town over is convinced that Emily "put her into a story" and she's upset about it) ... and then of course the romances.

Emily still hangs out with Dean Priest - but now that she's a woman of 19, 20, 21 years old ... the dynamic shifts a bit. It is Dean's moment, the one he has been waiting for since she was a small child. Which is kind of creepy, and reading the book - I STILL am wondering what she sees in Dean. As an adult, I mean. Other fans of the booK: what do YOU all think of Dean? What's your response to him? As her work grows in importance and relevance, as it starts to make her some money (not a lot at first, but some) ... Dean starts to resent it. He used to take her seriously - when she was a child, and her "work" was no threat to him, it might be something she would grow out of, it also made her charming and precocious ... but to keep on doing it? To have a passion in life other than ... him? He doesn't like that. I don't know. I want to smack Dean upside the head at times. He wants to CAPTURE Emily. And although I have never met the woman (uhm, she's fictional, remember?) and I do not know her personally, I do know one thing: you should never try to CAPTURE her. And you can never expect to be the only thing in her life. She will always have her writing. It will take her away from you. Deal. Are you man enough to deal? Dean Priest is not. It is not until Emily is completely BROKEN (this book goes to some pretty dark places) that she says, "Yes, I'll marry you, Dean." But she is only half a person by then. Her heart has been broken. And he is partly responsible for it. He condescended to her book, the book that she poured her heart and soul into. And it's not that she just wanted praise. Its that Dean LIED. Dean saw the special-ness of the book itself - but also saw how much it meant to her ... and oh no no we can't have THAT. We can't have Emily have a passion other than ME. So he lied. In my opinion, he's a selfish bastard. I can barely forgive him for that. And once he has broken her ... one she has burned up her book and injured herself by falling down the stairs and nearly died ... Dean thinks she is broken enough to accept being his wife. grrrr. I'm putting a dark spin on him but I don't know - that's what I see. Only then does Emily turn towards Dean, as something known and comforting ... his demands on her soul no longer bother her because her soul has been crushed. Lovely. And Dean Priest is the kind of person who would accept half a woman, because half is better than none at all. I don't know, I don't like the guy. He seemed oKAY when she was a kid - but even then there was something a little too ... proprietary about his affections for her. I dislike that intensely. Let Emily be. Don't assume you know her better than she knows herself. I've had people treat me like that before (also on this blog) and it is infuriating!

However, just because I don't understand something doesn't mean it's not interesting - quite the contrary. Dean is one of Lucy Maud's most interesting and intriguing characters. He's never expected, he always seems slightly creepy to me, and yet I trust Emily (fictional character that she is) - that something in her is fulfilled by their conversations. Perhaps his whimsy, his education, the fact that he has traveled the world ... also the fact that he is an ADULT, and he validates that she is SPECIAL. Like her father used to do. But nobody does that for Emily now. If anything it's the opposite. Emily isn't like anybody else and all of the adults around her are trying to force her into a different mold, a more conventional mold. Dean does not do that. Not at first, anyway. I do not understand Emily's attachment to Dean (anyone who said to me, "Don't worry about your art - Your smile and your eyes will get you way further than your art ever will" can expect to have my undying hatred forever) ... I am like Aunt Elizabeth and Aunt Laura who wonder, "What does she see in him??" ... but that just makes it all the more fascinating. And almost horrifying - to watch everything unfold. Because ... that's how life is sometimes. Things DON'T work out the way you want them to. You DO make choices that you think might be temporary and then they turn out to be permanent. There AREN'T always happy endings. You don't end up with who you are suppoesd to end up with. You are haunted by another. Blah blah. Life tasted sweet once ... there were possibilities .. .hopes ... but now, no more. Give up. Give up. This is the journey that Emily goes on in this book. And there are parts of it that are so freakin' SAD, filled with such loss ... that I really related to it. I really relate to Emily. I have had attachments to men that the majority of the people in my life found inexplicable. I have resisted getting attached to anybody - because so many men have that proprietary thing going on ... and I can't bear it. Love me, but don't feel you must OWN me. Because I won't be owned. I have been that sad, and for that long. So I may not get why she finds Dean's company so refreshing ... but that's not because I think there is something wrong in the book, or in Lucy Maud's description of it. There's nothing MISSING. It's just my personal response to the events that unfold. I want to scream at the book, "NO! YOU CAN'T MARRY HIM, EMILY! THIS IS GOING TO BE A HUGE HUGE MISTAKE!" But Lucy Maud makes us squirm, makes us wait ... it goes until almost the very last second ... the situation requires a sudden reversal (very typical of Lucy Maud's plots - a situation goes on unchanged for 25 years and then suddenly, in 5 minutes, with one or 2 sentences, the whole thing transforms. "I always loved you!" "I never forgave you." "I never got your letter." Etc.) And in Emily's Quest this wait is really agonizing - the most agonizing of all of Lucy Maud's stories. Emily's soul is on the rack. I mean, this woman goes through the wringer. And - I love her for it. I ache for her. Tears fill my eyes when she finds happiness because it is so hard-won, so RIGHT.

Here's an excerpt from the beginning of the book - an evening with Dean Priest.

And even though the excerpt itself is a foreshadowing of what will come - a cloud hangs over the whole thing, doesn't it?? - I love the typical Lucy Maud touch at the very end, where she talks about "thirty years later". Too funny. Really puts some perspective on it. It's never good to be TOO serious.

Excerpt from Emily's Quest - by L.M. Montgomery

Was Dean Priest changing from friend to lover? Nonsense. Arrant nonsense. Disagreeable nonsense. For she did not want him as a lover and she did want him madly as a friend. She couldn't lose his friendship. It was too dear, delightful, stimulating, wonderful. Why did such devilish things ever happen? When Emily reached this point in her disconneted musings she always stopped and retraced her mental steps fiercely, terrified to realise that she was almost on the point of admitting that "the something devilish" had already happened or was in process of happening.

In one way it was almost a relief to her when Dean said casually one November evening:

"I suppose I must soon be thinking of my annual migration."

"Where are you going this year?" asked Emily.

"Japan. I've never been there. Don't want to go now particularly. But whats the use of staying? Would you want to talk to me in the sitting-room all winter with the aunts in hearing?"

"No," said Emily between a laugh and a shiver. She recalled one fiendish autumn evening of streaming rain and howling wind when they couldn't walk in the garden but had to sit in the room where Aunt Elizabeth was knitting and Aunt Laura crocheting by the table. It had been awful. And again why? Why couldn't they talk as freely and whimsically and intimately then as they did in the garden? The answer to this at least was not to be expressed in any terms of sex. Was it because they talked of so many things Aunt Elizabeth could not understand and so disapproved of? Perhaps. But whatever the cause Dean might as well have been at the other side of the world for all the real conversation that was possible.

"So I might as well go," said Dean, waiting for this exquisite, tall, white girl in an old garden to say she would miss him horribly. She had said it every one of his flitting autumns for many years. But she did not say it this time. She found she dared not.

Again, why?

Dean was looking at her with eyes that could be tender or sorrowful or passionate, as he willed, and which now seemed to be a mixture of all three expressions. He must hear her say she would miss him. His true reason for going away this winter was to make her realise how much she missed him - make her feel that she could not live without him.

"Will you miss me, Emily?"

"That goes without saying," answered Emily lightly - too lightly. Other years she had been very frank and serious about it. Dean was not altogether regretful for the change. But he could guess nothing of the attitude of mind behind it. She must have changed because she felt something - suspected something, of what he had striven for years to hide and suppress as rank madness. What then? Did this new lightness indicate that she didn't want to make a too important thing of admitting she would miss him? Or was it only the instinctive defence of a woman against something that implied or evoked too much?

"It will be so dreadful here this winter without you and Teddy and Ilse that I will not let myself think of it at all," went on Emily. "Last winter was bad. And this - I know somehow - will be worse. But I'll have my work."

"Oh, yes, your work," agreed Dean with a little tolerant, half-amused inflection in his voice that always came now when he spoke of her "work", as if it tickled him hugely that she sholud call her pretty scribblings "work". Well, one must humour the charming child. He could not have said so more plainly in words. His implications cut across Emily's sensitive soul like a whiplash. And all at once her work and her ambitions became - momentarily at least - as childish and unimportant as he considered them. She could not hold her own conviction against him. He must know. He was so clever - so well-educated. He must know. That was the agony of it. She could not ignore his opinion. Emily knew deep down in her heart that she would never be able wholly to believe in herself until Dean Priest admitted that she could do something honestly worth while in its way. And if he never admitted it --

"I shall carry pictures of you wherever I go, Star," Dean was saying. Star was his old nickname for her - not a pun on her name but because he said she reminded him of a star. "I shall see you sitting in your room by that old lookout window, spinning your pretty cobwebs - pacing up and down in this old garden - wandering in the Yesterday Road - looking out to sea. Whenever I shall recall a bit of Blair Water loveliness I shall see you in it. After all, all other beauty is only background for a beautiful woman."

"Her pretty cowebs--" ah, there it was. That was all Emily heard. She did not even realise that he was telling her he thought her a beautiful woman.

"Do you think what I write is nothing but cobwebs, Dean?" she asked chokingly.

Dean looked surprised, doing it very well.

"Star, what else is it? What do you think it is yourself? I'm glad you can amuse yourself by writing. It's a splendid thing to have a little hobby of the kind. And if you can pick up a few shekels by it - well, that's all very well too in this kind of a world. But I'd hate to have you dream of being a Bronte or an Austen - and wake to find you'd wasted your youth on a dream."

"I don't fancy myself a Bronte or an Austen," said Emily. "But you didn't talk like that long ago, Dean. You used to think then I could do something one day."

"We don't bruise the pretty visions of a child," said Dean. "But it's foolish to carry childish dreams over into maturity. Better face facts. You write charming things of their kind, Emily. Be content with that and don't waste your best years yearning for the unattainable or striving to reach some height far beyond your grasp."

II

Dean was not looking at Emily. He was leaning on the old sundial and scowling down at it with the air of a man who was forcing himself to say a disagreeable thing because he felt it was his duty.

"I won't be just a mere scribbler of pretty stories," cried Emily rebelliously. He looked into her face. She was as tall as he was -- a trifle taller, though he would not admit it.

"You do not need to be anything but what you are," he said in a low vibrant tone. "A woman such as this old New Moon has never seen before. You can do more with those eyes - that smile - than you can ever do with your pen."

"You sound like Great-aunt Nancy Priest," said Emily cruelly and contemptuously.

But had he not been cruel and contemptuous to her? Three o'clock that night found her wide-eyed and anguished. She had lain through sleepless hours face to face with two hateful convictions. One was that she could never do anything worth doing with her pen. The other was that she was going to lose Dean's friendship. For friendship was all she could give him and it would not satisfy him. She must hurt him. And oh, how could she hurt Dean whom life had used so cruelly? She had said "no" to Andrew Murray and laughed a refusal to Perry Miller without a qualm. But this was an utterly different thing.

Emily sat up in bed in the darkness and moaned in a despair that was none the less real and painful because of the indisputable fact that thirty years later she might be wondering what on earth she had been moaning about.

"I wish there were no such things as lovers and lovemaking in the world," she said with savage intensity, honestly believeing she meant it.

The Books: "Emily Climbs" (L.M. Montgomery)

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Emily Climbs - by L.M. Montgomery Excerpt 7!!

I think this'll be my last excerpt from this book, although I love it so. I may change my mind tomorrow. I reserve the right to do that.

This, for me, is one of the funniest episodes in the book ... it's so RIDICULOUS, and it totally feels like it could have happened, because life just is that absurd sometimes. Perry comes and knocks on the window at Aunt Ruth's - he needs to talk to Emily. He had been invited to dinner at some illustrious judge's house - and Emily had been dying to hear how it all turned out. Perry is kind of lacking in manners - or, no - let's just say that certain refined manners do not come naturally to him - he needs to be REMINDED. Emily reminds him. Stuff like: don't fidget. Don't eat stuff off your knife. Don't slurp when you take a sip of water. Etc. So it's 11 pm or something like that - and Emily had gone down to the dining room to get something - she was in her nightgown - and suddenly there is Perry at the window, knocking. Emily knew she SHOLUDN'T open the the window ... but ... well. She's not a girl who worries all that much about should and shouldn't. She opens the window - and then comes a long conversation, with Perry standing outside, and Emily standing inside - where Perry tells her all about dinner at the judge's house. First of all, the entire story of all of the mishaps during the dinner ... Lucy Maud is in rare rare form. This is one of the times I love her best - in her comedic moments, when things go WRONG. Especially when things go wrong and everyone WANTS them to go right. Like in Anne of Green Gables (excerpt here) when Marilla has the new minister and his wife over for tea and lets Anne make the pudding - and suddenly during the tea - with everyone at the table, nice and civilized - Anne stands up suddenly and shouts at Marilla, "A MOUSE DROWNED IN THE PUDDING. I FORGOT TO TELL YOU BEFORE!" I am laughing right now as I type this. hahahahaha Lucy Maud has a wicked and almost subversive sense of humor. It's like the Marx Brothers. It is, Sheila? Yes, it is. To me, the Marx Brothers are funniest when they are in a situation where it is required that they be really civilized and proper. Because then you see even MORE how ridiculous it all is. You see how ridiculous even the CONCEPT of "order" is. Anyway, so Perry's big meal at the judge's is like that. Perry trips, he falls, he spills stuff, he blurts out inappropriate things ... but apparently, the judge is even MORE impressed with this young upstart. He thinks Perry is kind of brilliant.

But it's what comes AFTER Perry telling the story that is so funny to me. It's just ... well, it's perfect.

Excerpt from Emily Climbs - by L.M. Montgomery

"Why didn't you watch what the others did and imitate them?"

"Too rattled. But I'll say this - for all the style, the eats weren't a bit better than you have at New Moon - no, nor as good, by a jugful. Your Aunt Elizabeth's cooking would knock the spots off the Hardy's every time - and they didn't give you too much of anything! After the dinner was over we went back to the parlour - they called it living-room - and things weren't so bad. I didn't do anything out of the way except knock over a bookcase."

"Perry!"

"Well, it was wobbly. I was leaning against it talking to Mr. Hardy, and I suppose I leaned too hard, for the blooming thing went over. But, righting it and getting the books back seemed to loosen me up and I wasn't so tongue-tied after that. I got on not too bad - only every once in a long while I'd let slip a bit of slang, before I could catch it. I tell you, I wished I'd taken your advice about talking slang. Once the fat old lady agreed with something I'd said - she had sense if she did have three chins - and I was so tickled to find her on my side that I got excited and said to her, 'You bet your boots' before I thought. And I guess I bragged a bit. Do I brag too much, Emily?"

This question had never presented itself to Perry before.

"You do," said Emily candidly, "and it's very bad form."

"Well, I felt kind of cheap after I'd done it. I guess I've got an awful lot to learn yet, Emily. I'm going to buy a book on etiquette and learn it off by heart. No more evenings like this for me. But it was better at the last. Jim Hardy took me off to the den and we played checkers and I licked him dizzy. Nothing wrong with my checker etiquette, I tell you. And Mrs. Hardy said my speech at the debate was the best she had ever heard for a boy of my age, and she wanted to know what I meant to go in for. She's a great little dame and has the social end of things down fine. That is one reason I want you to marry me when the time comes, Emily - I've got to have a wife with brains."

"Don't talk nonsense, Perry," said Emily, haughtily.

"'Tisn't nonsense," said Perry, stubbornly. "And it's time we settled something. You needn't turn up your nose at me because you're a Murray. I'll be worth marrying some day - even for a Murray. Come, put me out of my misery."

Emily rose disdainfully. She had her dreams, as all girls have, the rose-red one of love among them, but Perry Miller had no share in those dreams.

"I'm not a Murray - and I'm going upstairs. Goodnight."

"Wait half a second," said Perry, with a grin. "When the clock strikes eleven I'm going to kiss you."

Emily did not for a moment believe that Perry had the slightest notion of doing anthing of the kind - which was foolish of her, for Perry had a habit of always doing what he said he was going to do. But then, he had never been sentimental. She ignored his remark, but lingered a moment to ask another question about the Hardy dinner. Perry did not answer the question: the clock began to strike elevent as she asked it - he flung his legs over the window-sill and stepped into the room. Emily realised too late that he meant what he said. She had only time to duck her head and Perry's hearty, energetic smack - there was nothing subtle about Perry's kisses - fell on her ear instead of her cheek.

At the very moment Perry kissed her and before her indignant protest could rush to her lips two things happened. A gust of wind swept in from the verandah and blew the little candle out, and the dining-room door opened and Aunt Ruth appeared in the doorway, robed in a pink flannel nightgown and carrying another candle, the light of which struck upward with gruesome effect on her set face with its halo of crimping-pins.

This is one of the places where a conscientious biographer feels that, in the good old phrase, her pen cannot do justice to the scene.

Emily and Perry stood as if turned to stone. So, for a moment, did Aunt Ruth. Aunt Ruth had expected to find Emily there, writing, as she had done one month previously when Emily had had an inspiration at bedtime and had slipped down to the warm dining-room to jot it in her Jimmy-book. But this! I must admit it did look bad. Really, I think we can hardly blame Aunt Ruth for righteous indignation.

Aunt Ruth looked at the unlucky pair.

"What are you doing here?" she asked Perry.

Stovepipe Town made a mistake.

"Oh, looking for a round square," said Perry offhandedly, his eyes suddenly becoming limpid with mischief and lawless roguery.

Perry's "impudence" - Aunt Ruth called it that, and, really, I think he was impudent - naturally made a bad matter worse. Aunt Ruth turned to Emily.

"Perhaps you can explain how you came to be here, at this hour, kissing this fellow in the dark?"

Emily flinched from the crude vulgarity of the question as if Aunt Ruth had struck her. She forgot how much appearances justified Aunt Ruth, and et a perverse spirit enter into and possess her. She lifted her head haughtily.

"I have no explanation to give to such a question, Aunt Ruth."

"I didn't think you would have."

Aunt Ruth gave a very disagreeable laugh, through which a thin, discordant note of triumph sounded. One might have thought that, under all her anger, something pleased Aunt Ruth. It is pleasant to be justified in the opinion we have always entertained of anybody. "Well, perhaps you will be so good as to answer some questions. How did this fellow get here?"

"Window," said Perry laconically, seeing that Emily was not going to answer.

"I was not asking you, sir. Go," said Aunt Ruth, pointing dramatically to the window.

"I'm not going to stir a step out of this room until I know what you're going to do to Emily," said Perry stubbornly.

"I," said Aunt Ruth, with an air of terrible detachment, "am not going to do anything to Emily."

"Mrs. Dutton, be a good sport," implored Perry coaxingly, "It's all my fault -- honest! Emily wasn't one bit to blame. You see, it was this way--"

But Perry was too late.

"I have asked my niece for an explanation and she has refused to give it. I do not choose to listen to yours."

"But---" persisted Perry.

"You had better go, Perry," said Emily, whose face was flying danger signals. She spoke quietly, but the Murrayest of all Murrays could not have expressed more definite command. There was a quality in it Perry dared not disregard. He meekly scrambled out of the window into the night. Aunt Ruth stepped forward and shut the window. Then, ignoring Emily utterly, she marched her pink flanneled little figure back upstairs.

Emily did not sleep much that night -- nor, I admit, did she deserve to. After her sudden anger died away, shame cut her like a whip. She realized that she had behaved very foolishly in refusing an explanation to Aunt Ruth. Aunt Ruth had a right to it, when such a situation developed in her own house, no matter how hateful and disagreeable she made her method of demanding it. Of course, she would not have believed a word of it; but Emily, if she had given it, would not have further complicated her false position.

Emily fully expected she would be sent home to New Moon in disgrace. Aunt Ruth would stonily decline to keep such a girl any longer in her house -- Aunt Elizabeth would agree with her -- Aunt Laura woudl be heartbroken. Would even Cousin Jimmy's loyalty stand the strain? It was a very bitter prospect. No wonder Emily spent a white night. She was so unhappy that every beat of her heart seemed to hurt her. And again I say, most unequivocally, she deserved it. I haven't one word of pity or excuse for her.

The Books: "Emily Climbs" (L.M. Montgomery)

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Emily Climbs - by L.M. Montgomery Excerpt 6!!

This is part of the section in the book where Emily has her second moment of "second sight". In Emily of New Moon (excerpt here) she "dreamt" she saw what happened to Ilse Burnley's mother - Ilse Burnley's mother didn't run off with another man so many years ago - Ilse Burnley's mother was taking a walk, and fell down an old nearly hidden well. And this turned out to be true. How could Emily know this? Lucy Maud writes about this event in a certain way: Emily isn't just upset at the thought that Ilse's mother ran off with another man, leaving her daughter and husband behind. Emily obsesses about it. She worries about it until she nearly makes herself sick. She loses appetite. She mopes. All joy is kind of sapped out of life for her. It's as though her entire consciousness is pouring into that mystery ... until she "sees" the truth.

In Emily Climbs this happens again. Emily and Ilse are taking a weekend - and going on a walking tour of the outlying areas of Shrewsbury - canvassing for subscriptions for the Shrewsbury Times. They're getting paid to do this - and they thought it would be fun. Emily gets permission from Elizabeth and Ruth to do this - they're going to stay one night with such and such a relative - so they have to make sure they're there by a certain time, and blah blah. Well, things don't work out in books the way they are supposed to - and Emily and Ilse decide to take a shortcut through the woods - after canvassing for a while - It should bring them out to a place where the town where they would spend the night would be visible. Instead of going all the way around the forest. Well, they come out on the other side - no town in sight. Just fields and farmhouses and church steeples. They are lost. It is sunset. No way will they make it to the appointed house by nightfall. So they decide to sleep in a haystack. It's a beautifully written section - Emily and Ilse - the country night - the two girls sharing secrets, looking up at the stars, talking about God, laughing ... a night to remember. The next day, they wake up for more canvassing, a little rumpled, with hay in their hair ... but ready to go.

And on their travels - they learn that a little boy, an Allen Bradshaw, has disappeared. A search party is out looking for him, but so far he is nowhere to be found. This, again, is one of those things that Emily fixates on. It's so upsetting to her, that she can't let it go. Ilse is able to put it out of her mind, but Emily walks along, worrying it to death. Where could he be? What happened to him? He CAN'T be dead ... he just can't!

I just love this one part of that larger story. Not sure why. It has something to do with her writing about the storm, or the oncoming storm ... Again, it's some of her best work. I can SEE that storm. And it just adds to the general anxietal feeling of the day ...

But more than that: like always: it's about character. Ilse is alive, as far as I'm concerned. Emily is alive. They are not just creatures on the page.

Oh, and the whole "house that belongs to me" section ... Later, of course, it turns out that Allan Bradshaw was exploring and accidentally got locked into that house (a summer cottage, no inhabitants at that time). But at the time - Emily is just inexplicably drawn to this random house.

Excerpt from Emily Climbs - by L.M. Montgomery

The story haunted Emily all the rest of the day and she walked under its shadow. Anything like that always took almost a morbid hold on her. She could not bear the thought of the poor mother at Malvern Point. And the little lad - where was he? Where had he been the previous night when she had lain in the ecstasy of wild, free hours? That night had not been cold - but Wednesday night had. And she shuddered as she recalled Tuesday night, when a bitter autumnal wind-storm had raged till dawn, with showers of hail and stinging rain. Had he been out in that - the poor lost baby?

"Oh, I can't bear it!" she moaned.

"It's dreadful," agreed Ilse, looking rather sick, "but we can't do anything. There's no sue in thinking of it. Oh" -- suddenly Ilse stamped her foot -- "I believe Father used to be right when he didn't believe in God. Such a hideous thing as this -- how could it happen if there is a God -- a decent God, anyway?"

"God hadn't anything to do with this," said Emily. "You know the Power that made last night couldn't have brought about this monstrous thing."

"Well, He didn't prevent it," retorted Ilse - who was suffering so keenly that she wanted to arraign the universe at the bar of her pain.

"Little Allan Bradshaw may be found yet - he must be," exclaimed Emily.

"He won't be found alive," stormed Ilse. "No, don't talk to me about God. And don't talk to me of this. I've got to forget it - I'll go crazy if I don't."

Ilse put the matter out of her mind with another stamp of her foot and Emily tried to. She couldn't quite succeed but she forced herself to concentrate superficially on the business of the day, though she knew the horror lurked in the back of her consciousness. Only once did she really forget it - when they came around a point on the Malvern River Road and saw a little house built in the cup of a tiny bay, with a steep grassy hill rising behind it. Scattered over the hill were solitary, beautifully shaped young fir-trees like little, green, elongated pyramids. No other house was in sight. All about it was a lovely autumnal solitude of grey, swift-running, windy river, and red, spruce-fringed points.

"That house belongs to me," said Emily.

Ilse stared.

"To you?"

"Yes. Of course, I don't own it. But haven't you sometimes seen houses that you knew belonged to you no matter who owned them?"

No, Ilse hadn't. She hadn't the least idea what Emily meant.

"I know who owns that house," she said. "It's Mr. Scobie of Kingsport. He built it for a summer cottage. I heard Aunt Net talking of it the last time I was in Wiltney. It was finished a few weeks ago. It's a pretty little house, but too small for me. I like a big house -- I don't want to feel cramped and crowded - especially in summer."

"It's hard for a big house to have any personality," said Emily thoughtfully. "But little houses almost always have. That house is full of it. There isn't a line or a corner that isn't eloquent, and those casement windows are lovable - especially that little one ihgh up under the eaves over the front door. It's absolutely smilig at me. Look at it glowing like a jewel in the sunshine out of the dark shingle setting. The little house is gretting us. You dear friendly thing, I love you - I understand you. As Old Kelly would say, ''may niver a tear be shed under your roof.' The people who are going to live in you must be nice people or they would never have thought you. If I lived in you, beloved, I'd always stand at that western window at evening to wave to some one coming home. That is just exactly what that window was built for - a frame for love and welcome."

"When you get through with talking to your house, we'd better hurry on," warned Ilse. "There's a storm coming up. See those clouds - and those sea-gulls. Gulls never come up this far except before a storm. It's going to rain any minute. We'll not sleep on a haystack tonight, Friend Emily."

Emily loitered past the little house and looked at it lovingly as long as she could. It was such a dear little place with its dubbed-off gables and rich, brown shingle tints, and its general intimate air of sharing mutual jokes and secrets. She turned aroun dhalf a dozen times to look upon it, as they climbed the steep hill, and when at last it dipped below sight she sighed.

"I hate to leave it. I have the oddest feeling, Ilse, that it's calling to me - that I ought to go back to it."

"Don't be silly," said Ilse impatiently. "There -- it's sprinkling now! If you hadn't poked so long looking at your blessed little hut we'd have been out on the main road now, and near shelter. Wow, but it's cold!"

"It's going to be a dreadful night," said Emily in a low voice. "Oh, Ilse, where is that poor little lost boy tonight? I wish I knew if they had found him."

"Don't!" said Ilse savagely. "Don't say another word about him. It's awful - it's hideous - but what can we do?"

"Nothing. That's the dreadful thing about it. It seems wicked to go on about our own business, asking for subscriptions, when that child is not found."

By this time they had reached the main road. The rest of the afternoon was not pleasant. Stinging showers came at intervals: between them the world was raw and damp and cold, with a moaning wind that came in ominous sighing gusts under a leaden sky. At every house where they called they were reminded of the lost baby, for there were only women to give or refuse subscriptions. The men were all away searching for him.

"Though it isn't any use now," said one woman gloomily, "except that they may find his little body. He can't have lived this long. I jest can't eat or cook for thinking of his poor mother. They say she's nigh crazy - I don't wonder."

"They say old Margaret McIntyre is taking it quite calmly," said an older woman, who was piecing a log-cabin quilt by the window. "I'd have thought she'd be wild, too. She seemed real fond of little Allan."

"Oh, Margaret McIntyre has never got worked up about anything for the past five years - ever since her own son Neil was frozen to death in the Klondyke. Seems as if her feelings were frozen then, too - she's been a little mad ever since. She won'kt worry none over this - she'll just smile and tell you she spanked the King."

Both women laughed. Emily, with the story-teller's nose, scented a story instantly, but though she would fain have lingered to hunt it down Ilse hustled her away.

"We must get on, Emily, or we'll never reach St. Clair before night."

They soon realized that they were not going to reach it. At sunset St. Clair was still three miles away and there was every indication of a wild evening.

"We can't get to St. Clair, that's certain," said Ilse. "It's going to settle down for ar steady ran and it'll be as black as a million black cats in a quarter of an hour. We'd better go to that house over there and ask if we can stay all night. It looks snug and respectable - though it certainly is the jumping-off place."

The house at which Ilse pointed - an old whitewashed house with a grey roof - was set on the face of a hill amid bright green fields of clover aftermath. A wet red road wound up the hill to it. A thick grove of spruces shut it off from the gulf shore, and beyond the grove a tiny dip in the land revealed a triangular glimpse of misty, white-capped, grey sea. The near brook valley was filled with young spruces, dark-green in the rain. The grey clouds hung heavily over it. Suddenly the sun broke through the clouds in the west for one magical moment. The hill of clover meadows flashed instantly into incredibly vivid green. The triangle of sea shimmered into violet. The old house gleamed like white marble against the emerald of its hilly background, and the inky black sky over and around it.

"Oh," gasped Emily, "I never saw anything so wonderful!"

She groped wildly in her bag and clutched her Jimmy-book. The post of a field-gate served as a desk- Emily licked a stubborn pencil and wrote feverishly. Ilse squatted on a stone in a fence corner and waited with ostentatious patience. She knew that when a certain look appeared on Emily's face she was not to be dragged away util she was ready to go. The sun had vanished and the rain was beginning to fall again when Emily put her Jimmy-book back into her bag, with a sigh of satisfaction.

"I had to get it, Ilse."

"Couldn't you have waited till you got to dry land and wrote it down from memory?" grumbled Ilse, uncoiling herself from her stone.

"No - I'd have missed some of the flavour then. I've got it all now - and in just exactly the right words. Come on - I'll race you to the house. Oh, smell that wind - there's nothing in all the world like a salt sea-wind - a savage salt sea-wind. After all, there's something delightful in a storm. There's always something - deep down in me - that seems to rise and leap out to meet a storm - wrestle with it."

"I feel that way sometimes - but not tonight," said Ilse. "I'm tired - and that poor baby ---"

"Oh!" Emily's triumph and exultation went from her in a cry of pain. "Oh -- Ilse -- I'd forgotten for a moment - how could I? Where can he be?"

"Dead," said Ilse harshly. "It's better to think so - than to think of him alive still - out tonight. Come, we've got to get in somewhere. The storm is on for good now - no more showers."

An angular woman panoplied in a white apron so stiffly starched that it could easily have stood alone, opened the door of the house on the hill and bade them enter.

"Oh, yes, you can stay here, I reckon," she said, not inhospitably, "if you'll excuse things being a bit upset. They're in sad trouble here."

"Oh -- I'm sorry," sttammered Emily. "We won't intrude - we'll go somewhere else."

"Oh, we don't mind you, if you don't mind us. There's a spare room. You're welcome. You can't go on in a storm like this - there isn't another house for some ways. I advise you to stop here. I'll get you a bit of supper - I don't live here - I'm just a neighbour come to help 'em out a bit. Hollinger's my name - Mrs. Julia Hollinger. Mrs. Bradshaw ain't good for anything - you've heard of her little boy mebbe."

"Is this where - and - he - hasn't - been found?"

"No -- never will be. I'm not mentioning it to her," with a quick glance over her shoulder along the hall -- "but it's my opinion he got in the quicksands down by the bay. That's what I think. Come in and lay off your things. I s'pose you don't mind eating in the kitchen. The room is cold - we haven't the stove up in it yet. It'll have to be put up soon if there's a funeral. I s'pose there won't be if he's in the quicksand. You can't have a funeral without a body, can you?"

All this was very gruesome. Emily and Ilse would fain have gone elsewhere - but the storm had broken in full fury and darkness seemed to pour in from the sea over the changed world. They took off their drenched hats and coats and followed their hostess to the kitchen, a clean, old-fashioned spot which seemed cheerful enough in lamp-light and fire-glow.

"Sit up to the fire. I'll poke it a bit. Don't mind Grandfather Bradshaw -- Grandfather, here's two young ladies that want to stay all night."

Grandfather stared stonily at them out of little, hazy blue eyes and said not a word.

"Don't mind him" -- in a pig's whisper -- "he's over ninety and he never was much of a talker. Clara -- Mrs. Bradshaw -- is in there" -- nodding towards the door of what seemed a small bedroom off the kitchen. "Her brother's with her -- Dr. McIntyre from Charlottetown. We sent for him yesterday. He's the only one that can do anything with her. She's been walking the floor all day but we've got her persuaded to lie down a bit. Her husband's out looking for little Allan."

"A child can't be lost in the nineteenth century," said Grandfather Bradhsaw, with uncanny suddenness and positiveness.

"There, there now, Grandfather, I advise you not to get worked up. And this is the twentieth century now. He's still living back there. His memory stopped a few years ago. What might your names be? Burnley? Starr? From Blair Water? Oh, then you'll know the Murrays? Niece? Oh!"

Mrs. Julia Hollinger's "Oh" was subtly eloquent. She had been setting dishes and food down at a rapid rate on the clean oil-cloth on the table. Now she swept them aside, extracted a table-cloth from a drawer of the cupboard, got silver forks and spoons out of another drawer, and a handsome pair of salt and pepper shakers from the shelves.

"Don't go to any trouble for us," pleaded Emily.

"Oh, it's no trouble. If all was well here you'd find Mrs. Bradshaw real glad to have you. She's a very kind woman, poor soul. It's awful hard to see her in such trouble. Allan was all the child she had, you see."

"A child can't be lost in the nineteenth century, I tell you," repeated Grandfather Bradshaw, with an irritable shift of emphasis.

"No -- no," soothingly, "of course not, Grandfather. Little Allan'll turn up all right yet. Here's a hot cup o' tea for you. I advise you to drink it. That'll keep him quiet for a bit. Not that he's ever very fussy - only everybody's a bit upset - except old Mrs. McIntyre. Nothing ever upsets her. It's just as well, only it seems to me real unfeeling. 'Course she isn't just right. Come, sit in and have a bite, girls. Listen to that rain, will you? The men will be soaked. They can't search much longer tonight - Will will soon be home. I sorter dread it - Clara'll go wild again when he comes home without little Allan. We had a terrible time with her last night, pore thing."

"A child can't be lost in the nineteenth century," said Grandfather Bradshaw - and choked over his hot drink in his indignation.

"No -- nor in the twentieth neither," said Mrs. Hollinger, patting him on the back. "I advise you to go to bed, Grandfather. You're tired."

"I am not tired, and I will go to bed when I choose, Julia Hollinger."

"Oh, very well, Grandfather. I advise you not to get worked up. I think I'll take a cup o' tea in to Clara. Perhaps she'll take it now. She hasn't eatne or drunk since Tuesday night. How can a woman stand that -- I put it to you?"

Emily and Ilse ate their supper with what appetite they could summon up, while Grandfather Bradshaw watched them suspiciously, and sorrowful sounds reached them from the little inner room.

"It is wet and cold tonight -- where is he -- my little son?" moaned a woman's voice, with an undertone of agony that made Emily writhe as if she felt it herself.

"They'll find him soon, Clara," said Mrs. Hollinger in a sprightly tone of artificial comfort. "Just you be patient - take a sleep, I advise you - they're bound to find him soon."

"They'll never find him." The voice was almost a scream now. "He is dead - he is dead - he died that bitter cold Tuesday night so long ago. O God, have mercy! He was such a little fellow! And I've told him so often not to speak until he was spoken to - he'll never speak to me again. I wouldn't let him have a light after he went to bed - and he died in the dark, alone and cold. I wouldn't let him have a dog - he wanted one so much. But he wants nothing now - only a grave and a shroud."

"I can't endure this," muttered Emily. "I can't, Ilse. I feel as if I'd go mad with horror. I'd rather be out in the storm."

Lank Mrs. Hollinger, looking at once sympathetic and important, came out of the bedroom and shut the door.

"Awful, isn't it? She'll go on like that all night. Would you like to go to bed? It's quite airly, but mebbe you're tired an' 'ud ruther be where you can't hear her, pore soul. She wouldn't take the tea - she's scared the doctor put a sleeping pill in it. She doesn't want to sleep till he's found, dead or alive. If he's in the quicksands o' course he never will be found."

"Julia Hollinger, you are a fool and the daughter of a fool, but surely even you must see that a child can't be lost in the nineteenth century," said Grandfather Bradshaw.

"Well, if it was anybody but you called me a fool, Grandfather, I'd be mad," said Mrs. Hollinger, a trifle tartly. She lighted a lamp and took the girls upstairs. "I hope you'll sleep. I advise you to get in between the blankets though there's sheets on the bed. They wuz all aired today, blankets and sheets. I thought it'd be better to air 'em in case there was a funeral. I remember the New Moon Murrays wuz always particular about airing their beds, so I thought I'd mention it. Listen to that wind. We'll likely hear of awful damage from this storm. I wouldn't wonder if the roof blew off this house tonight. Troubles never come singly. I advise you not to git upset if you hear a noise through the night. If the men bring the body home Clara'll likely act like all possessed, pore thing. Mebbe you'd better turn the key in the lock. Old Mrs. McIntyre wanders round a bit sometimes. She's quite harmless and mostly sane neough but it gives folks a start."

The girls felt relieved as the door closed behind Mrs. Hollinger. She was a good soul, doing her neighbourly duty as she conceived it, faithfully, but she was not exactly cheerful company. They found themselves in a tiny, meticulously neat "spare room" under the sloping eaves. Most of the space in it was occupted by a big comfortable bed that looked as if it were meant to be slept in, and not merely to decorate the room. A little four-paned window, with a spotless white muslin frill, shut them in from the cold, stormy night that was on the sea.

"Ugh," shivered Ilse, and got into the bed as speedily as possible. Emily followed her more slowly, forgetting about the key. Ilse, tired out, fell asleep almost immediately, but Emily could not sleep. She lay and suffered, straining her ears for the sound of footsteps. The rain dashed against the window, not in drops, but sheets, the wind snarled and shrieked. Down below the hill she heard the white waves ravening along the dark shore. Could it be only twenty-four hours since that moonlit, summery glamour of the haystack and the ferny pasture? Why, that must have been in another world.

Where was that poor lost child? In one of the pauses of the storm she fancied she heard a little whimper overhead in the dark as if some lonely little soul, lately freed from the body, were trying to find its way to kin. She could discover no way of escape from her pain: her gates of dream were shut against her: she could not detach her mind from her feelings and dramatise them. Her nerves grew strained and tense. Painfully she sent her thoughts out into the storm; seeking, striving to pierce the mystery of the child's whereabouts. He must be found -- she clenched her hands -- he must. That poor mother!

"O God, let him be found, safe -- let him be found safe," Emily prayed desperately and insistently, over and over again - all the more desperately and insistently because it seemed a prayer so impossible of fulfillment. But she reiterated it to bar out of her mind terrible pictures of swamp and quicksand and river, until at last she was so weary that mental torture could no longer keep her awak, and she fell into a troubled slumber, while the storm roared on and the baffled searchers finally gave up their vain quest.

The Books: "Emily Climbs" (L.M. Montgomery)

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Emily Climbs - by L.M. Montgomery Excerpt 5!

One of the reasons why I think Lucy Maud's books are so special - so ... long-lastingly good ... is that they seem to have everything in them. It feels so much like a slice of life - that it is totally transportive. There is tragedy, there are comedic mishaps, there are deep converstaions about the meaning of life, there is leisure-time when nothing much happens ... There isn't a sense of urgency, or over-importance - as in: Here Is a Great Book. It's a story. The story is told. And nothing is left out. So we hear about Anne's dresses for the dances at Redmond ... and we get to know about the knick-knacks in her little house of Dreams - the trees she loves, the things she cherishes ... but at the same time, we have the larger story of her LIFE going on - her baby dying, her marriage with Gilbert, etc. And if you read all of the books in a series, you just can rest easy on this continuity - Lucy Maud just takes charge. And so ... when Rachel Lynde dies ... you get a real sense of loss. Because she has been a constant character throughout. She is REAL. To me, these books feel REAL. You can see the cupboards of damson preserves, you can see the doilies, you can see the fire in the stove on a wintry night, you can see the delicate wallpaper ... and you can also see these fictional PEOPLE ... come to life. I'm not sure if I'm saying this correctly ... it's just that I feel like I am looking at an entire WORLD when I read these books.

Emily Climbs - with all of the journal entries included - is especially special to me ... because if you're a diary person, you know that not every day contains some big event. Sometimes you write in your diary about how you have a headache, or how you're pissed that you can't find a recipe you want for Thanksgiving, or how you have so many errands to do that you're kind of freaking out. Boring everyday life moments. But they aren't boring, if you look at them in another way. If you look at them as helping to build up the illusion that you are looking at something that is REAL. So Emily's diary entries - with all their trivia and miscellania - help to create the impression that we are looking at a LIFE, not reading a book.

I love those diary entries, man. There are some chapters which are made up entirely of the diary entries ... and they are a hoot. Because we are not worried about the larger plot in those chapters - we are just listening to Emily talk and tell stories ... We are getting quick snapshots of her life, her thought process ... These chapters kind of function like a montage. They're great - I love them.

Anyway, here's one of my favorite little diary entries from the book. It makes me laugh out loud. It's not a big enough story to warrant an entire chapter ... it doesn't illuminate anything special about Emily ... it's not an epiphany moment, or a growth moment ... it's just something hysterical that happened to her ... and when you add up 20 of these moments, 30? You really feel like you are learning about a real living girl here.

Here's the excerpt. It's hilarious.

Excerpt from Emily Climbs - by L.M. Montgomery

"May 29, 19--

"Tonight Aunt Ruth came home with a portentous face.

"'Em'ly, what does this story mean that is all over Shrewsbury - that you were seen standing on Queen Street last night with a man's arms around you, kissing him?'

"I knew in a minute what had happened. I wanted to stamp - I wanted to laugh - I wanted to tear my hair. The whole thing was so absurd and ludicrous. But I had to keep a grave face and explain to Aunt Ruth.

"This is the dark, unholy tale.

"Ilse and I were 'dandering' along Queen Street last night at dusk. Just by the old Taylor house we met a man. I do not know the man - not likely I shall ever know him. I do not know if he was tall or short, old or young, handsome or ugly, black or white, Jew or Gentile, bond or free. But I do know he hadn't shaved that day!

"He was walking at a brisk pace. Then something happened which passed in the wink of an eye, but takes several seconds to describe. I stepped aside to let him pass -- he stepped in the same direction -- I darted the other way -- so did he -- then I thought I saw a chance of getting past and I made a wild dash - he made a wild dash - with the result that I ran full tilt against him. He had thrown out his arms when he realized a collision was unavoidable - I went right between them - and in the shock of the encounter they involuntarily closed around me for a moment while my nose came into violent contact with his chin.

"'I -- I -- beg your pardon,' the poor creature gasped, dropped me as if I were a hot coal, and tore off around the corner.

"Ilse was in fits. She said she had never seen anything so funny in her life It had all passed so quickly that to a by-stander it looked exactly as if that man and I had stopped, gazed at each other for a moment, and then rushed madly into each other's arms.

"My nose ached for clocks. Ilse said she saw Mrs. Taylor peering from the window just as it happened. Of course that old gossip has spread the story with her own interpretation of it.

"I explained all this to Aunt Ruth, who remained incredulous and seemed to consider it a very limping tale indeed.

"'It's a very stronge thing that on a sidewalk twelve feet wide you couldn't get past a man without embracing him,' she said.

"'Come now, Aunt Ruth,' I said, 'I know you think me sly and deep and foolish and ungrateful. But you know I am half Murray, and do you think any one with any Murray in her would embrace a gentleman friend on the public street?'

"'Oh, I did think you could hardly be so brazen,' admitted Aunt Ruth. 'But Miss Taylor said she saw it. I do not like to have one of my family talked about like that. It would not have occurred if you had not been out with Ilse Burnley in defiance of my advice. Don't let anything like this happen again.'

"'Things like that don't happen,' I said. 'They are foreordained.'

The Books: "Emily Climbs" (L.M. Montgomery)

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Emily Climbs - by L.M. Montgomery Excerpt 4!

This is an excerpt from another one of my favorite chapters. In it - Lucy Maud seems to cram an entire lifetime of experience. You feel like this has really HAPPENED. Emily is staying at Aunt Ruth's and going to high school. She enjoys it, except for the living with Aunt Ruth part. Then she gets involved with the spring play - and somehow, Aunt Ruth didn't get, originally, that this would be an actual PLAY (and we all know PLAYS are evil and actors are even worse!!) - so on the night of the play, Ruth finds out what is going on - and forbids Emily to take part in it. Emily fights back. Ruth is firm and unyielding. Emily has a big part in the play - so she pleads. She says she will go be in the play anyway. Ruth says, "If you disobey me - don't come back home tonight." Or something like that. Emily is in a RAGE. She stalks off - she has finally HAD IT with Aunt Ruth. She does the play. It's a great little triumph for her. She shines in her part, mainly because of the simmering RAGE beneath everything. Teddy walks her home. Emily doesn't believe Ruth will lock her out or anything - but she goes up to the door, and finds it locked. It is March, it is cold, it is 10 o'clock at night ... and she can't get into the house. This is the last straw. Emily is fed up with Aunt Ruth and how Ruth treats her. So - in a fit of rage and purpose - she is ON FIRE (I love how Lucy Maud describes it - anger like that DOES burn!!) - she decides to walk home to New Moon. She will no longer put up with Aunt Ruth. If that means she can't go to high school anymore, then so be it. It's 7 miles home. Emily is not wearing proper boots - she's wearing little kid slippers - it's freezing cold ... but she stalks home, the entire way - 7 miles - in a fury that carries her along. She gets home and it must be 2 or 3 in the morning - and she walks inside and Cousin Jimmy is up - totally shocked to see Emily, who is supposed to be in Shrewsbury, strolling into the kitchen. He realizes she is all upset and in a fury - so he sits her down, makes her eat doughnuts, and has her tell him all about it. So - for about 3 or 4 pages - Emily goes on complaining. It's a very funny section - because Jimmy agrees with everything she says (when he can get a word in edgewise) - but slowly - over the course of the complaining - Emily starts to get the strange uneasy feeling that she has kind of acted like an overdramatic little fool. It's so great the way Lucy Maud describes it ... We've all done stuff like that, especially high-tempered hot-headed teenagers - anyone who is known as 'sensitive' or 'dramamtic' - has had moments like this. Where you fly off the handle - and you feel TOTALLY justified - and in a TOWERING RAGE of self-righteousness and injured dignity ... and slowly ... you realize ... Uhm ... hm. Maybe I overreacted? it's not easy for Emily to admit this. She's so full of pride, and she hates to concede to Aunt Ruth anymore. But JImmy - with a couple of his simple pointed statements - makes her see that she needs to suck it up, go home to Aunt Ruth, and realize that she needs to be GRATEFUL to Aunt Ruth for taking her in. Because of Aunt Ruth - Emily is getting her chance at more education. She needs to be thankful for that. Emily fights against this, in her mind ... but gently ... and without judging her TOO much ... Jimmy prods her in the right direction.

So now it's like - 4 or 5 a.m. and Emily decides to walk back to Shrewsbury. Jimmy is kind of horrified at this thought - maybe Emily should wait until Elizabeth wakes up - and someone can drive her back?? But Emily's rage is done - she is no longer interested in making a big family SCENE - and she thinks it would be best if nobody knew about her little trek home.

So off she goes. To walk the 7 miles back home.

This walk back home is some of my favorite writing Lucy Maud has ever done.

Oh - and her little moment with Ruth at the very end is just perfection. It's not what you expect to happen ... you expect more of a scene, maybe ... but watch how Emily handles the moment. It's great.

Excerpt from Emily Climbs - by L.M. Montgomery

Emily went back to Shrewsbury through the clear moonlight. She had expected the walk to be dreary and weary, robbed of the impetus anger and rebellion had given. But she found that it had become transmuted into a thing of beauty - and Emily was one of "the eternal slaves of beauty," of whom Carman sings, who are yet "masters of the world." She was tired, but her tiredness showed itself in a certain exaltation of feeling and imagination such as she often experienced when over-fatigued. Thought was quick and active. She had a series of brilliant imaginary conversations and thought out so many epigrams that she was agreeably surprised at herself. It was good to feel vivid and interesting and all-alive once more. She was alone but not lonely.

As she walked along she dramatised the night. There was about it a wild, lawless charm that appealed to a certain wild, lawless strain hidden deep in Emily's nature - a strain that wished to walk where it would with no guidance but its own - the strain of the gypsy and the poet, the genius and the fool.

The big fir trees, released from their burden of snow, were tossing their arms freely and wildly and gladly across the moonlit fields. Was anything ever so beautiful as the shadows of those grey, clean-limbed maples on the road at her feet? The houses she passed were full of intriguing mystery. She liked to think of the people who lay there dreaming and saw in sleep what waking life denied them - of little children's dear hands folded in exquisite slumber - of hearts that, perhaps, kept sorrowful, wakeful vigils - of lonely arms that reached out in the emptiness of the night - all while she, Emily, flitted by like a shadowy wraith of the small hours.

And it was easy to think, too, that other things were abroad - things that were not mortal or human. She always lived on the edge of fairyland and now she stepped right over it. The Wind Woman was really whistling eerily in the reeds of the swamp - she was sure she heard the dear, diabolical chuckles of owls in the spruce copses - something frisked across her path - it might be a rabbit or it might be a Little Grey Person: the trees put on half pleasing, half terrifying shapes they never wore by day. The dead thistles of last year were goblin groups along the fences: that shaggy, old yellow birch was some satyr of the woodland: the footsteps of the old gods echoed around her: those gnarled stumps on the hill field were surely Pan piping through moonlight and shadow with his troop of laughing fauns. It was delightful to believe they were.

"One loses so much when one becomes incredulous," said Emily - and then thought that was a rather clever remark and wished she had a Jimmy-book to write it down.

So, having washed her soul free from bitterness in the aerial bath of the spring night and tingling from head to foot with the wild, strange, sweet life of the spirit, she came to Aunt Ruth's when the faint, purplish hills east of the harbour were growing clear under a whitening sky. She had expected to find the door still locked; but the knob turned as she tried it and she went in.

Aunt Ruth was up and was lighting the kitchen fire.

On the way from New Moon Emily had thought over a dozen different ways of saying what she meant to say - and now she used not one of them. At the last moment an impish inspiration came to her. Before Aunt Ruth could - or would - speak, Emily said,

"Aunt Ruth, I've come back to tell you that I forgive you, but that this must not happen again."

To tell the truth, Ruth Dutton was considerably relieved that Emily had come back. She had been afraid of Elizabeth and Laura - Murray family rows were bitter things - and truly a little afraid of the results to Emily herself if she had really gone to New Moon in those thin shoes and that insufficient coat. For Ruth Dutton was not a fiend - only a rather stupid, stubborn little barnyard fowl trying to train up a skylark. She was honestly afraid that Emily might catch a cold and go into consumption. And if Emily took it into her head not to come back to Shrewsbury - well, that would "make talk", and Ruth Dutton hated "talk" when she or her doings was the subject. So, all things considered, she decided to ignore the impertinence of Emily's greeting.

"Did you spend the night on the streets?" she asked grimly.

"Oh, dear no - I went out to New Moon - had a chat with Cousin Jimmy and some lunch - then walked back."

"Did Elizabeth see you? Or Laura?"

"No. They were asleep."

Mrs. Dutton reflected that this was just as well.

"Well," she said coldly, "you have been guilty of great ingratitude, Em'ly, but I'll forgive you this time--" then stopped abruptly. Hadn't that been said already this morning? Before she could think of a substitute remark Emily had vanished upstairs. Mistress Ruth Dutton was left with the unpleasant sensation that, somehow or other, she had not come out of the affair quite as triumphantly as she should have.

The Books: "Emily Climbs" (L.M. Montgomery)

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Emily Climbs - by L.M. Montgomery Excerpt 3!

Okay - so we have been talking so much about Aunt Ruth in other Emily entries that I had to find an excerpt about her. There are so many that I love - she is quite a fearsome and unpleasant personality - but she is so comedically drawn ... even when she is totally giving Emily a hard time, there's something deeply deeply funny and absurd about Aunt Ruth.

So. Elizabeth is allowing Emily to go on to high school. The big high school in Shrewsbury. Ilse, Perry, and Teddy are going as well - and they are all rooming in one of the big dormitories. But no - a Murray would not be allowed to live like that - so Emily has to live with her Aunt Ruth, who lives in Shrewsbury. We have met Aunt Ruth before - and we know that she is not sympathetic, she is judgmental, and she is brutal - in terms of her honesty. But Emily is dying for a chance at more education - and this is the only way, so she sucks it up, and puts up with it. Oh yeah, and Elizabeth also made Emily promise that she would stop writing short stories and anything fictional for the entire three years of her high school years. Elizabeth is horrified that Emily would spend so much time on "lies". At first Elizabeth wants to ban h er from writing altogether (some people just never learn) - but Cousin Jimmy, I believe, talks her into a more gentle restriction. Emily is surprised when Mr. Carpenter, her teacher/mentor, approves of this restriction! He thinks holding off on the fiction and only writing what is true will be good training for her.

Anyhoo, so off Emily goes, to start high school.

I'll post an excerpt from one of the chapters made up entirely of random diary entries from Emily. It gives a great picture of Aunt Ruth.

Excerpt from Emily Climbs - by L.M. Montgomery Excerpt 3!

"I like Shrewbury and I like school but I shall never like Aunt Ruth's house. It has a disagreeable personality. Houses are like people - some you like and some you don't like - and once in a while there is one you love. Outside, this house is covered with frippery. I feel like getting a broom and sweeping it off. Inside, its rooms are all square and proper and soulless. Nothing you could put into them would ever seem to belong to them. There are no nice romantic corners in it, as there are at New Moon. My room hasn't improved on acquaintance, either. The ceiling oppresses me - it comes down so low over my bed - and Aunt Ruth won't let me move the bed. She looked amazed when I suggested it.

" 'The bed has always been in that corner,' she said, just as she might have said, 'The sun has always risen in the east.'

"But the pictures are really the worst thing about this room - chromos of the most aggravated description. Once I turned them all to the wall and of course Aunt Ruth walked in - she never knocks - and noticed them at once.

"'Em'ly, why have you meddled with the pictures?'

"Aunt Ruth is always asking 'why' I do this and that. Sometimes I can explain and sometimes I can't. This was one of the times I couldn't. But of course I had to answer Aunt Ruth's question. No disdainful smile would do here.

"'Queen Alexandra's dog collar gets on my nerves,' I said, 'and Byron's expression on his death-bed at Missolonghi hinders me from studying.'

"'Em'ly,' said Aunt Ruth, 'you might try to show a little gratitude.'

"I wanted to say,

"'To whom -- Queen Alexandra or Lord Byron?' but of course I didn't. Instaead I meekly turned all the pictures right side out again.

"'You haven't told me the real reason why you turned those pictures,' said Aunt Ruth sternly. 'I suppose you don't mean to tell me. Deep and sly - deep and sly - I always said you were. The very first time I saw you at Maywood I said you were the slyest child I have ever seen.'

"'Aunt Ruth, why do you say such things to me?' I said, in exasperation. 'Is it because you love me and want to improve me - or hate me and want to hurt me - or just because you can't help it?'

"'Miss Impertinence, please remember that this is my house. And you will leave my pictures alone after this. I forgive you for meddling with them this time but don't let it happen again. I will find out yet your motive in turning them around, clever as you think yourself.'

"Aunt Ruth stalked out but I know she listened on the landing quite a while to find out if I would begin talking to myself. She is always watching me - even when she says nothing - does nothing - I know she is watching me. I feel like a little fly under a microscope. not a word or action escapes her criticism, and, though she can't read my thoughts, she attributes thoughts to me that I never had any idea of thinking. I hate that worse than anything else.

"Can't I say anything good of Aunt Ruth? Of course I can.

"She is honest and virtuous and truthful and industrious and of her pantry she needeth not be ashamed. But she hasn't any lovable virtues - and she will never give up tryiing to find out why I turned the pictures. She will never believe that I told her the simple truth.

"Of course, things 'might be worse.' As Teddy says, it might have been Queen Victoria instead of Queen Alexandra.

"I have some pictures of my own pinned up that save me - some lovely sketches of New Moon and the old orchard that Teddy made for me, and an engraving Dean gave me. It is a picture in soft, dim colours of palms around a desert well and a train of camels passing across the sands against a black sky gemmed with stars. It is full ofl ure and mystery and when I look at it I forget Queen Alexandra's jewelry and Lord Byron's lugubrious face, and my soul slips out - out - through a little gateway into a great, vast world of freedom and dream.

"Aunt Ruth asked me where I got that picture. When I told her, she sniffed and said,

"'I can't understand how you have such a thing for Jarback Priest. He's a man I've no use for.'

"I shouldn't think she would have.

"But if the house is ugly and my room unfriendly the Land of Uprightness is beautiful and saves my soul alive. The Land of Uprightness is the fir grove behind the house. I call it that because the firs are all so exceedingly tall and slender and straight. There is a pool in it, veiled with ferns, and a big grey boulder beside it. It is reached by a little, winding, capricious path so narrow that only one can walk in it. When I'm tired or lonely or angry or too ambitious I go there and sit for a few minutes. Nobody can keep an upset mind looking at those slender, crossed tips against the sky. I go there to study on fine evenings, though Aunt Ruth is suspicious and thinks it is just another manifestation of my slyness. Soon it will be dark too early to study there and I'll be so sorry. Somehow, my books have a meaning there they never have anywhere else.

"There are so many dear, green corners in the Land of Uprightness, full of the aroma of sun-steeped ferns, and grassy, open spaces where pale asters feather the grass, swaying gently towards each other when the Wind Woman runs among them. And just to the left of my window there is a group of tall old firs that look, in moonlight or twilight, like a group of witches weaving spells of sorcery. When I first saw them, one windy night against the red sunset, with the reflection of my candle, like a weird, signal flame, suspended in the air among their boughs, the flash came - for the first time in Shrewsbury - and I felt so happy that nothing else matterred. I have written a poem about them.

"But oh, I burn to write stories. I knew it would be hard to keep my promise to Aunt Elizabeth but I didn't know it would be so hard. Every day it seems harder - such splendid ideas for plots pop into my mind. Then I have to fall back on character studies of the people I know. I have written several of them. I always feel so strongly tempted to touch them up a bit -- deepen the shadows - bring out the highlights a little more vividly. But I remember that I promised Aunt Elizabeth never to write anything that wasn't true so I stay my hand and try to paint them exactly as they are.

"I have written one of Aunt Ruth. Interesting, but dangerous. I never leave my Jimmy-book or my diary in my room. I know Aunt Ruth rummages through it when I'm out. So I always carry them in my book-bag.

"Ilse was up this evening and we did our lessons together. Aunt Ruth frowns on this - and, to be strictly just, I don't know that she is wrong. Ilse is so jolly and comical that we laugh more than we study, I'm afraid. We don't do as well in class the next day - and besides, this house disapproves of laughter.

"Perry and Teddy like the High School. Perry earns his lodging by looking after the furnace and grounds and his board by waiting on the table. Besides, he gets twenty-five cents an hour for doing odd jobs. I don't see much of him or Teddy, except in the week-ends home, for it is against the school rules for boys and girls to walk together to and from school. Lots do it, though. I had several chances to but I concluded that it would not be in keeping with New Moon traditions to break the rule. Besides, Aunt Ruth asks me every blessed night when I come home from school if I've walked with anybody. I think she's sometimes a little disappointed when I say 'No'.

"Besides, I didn't much fancy any of the boys who wanted to walk with me.

The Books: "Emily Climbs" (L.M. Montgomery)

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Emily Climbs - by L.M. Montgomery Excerpt 2!!

The chapter "In the Watches of the Night" is one of my favorite chapters in any Lucy Maud book ever. It's deep, wide, terrifying, romantic - it's like all of Jane Eyre compressed into one chapter. Lucy Maud starts the chapter by telling us where we are going to go:

Some of us can recall the exact time in which we reached certain milestones on life's road - the wonderful hour when we passed from childhood to girlhood - the enchanged, beautiful - or perhaps the shattering and horrible - hour when girlhood was suddenly womanhood - the chilling hour when we faced the fact that youth was definitely behind us - the peaceful, sorrowful hour of the realisation of age. Emily Starr never forgot the night when she passed the first milestone, and left childhood behind her forever.

And so she then takes us thru what happened - step by step by step. It is completely specific - there is nothing generalized about this. We all may have these moments - but each of us will have a completely different story to tell. This is Emily's story. And Lucy Maud just made all of this stuff up in her head. It's amazing. The chapter begins on a hot July night. It's a weeknight - and Emily and Aunt Elizabeth and Aunt Laura are sitting in church at a prayer meeting. Emily is bored out of her mind. So to entertain herself, she starts looking around at the congregation, and basically people-watching. We hear her thoughts. She sees into people's souls - she can SEE the wife that despises her husband - she can SEE people's struggles, and silent worries. Her thoughts about the congregation go on for many pages. They are very entertaining. Oftentimes mean. She is merciless toward others (when they deserve it). Lucy Maud lets it go on for so long to really give the sense of Emily LOSING herself in this activity. And she does. Oh and I forgot - after prayer meeting, Emily was going to go and have a sleepover at Ilse's house. This is very important later. So - the prayer meeting ends. Everyone is secretly relieved - because nobody really likes the minister. They all start to jostle out of the church. Emily is still half-in her people-watching reverie - and forgets to bring her hymn book with her. She is outside the church - there's a big crowd - Elizabeth and Laura have gone off without her (knowing that she will be going home with Ilse) - but Emily can't find Ilse for a second in the throng - and before she forgets - she runs back inside to get her hymn book. Slipped inside the hymn book is a little piece of paper on which she had put down a couple of notes about her people-watching - notes that she would not anybody else to see. This is why the hymn book is so essential. Emily goes to the pew - the church is now empty - and the caretaker is putting out the lamps. Emily grabs her hymn book ... but her scrap of paper is not in it. Panic. Emily gets down on her hands and knees to look for it on the floor (which means - if anyone had looked into the church it would have looked empty) ... and in that fateful moment - the caretaker goes to the front door of the church, walks out, and locks the door behind him. Locking Emily into the dark church. It takes a while for Emily to realize her predicament ... and by that time, the thunder that had been growling all night - breaks out into a full storm. Emily is irrationally terrified of thunderstorms. So now begins her long night of utter terror. She stands at the door screaming (even though everyone has left): she screams for Elizabeth, Ilse, Laura ... and then, desperately, for Teddy.

Nobody hears of course. Ilse would assume that she decided not to sleep over and went home. Elizabeth and Laura would assume she was with Ilse. She would not be missed. For a while, she basically falls apart. She sits on the steps up to the church gallery, shivering, wincing, terrified. Finally, she pulls herself together. Finds her backbone. And also - the writer in her comes to life. Wouldn't this be interesting to write about someday?? She decides to go back into the main church, sit in a pew, and just wait it out. But as she goes to put her hand on the stair railing - she doesn't touch wood - she touches something hairy. This is the worst moment of the chapter. The horror that goes thru Emily ... then in a flash of lightning she sees a dog walk by. A dog. A dog somehow got locked in the church too. It takes a while for Emily to recover her equilibrium after touching him in the dark. She doesn't know whose dog it is - but he seems friendly - so she makes her way, in the dark, into the church and sits in a pew. Only a couple seconds go by before Emily just gets the sense that she is not alone. She knows that somebody else is in that church with her (besides the dog). And in a flash of lightning - he is revealed. (Terrifying moment). He is known as "Mad Mr. Morrison". He was once a normal man - but he lost his wife - and never recovered. He is now insane - and homeless - and is constantly "looking for his wife". As a matter of fact, he will go up to random women, and start stroking their hair, caressing them, thinking that she is his dead wife. He is known to be harmless - he would never HURT anybody - but still, he's kind of a creepy person and you do not want to be locked in a church with the dude. So Emily sees him in the flash of lightning - he is standing right in front of her - hands outstretched to touch her. Emily screams and runs. But there is nowhere for her to go. Then follows an agonizing hour? Couple of hours? With Emily hiding in between pews - as Mad Mr. Morrison searches for her. She has to keep moving - because he will catch up with her. This goes on forever. The way Lucy Maud describes Emily's terror is palpable. Emily has no critical mind left - or rationality. She is just a cringing little bundle of terror, trying to survive into the next second, without Mad Mr. Morrison getting her - in that dark empty church.

And then ... from the outside of the church ... she hears a voice calling, "Emily? Emily?"

It is Teddy. Teddy. Who heard her cry out for him. Only ... he was a couple of miles away. That's what's weird about it. He heard her cry his name ... and knew that he had to go to the church ... and so he left his house without his mother knowing, and came to 'save' Emily. It is all quite peculiar.

So Emily hears the voice - and screams - HELP HELP TEDDY TEDDY - she is out of her mind. Out. Of. Her. Mind. It's wrenching to read - because by now we love Emily. It's horrible to think of her so terrified and helpless.

Emily runs to the door, screaming out to Teddy about Mad Mr. Morrison being in there with her. Teddy shouts back that the key to let her out is hanging on the inside wall - if she can't find it he will break a window. In a flash of lightning - Emily sees the key, grabs it, opens the door - and falls out into Teddy's arms - just as poor Mad Mr. Morrison lunges at her from within the church. Teddy holds Emily - and scolds Mad Mr. Morrison about frightening Emily. Mad Mr. Morrison suddenly looks broken, desolate - and says, "I only wanted to find my beautiful Annie." And something in Teddy's heart has compassion for this poor man - it's heartbreaking - so Teddy says, "You'll find her someday." Emily, meanwhile, is still screaming, and sobbing, and shivering, and thrashing about in Teddy's arms. The terror she went thru has dissolved her self-control.

Teddy leads her over to the graveyard. By this point - the main thunder and lightning storm has passed ... and the moon has tentatively come out ... leaving the world a moonlit wonderland. They sit on one of the big slabs in the moonlight, and Emily cries in Teddy's arms. Teddy holds her. They talk about the weirdness of Teddy "hearing" her. Emily keeps saying, "But you couldn't have heard me ... you were too far away ..." And Teddy sticks to his guns. "I don't care. I HEARD you." There doesn't seem to be much else to say. Emily is slowly starting to calm down ... and suddenly ... she becomes completely aware of Teddy's arms around her ... of Teddy beside her ... the whole night trembles with romntic possibility. Teddy holds her ... looks down at her ... and says, "You are the sweetest girl, Emily" and leans in to kiss her. Emily has never been kissed - although someone at school TRIED to kiss her and she slapped him upside the head. Teddy had heard about that - but he somehow has a feeling that he won't get slapped.

But in that moment ... before their lips meet (DAMMIT) - suddenly Mrs. Kent - Teddy's insanely jealous mother - appears in the graveyard. She had heard her son leave the house - and she followed. Mrs. Kent hovers about her son - and considers anything that is a threat to their relationship - a threat. For example - he had a kitten he loved. Mrs. Kent drowned it. So, uhm. This is not a well woman. So to see Teddy making out with Emily in a graveyard ... this is a tragedy. A betrayal. Teddy is 15 years old at this point, 16 ... he should be allowed to have his own little romances if he wants - but not in Mrs. Kent's world. And from this night on - Mrs. Kent despises Emily. Emily is the threat. Emily is the one she needs to destroy.

Anyhoo - that's where I'll start the excerpt. With what happens at the very end of the chapter - when Mrs. Kent shows up.

Emily ends up having a shining moment here. Truth-teller. But of course - this truth-telling is the main reason why Mrs. Kent looks upon her as the most dangerous threat of all.

Excerpt from Emily Climbs - by L.M. Montgomery

"So you are trying to steal my son from me," she said. "He is all I have and you are trying to steal him."

"Oh, Mother, for goodness' sake, be sensible!" muttered Teddy.

"He - he tells me to be sensible," Mrs. Kent echoed tragically to the moon. "Sensible!"

"Yes, sensible," said Teddy angrily. "There's nothing to make such a fuss about. Emily was locked in the church by accident and Mad Mr. Morrison was there, too, and nearly frightened her to death. I came to let her out and we were sitting here for a few minutes until she got over her fright and was able to walk home. That's all."

"How did you know she was here?" demanded Mrs. Kent.

How indeed! This was a hard question to answer. The truth sounded like a silly, stupid invention. Nevertheless, Teddy told it.

"She called me," he said bluntly.

"And you heard her - a mile away. Do you expect me to believe that?" said Mrs. Kent, laughing wildly.

Emily had by this time recovered her poise. At no time in her life was Emily Byrd Starr disconcerted for long. She drew herself up proudly and in the dim light, in spite of her Starr features, she looked much as Elizabeth Murray must have looked over thirty years before.

"Whether you believe it or not it is true, Mrs. Kent," she said haughtily. "I am not stealing your son - I do not want him - he can go."

"I'm going to take you home first, Emily," said Teddy. He folded his arms and threw back his head and tried to look as stately as Emily. He felt that he was a dismal failure at it, but it imposed on Mrs. Kent. She began to cry.

"Go - go," she said. "Go to her - desert me."

Emily was thoroughly angry now. If this irrational woman persisted in making a scene, very well: a scene she should have.

"I won't let him take me home," she said, freezingly. "Teddy, go to your mother."

"Oh, you command him, do you? He must do as you tell him, must he?" cried Mrs. Kent, who now seemed to lose all control of herself. Her tiny form was shaken with violent sobs. She wrung her hands.

"He shall choose for himself," she cried. "He shall go with you - or come with me. Choose, Teddy, fo ryourself. You shall not do her bidding. Choose!"

She was fiercely dramatic again, as she lifted her hand and pointed it at poor Teddy.

Teddy was feeling as miserable and impotently angry as any male creature does when two women are quarreling about him in his presence. He wished himself a thousand miles away. What a mess to be in - and to be made ridiculous like this before Emily! Why on earth couldn't his mother behave like other boys' mothers? Why must she be so intense and exacting? He knew Blair Water gossip said she was "a little touched". He did not believe that. But - but - well, in short here was a mess. You came back to that every time. What on earth was he to do? If he took Emily home he knew his mother would cry and pray for days. On the other hand to desert Emily after her dreadful experience in the church, and leave her to traverse that lonely road alone was unthinkable. But Emily now dominated the situation. She was very angry, with the icy anger of old Hugh Murray that did not dissipate itself in idle bluster, but went straight to the point.

"You are a foolish, selfish woman," she said, "and you will make your son hate you."

"Selfish! You call me selfish," sobbed Mrs. Kent. "I live only for Teddy - he is all I have to live for."

"You are selfish." Emily was standing straight: her eyes had gone black: her voice was cutting: "the Murray look" was on her face, and in the pale moonlight it was a rather fearsome thing. She wondered, as she spoke, how she knew certain things. But she did know them. "You think you love him - it is only yourself you love. You are determined to spoil his life. You won't let him go to Shrewsbury because it will hurt you to let him go away from you. You have let your jealousy of everything he cares for eat your heart out, and master you. You won't bear a little pain for his sake. You are not a mother at all. Teddy has a great talent - everyone says so. You ought to be proud of him - you ought to give him his chance. But you won't - and some day he will hate you for it - yes, he will."

"Oh, no, no," moaned Mrs. Kent. She held up her hands as if to ward off a blow and shrank back against Teddy. "Oh, you are cruel - cruel. You don't know what I've suffered - you don't know what ache is always at my heart. He is all I have - all. I have nothing else - not even a memory. You don't understand. I can't - I can't give him up."

"If you let your jealousy ruin his life you will lose him," said Emily inexorably. She had always been afraid of Mrs. Kent. Now she was suddenly no longer afraid of her - she knew she would never be afraid of her again. "You hate everything he cares for - you hate his friends and his dog and his drawing. You know you do. But you can't keep him that way, Mrs. Kent. And you will find it out when it is too late. Good-night, Teddy. Thank you again for coming to my rescue. Good-night, Mrs. Kent."

Emily's good-night was very final. She turned and stalked across the green without another glance, holding her head high. Down the wet road she marched - at first very angry - then, as anger ebbed, very tired - oh, horribly tired. She discovered that she was fairly shaking with weariness. The emotions of the night had exhausted her, and now - what to do? She did not like the idea of going home to New Moon. Emily felt that she could never face outraged Aunt Elizabeth if the various scandalous doings of this night should be discovered. She turned in at the gate of Dr. Burnley's house. His doors were never locked. Emily slipped into the front hall as the dawn began to whiten in the sky and curled up on the lounge behind the staircase. There was no use in waking Ilse. She would tell her the whole story in the morning and bind her to secrecy - all, at least, except one thing Teddy had said, and the episode of Mrs. Kent. One was too beautiful, and the other too disagreeable to be talked about. Of course, Mrs. Kent wasn't like other women and there was no use in feeling too badly about it. Nevertheless, she had wrecked and spoiled a frail, beautiful something - she had blotched with absurdity a moment that should have been eternally lovely. And she had, of course, made poor Teddy feel like an ass. That, in the last analysis, was what Emily really could not forgive.

The Books: "Emily Climbs" (L.M. Montgomery)

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Emily Climbs - by L.M. Montgomery

This is the second book in the Emily series. There were times when this one was my favorite one out of the three - it's so rich, and funny - with so many of my favorite episodes that Lucy Maud has ever written (Emily going to interview the author - with the crazy dog running wild, Perry kissing Emily, the incident when Emily gets locked in the church, Emily walking the 7 miles home from Shrewsbury ...)

Again, I think that Lucy Maud was just at the top of her game, consistently, with the Emily series. She KNEW this character, this character is completely an individual, a living human being - and there isn't one false note in the whole thing.

I love, too, how a lot of this book - maybe half of it - is made up of Emily's actual diary entries. We get to hear Emily's voice in a really private way. We hear her thoughts, hear how she writes. It's a wonderful device and I think Lucy Maud really carries it off.

I'll do a bunch of excerpts from this one, too. Because it pleases me.

The first chapter shows Emily, in her room, a snowstorm outside - writing in her diary. Then we hear the entire diary entry - which is parts inspirational, part hysterical, part thoughtful. Emily is 13 years old.

Oh, and listen to the first sentence of the book. There's a melancholy in it. Lucy Maud the narrator inserts herself. She knows the future:

Emily Byrd Starr was alone in her room, in the old New Moon farmhouse at Blair Water, one stormy night in a February of the olden years before the world turned upside down.

"before the world turned upside down". World War I. There's a chill in those words, you know? The chill that lies over the stillness and peace of the early 20th century, in looking back on it.

The excerpt below is the last couple paragraphs of the last chapter. I love it - because Lucy Maud comes right out and tells us what she, the author, is doing.

Excerpt from Emily Climbs - by L.M. Montgomery

Emily looked at her candle - it,. too, was almost burned out. She knew she could not have another that night - Aunt Elizabeth's rules were as those of Mede and Persian: she put away her diary in the little right-hand cupboard above the mantel, covered her dying fire, undressed and blew out her candle. The room slowly filled with the faint, ghostly snow-light of a night when a full moon is behind the driving storm-clouds. And just as Emily was ready to slip into her high black bedstead a sudden inspiration came - a splendid new idea for a story. For a minute she shivered reluctantly: the room was getting cold. But the idea would not be denied. Emily slipped her hand between the feather tick of her bed and the chaff mattress and produced a half-burned candle, secreted there for just such an emergency.

It was not, of course, a proper thing to do. But then I have never pretended, nor ever will pretend, that Emily was a proper child. Books are not written about proper children. They would be so dull nobody would read them.

She lighted her candle, put on her stockings and a heavy coat, got out another half-filled Jimmy-book, and began to write by the single, uncertain candle which made a pale oasis of light in the shadows of the room. In that oasis Emily wrote, her black head bent over her book, as the hours of night crept away and the other occupants of New Moon slumbered soundly; she grew chill and cramped, but she was quite unconscious of it. Her eyes burned - her cheeks glowed - words came like troops of obedient genii to the call of her pen. When at last her candle went out with a sputter and a hiss in its little pool of melted tallow, she cane back to reality with a sigh and a shiver. It was two, by the clock, and she was very tired and very cold; but she had finished her story and it was the best thing she had ever written. She crept into her cold nest with a sense of completion and victory, born of the working out of her creative impulse, and fell asleep to the lullaby of the waning storm.

The Books: "Emily of New Moon" (L.M. Montgomery)

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Emily of New Moon - by L.M. Montgomery Excerpt 6!!

Oh, there's just too much I want to excerpt. The whole section at Great-aunt Nancy's - just the description of her HOUSE - I love it ... her first conversation wtih Dean Priest - when Dean Priest, with his hunchback and his gleaming green eyes, decides to himself (actually, he says it out loud to Emily): "I think I'll wait for you." Emily has no idea what he's talking about, of course ... but we do. And you know what? He does wait for her. It's kind of creepy, yes, but there's something in Dean Priest that excites and challenges Emily - something she cannot get anywhere else. He respects her - he doesn't talk down to her. Then there's the beautiful section when she comes home and Elizabeth finally allows her to have her own room - she can have what was once her mother's room. The section where Emily is allowed to go into that room for the first time, and look at the pictures that her mother (whom she never knew) had put on the wall ... It helps Emily feel like she actually knows her mother. She loves her mother. Oh yes - and in the middle of all of this - Emily overhears Great-aunt Nancy and Caroline gossiping one day - and the story of Ilse Burnley's mother running away with another man comes out. To say that Emily takes this hard is an understatement. She obsesses so much about it, it makes her so unhappy and worried and anxious ... that she mopes about, she loses weight, she has no energy. She cant tell Ilse that she knows the story ... and this worries her too. Her main conviction, though, is that "Ilse's mother COULDN'T have done it." She does not believe for a second that Ilse's mother actually ran away. She COULDN'T have done it. Turns out that this is not just childish optimism and hope ... We are moving towards Emily's first experience with what Lucy Maud calls 'second sight'. The kind of knowledge that has nothing to do with the brain, or the intellect. Knowledge that comes from ... where. Who knows. Lucy Maud does not speculate - and Emily sure doesn't either. She is almost embarrassed by this "gift" when it comes out. It doesn't feel like a gift to her. But anyway - her spirit is so torn up by this horrible story of gossip ... that she can't get it out of her mind.

But I want to excerpt the part where Mr. Carpenter comes into her life. Because Mr. Carpenter is up there on my list of Most Favorite Lucy Maud Characters Created. I love him so much. It actually kinda hurts. I know it's silly, and he's a fictional character - but I truly love him.

I won't say anymore - I'll just post the excerpt. He's the new teacher at Emily's school. And he is completely different from the bitch in tights Miss Brownwell - who basically despised children, and was a bitter witch about her own life, so she punished her students about THAT. Bitch. Mr. Carpenter comes into the class ... and is a horse of a different color.

I love him because - well, you can see how Lucy Maud hints at the fact that there are deep wells of sadness and agony in this man. And yet ... he makes education come alive for these kids.

Excerpt from Emily of New Moon - by L.M. Montgomery

Mr. Carpenter never talked of his past or offered any explanation of the fact that at his age he had no better profession than teaching a district school for a pittance of salary, but the truth leaked out after a while; for prince Edward Island is a small province and everybody in it knows something about everybody else. So eventually Blair Water people, and even the school children, understood that Mr. Carpenter had been a brilliant student in his youth and had had his eye on the ministry. But at college he had got in with a "fast set" -- Blair Water people nodded heads slowly and whispered the dreadful phrase portentously - and the fast set had ruined him. He "took to drink" and went to the dogs generally. And the upshot of it all was that Francis Carpenter, who had led his class in his first and second years at McGill, and for whom his teachers had predicted a great career, was a country school-teacher at forty-five with no prospect of ever being anything else. Perhaps he was resigned to it - perhaps not. Nobody every knew, not even the brown mouse of a wife. Nobody in Blair Water cared - he was a good teacher, and that was all that mattered. Even if he did go on occasional "sprees" he always took Saturday for them and was sober enough by Monday. Sober, and especiall dignified, wearing a rusty black frock coat which he never put on any other day of the week. He did not invite pity and he did not pose as a tragedy. But sometimes, when Emily looked at his face, bent over the arithmetic problems of Blair Water School, she felt horribly sorry for him without in the least understanding why.

He had an explosive temper which generally burst into flame at least once a day, and then he would storm about wildly for a few minutes, tugging at his beard, imploring heaven to grant him patience, abusing everybody in general and the luckless object of his wrath in particular. But these tempers never lasted long. In a few minutes Mr. Carpenter would be smiling as graciously as a sun bursting through a storm-cloud on the very pupil he had been rating. Nobody seemed to cherish any grudge because of his scoldings. He never said any of the biting things Miss Brownell was wont to say, which rankled and festered for weeks; his hail of words fell alike on just and unjust and rolled off harmlessly.

He could take a joke on himself in perfect good nature. "Do you hear me? Do you hear me, sirrah?" he bellowed to Perry Miller one day. "Of course I can ehar you," retorted Perry coolly, "they could hear you in Charlottetown." Mr. Carpenter stared for a moment, then broke into a great, jolly laugh.

His methods of teaching were so different from Miss Brownell's that the Blair Water pupils at first felt as if he had stood them on their heads. Miss Brownell had been a martinet for order. Mr. Carpenter never tried to keep order apparently. But somehow he kept the children so busy that they had no time to do mischief. He taught history tempestuously for a month, making his pupils play the different characters and enact the incidents. He never bothered any one to learn dates - but the dates stuck in the memory just the same. If, as Mary Queen of Scots, you were beheaded by the school axe, kneeling blindfolded at the doorstep, with Perry Miller, wearing a mask made out of a piece of Aunt Laura's old black silk, for executioner, wondering what would happen if he brought the axe down too hard, you did not forget the year it all happened; and if you fought the battle of Waterloo all over the school playground, and heard Teddy Kent shouting, "Up, Guards, and at 'em!" as he led the last furious charge you remembered 1815 without half trying to.

Next month history would be thrust aside altogether and geography would take its place, when school and playground were mapped out into countries and you dressed up as the animals inhabiting them or traded in various commodities over their rivers and cities. When Rhode Stuart had cheated you in a bargain in hides, you remembered that she had bought the cargo from the Argentine Republic, and when Perry Miller would not drink any water for a whole hot summer day because he was crossing the Arabian Desert with a caravan of camels and could not find an oasis, and then drank so much that he took terrible cramps and Aunt Laura had to be up all night with him - you did not forget where the said desert was. The trustees were quite scandalized over some of the goings on and felt sure that the children were having too good a time to be really learning anything.

If you wanted to learn Latin and French you had to do it by talking your exercises, not writing them, and on Friday afternoons all lessons were put aside and Mr. Carpenter made the children recite poems, make speeches and declaim passages from Shakespeare and the Bible. This was the day Ilse loved. Mr. Carpenter pounced on her gift like a starving dog on a bone and drilled her without mercy. They had endless fights and Ilse stamped her foot and called him names while the other pupils wondered why she was not punished. Ilse went to school regularly - something she had never done before. Mr. Carpenter had told her that if she were absent for a day without good excuse she could take no part in the Friday "exercises" and this would have killed her.

One day Mr. Carpenter had picked up Teddy's slate and found a sketch of himself on it, in one of his favourite if not exactly beautiful attitudes. Teddy had labelled it "The Black Death" -- half of the pupils of the school having died that day of the Great Plague, and having been carried out on stretchers to the Potter's Field by the terrified survivors.

Teddy expected a roar of denunciation, for the day before Garrett Marshall had been ground into figurative pulp on being discovered with the picture of a harmless cow on his slate - at least, Garrett said he meant it for a cow. But now this amazing Mr. Carpenter only drew his beetling brows together, looked earnestly at Teddy's slate, put it down on the desk, looked at Teddy, and said,

"I don't know anything about drawing - I can't help you, but, by gad, I think hereafter you'd better give up those extra arithmetic problems in the afternoon and draw pictures."

Whereupon Garrett Marshall went home and told his father that "old Carpenter" wasn't fair and "made favourites" over Teddy Kent.

Mr. Carpenter went up to the Tansy Patch that evening and saw the sketches in Teddy's old barn-loft studio. Then he went into the house and talked to Mrs. Kent. What he said and what she said nobody every knew. But Mr. Carpenter went away looking grim, as if he had met an unexpected match. He took great pains with Teddy's general school work after that and procured from somewhere certain elementary text books on drawing which he gave him, telling him not to take them home - a caution Teddy did not require. He knew quite well that if he did they would disappear as mysteriously as his cats had done. He had taken Emily's advice and told his mother he would not love her if anything happened to Leo, and Leo flourished and waxed fat and doggy. But Teddy was too gentle at heart and too fond of his mother to make such a threat more than once. He knew she had cried all that night after Mr. Carpenter had been there, and prayed on her knees in her little bedroom most of the next day, and looked at him with bitter, haunting eyes for a week. He wished she were more like other fellows' mothers but they loved each other very much and had dear hours together in the little gray house on the tansy hill. It was only when other people were about that Mrs. Kent was queer and jealous.

"She's always lovely when we're alone," Teddy had told Emily.

As for the other boys, Perry Miller was the only one Mr. Carpenter bothered much with in the way of speeches - and he was as merciless with him as with Ilse. Perry worked hard to please him and practiced his speeches in barn and field - and even by nights in the kitchen loft - until Aunt Elizabeth put a stop to that. Emily could not understand why Mr. Carpenter would smile amiably and say "Very good" when Neddy Grey rattled off a speech glibly, without any expression whatever, and then rage at Perry and denounce him as a dunce and a nincompoop, by gad, because he had failed to give just the proper emphasis on a certain word, or had timed his gesture a fraction of a second too soon.

Neither could she understand why he made red pencil corrections all over her compositions and rated her for split infinitives and too lavish adjectives and strode up and down the aisle and hurled objurgations at her because she didn;t know "a good place to stop when she saw it, by gad," and then told Rhoda Stuart and Nan Lee that their compositions were very pretty and gave them back without so much as a mark on them. Yet, in spite of it all, she liked him more and more as time went on and autumn passed and winter came with its beautiful bare-limbed trees, and soft pearl-gray skies that were slashed with rifts of gold in the afternoons, and cleared to a jewelled pageantry of stars over the wide white hills and valleys around New Moon.

The Books: "Emily of New Moon" (L.M. Montgomery)

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Emily of New Moon - by L.M. Montgomery Excerpt 5!!

Okay, so this entire chapter is hilarious and beautiful - I'll only excerpt a part of it - but it is Lucy Maud at her very best. It's comical - it has two very distinct voices - Emily's and Father Cassidy's - we are in Emily's shoes, of course - and yet, because we are a bit older than Emily, we can totally see Father Cassidy's point of view. We can see how he sees her - and we can see how unutterably delightful he finds her. Imagine: this little black-haired girl shows up on the doorstep of the rectory one day - unannounced - terrified because you are a Catholic and she doesn't know any Catholics and she has been taught that "papists" are bizarre and almost like they're members of a cult - and yet she is at the end of her rope, and she has come to ask a personal favor of you. To use your influence (because we all know that Catholics do whatever their priests tell them to do) with a member of your congregation - and ask him NOT to cut down the spruce grove over by New Moon. Father Cassidy is like ... wha????? But watch how she does it - and watch how Father Cassidy just falls in love with her. The guy has an Irish brogue - he's still a bit of the old country - and Emily comes to see him, terrified, she has not told Elizabeth or Laura where she has gone. She has taken it upon herself to walk the distance to the Catholic church in the next town, to talk to Father Cassidy. She's, like, 9 years old or something like that. Lucy Maud's sense of humor totally shines in chapters like this one - where the events border on the absurd. Father Cassidy talks with her a while - and eventually convinces her to stay for tea. He's fascinated by this small impish child who has shown up to demand that he intercede with a parishioner. hahahaha It's so brazen!! Father Cassidy sees her innocence - sees her guilelessness ... but he also sees something else. In the same way that Dean Priest, later, will see something else. He sees the future. Father Cassidy senses that this girl ... this girl is something special. He basically just wants to keep her talking.

I'll just excerpt a bit of it. It's my favorite bit - the ending epiphany moment always brings a little lump to my throat. Lucy Maud is marvelous.

Excerpt from Emily of New Moon - by L.M. Montgomery

"Now you sit right down here, Elf, and be human for ten minutes and we'll have a friendly snack."

Emily was hungry - a nice comfortable feeling she hadn't experienced for a fortnight. Mrs. Cassidy's plum cake was all her reverend son claimed, and the cream cow seemed to be no myth.

"What do you think av me now?" asked Father Cassidy suddenly, finding Emily's eyes fixed on him speculatively.

Emily blushed. She had been wondering if she dared ask another favour of Father Cassidy.

"I think you are awfully good," she said.

"I am awfully good," agreed Father Cassidy. "I'm so good that I'll do what you want me to do - for I feel there's something else you want me to do."

"I'm in a scrape and I've been in it all summer. You see" -- Emily was very sober -- "I am a poetess."

"Holy Mike! That is serious. I don't know if I can do much for you. How long have you been that way?"

"Are you making fun of me?" asked Emily gravely.

Father Cassidy swallowed something besides plum cake.

"The saints forbid! It's only that I'm rather overcome. To be after entertaining a lady av New Moon -- and an elf - and a poetess all in one is a bit too much for a humble praste like meself. Have another slice av cake and tell me all about it."

"It's like this -- I'm writing an epic."

Father Cassidy suddenly leaned over and gave Emily's wrist a little pinch.

"I just wanted to see if you were real," he explained. "Yes -- yes, you're writing an epic -- go on. I think I've got my second wind now."

"I began it last spring. I called it The White Lady first but now I've changed it to The Child of the Sea. Don't you think that's a better title?"

"Much better."

"I've got three cantos done, and I can't get any further because there's something I don't know and can't find out. I've been so worried about it."

"What is it?"

"My epic," said Emily, diligently devouring plum cake, "is about a very beautiful high-born girl who was stolen away from her real parents when she was a baby and brought up in a woodcutter's hut."

"One av of the seven original plots in the world," murmured Father Cassidy.

"What?"

"Nothing. Just a bad habit av thinking aloud. Go on."

"She had a lover of high degree but his family did not want him to marry her because she was only a woodcutter's daughter --"

"Another of the seven plots -- excuse me."

"-- so they sent him away to the Holy land on a crusade and word came back that he was killed and then Editha -- her name was Editha -- went into a convent --"

Emily paused for a bite of plum cake and Father Cassidy took up the strain.

"And now her lover comes back very much alive, though covered with Paynim scars, and the secret av her birth is discovered through the dying confession av the old nurse and the birthmark on her arm."

"How did you know?" gasped Emily in amazement.

"Oh, I guessed it -- I'm a good guesser. But where's your bother in all this?"

"I don't know how to get her out of the convent," confessed Emily. "I thought perhaps you would know how it would be done."

Again Father Cassidy fitted his fingers.

"Let us see, now. It's no light matter you;'ve undertaken, young lady. How stands the case? Editha has taken the veil, not because she has a religious vocation because because she imagines her heart is broken. The Catholic Church does not release its nuns from their vows because they happen to think they've made a little mistake av that sort. No, no, -- we must have a better reason. Is this Editha the sole child av her real parents?"

"Yes."

"Oh, then the way is clear. If she had had any brothers or sisters you would have had to kill them off, which is a messy thing to do. Well, then, she is the sole daughter and heiress av a noble family who have for years been at deadly feud with another noble family -- the family av the lover. Do you know what a feud is?"

"Of course," said Emily, disdainfully. "And I've got all that in the poem already."

"So much the better. This feud has rent the kingdom in twain and can only be healed by an alliance between Capulet and Montague."

"Those aren't their names."

"No matter. This, then, is a national affair, with far-reaching issues, therefore an appeal to the Supreme Pontiff is quite in order. What you want," Father Cassidy nodded solemnly, "is a dispensation from Rome."

"Dispensation is a hard word to work into a poem," said Emily.

"Undoubtedly. But young ladies who will write epic poems and who will lay the scenes thereof amid times and manners av hundreds av years ago, and will choose heroines av a religion quite unknown to them, must expect to run up against a few snags."

"Oh, I think I'll be able to work it in," said Emily cheerfully. "And I'm so much obliged to you. You don't know what a relief it is to my mind. I'll finish the poem right up now in a few weeks. I haven't done a thing at it all summer. But then of course I've been busy. Ilse Burnley and I have been making a new language."

"Making a -- new -- excuse me. Did you say language?"

"Yes."

"What's the matter with English? Isn't it good enough for you, you incomprehensible little being?"

"Oh, yes. That isn't why we're making a new one. You see in the spring, Cousin Jimmy got a lot of French boys to help plant the potatoes. I had to help too and Ilse came to keep me company. And it was so annoying to hear those boys talking French when we couldn't understand a word of it. They did it just to make us mad. Such jabbering! So Ilse and I just made up our miunds we'd invent a new language that they couldn't understand. We're getting on fine and when the potato picking time comes we'll be able to talk to each other and those boys won't be able to understand a word we're saying. Oh, it will be great fun!"

"I haven't a doubt. But two girls who will go to all the trouble av inventing a new language just to get square with some poor little French boys -- you're beyond me," said Father Cassidy, helplessly. "Goodness knows what you'll be doing when you grow up. You'll be Red Revolutionists. I tremble for Canada."

"Oh, it isn't a trouble -- it's fun. And all the girls in school are just wild because they hear us talking in it and can't make it out. We can talk secrets right before them."

"Human nature being what it is, I can see where the fun comes in all right. Let's hear a sample av your language."

"Nat millan O ste dolman bote ta Shrewsbury fernas ta poo litanos," said Emily glibly. "That means 'Next summer I am going to Shrewsbury woods to pick strawberries.' I yelled that across the playground to Ilse the other day at recess and oh, how everybody stared."

"Staring, is it? I should say so. My own poor old eyes are all but dropping out av me head. Let's hear a bit more av it."

"Mo tral li dead seb ad li mo trene. Mo bertral seb mo bertrene das sten dead e ting setra. That means 'My father is dead and so is my mother. My grandfather and grandmother have been dead a long time.' We haven't invented a word for 'dead' yet. I think I will soon be able to write my poems in our language and then Aunt Elizabeth will not be able to read them if she finds them."

"Have you written any other poetry besides your epic?"

"Oh, yes -- but just short pieces -- dozens of them."

"H'm. Would you be so kind as to let me hear one av them?"

Emily was greatly flattered. And she did not mind letting Father Cassidy hear her precious stuff.

"I'll recite my last poem," she said, clearing her throat importantly. "It's called Evening Dreams."

Father Cassidy listened attentively. After the first verse a change came over his big brown face, and he began patting his fingertips together., When Emily finished she hung down her lashes and waited trembling. What if Father Cassidy said it was no good? No, he wouldn't be so impolite - but if he bantered her as he had done about her epic -- she would know what that meant.

Father Cassidy did not speak all at once. The prolonged suspense was terrible to Emily. She was afraid he could not praise and did not want to hurt her feelings by dispraise. All at once her "Evening Dreams" seemed trash and she wondered how she could ever have been silly enough to repeat it to Father Cassidy.

Of course, it was trash. Father Cassidy knew that well enough. All the same, for a child like this - and rhyme and rhythm were flawless - and there was one line -- just one line -- "the light of faintly golden stars" -- for the sake of that line Father Cassidy suddenly said,

"Keep on, -- keep on writing poetry."

"You mean?" -- Emily was breathless.

"I mean you'll be able to do something by and by. Something -- I don't know how much -- but keep on -- keep on."

Emily was so happy she wanted to cry. It was the first word of commendation she had ever received except from her father -- and a father might have too high an opinion of one. This was different. To the end of her struggle for recognition Emily never forgot Father Cassidy's "Keep on" and the tone in which he said it.

"Aunt Elizabeth scolds me for writing poetry," she said wistfully. "She says people will think I'm as simple as Cousin Jimmy."

"The path of genius never did run smooth. But have another piece av cake -- do, just to show there's something human about you."

"Ve, merry ti. O del re dolman cosey aman ri sen ritter. That means, 'No, thank you. I must be going home before it gets dark.'"

"I'll drive you home."

"Oh, no, no. It's very kind of you" -- the English language was quite good enough for Emily now, "But I'd rather walk. It's -- it's -- such good exercise."

"Meaning," said Father Cassidy with a twinkle in his eye, "that we must keep it from the old lady. Goodbye, and may you always see a happy face in your looking-glass!"

Emily was too happy to be tired on the way home. There seemed to be a bubble of joy in her heart - a shimmering, prismatic bubble. When she came to the top of the big hill and looked across to New Moon, her eyes were satisfied and loving. How beautiful it was, lying embowered in the twilight of the old trees; the tips of the loftiest spruces came out in purple silhouette against the northwestern sky of rose and amber; down behind it the Blair Water dreamed in silver; the Wind Woman had folded her misty bat-wings in a valley of sunset and stillness lay over the world like a blessing. Emily felt sure everything would be all right. Father Cassidy would manage it in some way.

And he had told her to "keep on".

The Books: "Emily of New Moon" (L.M. Montgomery)

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Emily of New Moon - by L.M. Montgomery Excerpt 4!!

I always loved this particular chapter, for some reason. I wished I could crawl in between the lines of the page and join Emily, Ilse, and Teddy around Cousin Jimmy's fire. So Teddy has come into the story. Emily and Ilse befriend Teddy - a boy in their class - and he has a mother who is, uhm, somewhat ODD, to say the least. She hovers over Teddy. Her entire life is her son. Again, this characterization is evidence that Lucy Maud knew exactly where she was going in this series ... because the climax with Teddy's mother does not occur until Book 3 - but the seeds of it are in place. Marvelous. This is why it's so wonderful to read these books over and over again. You see, with each reading, how good Lucy Maud really IS. "Oh, look ... foreshadowing there ..." But it's subtle. She never beats you over the head with it - it's just that she had carefully plotted out the journeys of these people - so she knew where she was going, and she knew how to set them up. So the payoff in that last book is HUGE. Teddy's mother is one of Lucy Maud's most tragic and irritating creations. She's a martyr - and yet ... her martyrdom causes her soul to shrivel, for her to lose her sense of humanity ... She does something so evil (eventually) - and yeah, I would call it evil - that Emily's life is nearly ruined forever. She has that kind of power ... and she uses it. From the very beginning, when Ilse and Emily befriend Teddy - and she peeks out the windows at them playing in the yard ... she knows. She knows that these two girls will grow into 2 women who conceivably could take her son away from her. Her own tragedy that befell her has caused her to go mad. Her connection to her son is unnatural. And Teddy feels it - even then - as a young boy. He knows his mother is not like other mothers. He loves her ... but there are times when her hovering presence makes him feel suffocated.

Oh, and then - also - there is the foreshadowing of Teddy's "call" to her.

And Ilse is, I believe, one of Lucy Maud's most WILD creations. Ilse lives by her own rules. Always and forever. She can be quite scandalous. But that is just who she is. When Emily meets her, Ilse is neglected horribly by her father - and her mother disappeared. It is believed (only this story is kept from Emily) that Ilse's mother ran off with another man. And her father has become so bitter - and Ilse reminds him of happier days - so he literally could barely care less what Ilse does. Ilse dresses in rags. She doesn't go to school. Or, she does when she FEELS like it. And she makes statements like, "No. I don't believe in God" - completely scandalizing everyone.

But then comes the autumn (this is the excerpt I'm posting today) - and Cousin Jimmy has to boil the pigs potatoes. There's a whole chapter about this ritual ... I just think Lucy Maud creates such a vivid LIVING picture here. I just want to be there.

There's reality in it - and yet - it's magical too. The way life sometimes is when you're a kid.

Excerpt from Emily of New Moon - by L.M. Montgomery

Emily was sure no built-in boiler could have the charm of the big pot. She helped Cousin Jimmy fill it full of potatoes after she came from school; then, when supper was over, Cousin Jimmy lighted the fire under it and puttered about it all the evening. Sometimes he poked the fire -- Emily loved that part of the performance -- sending glorious streams of rosy sparks upward into the darkness; sometimes he stirred the potatoes with a long pole, looking, with his queer, forked grey beard and belted "jumper", just like some old gnome or troll of northland story mixing the contents of a magical caldron; and sometimes he sat beside Emily on the grey granite boulder near the pot and recited his poetry for her. Emily liked this bet of all, for Cousin Jimmy's poetry was surprisingly good - at least in spots - and Cousin Jimmy had "fit audience though few" in this slender little maiden with her pale eager face and rapt eyes.

They were an odd couple and they were perfectly happy together. Blair Water people thought Cousin Jimmy a failure and a mental weakling. But he swelt in an ideal world of which none of them knew anything. He had recited his poems a hundred times thus, as he boiled the pigs' potatoes; the ghosts of a score of autumns haunted the clump of spruces for him. He was an odd, ridiculous figure enough, bent and wrinkled and unkempt, gesticulating awkwardly as he recited. But it was his hour; he was no longer "simple Jimmy Murray" but a prince in his own realm. For a little while he was strong and young and splendid and beautiful, accredited master of song to a listening, enraptured world. None of his prosperous, sensible Blair Water neighbours ever lived through such an hour. He would not have exchanged places with one of them. Emily, listening to him, felt vaguely that if it had not been for that unlucky push into the New Moon well, this queer little man beside her might have stood in the presence of kings.

But Elizabeth had pushed him into the New Moon well and as a consequence he boiled pigs' potatoes and recited to Emily -- Emily, who wrote poetry too, and loved these evenings so much that she could not sleep after she went to bed until she had composed a minute description of them. The flash came almost every evening over something or other. The Wind Woman swooped or purred in the tossing boughs above them -- Emily had never been so near to seeing her; the sharp air was full of the pleasant tang of the burning spruce cones Cousin Jimmy shovelled under the pot; Emily's furry kitten, Mike II, frisked and scampered about like a small, charming demon of the night; the fire glowed with beautiful redness and allure through the gloom; there were nice whispery sounds everywhere; the "great big dark" lay spread around them full of mysteries that daylight never revealed; and over all a purple sky powdered with stars.

Ilse and Teddy came, too, on some evenings. Emily always knew when Teddy was coming, for when he reached the old orchard he whistled his "call" -- the one he used just for her -- a funny, dear little call, like three clear bird notes, the first just medium pitch, the second higher, the third dropping away into lowness and sweetness long-drawn-out -- like the echoes in the Bugle Song that went clearer and further in their dying. That call always had an odd effect on Emily; it seemed to her that it fairly drew the heart out of her body -- and she had to follow it. She thought Teddy could have whistled her clear across the world with those three magic notes. Whenever she heard it she ran quickly through the orchard and told Teddy whether Cousin Jimmy wanted him or not, because it was only on certain nights that Cousin Jimmy wanted anybody but her. He would never recite his poetry to Ilse or Teddy; but he told them fairy stories, and tales about the old dead-and-gone Murrays in the pond graveyard that were as queer, sometimes, as the fairy stories; and Ilse would recite too, doing better there than she ever did anywhere else; and sometimes Teddy lay sprawled out on the ground beside the big pot and drew pictures by the light of the fire -- pictures of Cousin Jimmy stirring the potatoes -- pictures of Ilse and Emily dancing hand in hand around it like two small witches, pictures of Mike's cunning, little, whiskered face peering around the old boulder, pictures of weird, vague faces crowding in the darkness outside their enchanted circle. They had very wonderful evenings there, those four children.

"Oh, don't you like the world at night, Ilse?" Emily once said rapturously.

Ilse glanced happily around her -- poor little neglected Ilse, who found in Emily's companionship what she had hungered for all her short life and who was, even now, being led by love into something of her rightful heritage.

"Yes," she said. "And I always believe there is a God when I'm here like this."

The Books: "Emily of New Moon" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Emily of New Moon - by L.M. Montgomery Excerpt 3!!

I love this little excerpt just because it gives you a sense of the depths within Emily - depths that even she does not know are there. In a way, Emily is almost afraid of her own "depths" - the few times that her moments of precognition occur - or the time she has the prophetic dream - or the time in the last book where she "calls" to Teddy ... These are extraordinary events. Emily is tapped into some well-source of power. Something she is not at all in charge of. And this "side" of her almost scares her. She thinks it's best not to talk about that stuff. It makes her feel uncomfortable, different from other people. She brushes off Ilse or Teddy wanting to talk about it ... There are some things better left unsaid.

In this excerpt - Emily has been blown off by the first friend she made - the despicable Rhoda with the "sugar-brown hair". Rhoda was sweet and alluring, and "courted" Emily - Emily had never had a friend before, so she falls HARD for Rhoda. Then - in a devastating blow - Rhoda has a birthday party and invites every girl in the class EXCEPT Emily.

Nice to know that little girls could behave just as atrociously to one another back then as they do today.

But it's what happens directly after the blow-off that I am excerpting. It's as though thru the confrontation with her Aunt Elizabeth - she completley gets rid of all of her anger and hurt. It washes out of her. I can't think specifically of a moment in my life where that has happened - but I know it happens all the time. You are all worked UP about something, something is ALWAYS on your mind, you are working it over, worrying about it, angsting ... and then a random moment, unconnected, sets you free. The emotions move course. And 5 minutes later you're wondering: "Why on earth was I so upset?"

Excerpt from Emily of New Moon - by L.M. Montgomery

Emily was of a nature which, even as a child, did not readily recover from or forget such a blow. She moped about New Moon, lost her appetite, and grew thin. She hated to go to Sunday School because she thought the other girls exulted in her humiliation and her estrangement from Rhoda. Some slight feeling of the kind there was, perhaps, but Emily morbidly exaggerated it. If two girls whispered or giggled together she thought she was being discussed and laughed at. If one of them walked home with her she thought it was out of condescending pity because she was friendless. For a month Emily was the most unhappy little being in Blair Water.

"I think I must have been put under a curse at birth," she reflected disconsolately.

Aunt Elizabeth had a more prosaic idea to account for Emily's languor and lack of appetite. She had come to the conclusion that Emily's heavy masses of hair "took from her strength" and that she would be much stronger and better if it were cut off. With Aunt Elizabeth to decide was to act. One morning she coolly informed Emily that her hair was to be "shingled".

Emily could not believe her ears.

"You don't mean that you are going to cut off my hair, Aunt Elizabeth," she exclaimed.

"Yes, I mean exactly that," said Aunt Elizabeth firmly. "You have entirely too much hair especially for hot weather. I feel sure that is why you have been so miserable lately. Now, I don't want any crying."

But Emily could not keep the tears back.

"Don't cut it all off," she pleaded. "Just cut a good big bang. Lots of the girls have their hair banged clean from the crown of their heads. That would take half my hair off and the rest won't take too much strength."

"There will be no bangs here," said Aunt Elizabeth. "I've told you so often enough. I'm going to shingle your hair close all over your head for the hot weather. You'll be thankful to me some day for it."

Emily felt anything but thankful just then.

"It's my one beauty," she sobbed. "It and my lashes. I suppose you want to cut off my lashes too."

Aunt Elizabeth did distrust those long, upcurled fringes of Emily's, which were an inheritance from the girlish stepmother, and too un-Murray-like to be approved; but she had no designs against them. The hair must go, however, and she curtly bade Emily wait there, without any fuss, until she got the scissors.

Emily waited -- quite hopelessly. She must lose her lovely hair -- the hair her father had been so proud of. It might grow again in time -- if Aunt Elizabeth let it -- but that would take years, and meanwhile what a fright she would be! Aunt Laura and Cousin Jimmy were out; she had no one to back her up; this horrible thing must happen.

Aunt Elizabeth returned with the scissors; they clicked suggestively as she opened them; that click, as if by magic, seemed to loosen something -- some strange formidable power in Emily's soul. She turned deliberately around and faced her aunt. She felt her brows drawing together in an unaccustomed way -- she felt an uprush as from unknown depths of some irresistible surge of energy.

"Aunt Elizabeth," she said, looking straight at the lady with the scissors, "my hair is not going to be cut off. Let me hear no more of this."

An amazing thing happened to Aunt Elizabeth. She turned pale -- she laid the scissors down -- she looked aghast for one moment at the transformed or possessed child before her -- and then for the first time in her life Elizabeth Murray turned tail and fled -- literally fled -- to the kitchen.

"What is the matter, Elizabeth?" cried Laura, coming in from the cook-house.

"I saw -- Father -- looking from her face," gasped Elizabeth, trembling. "And she said, 'Let me hear no more of this,' -- just as he always said it -- his very words."

Emily overheard her and ran to the sideboard mirror. She had had, while she was speaking, an uncanny feeling of wearing somebody else's face instead of her own. It was vanishing now -- but Emily caught a glimpse of it as it left -- the Murray look, she supposed. No wonder it had frightened Aunt Elizabeth -- it frightened herself -- she was glad that it had gone. She shivered -- she fled to her garret retreat and cried; but somehow, she knew that her hair would not be cut.

Nor was it; Aunt Elizabeth never referred to the matter again. But several days passed before she meddled much with Emily.

It was a rather curious fact that from that day Emily ceased to grieve over her lost friend. The matter had suddenly become of small importance. It was as if it had happened so long ago that nothing, save the mere emotionless memory of it, remained. Emily speedily regained appetite and animation, resumed her letters to her father and found that life tasted good again, marred only by a mysterious prescience that Aunt Elizabeth had it in for her in regard to her defeat in the matter of her hair and would get even sooner or later.

The Books: "Emily of New Moon" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Emily of New Moon - by L.M. Montgomery

Excerpt 2!!

I just love this part - when Emily first goes to New Moon, after her father's death. Everything is new and strange, and her grief is still fresh ... so all of her impressions come rushing at her. Emily is very disoriented. And Aunt Elizabeth, to say the least, is NOT sympathetic to the whims and ups and downs of Emily's personality. She should be seen and not heard. She will not be allowed to 'wallow' in grief (uhm, her father died 2 days ago??) Etc. The rules come fast and furious at Emily. New Moon is beautiful and mysterious and interesting - but it is not at ALL comforting at first. Especially not the first night ... when Elizabeth sternly and coldly refuses to let Emily have her own room. She is too young. She must sleep with Elizabeth. Emily - who is only a child - still has a strong sense of herself, a strong sense of boundaries - she needs solitude, alone time ... This is NOT respected at New Moon. Elizabeth will NEVER get this about Emily. It is one of their most ongoing struggles.

I love the writing in the "New Moon" chapter and also in the next chapter "The Book of Yesterday". - Emily's arrival at her new home. It's so vivid - the shadowy kitchen, the hanging hams, the tall spruces, the dark house crowded with Victorian furniture - Emily grew up in a shabby little house in the woods, with maybe 3 or 4 rooms ... She is agog at her new surroundings, overwhelmed, exhausted, almost hallucinatory.

She wakes up the next morning and spends a couple of days hanging out with Cousin Jimmy (a marvelous character, my God, isn't he great?) - and he tells her the stories of the Murry family - a long established kind of intimidating family - a family Emily is part of but she knows nothing about.

When her dead mother, the beloved Juliet Murry, married a poor writer (Emily's father) - her family disowned her. They turned their backs. They can be very cold. Emily knows NONE of her own history.

Oh, and one thing. This chapter kind of sets up the whole rest of the series. Things are pointed out in this chapter that will only be resolved in the THIRD book of the series. Foreshadowing all over the place. Lucy Maud knew what the hell she was doing.

Oh, and the "Here I stay" story in the excerpt below is true. It was part of Lucy Maud's family history.

Excerpt from Emily of New Moon - by L.M. Montgomery

Emily resigned herself with a sigh of disappointment to staying home; but it was very pleasant after all. Cousin Jimmy took her for a walk to the pond, showed her the graveyard and opened the book of yesterday to her.

"Why are all the Murrays buried here?" asked Emily. "Is it really because they are too good to be buried with common people?"

"No -- no, pussy. We don't carry our pride as far as that. When old Hugh Murray settled at New Moon there was nothing much but woods for miles and no graveyards nearer than Charlottetown. That's why the old Murrays were buried here -- and later on we kept it up because we wanted to lie with our own, here on the green, green banks of the old Blair Water."

"That sounds like a line out of a poem, Cousin Jimmy," said Emily.

"So it is -- out of one of my poems."

"I kind of like the idea of a 'sclusive burying ground like this," said Emily decidedly, looking around her approvingly at the velvet grass sloping down to the fairy-blue pond, the neat walks, the well-kept graves.

Cousin Jimmy chuckled.

"And yet they say you ain't a Murray," he said. "Murray and Byrd and Starr -- and a dash of Shipley to boot, or Cousin Jimmy Murray is much mistaken."

"Shipley?"

"Yes -- Hugh Murray's wife - your great-great-grandmother -- was a Shipley -- an Englishwoman. Ever hear of how the Murrays came to New Moon?"

"No."

"They were bound for Quebec -- hadn't any notion of coming to P.E.I. They had a long rough voyage and water got scarce, so the captain of the New Moon put in here to get some. Mary Murray had nearly died of seasickness coming out -- never seemed to get her sea-legs -- so the captain, being sorry for her, told her she could go ashore with the men and feel solid ground under her for an hour or so. Very gladly she went and when she got to shore she said, 'Here I stay.' And stay she did; nothing could budge her; old Hugh -- he was young Hugh then, of course -- coaxed and stormed and raged and argued -- and even cried, I've been told -- but Mary wouldn't be moved. In the end he gave in and had his belongings landed and stayed, too. So that is how the Murrays came to P.E. Island."

"I'm glad it happened like that," said Emily.

"So was old Hugh in the long run. And yet it rankled, Emily -- it rankled. He never forgave his wife with a whole heart. Her grave is over there in the corner -- that one with the flat red stone. Go you and look at what he had put on it."

Emily ran curiously over. The big flat stone was inscribed with one of the long, discursive epitaphs of an older day. But beneath the epitaph was no scriptural verse or pious psalm. Clear and distinct, in spite of age and lichen, ran the line, "Here I stay."

"That's how he got even with her," said Cousin Jimmy. "He was a good husband to her -- and she was a good wife and bore him a fine family -- an dhe never was the same after her death. But that rankled in him until it had to come out."

Emily gave a little shiver. Somehow, the idea of that grim old ancestor with his undying grudge against his nearest and dearest was rather terrifying.

The Books: "Emily of New Moon" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Emily of New Moon - by L.M. Montgomery

I'm almost NERVOUS to start this. I love the Emily books so much. I need to calm down. I have a greater affinity for the Emily books than the Anne books (Madeleine L'Engle wrote a WONDERFUL essay about the Emily books - and how much they enchanted her and inspired her as a child) ... I love Anne Shirley, do not get me wrong ... but there are times when I feel a WEE bit like Leslie Moore, looking at Anne with resentful eyes, wondering, "Do you EVER have a bad day? Do you EVER give up hope? Do you EVER lie awake at night, tormented??" She doesn't seem to. After all, Lucy Maud makes a big point of telling us that she and Gilbert never fight in their marriage. Never fight. Mm-hmm. A bit of wishful thinking there, LM. I mean - Anne never comes off as saccharine, NEVER ... she's a living breathing funny warm human being ... but Emily? There's just something about Emily that I can totally click into. And this was so since I first read the books - which, I think, was late in high school or early college.

I think also there's the whole artist thing. Emily is a person who has a CALLING. She knows it from when she is a small child. She is a writer. This is her CALLING. The Emily books are much more autobiographical than the Anne books - and there are certain sections that are taken almost word for word from Lucy Maud's journals and personal essays, and the excerpt I'm posting today is one of them. Lucy Maud had written herself about "the flash" and what that meant to her, and what it WAS ... so she gives that gift to Emily. (Oh, and Lucy Maud said, later, that she also could "see the wallpaper in the air" when she was a kid, and liked to amuse herself doing so. There are lots of little similarities here between Emily and the author).

Emily is a darker book than Anne. The mood is darker. Emily herself is a darker personality than Anne, much more rigid and unbending. She refuses to be bullied, even though she is a child, and man - is she surrounded by grown-up bullies. There are no character transformations like there are in the Anne books. For example: in the Anne books - Mrs. Lynde, while a comic character, is pretty blunt and rude to Anne at first meeting her. She's kind of a busybody, and doesn't treat children like they are human beings. But in the end, we come to see that Mrs. Lynde is one of the warmest most wonderful people on the planet - she would literally give you the damn shirt off her back (if she thought you deserved it, that is) - and she LOVES Marilla, and she LOVES Anne. In her own Mrs. Lynde way, of course ... but we come to see that that first impression of her was just the tip of the iceberg. That kind of stuff doesn't really happen in the Emily books. Aunt Elizabeth doesn't transform, on closer knowing of her, into a warmer more loving person. We don't see that her coldness is actually masking a deep pool of lava-like love (like we do with Marilla). Aunt Elizabeth is, for her own reasons, a cold and uptight woman, who cannot bear disagreement, and MUST be the boss. Emily MUST succumb to her will. This is the source of most of their battles. Emily wins some of the battles, but Elizabeth wins most of them. Emily finally is able to live her own life a bit - but that is ONLY because she reaches the age of adulthood. I am not saying that Elizabeth is not complex - oh God, she is - and I LOVE her - I love that character, and how she is written. She is terrifying, and confusing ... and her clashes with Emily are terrifically written. Lucy Maud goes right into the psychology of it - she describes what is really going on. What Elizabeth is really feeling, even though she could never admit it to herself. Elizabeth thinks that Emily should not have a spirit of her own. Her will should be Elizabeth's will. Because she is a child.

God, there are just so many things I love about this series. I can't even get into it without writing a 20 page essay!!

And so I'm going to break with my own tradition (why not - it's my blog!!) and do a couple of excerpts from each Emily book. One is JUST NOT ENOUGH.

The first excerpt is from the very first chapter in Emily of New Moon. Emily fanatics will immediately know the chapter and what happens in it: Emily goes out for a walk by herself, and with her imaginary companion - The Wind Woman. Emily runs around, glorying in nature (what a pallid way to describe this chapter!!), having a marvelous time - although somehow, in the prose, Lucy Maud lets us know the darkness of this world, of Emily's world. The shabbiness of the house, the alone-ness of the child ... there's something dark in the MOOD, basically. Emily returns to her house after her walk (she's 8 years old, I think??) and the housekeeper greets her bluntly at the door, "You know, don't you, that your father is dying?"

Emily's mother is dead. Her father - an abstracted gentle man - takes care of her. They live far off out of town, and Emily has never gone to school. She has grown up only in the company of her father, the cats (who take on intense 3-dimensional personalities in this book - just as they did for Lucy Maud in real life), the trees (some of which Emily names), and the Wind Woman. Emily lives a life of the mind and a life of the imagination. Her father accepts this in her, he does not judge her, he does not try to clip her wings, or trim her into a more acceptable shape. But the book opens with Emily getting the news broken to her - that her father is dying. He doesn't have long to live.

The excerpt I am going to post (or, the first one) is from Emily's walk (and it is also the very end of the first chapter - the last line of the excerpt below is the last line of the first chapter.).

It's the whole "flash" thing. Lucy Maud wrote a lot about what she called "the flash" in her journals. And she also wrote about it in her long autobiographical essay The Alpine Path (which I will get to, later - I have placed THAT book in my "memoir" bookshelf. Forgive my autism). Anyway, she wrote about it almost exactly as she writes about it here.

I think this book just LIVES. I really do. There is something urgent and personal in the prose - something not careful - Lucy Maud uses dashes a lot (uhm, like I do) - because as her thoughts tumble out, this way, that way, they don't organize themselves into neat little sentences. It's a bit more breathless. The dashes are part of that.

Here's Emily. Out on her walk.

I love these books so dearly I don't even know what to say anymore.

Excerpt from Emily of New Moon - by L.M. Montgomery

And the barrens were such a splendid place in which to play hide and seek with the Wind Woman. She was so very real there; if you could just spring quickly enough around a little cluster of spruces -- only you never could -- you would see her as well as feel her and hear her. There she was -- that was the sweep of her grey cloak -- no, she was laughing up in the very top of the taller trees -- and the chase was on again -- till, all at once, it seemed as if the Wind Woman were gone -- and the evening was bathed in a wonderful silence -- and there was a sudden rift in the curdled clouds westward, and a lovely, pale, pinky-green lake of sky with a new moon in it.

Emily stood and looked at it with clasped hands and her little black head upturned. She must go home and write down a description of it in the yellow account book, where the last thing written had been, "Mike's Biograffy." It would hurt her with its beauty until she wrote it down. Then she would read it to Father. She must not forget how the tips of the trees on the hill came out like fine black lace across the edge of the pinky-green sky.

And then, for one glorious, supreme moment, came "the flash".

Emily called it that, although she felt that the name didn't exactly describe it. It couldn't be described -- not even to Father, who always seemed a little puzzled by it. Emily never spoke of it to anyone else.

It had always seemed to Emly, ever since she could rmember, that she was very, very near to a world of wonderful beauty. Between it and herself hung only a thin curtain; she could never draw the curtain aside -- but sometimes, just for a moment, a wind fluttered it and then it was as if she caught a glimpse of the enchanting realm beyond -- only a glimpse -- and heard a note of unearthly music.

This moment came rarely -- went swiftly, leaving her breathless with the inexpressible delight of it. She could never recall it -- never summon it -- never pretend it; but the wonder of it stayed with her for days. It never came twice with the same thing. To-night the dark boughs against that far-off sky had given it. It had come with a high, wild note of wind in the night, with a shadow wave over a ripe field, with a greybird lighting on her window-sill in a storm, with the singing of "Holy, holy, holy" in church, with a glimpse of the kitchen fire when she had come home on a dark autumn night, with the spirit-like blue of ice palms on a twilit pane, with a felicitous new word when she writing down a 'description' of something. And always when the flash came to her Emily felt that life was a wonderful, mysterious thing of persistent beauty.

She scuttled back to the house in the hollow, through the gathering twilight, all agog to get home and write down her "description" before the memory picture of what she had seen grew a little blurred. She knew just how she would begin it -- the sentence seemed to shape itself in her mind: "The hill called to me and something in me called back to it."

She found Ellen Greene waiting for her on the sunken front-doorstep. Emily was so full of happiness that she loved everything at that moment, even fat things of no importance. She flung her arms around Ellen's knees and hugged them. Ellen looked down gloomily into the rapt little face, where excitement had kindled a faint wild-rose flush, and said, with a ponderous sigh,

"Do you know that your pa has only a week or two more to live?"

The Books: Further Chronicles of Avonlea: 'Tannis of the Flats' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "Tannis of the Flats" - by L.M. Montgomery

This story is really interesting, I think, because of the racial aspect. Lucy Maud doesn't really deal with racial issues - at least not overtly - and this is the only story I can think of where she does. It doesn't take place on Price Edward Island, either - although one of the main characters is visiting FROM PEI - it takes place out on the wild west of the Canadian prairies - at a small settlement where a telegraph office has been set up. It's not as domesticated as Avonlea (or - it's not domesticated at all, let's say that) - and surrounding the town, in huddled teepees, are Indians - Indians who do odd jobs, or who just hang on the outskirts of what used to be their land, doing not much at all. Lucy Maud does not have a very high opinion of these people, you can tell that - and yet ... then there's Tannis ... a young Indian woman ... and while she has limitations (limitations ONLY due to her race - which Lucy Maud appears to believe is in the blood: Indians are lazy, sullen, and can't really go very far in life. Not just because the opportunities are not there, but because it is not in their BLOOD to be otherwise) ... but anyway, while Tannis has personal limitations (she is humorless, she has no sense of irony - which turns out to be a huge defect in this case, she doesn't do things for "fun", she is LITERAL) - she also, at the end of the story, does something so selfless, and so sacrificial that it takes your breath away. She gives up her chance at happiness - in order to get the man she loves what he needs (which, in this case, is another woman). Tannis is the heroine of the day. Tannis rises to a height unknown in the more polite and genteel white world. She is the one. So ... even though there are parts of the story where you realize the racist attitudes of pretty much everyone at that time towards the Indians ... Tannis is not a generalized stereotype. She is a real person, a real girl. It's a VERY interesting story - and one of my favorites that Lucy Maud has written. I can't really LOVE Tannis, because the way Lucy Maud writes her - she is not very lovable. But she is a heroine nonetheless.

Tannis ends up having a "flirtation" (although Tannis couldn't be a good flirt if you paid her) with a young man named Jerome Carey (a white man) who has come to work at the telegraph office. It is a temporary position for him - so he decides: what the hey, I'll hang out with Tannis to pass the time while I'm here, no big deal. Well, to Tannis everything is a big deal. Carey is playing with fire by flirting with this Indian girl. She takes nothing lightly. Uhm ... maybe I see myself in Tannis. I'm a horrible flirt as well. Or - it's hard for me to "just" flirt. When I flirt, I mean business. I prefer it that way. But Tannis isn't a light-hearted person, a coquette, a domesticated white girl ... she is a girl of the prairies ... and Jerome Carey ends up paying dearly for messing with her heart.

Anyway, here's the excerpt where Tannis is first described. You'll see the racist attitude towards mixed blood (oh, and Tannis is a half-breed - which many saw, including Cher, as being even WORSE than being an Indian. If you were a half-breed, that's all you ever heard. If you were a half-breed, how you loved to hate the word. And etc.) Interesting, though: even with Lucy Maud's attitude towards race and blood: you can tell that, on another level, she is criticizing the snobbery of the white world, the assumptioins of the white world. You must ADJUST your assumptions with different people ... you cannot assume that every woman is the same (this is for Jerome Carey) ... you have to learn how to read the signs ... do not treat everybody as though they are cutouts of each other. That way disaster lies. Tannis is NOT like other women. Jerome Carey doesn't read the signs.

I can think of one man in my life (*cough* doppelganger *cough*) who flirted outrageously with me one night - it wasn't even really flirting - he DECLARED himself to me - and yet ... he was not free ... not free to be with me ... yet he declared himself anyway, causing me to basically (no, not basically - literally) run off into the night away from him, away from the situation - and the repercussions of that night, for me, were disastrous. This began the long dark period of 2002 for me. Doppelganger flirted with the wrong girl. He knows it NOW - but in that moment he thought his overwhelming declaration would be welcome. He also couldn't help himself (his words.) Maybe he thought I was shallow, and uncommitted, and fabulously okay with myself ... like I appeared, and also like most girls in New York are, or appear to be. He didn't read the signs. Which were THERE. But man, did he mess with the wrong girl. It was horrible for him, it certainly was, to know how much he hurt me - it's years later and we're still SO AWKWARD when we run into each other - that declaration from 2002 still sits between us, screaming at us ... but it was more horrible for me. So I guess I relate to Tannis. Even though all the half-breed, racial blood characteristics, and yadda yadda talk is from another time altogether, and I certainly have more of a sense of humor than Tannis does. But still, I feel for her. I know what she goes through here.

Excerpt from Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "Tannis of the Flats" - by L.M. Montgomery

Tannis was the daughter of old Auguste Dumont, who kept the one small store at the Flats, lived in the one frame house that the place boasted, and was reputed to worth an amount of money which, in half-breed eyes, was a colossal fortune. Old Auguste was black and ugly and notoriously bad-tempered. But Tannis was a beauty.

Tannis' great-grandmother had been a Cree squaw who married a French trapper. The son of this union because, in due time, the father of Auguste Dumont. Auguste married a woman whose mother was a French half-breed and whose father was a pure-bred Highland Scotchman. The result of this atrocious mixture was its justification - Tannis of the Flats - who looked as if all the blood of all the Howards might be running in her veins.

But, after all, the dominant current in those same veins was from the race of plain and prairie. The practiced eye detected it in the slender stateliness of carriage, in the graceful, yet voluptuous, curves of the lithe body, in the smallness and delicacy of hand and foot, in the purple sheen on straight-falling masses of blue-black hair, and, more than all else, in the long, dark eye, full and soft, yet alight with a slumbering fire. France, too, was responsible for somewhat in Tannis. It gave her a light step in place of the stealthy half-breed shuffle, it arched her red upper liip into a more tremulous bow, it lent a note of laughter to her voice and a sprightlier wit to her tongue. As for her red-headed Scotch grandfather, he had bequeathed her a somewhat whiter skin and ruddier bloom than is usually found in the breeds.

Old Auguste was mightily proud of Tannis. He sent her to school for four years in Prince Albert, bound that his girl should have the best. A High School course and considerable mingling in the social life of the town - for old Auguste was a man to be conciliated by astute politicians, since he controlled some two or three hundred half-breed votes - sent Tannis home to the Flats with a very thin, but very deceptive, veneer of culture and civilization overlying the primitive passions and ideas of her nature.

Carey saw only the beauty and the veneer. he made the mistake of thinking that Tannis was what she seemed to be - a fairly well-educated, up-to-date young woman with whom a friendly flirtation was just what it was with white womankind - the pleasant amusement of an hour or season. It was a mistake - a very big mistake. Tannis understood something of piano playing, something less of grammar and Latin, and something less still of social prevarications. But she understood absolutely nothing of flirtation. You can never get an Indian to see the sense of Platonics.

Carey found the Flats quite tolerable after the homecoming of Tannis. He soon fell into the habit of dropping into the Dumont house to spend the evening, talking with Tannis in the parlor - which apartment was amazingly well-done for a place like the Flats - Tannis had not studied Prince Albert parlors four years for nothing - or playing violin and piano duets with her. When music and conversation palled, they went for long gallops over the prairies together. Tannis rode to perfection, and managed her bad-tempered brute of a pony with a skill and grace that made Carey applaud her. She was glorious on horseback.

Sometimes he grew tired of the prairies, and then he and Tannis paddled themselves over the river in Nitchie Joe's dugout, and landed on the old trail that struck straight into the wooded belt of the Saskatchewan valley, leading north to trading posts on the frontier of civilization. There they rambled under huge pines, hoary with the age of centuries, and Carey talked to Tannis about England and quoted poetry to her. Tannis liked poetry; she had studied it at school, and understood it fairly well. But once she told Carey that she thought it a long, round-about way of saying what you could say just as well in about a dozen plain words. Carey laughed. He liked to evoke those little speeches of hers. They sounded very clever, dropping from such arched, ripely-tinted lips.

If you had told Carey that he was playing with fire, he would have laughed at you. In the first place, he was not in the slightest degree in love with Tannis - he merely admired and liked her. In the second place, it never occurred to him that Tannis might be in love with him. Why, he had never attempted any love-making with her! And, above all, he was obsessed with that aforesaid fatal idea that Tannis was like the women he had associated with all his life, in reality as well as in appearance. He did not know enough of the racial characteristics to understand.

But, if Carey thought that his relationship with Tannis was that of friendship merely, he was the only one at the Flats who did think so. All the half-breeds and quarter-breeds and any-fractional breeds there believed that he meant to marry Tannis. There would have been nothing surprising to them in that. They did not know that Carey's second cousin was a baronet, and they would not have understood that it need make any difference, if they had. They thought that rich old Auguste's heiress, who had been to school for four years in Prince Albert, was a catch for anybody.

The Books: Further Chronicles of Avonlea: 'Only a Common Fellow' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "Only a Common Fellow" - by L.M. Montgomery

One of Lucy Maud's beautiful little stories about the sacrifices people make sometimes, when you least expect it. I am strangely moved by this story - even though it's written in kind of a sentimental tone - and even if I, personally, think that the main love story is based WAY too much on looks to have much of a chance. However, maybe that is part of Lucy Maud's point (the title kind of hints at that). Mark Foster is not good-looking, or tall, or an appropriate romantic hero. He is "only a common fellow". And yet - he is a hero. By the end of this story he is revealed as a complete hero who has sacrificed his own happiness for Philippa's. You don't even really LIKE Mark Foster - because he is seen through the eyes of the sentimental old aunt who is the narrator, who thinks that her darling niece Philippa shouldn't be marrying him. Her darling niece Philippa had been in love with a man named Owen Blair - a man who was handsome, strong, good-looking, you know - "your basic nightmare". And he apparently had been killed on the fields of France "by the Huns". He never returned. Philippa's heart has broken. And her evil stepmother (a great character) has basically set Philippa up with Mark Foster, a wealthy man, so that she can get her off her hands. It will be a loveless marriage - and Philippa's father is too weak to do anything to stop it. But Isabella (the stepmother) is pleased as punch. Mark Foster is wealthy, there's a mortgage on the farm that Mark said he would take care of for her IF he could marry Philippa, she doesn't want Philippa around, a reminder of her husband's first marriage, and so that's THAT. Philippa has basically been SOLD to Mark Foster. One the morning of the wedding, Philippa lies in her bed crying. Her aunt comes to her. They both weep together. They weep for the memory of Owen Blair. Philippa asks her aunt to talk to her about Owen, almost like a bedtime story. It's a horrible situation - she's going to be married to Mark Foster in 2 hours, and here she is, lying in bed, dreaming about another man. Anyway, at the end of the story - with the house full of wedding guests, the ceremony about to take place, a knock comes on the door. The auntie opens the door - and there stands Owen Blair. Who apparently was NOT killed by Huns ... he had been injured - and he had written Philiippa many letters - telling her he loved her, he was injured, he would be home as soon as he could. Only Philippa never got those letters. Because the evil Isabella had confiscated them. Philippa stands there, in her wedding dress, torn between her duty - she had said she would marry Mark - and her love for Owen. Isabella is busted in her evil-ness. Philippa, who is a good girl, finally chooses - and she goes and stands by Mark. She said she would marry him and she will not go back on her word. Owen is stunned. But then comes Mark Foster's shining moment. He is "only a common fellow", and nobody likes him, but he actually does love Philippa - and he knows he cannot bear to be married to a woman who is in love with someone else. He thought she might come around, once her grief for Owen had subsided ... but now that he is alive ... everything has changed. Mark suddenly steps out and says, "I cannot be married to anyone who loves someone else. I thought you would learn to love me but that was when we beleived Owen was dead. Please. Go to Owen. Be with him." Isabella looks horrified - Mark glances at her and says, "Oh. One last thing." He takes the mortgage papers out of his pocket, and rips them up, right there and then. And walks off, leaving Philippa weeping in Owen's arms. The story ends with this moving paragraph:

I was glad for my dearie's sake and Owen's; but Mark Foster had paid the price of their joy, and I knew it had beggared him of happiness for life.

Here's an excerpt from the beginning part of the story. I like how Isabella is described when you first meet her. You just get who she is, instantly.

Excerpt from Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "Only a Common Fellow" - by L.M. Montgomery

When she had talked it all out she lay down on her pillow again. I got up and went downstairs to light the fire. I felt terrible old and tired. My feet seemed to drag, and the tears kept coming to my eyes, though I tried to keep them away, for well I knew it was a bad open to be weeping on a wedding day.

Before long Isabella Clark came down; bright and pleased-looking enough, she was. I'd never liked Isabella, from the day Philippa's father brought her here; and I liked her even less than ever this morning. She was one of your sly, deep women, always smiling smooth, and scheming underneath it. I'll say it for her, though, she had been good to Phillippa, but it was her doings that my dearie was to marry Mark Foster that day.

"Up betimes, Rachel," she said, smiling andn speaking me fair, as she always did, and hating me in her heart, as I well knew. "That is right, for we'll have plenty to do to-day. A wedding makes a lot of work."

"Not this sort of wedding," I said, sour-like. "I don't call it a wedding when two people get married and sneak off as if they were ashamed of it - as well they might be in this case."

"It was Philippa's own wish that all should be very quiet," said Isabella, as smooth as cream. "You know I'd have given her a big wedding, if she'd wanted it."

"Oh, it's better quiet," I said. "The fewer to see Philippa marry a man like Mark Foster the better."

"Mark Foster is a good man, Rachel."

"No good man would be content to buy a girl as he's bought Philippa," I said, determined to give it in to her. "He's a common fellow, not fit for my dearie to wipe her feet on. It's well that her mother didn't live to see this day; but this day would never have come, if she'd lived."

"I dare say Philippa's mother would have remembered that Mark Foster is very well off, quite as readily as worse people," said Isabella, a little spitefully.

I liked her better when she was spiteful than when she was smooth. I didn't feel so scared of her then.

The Books: Further Chronicles of Avonlea: 'The Conscience Case of David Bell' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "The Conscience Case of David Bell" - by L.M. Montgomery

Melissa: we're ALMOST AT EMILY! ALMOST!!! 2 more stories in this collection and then ... EMILY! hahahaha

Okay, so let me see if I can remember the who what where why when of this story. It appears that a new preacher has come to town - actually, I guess you might call him an itinerant preacher - an evangelist (Lucy Maud's people are, in general, Presbyterians - there are a lot of jokes about Methodists - the battle between the Prescyterians and the Methodists - so it seems that these are the two main religions of the people of Prince Edward Island. There are, of course, some Catholics - but those people are just filthy drunken no-good Irish - so nobody takes them seriously) But in this particular story, an itinerant preacher has "set up shop" in town - and an evangelical fever has swept through the community. Everyone wants to get up and testify. Testifying is good for the soul. In my opinion, it's kind of a group-think atmosphere - or a variation on the whole Large Group Awareness Training, which has now been identified as a cult atmosphere - but who am I to judge. (Uhm, yes. I judge. But you know.) Lucy Maud doesn't judge (or no, that's not true - she does. She judges pious judgmental people - as you can see from her humorous characterization of Miriam Bell below. It's not a HARSH judgment, but she definitely acknowledges how tiresome such people are). She is interested in how this whole testifying fever would impact somebody who had something on his conscience. Something he did NOT want to share with the community. Or even his family. His family, all worked up about the weekly revival meetings, wonders why their father won't testify. They feel hurt, they feel rejected, they want him to be a part of their enthusiasm, and also - I think they think that he might not be "saved" if he doesn't go along with the group-think. And their father - for the most part a lovely kind gentle man - has suddenly, over the last weeks, since itinerant preacher came to town, become grumpy, withdrawn, separate ... Lucy Maud paints a portrait of a very close and loving family (something she doesn't often do - if you think about her stories, most of them are people who are isolated - either by being orphaned, or whatever - and their families, while interesting and book-worthy, aren't exactly LOVING. She doesn't write stories, for the most part, about people who have a ton of siblings, for example. There are no novels she has written - except for the execrable Pat of Silver Bush series, which shows her inadequacies in this area as in others - where there's a big raucous family with brothers and sisters. Her heroines are alone in the world.) But I digress. The Bell family, in this story, is lovingly drawn - I think Lucy Maud does a very good job of giving a sense of this family, who they are, the different personalities of each, and how they love each other. It's not sentimental - Lucy Maud isn't good when she gets sentimental - but it feels real. I like all of these people.

I'll excerpt the opening scene of the story when everyone is getting ready to go to the revival meeting. You'll see what I mean about the atmosphere she creates. It's lovely. Also, Lucy Maud always sets up most of her exposition in the mouths of her characters - she lets THEM give the back story, and I like that a lot, good technique, it makes the whole thing seem much more real.

Excerpt from Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "The Conscience Case of David Bell" - by L.M. Montgomery

Eben Bell came in with an armful of wood and banged it cheerfully down in the box behind the glowing Waterloo stove, which was pouring warmth and ruddy color into the dismal little kitchen, making of it a homey, pleasant place.

"There, sis, that's the last chore on my list. Bob's milking. Nothing more for me to do but put on my white collar for the meeting. Avonlea is more than lively since the evangelist came, ain't it, though?"

Mollie Bell nodded. She was curling her hair before the tiny mirror that hung on the whitewashed wall and distorted her round, pink-and-white face into a grotesque caricature.

"Wonder who'll stand up tonight," said Even reflectively, sitting down on the edge of the wood box. "There ain't many sinners left in Avonlea - only a few hardened chaps like myself."

"You shouldn't talk like that," said Mollie rebukingly. "What if father heard you?"

"Father wouldn't hear me if I shouted it in his ear," returned Eben. "He goes around, these days, like a man in a dream, and a mighty bad dream at that. Father has always been a good man. What's the matter with him?"

"I don't know," said Mollie, dropping her voice. "Mother is dreadfully worried over him. And everybody is talking, Eb. It just makes me squirm. Flora Jane Fletcher asked me last night why father never testified, and him one of the elders. She said the minister was perplexed about it. I felt my face getting red."

"Why didn't you tell her it was no business of hers?" said Eben angrily. "Old Flora Jane had better mind her own business."

"But all the folks are talking about it, Eb. And mother is fretting her heart out over it. Father has never acted like himself since these meetings began. He just goes there night after night, and sits like a mummy, with his head down. And almost everybody else in Avonlea hs testified."

"Oh, no, there's lots haven't," said Eben. "Matthew Cuthbert never has, nor Uncle Elisha, nor any of the Whites."

"But everybody knows they don't believe in getting up and testifying, so nobody wonders when they don't. Besides," Mollie laughed -- "Matthew could never get a word out in public, if he did believe in it. He'd be too shy. But," she added with a sigh, "it isn't that way with father. He believes in testimony, so people wonder why he doesn't get up. Why, even old Josiah Sloane gets up every night."

"With his whiskers sticking out every which way, and his hair ditto," interjected the graceless Eben.

"When the minister calls for testimonials and all the folks look at our pew, I feel ready to sink through the floor for shame," said Mollie. "If father would get up just once!"

Miriam Bell now entered the kitchen. She was ready for the meeting, to which Major Spencer was to take her. She was a tall, pale girl, with a serious face, and dark thoughtful eyes, totally unlike Mollie. She had "come under conviction" during the meetings, and had stood up for prayer and testimony several times. The evangelist thought her very spiritual. She heard Mollie's concluding sentence and spoke reprovingly.

"You shouldnt criticize your father, Mollie. It isn't for you to judge him."

Eben had hastily slipped out. He was afraid Miriam would begin talking religion to him if he stayed. He had with difficulty escaped from an exhortation by Robert in the cow-stable. There was no peace in Avonlea for the unregenerate, he reflected. Robert and Miriam had both "come out" and Mollie was hovering on the brink.

"Dad and I are the black sheep of the family," he said with a laugh, for which he at once felt guilty. Eben had been brought up with a strict reverence for all religious matters. On the surface he might sometimes laugh at them, but the deeps troubled him whenever he did so.

Indoors, Miriam touched her younger sister's shoulder and looked at her affectionately.

"Won't you decide to-night, Mollie?" she asked, in a voice tremulous with emotion.

Mollie crimsoned and turned her face away uncomfortably. She did not know what answer to make, and was glad that a jingle of bells outside saved her the necessity of replying.

"There's your beau, Miriam," she said, as she darted into the sitting room.

Soon after, Eben brought the family pung and his chubby red mare to the door for Mollie. He had not as yet attained to the dignity of a cutter of his own. That was for his elder brother, Robert, who presently came out in his new fur coat and drove dashingly away with bells and glitter.

"Thinks he's the people," remarked Eben, with a fraternal grin.

The rich winter twilight was purpling over the white world as they drove down the lane under the over-arching wild cherry trees that glittered with gemmy hoar-frost. The snow creaked and crisped under the runners. A shrill wind was keening in the leafless dogwoods. Over the trees the sky was a dome of silver, with a lucent star or two on the slope of the west. Earth-stars gleamed warmly out here and there, where homesteads were tucked snugly away in their orchards or groves of birch.

"The church will be jammed tonight," said Eben. "It's so fine that folks will come from near and far. Guess it'll be exciting."

"If only father would testify!" sighed Mollie, from the bottom of the pung, where she was snuggled amid furs and straw. "Miriam can say what she likes, but I do feel as if we were all disgraced. It sends a creep all over me to hear Mr. Bentley say, 'Now, isn't there one more to say a word for Jesus?' and look right over at father."

Eben flicked his mare with his whip, and she broke into a trot. The silence was filled with a faint, fairy-like melody from afar down the road, where a pungful of young folks from White Sands were singing hymns on their way to meeting.

"Look herer, Mollie," said Eben awkwardly at last, "are you going to stand up for prayers tonight?"

"I --- I can't as long as father acts this way," answered Mollie, in a choked voice. "I - I want to, Eb, and Mirry and Bob want me to, but I can't. I do hope that the evangelist won't come and talk to me special tonight. I always feel as if I were being pulled two different ways, when he does."

The Books: Further Chronicles of Avonlea: 'In Her Selfless Mood' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "In Her Selfless Mood" - by L.M. Montgomery

A story of the complete sacrifice of a life in order to carry out her mother's dying wish (her mother who didn't even really love her that much) ... where nobody in the story is likable. Not one person. Not even our martyr - Eunice. Eunice is all hump-backed, and fierce, and loves her mother with every inch of her being. Her mother - Naomi - is kind of a loathsome woman. She lies in bed, dying, and she makes no bones about it: her love is for her son, Christopher. So she, in her last dying gasp, makes Eunice promise that she will always take care of Christopher, that she will never let anyone hurt him, and even when they both go to live at an aunt and uncles- she will make sure that no one lays a hand on him. This will be an uphill job - because, sadly enough, Christopher is kind of an asshole - and is not worthy at all of such attention. Or, maybe he is - maybe we all are - but you wish he at least would LOVE Eunice, or be grateful. He is not. He is openly creeped out by her and her hump and her intense interest in him. He wants her to back off, learn boundaries, whatever. Years pass. Well, eventually - you know - Christopher gets married - leaving Eunice as a boarder at this REALLY unsympathetic aunts and uncles. She has no life. No fulfillment. No purpose. She lives on other people's charity. Her brother doesn't need her anymore. I don't know, the whole thing is kind of depressing. You want to reach into the story and tell Eunice, the hump-back, that she doesn't HAVE to live at that aunt and uncles - and share a room with their daughter (who despises Eunice). You could run away! But oh no, she cannot do that. Because she needs to be near Christopher - even though he is now a grown man - so that she can watch over him, all the rest of the days of his life.

The whole thing is depressing. Eventually there's a smallpox epidemic - and Christopher (who no longer needs Eunice, lives with his wife, and thinks Eunice is kind of, uhm, freaky - anyway) comes down with the disease. And this is Eunice's big moment. Her ultimate fulfillment of that death-bed promise. She goes to nurse him since his wife has been banished from the house.

Blah. Eventually Christopher does die from smallpox - but not before saying to Eunice, "You're the best nurse ever." This, for her, is outward confirmation that she has "done good", as they say, that her mother would be pleased - so instead of facing the rest of her life, empty, bleak, unfulfilled - she lies down and dies. But she's smiling when she dies. Because she kept her mother's promise.

Wow, she really took that deathbed promise thing seriously there.

Here is the moment when Naomi dies. The whole thing is depressing. Everyone in the story is twisted, intense, violent, grim ... You kinda want to peek your head in the window and say, "Lighten up, Francis!"

Excerpt from Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "In Her Selfless Mood" - by L.M. Montgomery

Outside, in the thickly gathering dusk, Caroline Holland and Sarah Spencer were at the dairy, straining the milk into creamers, for which Christopher was sullenly pumping water. The house was far from the road, up to which a long red lane led; across the field was the old Holland homestead where Caroline lived; her unmarried sister-in-law, Electa Holland, kept house for her while she waited on Naomi.

It was her night to go home and sleep, but Naomi's words haunted her, although she believed they were born or pure "cantankerousness".

"You'd better go in and look at her, Sarah," she said, as she rinsed out the pails. "If you think I'd better stay here tonight, I will. If the woman was like anybody else, a body would know what to do; but, if she thought she could scare us by saying she was going to die, she'd say it."

When Sarah went in, the sick room was very quiet. In her opinion, Naomi was no worse than usual, and she told Caroline so; but the latter felt vaguely uneasy and concluded to stay.

Naomi was as cool and defiant as customary. She made them bring Chrstopher in to say goodnight and had him lifted up on the bed to kiss her. Then she held him back and looked at him admiringly - at the bright curls and rosy cheeks and round, firm limbs. The boy was uncomfortable under her gaze and squirmed hastily down. Her eyes followed him greedily as he went out. When the door closed behind him she groaned. Sarah Spencer was startled. She had never heard Naomi Holland groan since she had come to wait on her.

"Are you feeling any worse, Naomi? Is the pain coming back?"

"No. Go and tell Car'line to give Christopher some of that grape jelly on his bread before he goes to bed. She'll find it in the cupboard under the stairs."

Presently the house grew very still. Caroline had dropped asleep on the sitting-room lounge, across the hall. Sarah Spencer nodded over her knitting by the table in the sick room. She had told Eunice to go to bed, but the child refused. She still sat huddled up on the foot of the bed, watching her mother's face intently. Naomi appeared to sleep. The candle by her bedside burned slowly. To Eunice, the elfin flame, which flickered gaily, seemed like an impish eye upon her. The wavering light cast grotesque shadows of Sarah Spencer's head on the wall. The thin curtains at the window wavered to and fro, as if shaken by ghostly hands.

At midnight Naomi Holland opened her eyes. The child she had never loved was the only one to go with her to the brink of the Unseen.

"Eunice -- remember!"

It was the faintest whisper. The soul, passing over the threshold of another life, strained back to its only earthly tie. A quiver passed over the long, pallid face.

A horrible scream rang through the silent house. Sarah Spencer sprung out of her doze in consternation, and gazed blankly at the shrieking child. Caroline came hurrying in with distended eyes. On the bed, Naomi Holland lay dead.

The Books: Further Chronicles of Avonlea: 'The Education of Betty' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "The Education of Betty" - by L.M. Montgomery

This is one of those stories where I think, "Nice try, Maud, but not only am I NOT going there with you - I kinda resent you making me go there in the first place." Ha. I'm being dramatic - but seriously, 'The Education of Betty' is - I don't know. The whole thing seems ikky to me. And that is the best and most articulate assessment I can make. I dislike the assumption that Betty needs to stop being a tomboy, needs to be pruned and shaped. Ew. I liked her better before. I dislike the assumption of our narrator that he is totally in charge of Betty's entire life. Like - how she walks, dresses, whatever. I don't care what anyone says - I like Betty better when we first meet her - chasing dogs across the lawn, than in the last scene - where she is submissive, ladylike, and quivering with romantic possibility. Spare me. Also - I guess I just don't like the narrator himself. He comes across as smug, sexist, and unimaginative - not to mention jealous and ridiculous, he doesn't have the balls in the end to just say, "YOU MUST MARRY ME" - or, eventually he does - but not before driving her into the arms of someone else. Ew. Like, dude: your days as a tutor are long gone. Stop acting like you still get to control every move Betty makes, you smug control-freak. Ew. Ikky. Ikky. I read the story keep waiting for Betty to say, "You know what, Stephen? I've had it with you. I can grow up on my own. I can 'education' myself on my own. You're WAY too ikky, and WAY too invested in me, oh, learning how to walk slower, and keep my head erect, and comb my hair. Get a life, Stephen. Seriously."

I never feel this way about Lucy Maud's stuff, so whatever, in my opinion - this story is a huge misfire. You at LEAST need me to get on the narrator's side. But in this case, I am voting against him. Because I think Betty is fine and lovely just the way she is. She's not a terror. She's not a juvenile delinquent. No. She just, uhm, LIKES TO READ, and likes to RUN AROUND OUTSIDE, and dismisses with a scoff the idea that women need to be ladylike. Oh my gosh, what is WRONG with Betty????? We have to call in a tutor to help her get rid of THOSE crazy ideas.

Yeah. That kind of nonsense is what kept women down, and I resent that Betty's "education" really meant: Making her be like everyone else. So I find the story to be a huge bummer. It's supposed to be charming, and kind of cute - you can tell, in how she writes it - it's supposed to be a witty little domestic comedy. But it's not.

I am going to provide an excerpt from the beginning when we get to see Betty as herself. Infinitely more interesting than the calmed-down shy coquette at the end. Ew.

Now Lucy Maud is the QUEEN of unconventional female heroines. Is Emily Byrd Starr a normal little girl? Who plays with dolls and tea sets? Uhm NO. Is Anne Shirley in any way conventional? Maybe the only conventional thing about her is that she wants desperately to belong and fit in. But, uhm, other than that? She is totally original and herself. And it's not that these unconventional females don't have to learn tough lessons along the way - about how to get along in the world - how to know how to pretend to fit in (like with the whole Aunt Ruth debacle in Emily Climbs) - even if every fiber of your independent unconventional soul SCREAMS against conformity. Sometimes it is better to conform to get along - than to assert your different-ness.

Yes. SOMETIMES. But ALL the time? Like with Betty?

No. Won't go there wiht you, Lucy. And since in every other story you write there's some unconventional and gorgeous and lovable female running around - I'm just gonna assume this one is a misfire, and move on. No hard feelings, Maudie.

Excerpt from Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "The Education of Betty" - by L.M. Montgomery

I rode over to Glenby the next morning after my paternal interview with Sara, intending to have a frank talk with Betty and lay the foundation of a good understanding on both sides. Betty was a sharp child, with a disconcerting knack of seeing straight through grindstones; she would certainly perceive and probably resent any underhand management. I thought it best to tell her plainly that I was going to look after her.

When, however, I had encountered Betty, tearing madly down the beech avenue with a couple of dogs, her loosened hair streaming behind her like a banner of independence, and had lifted her, hatless and breathless, up before me on my mare, I found that Sara had saved me the trouble of an explanation.

"Mother says you are going to take charge of my education, Stephen," said Betty, as soon as she could speak. "I'm glad, because I think that, for an old person, you have a good deal of sense. I suppose my education hs to be seen to, some time or other, and I'd rather you'd do it than anybody else I know."

"Thank you, Betty," I said gravely. "I hope I shall deserve your good opinion of my sense. I shall expect you to do as I tell you, and be guided by my advice in everything."

"Yes, I will," said Betty, "because I'm sure you won't tell me to do anything I'd really hate to do. You won't shut me up in a room and make me sew, will you? Because I won't do it."

I assured her I would not.

"Nor send me to a boarding school," pursued Betty. "Mother's always threatening to send me to one. I suppose she would have done it before this, only she knew I'd run away. You won't send me to a boarding school, will you, Stephen? Because I won't go."

"No," I said obligingly. "I won't. I should never dream of cooping a wild little thing, like you, up in a boarding school. You'd fret your heart out like a caged skylark."

"I know you and I are going to get along together splendidly, Stephen," said Betty, rubbing her brown cheek chummily against my shoulder. "You are so good at understanding. Very few people are. Even dad darling didn't understand. He let me do just as I wanted to, just because I wanted to, not because he really understood that I couldn't be tame and play with dolls. I hate dolls! Real live babies are jolly; but dogs and horses are ever so much nicer than dolls."

"But you must have lessons, Betty. I shall select your teachers and superintend your studies, and I shall expect you to do me credit along that line, as well as along all others."

"I'll try, honest and true, Stephen," declared Betty. And she kept her word.

The Books: Further Chronicles of Avonlea: 'The Son of His Mother'

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "The Son of His Mother" - by L.M. Montgomery

I find this to be one of Lucy Maud's most emotionally creepy stories. And again - while we can look in and see: "Wow, these people have some SERIOUS psychological issues" - they are not analyzed to death, the truths about them are just stated - and it takes an actual physical event to wipe away all of the problems. Which so rarely happens in real life. Like - a freaky obsessive person usually stays a freaky obsessive person (uhm, I should know). Anyway, I find Thyra Carewe to be one of Lucy Maud's strangest creations - and man, you just know this woman would totally benefit from major Prozac doses on a regular basis as well as deep deep psychoanalysis - but she lives in PEI at the beginning of the 20th century, so obviously these are not options for her. But: if Thyra were drugged up and made to be normal - then she wouldn't be so memorable, and there would be no need to write a story about her. So there's THAT.

Actually, there's a lot in the story that I find psychologically interesting - and also ... creeeepy. Thyra Carewe is an intense woman (uhm, that is putting it mildly) - who was widowed a year after her first (and only) child was born. So she and her son have been everything to each other through the years. Her son Chester. Her son Chester is EVERYTHING to her. The opening of the story makes it clear that there is - I don't want to say an unnatural bond between them - but - on some level, the intensity with which Thyra loves her son (especially now that he has become a young man - and is trying to loosen the apron strings) is - unnatural. She will not let go. Chester and she will grow old together. The thought of any other woman having him drives her into a frenzy. But Chester - who has always been a good boy, kind and patient wiht his mother, is now "seeing" someone (in early 20th century fashion - he goes over to her house at twilight, and sits with her for an hour) - Her name is Damaris Garland (I love that name) - and Thyra Carewe would be RIPSHIT if she knew Chester was seeing ANYONE seriously, so the entire town basically hides the truth from her. She thinks Chester is bringing the cows home, or whatever, when really he is "sitting" with Damaris. Thyra, blithely ignorant (ignorant in more ways than one), confident that Chester will never marry ("he doesnt' come from a marrying race" - Thyra was "old" when she had Chester - in her 40s - and her husband was even older than she was - Marrying is not in their DNA) - And Thyra is basically so rigid about Chester that she's like a tree bough about to snap off. You worry for her. The opening scenes tell us all we need to do. Chester is late coming home, and the SECOND the time has come when Chester SHOULD have walked through the door, Thyra begins to slowly freak out. She paces. She stands at the window, staring out, like a statue. We see her through the eyes of her neighbors - who pity her. "Poor Thyra ... if only she knew where Chester was right now ... she'd flip out." You want to slap Thyra. Chester is 18 years old - let the guy date somebody, Thyra. You are going to ruin your precious relationship wiht your son. He is already LYING to you about who he is, he is terrified to tell you he loves Damaris - you are being totally unreasonable, Thyra. But still: Lucy Maud writes her so well that you can't stop reading. Thyra Carewe is a VERY convincing character portrait. You are glad she's not your friend, you are glad she's not your mother - but still. She's interesting. (Reminds me of Tommy Lee Jones' response to the question, "Do you have to like the character you are portraying?" Jones bluntly said, "Nope. But you do have to want to watch that character.") You want to watch Thyra Carewe.

As she waits for Chester - this guy shows up at her door - he's basically the PEI version of a homeless dude. He is the guy in town who can't get his act together, he is also crippled and slouched over with rheumatism, and so - people in the town give him errands to do, to keep him occupied and employed. He is also quite a creation - and I have to say: Lucy Maud deals a lot in archetypes - so the same "type" show up in story after story, with little tweaks here and there. But August stands alone. I cannot think of another character even remotely like August in any one of her stories. August is the male version of a vicious gossip. Lucy Maud has written about female vicious gossips before - the kind of self-righteous moralistic bitches who glory in the suffering of another ("Well, I told her that it wouldn't be right for her to blah blah blah ... serves her right ...." Etc. THAT type shows up in Lucy Maud's stuff quite a bit) - but August is a bored person, malicious - he knows he is despised and pitied - he knows people are disgusted by his twisted rheumatic appearance - and this has corrupted his soul. He is the essence of Corrupt. He loves to be the bearer of bad news. He loves to tell someone bad news and then watch them blanch and gasp. This is because August is so beyond the pale, in terms of his own humanity - so much bad has already happened to him - that he could never blanch and gasp again. He feels outside the human family. He doesn't just resent this. That is too feeble a word. He hates all of humanity. And he is literally gleeful when he gets to watch a fellow human suffer. Horrible character.

Anyway, he shows up while Thyra is waiting for Chester - and ends up "breaking the news" to her that Chester is sitting at Damaris Garland's. Actually, there is nothing accidental about August's behavior. He comes to Thyra's house on the pretense of an errand - but his main goal is to tell her the bad news, and to have the joy of watching the proud stern imperioud Thyra be shaken. What fun that will be!!

This story is, what, 20 pages long? Obviously it's deep and powerful - look at how much I have written about it.

I highly recommend reading it - I think it's some of Lucy Maud's best work. It's dark, man. Really dark. And the catharsis at the end is well-deserved. It doesn't feel like a plot device - it takes your breath away the first time you read it.

Hard to choose an excerpt from this extraordinary little story - so I guess I'll just choose the opening to excerpt. Notice the bit about how Thyra treats Chester's dog. That's when I realize: Oh. Thyra is kind of nuts, and I'm a little bit creeped out right now.

Excerpt from Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "The Son of His Mother" - by L.M. Montgomery

Thyra Carewe was waiting for Chester to come home. She sat by the west window of the kitchen, looking out into the gathering of the shadows with the expectant immovability that characterized her. She never twitched or fidgeted. Into whatever she did she put the whole force of her nature. If it was sitting still, she sat still.

"A stone image would be twitchedly beside Thyra," said Mrs. Cynthia White, her neighbor across the lane. "It gets on my nerves, the way she sits at the window sometimes, with no more motion than a statue and her great eyes burning down the lane. When I read the commandment, 'Thou shalt have no other gods before me,' I declare I always think of Thyra. She worships that son of hers far ahead of her Creator. She'll be punished for it yet."

Mrs. White was watching Thyra now, knitting furiously as she watched, in order to lose no time. Thyra's hands were folded idly in her lap. She had not moved a muscle since she sat down. Mrs. White complained that it gave her the weeps.

"It doesn't seem natural to see a woman sit so still," she said. "Sometimes the thought comes to me, 'what if she's had a stroke, like her old Uncle Horatio, and is sitting there stone dead!'"

The evening was cold and autumnal. There was a fiery red spot out at sea, where the sun had set, and, above it, over a chill, clear, saffron sky, were reels of purple-black clouds. The river, below the Carewe homestead, was livid. Beyond it, the sea was dark and brooding. It was an evening to make most people shiver and forebode and early winter, but Thyra loved it, as she loved all stern, harshly beautiful things. She would not light a lamp because it would blot out the savage grandeur of sea and sky. It was better to wait in darkness until Chester came home.

He was late tonight. She thought he had been detained over time at the harbor, but she was not anxious. He would come straight home to her as soon as his business was completed - of that she felt sure. Her thoughts went out along the bleak harbor road to meet him. She could see him plainly, coming with his free stride through the sandy hollows and over the windy hills, in the harsh, cold light of that forbidding sunset, strong and handsome in his comely youth, with her own deeply cleft chin and his father's dark gray, straightforward eyes. No other woman in Avonlea had a son like hers - her only one. In his brief absence she yearned after him with a maternal passion that had in it something of physical pain, so intense was it. She thought of Cynthia White, knitting across the road, with contemptuous pity. That woman had no son - nothing but pale-faced girls. Thyra had never wanted a daughter, but she pitied and despised all sonless women.

Chester's dog whined suddenly and piercingly on the doorstep outside. He was tired of the cold stone and wanted his warm corner behind the stove. Thyra smiled grimly when she heard him. She had no intention of letting him in. She said she had always disliked dogs, but the truth, although she would not glance at it, was that she hated the animal because Chester loved him. She could not share his love even with a dumb brute. She loved no living creature in the world but her son, and fiercely demanded a like concentrated affection from him. Hence it pleased her to hear his dog whine.

It was now quite dark; the stars had begun to shine out over the shorn harvest fields, and Chester had not come. Across the lane, Cynthia White had pulled down her blind, in despair of out-watchig Thyra, and had lighted a lamp. Lively shadows of little girl-shapes passed and re-passed on the pale oblong of light. They made Thyra conscious of her exceeding loneliness.

The Books: Further Chronicles of Avonlea: 'Sara's Way"' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "Sara's Way" - by L.M. Montgomery

One of the things that is so refreshing, for me, about Lucy Maud's work is how she doesn't pathologize her characters. Freud isnt "in" in her world. People's quirks are just that: quirks. Some people have annoying quirks, some people have evil quirks, some quirks are just lovable. It's all part of the human tapestry. "Sara's Way" is a perfect example of this, for me - it's a story I love. Sara is a girl who only becomes interested in someone (or in animals, as well) when they are down and out. She is a true underdog champion. She couldn't care less about birds. But let a bird be found on the lawn with a broken wing - and she falls INSTANTLY in love with it. This would be seen, nowadays, as a low level pathology - like maybe something is wrong with Sara, something needs to be fixed. Why doesn't she love things that are whole and strong? Why does she only love things that are weak? What is WRONG with Sara? Lucy Maud does not take this route. This is just the way Sara is. It is who she has been since she was a little girl and it is who she is now as a woman ... and so ... what will Sara's life be like, if we know this quirk of hers? Who will she marry? Will she marry? Nothing is WRONG with Sara, in Lucy Maud's eyes - even though the ladies in the town, as well as her mother, get frustrated with her because of this quirk. They talk about her behind her back. Sara knows she is talked about, but she doesn't care, because this is just the way she is. She loves broken things. She loves mothering to weakened animals. Okay - so now: in the course of this story - a man comes into her life. He is interersted in her. He tries to court her. She basically laughs in his face. She is SO not interested. Everyone thinks she is insane to not be interested. He's a good man, he makes good money, he would be a good provider ... Sara is crazy! But Sara just knows her own mind. Lucy Maud doesn't spell it out too clearly but you do get the jist: what would be in this fellow to FIX? Because without that element - Sara will never be interested. He seems perfectly fine all on his own. Sara could not care less about such creatures. And then - all of a sudden - this same fellow falls into disrepute. I cannot remember the reason but I know it has something to do with making bad investments - and losing a ton of money. Suddenly, this golden boy doesn't have such a whiff of success around him. He is scorned by the small town - practical people who think that being bad with your money is a sign of deeper more sinful issues. He becomes almost a pariah. Sara sees him out and about, and he looks like a ghost of his former self. He is gaunt, pale, upset, and averts his eyes away from her. I am sure you can guess where this is going. The women in her life - her mother, her neighbors, all say, "Thank goodness you had the presence of mind to stay away from THAT trainwreck, Sara! He's barely better than a criminal!" Sara, in one fell swoop, knows what she must do. This once-strong man is now the equivalent of the bird with the broken wing. And (like the title of the story says) it is not Sara's way to ignore that. She now has something to fix. She knows, in her heart of hearts, that her attentions, her love - will make this broken man stand strong again. So she basically goes to him and proposes marriage. He can't believe it, naturally. Doesn't she hate him and scorn him? No, she does not. She now loves him. Because he needs her.

I love the straightforward way Lucy Maud tells this moving tale. Sara, for me, comes to life - and I actually would love to have read a full book about her. She's a good character - someone I would love to see in a variety of different situations. A very unexpected personality, a great female character - for me, Sara is in Lucy Maud's canon of unforgettable women.

Here's the opening of the story where this whole dynamic is set up. Notice Lucy Maud's gift with storytelling. The ladies in the town do all the exposition for her.

Excerpt from Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "Sara's Way" - by L.M. Montgomery

"How does Sara like teaching at Newbridge?" asked Mrs. Jonas, helping herself a second time to Mrs. Eben's matchless black fruit cake, and thereby bestowing a subtle compliment which Mrs. Eben did not fail to appreciate.

"Well, I guess she likes it pretty well - better than down at White Sands, anyway," answered Mrs. Eben. "Yes, I may say it suits her. Of course it's a long walk there and back. I think it would have been wiser for her to keep on boarding at Morrison's, as she did all winter, but Sara is bound to be home all she can. And I must say the walk seems to agree with her."

"I was down to see Jonas' aunt at Newbridge last night," said Mrs. Jonas, "and she said she'd heard that Sara had made up her mind to take Lige Baxter at last, and that they were to be married in the fall. She asked me if it was true. I said I didn't know, but I hoped to mercy it was. Now, is it, Louisa?"

"Not a word of it," said Mrs. Eben sorrowfully. "Sara hasn't any more notion of taking Lige than ever she had. I'm sure it's not my fault. I've talked and argued till I'm tired. I declare to you, Amelia, I am terribly disappointed. I'd set my heart on Sara marrying Lige - and now to think she won't!"

"She is a very foolish girl," said Mrs. Jonas judicially. "If Lige Baxter isn't good enough for her, who is?"

"And he's so well off," said Mrs. Eben, "and does such a good business, and is well spoken of by everyone. And that lovely new house of his at Newbridge, with bay windows and hardwood floors! I've dreamed and dreamed of seeing Sara there as mistress."

"Maybe you'll see her there yet," said Mrs. Jonas, who always took a hopeful view of everything, even of Sara's contrariness. But she felt discouraged, too. Well, she had done her best.

If Lige Baxter's broth was spoiled, it was not for lack of cooks. Every Andrews in Avonlea had beent trying for two years to bring about a match between him and Sara, and Mrs. Jonas had borne her part valiantly.

Mrs. Eben's despondent reply was cut short by the appearance of Sara herself. The girl stood for a moment in the doorway and looked with a faintly amused air at her aunts. She knew quite well that they had been discussing her, for Mrs. Jonas, who carried her conscience in her face, looked guilty, and Mrs. Eben had not been able wholly to banish her aggrieved expression.

Sara put away her books, kissed Mrs. Jonas' rosy cheek, and sat down at the table. Mrs. Eben brought her some fresh tea, some hot rolls, and a little jelly-pot of the apricot preserves Sara liked, and she cut some more fruit cake for her in moist, plummy slices. She might be out of patience with Sara's "contrariness", but she spoiled and petted her for all that, for the girl was the very core of her childless heart.

Sara Andrews was not, strictly speaking, pretty, but there was that about her which made people look at her twice. She was very dark, with a rich, dusky sort of darkness, her deep eyes were velvety brown, and her lips and cheeks were crimson.

She ate her rolls and preserves with a healthy appetite, sharpened by her long walk from Newbridge, and told amusing little stories of her day's work that made the two older women shake with laughter, and exchange shy glances of pride over her cleverness.

When tea was over she poured the remaining contents of the cream jug into a saucer.

"I must feed my pussy," she said as she left the room.

"That girl beats me," said Mrs. Eben with a sigh of perplexity. "You know that black cat we've had for two years? Even and I have always made a lot of him, but Sara seemed to have a dislike to him. Never a peaceful nap under the stove could he have when Sara was home - out he must go. Well, a little spell ago he got his leg broke accidentally and we thought he'd have to be killed. But Sara wouldn't hear of it. She got splints and set his leg just as knacky, and bandaged it up, and she has tended him like a sick baby ever since. He's just about well now, and he lives in clover, that cat does. It's just her way. There's them sick chickens she's been doctoring for a week, giving them pills and things! And she thinks more of that wretched-looking calf that got poisoned with paris green than of all the other stock on the place."

The Books: Further Chronicles of Avonlea: 'The Return of Hester"' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "The Return of Hester" - by L.M. Montgomery

Lucy Maud wrote ghost stories. They paid well - and I also think that there was a part of her that really sympathized and believed in the supernatural. All you need to do is read her journals to get that. Her cousin (and kindred spirit) Frede died in the 1918 influenza epidemic and Lucy Maud never really recovered from it (and Lucy Maud died in 1942!) Her grief always seemed to be fresh. She was not a "friend"-ish type person ... Frede was her friend, and when she died, that was it. But there are multiple times in the journals when Lucy Maud got the sense that Frede was trying to communicate with her from beyond. Through her cats - through her dreams ... She believed that there was a thin veil between the living world and the spirit realm - Frede was still with her. This kind of unexplainable phenomenon also shows up in her novels - especially in the Emily books - where she makes it quite clear that Emily has the gift (or curse) of "second sight". Emily does not WANT this gift. It makes her feel uncanny, almost devilish. But in each of the books in those series - there is one incident - one unexplainable incident - when Emily breaks the boundaries between this world and the next - or not even the next world - she has unexplainable ESP moments - where she is actually able to communicate with someone who is across the ocean, or whatever. So Lucy Maud, while she wrote ghost stories because they paid well, also had a rather spooky strain in her ... you can tell, in the prose. She doesn't condescend to the genre.

"The Return of Hester" is about two sisters - again, the Lucy Maud archetypes. There is Hester - the strong domineering sister. And Margaret, the more submissive sister. Hester and Margaret's parents have died - and the two sisters are everything to each other. Hester is a fierce woman (although also quite loving) - and has family pride that could cut glass. She is FIERCE and forbidding. Margaret is a bit more open. Anyway - when Margaret is about 18 - Hester goes away for a month - and during that time, a man named Hugh Blair starts to court Margaret. Margaret (the narrator of the tale) says that she lived a lifetime in that one month. She fell in love with Hugh Blair. It was her "moment" - her one moment in the sun. Hester returned from her trip, found out about the love affair and put a stop to it pronto. I think because Hugh Blair is not "good enough" for Margaret. That family pride, you know. Margaret begs, pleads, cries - but Hester will not budge. So Margaret, moron that she is, submits. She tells Hugh Blair no. Hugh Blair then begs and pleads. Margaret cannot go against Hester. Not because Hester is evil - but because their relationship is so strong. So then years pass. Hugh Blair (naturally) has never married. In my life, they always marry. But in Lucy Maud's world, when your main love affair ends ... you never have another one. And then - after an illness - Hester dies. On her deathbed, she says to Margaret, "Please promise me ... that you will never marry Hugh Blair." Margaret, beside herself with grief at losing Hester, says, "Don't be silly ... it's been years ... he doesn't love me anymore ..." Hester, going into the white light, says, "He has never married ... the moment I die, he is going to come around again ... Do not say Yes. Promise me." Margaret, like a moron, promises. So Hester dies. And whaddya know, a week later - Hugh Blair comes calling. He sees his moment and he takes it. He has never stopped loving Margaret. Margaret, in the first throes of grief, puts him off - tells him No - she is out of her mind. Hester was everything to her. Hugh again begs. Margaret says No.

The book begins at this moment.

Here's the spooky excerpt.

Excerpt from Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "The Return of Hester" - by L.M. Montgomery

That was three weeks ago - and now I sat alone in the moonlit rose-garden and wept for him. But, after a time, my tears dried and a very strange feeling came over me. I felt calm and happy, as if some wonderful love and tenderness were very near me.

And now comes the strange part of my story - the part which will not, I suppose, be believed. If it were just for one thing, I think I should hardly believe it myself. I should feel tempted to think I had dreamed it. But because of that one thing I know it was real. The night was very calm and still. Not a breath of wind stirred. The moonshine was the brightest I had ever seen. In the middle of the garden, where the shadow of the poplars did not fall, it was almost as bright as day. One could have read fine print. There was still a little rose glow in the west, and over the airy boughs of the tall poplars one or two large, bright stars were shining. The air was sweet with a hush of dreams, and the world was so lovely that I held my breath over its beauty.

Then, all at once, down at the far end of the garden, I saw a woman walking. I thought at first that it must be Mary Sloane, but, as she crossed a moonlit path, I saw it was not our old servant's stout, homely figure. This woman was tall and erect.

Although no suspicion of the truth came to me, something about her reminded me of Hester. Even so had Hester liked to wander about the garden in the twilight. I had seen her thus a thousand times.

I wondered who the woman could be. Some neighbor, of course. But what a strange way for her to come! She walked up the garden slowly in the poplar shade. Now and then she stooped, as if to caress a flower, but she plucked none. Halfway up she came out into the moonlight and walked across the plot of grass in the center of the garden. My heart gave a great throb and I stood up. She was quite near to me now - and I saw that it was Hester.

I can hardly say just what my feelings were at this moment. I know that I was not surprised. I was frightened, and yet I was not frightened. Something in me shrank back in a sickening terror; but I, the real I, was not frightened. I knew that this was my sister, and that there could be no reason why I should be frightened of her, because she loved me still, as she had always done. Further than this I was not conscious of any coherent thought, either of wonder or attempt at reasoning.

Hester paused when she came to within a few steps of me. In the moonlight I saw her face quite plainly. It wore an expression I had never before seen on it - a humble, wistful, tender look. Often in life Hester had looked lovingly, even tenderly, upon me; but always, as it were, through a mask of pride and sternness. This was gone now, and I felt nearer to her than ever before. I knew suddenly that she understood me. And then the half-conscious awer and terror some part of me had felt vanished, and I only realized that Hester was here, and that there was no terrible gulf of change between us.

Hester beckoned to me and said,

"Come."

The Books: Further Chronicles of Avonlea: 'The Brother Who Failed"' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "The Brother Who Failed" - by L.M. Montgomery

This story is kind of like, oh, a This Is Your Life episode - or maybe a very special Oprah episode. Robert Monroe - member of the Monroe family, all of whom are brilliant and accomplished - overhears a bitchy gossip say something about him like, "It's such a shame HE never made anythign of himself." Robert Monroe is a farmer, lives on a little farm by himself ... is a kindly man, proud of his brothers and sisters accomplishments ... and he is devastated to hear that he is perceived as a failure, and also as an embarrassment to the rest of the family. He is so kindly and so sweet that it never even occurred to him!! Well, word gets back to his siblings - all of whom are coming to town for a family gathering - that Robert needs a little pick-me-up - so as they sit around the dinner table, one by one they all get up and share storeis about Robert, and how he helped them at one time, how he did something selfless, how he came to the rescue ... Robert just has to sit there and take it. He is love-bombed from every direction. Like I said: it's kinda Oprah-ish, but that's okay - Oprah very often makes me cry, and so does this wee story. It's really about: how do we measure success? Monetary? How many kids you have? How much you travel? Your grades? Sure, all of these things are what we are judged by in life - but there's much more. Lucy Maud has a way of seeing those who are mainly invisible, the Robert Monroes of the world. Her inspiration was Prince Edward Island - and all she needed to do was look there, to see people - men - women - living quiet lives, maybe "unimportant" in terms of the grand scheme of things - but with a 360 degree scope of experience: love, grief, rage, loss, humor, shame, resilience ... She saw it all there.

Here's a brief excerpt. Not much happens here - this is right before Robert overhears the vicious gossip. I include it because it's such a wonderful example of Lucy Maud's poetic nature writing. She is SO good at it.

Excerpt from Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "The Brother Who Failed" - by L.M. Montgomery

Robert went across the yard and sat down on a rustic bench in the angle of the front porch. It was a fine December evening, as mild as autumn; there had been no snow, and the long fields, sloping down from the homestead, were brown and mellow. A quiet hush, holding something of magic in it, rested like an unseen mantle on the dark forest, brooding field, and the once flowering, fertile valley. The earth was like a tired old man patiently awaiting his well-earned sleep. Out to sea, a dull, red sunset faded out into somber clouds, and the soft sound of the waves breaking on the shore was wafted on the evening breeze.

Robert rested his chin on his hand and looked across the vales and hills, where the feathery gray of leafless hardwoods was mingled with the sturdy, unfailing green of the conebearers. He was a tall, bent man, with thin, gray hair, a lined face, and deeply set, gentle brown eyes, - the eyes of one who, looking through pain, sees rapture beyond.

He felt very happy. He loved his family clannishly, and he was rejoiced that they were all again near to him. He was proud of their success and fame. He was glad that James had prospered so well of late years. There was no canker of envy or discontent in his soul.

The Books: Further Chronicles of Avonlea: 'The Dream Child"' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "The Dream Child" - by L.M. Montgomery

This is one of Lucy Maud's more openly tragic stories. When you get to her collection of ghost stories (published posthumously - as in, the last 10 years) - you see a lot of this kind of writing - quivering wtih passion, grief, strong strong emotions - nobody has a sense of humor. Life is tragic. Bad Things Happen. She was a big believer (and she had a whole philosophy about it) that there is no shame in the Happy Ending, that a book shouldn't be considered less important or less worthy just because things work out in the end. But at the time that she was writing - happy endings were not in vogue (I guess they never really are, if you think about it) - and so she was defensive about being seen as a lightweight. Which is so ridiculous. How anyone could read Emily of New Moon (excerpt here) or Blue Castle (excerpt here) and ever think of her as a "lightweight writer" I will never know.

But anyway - when she puts on her Tragic Mask (as she does in this story) - she tends to tip over into melodrama. At least that is my assessment. She does good melodrama - it gets gothic, the writing is a bit florid - and people quiver with unspeakable pain. Melodrama.

There is a married couple. The story is told first-person from the perspective of the husband. Oh, they are happy. What a happy courtship they had. They live in a little house by the sea. They are happy happy happy. Then their son is born. They had never thought they could be MORE happy. But then lo - they were. Happy happy happy. The child lives 20 months or something like that - and then dies suddenly. And the wife loses it. She cracks up. Her grief is so intense that weird psychic shit starts happening. The husband begins to wake up in the night only to find his wife is not there. He goes out looking for her and finds her wandering along the shore, staring out into the ocean ...She says that she has heard the baby calling for her. She calls it her "dream-child". She can hear it just over that next dune, just over that NEXT dune ... she chases the sound of the dream-child's cry. Husband tries to bring her back to the house. She flips OUT. So he walks the shore with her. This starts to happen more and more often. Every other night he wakes up and finds her wandering along the shore, in between waking and dreaming, listening for the cries of her dream-child, and then following the sound when it comes (the husband can hear nothing).

Here's an excerpt.

Excerpt from Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "The Dream Child" - by L.M. Montgomery

What a horror brooded over that spring - that so beautiful spring! The time had come of lazy days, sunny blue skies, of the soft patter of sudden showers welcomed by the yet-to-be-weeded soil; of daffodils and iris and violets, or orchards transformed into pink and white fairylands; of the murmuring of babbling brooks and the sweet song of birds. Yes, the delicious joys of spring were abroad in the land. Almost every night of this wonderful time the dream-child called his mother, and we roved the gray shore in quest of him.

In the day she was herself; but, when the night fell, she was restless and uneasy until she heard the call. Then follow it she would, even through storm and darkness. It was then, she said, that the cry sounded loudest and nearest, as if her pretty boy were frightened by the tempest. What wild, terrrible rovings we had, she straining forward, eager to overtake the dream-child; I, sick at heart, following, guiding, protecting, as best I could, then afterwards leading her gently home, heart-broken because she could not reach the child.

I bore my burden in secret, determining that gossip could not busy itself with my wife's condition so long as I could keep it from becoming known. We had no near relatives - none with any right to share any trouble- and so I carried on alone, for grief is ever proud.

I thought, however, that I should have medical attention, and I took our old doctor into my confidence. He looked grave when he heard my story. I did not like his expression nor his few guarded remarks. He said he thought human aid would avail little; she might come all right in time; humor her as far as possible, watch over her, protect her. He needed not to tell me that.

The spring went out and summer came in - and the horror deepened and darkened. I knew that suspicions were being whispered from lip to lip. We had been seen on our nightly quests. Men and women began to look at us pityingly when we went abroad.

One day, on a dull, drowsy afternoon, the dream-child called. I knew then that the end was near the end had been near in the old grandmother's case sixty years before when the dream-child called in the day. The doctor looked graver than ever when I told him, and said that the time had come when I must have help in my task. I could not watch by day and night. Unless I had assistance I would break down.

I did not think that I should. Love is stronger than that. And on one thing I was determined -- they should never take my wife from me. No restraint sterner than a husband's loving hand should ever be put upon her, my pretty, piteous darling.

I never spoke of the dream-child to her. The doctor advised against it. It would, he said, only serve to deepen the delusion. When he hinted at an asylum, I gave him a look that would have been a fierce sword for another man. He never spoke of it again.

The Books: Further Chronicles of Avonlea: 'Jane's Baby' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "Jane's Baby" - by L.M. Montgomery

This story has a complicated plot involving two feuding sisters - who are fighting over an orphaned baby in their family - they basically keep kidnapping the baby back and forth from each other, because THEY want to raise it. I believe the sisters are feuding because one of them (Charlotte) went off and married someone that the other sister (Rosetta) disapproved of. They are the Lucy Maud sister archetypes: Charlotte is weak and sweet, Rosetta is strong and bossy. The two have not spoken for years. But - as the opening scene shows - all they do is think about each other. And it is "Jane's baby", Jane's orphaned baby, that forces the two sisters (who, naturally, actually love each other to death) to get back together, to reconcile.

But I love this opening scene. It's Lucy Maud in "high comedy" mode, and I love it.

Excerpt from Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "Jane's Baby" - by L.M. Montgomery

Miss Rosetta Ellis, with her front hair in curl-papers and her back hair bound with a checked apron, was out in her breezy side yard under the firs, shaking her parlor rugs, when Mr. Nathan Patterson drove in. Miss Rosetta had seen him coming down the long red hill, but she had not supposed he would be calling at that time of the morning. So she had not run. Miss Rosetta always ran if anybody called and her front hair was in curl-papers; and, though the errand of the said caller might be life or death, he or she had to wait until Miss Rosetta had taken her hair out. Everybody in Avonlea knew this, because everybody in Avonlea knew everything about everybody else.

But Mr Patterson had wheeled into the lane so quickly and unexpectedly that Miss Rosetta had had no time to run; so, twitching off the checked apron, she stood her ground as calmly as might be under the disagreeable consciousness of curl-papers.

"Good morning, Miss Ellis," said Mr. Patterson, so somberly that Miss Rosetta instantly felt that he was the bearer of bad news. Usually Mr. Patterson's face was as broad and beaming as a harvest moon. Now his expression was very melancholy, and his voice positively sepulchral.

"Good morning," returned Miss Rosetta, crisply and cheerfully. She, at any rate, would not go into eclipse until she knew the reason therefor. "It is a fine day."

"A very fine day," assented Mr. Patterson solemnly. "I have just come from the Wheeler place, Miss Ellis, and I regret to say --"

"Charlotte is sick!" cried Miss Rosetta rapidly. "Charlotte has got another spell with her heart! I knew it! I've been expecting to hear it! Any woman that drives about the country as much as she does is liable to heart disease at any moment. I never go outside of my gate but I meet her gadding off somewhere. Goodness knows who looks after her place. I shouldn't like to trust as much as a hired man as she does. Well, it is very kind of you, Mr. patterson, to put yourself out to the extent of calling in to tell me that Charlotte is sick, but I don't really see why you should take so much trouble - I really don't. It doesn't matter to me whether Charlotte is sick or whether she isn't. You know that perfectly well, Mr. Patterson, if anybody does. When Charlotte went and got married, on the sly, to that good-for-nothing Jacob Wheeler --"

"Mrs. Wheeler is quite well," interrupted Mr. Patterson desperately. "Quite well. Nothing at all the matter with her, in fact. I only --"

"Then what do you mean by coming here and telling me she wasn't, and frightening me half to death?" demanded Miss Rosetta indignantly. "My own heart isn't very strong - it runs in our family - and my doctor warned me to avoid all shocks and excitement. I don't want to be excited, Mr. patterson. I won't be excited, not even if Charlotte has another spell. It's perfectly useless for you to try to excite me, Mr. Patterson."

"Bless the woman, I'm not trying to excite anybody!" declared Mr. Patterson in exasperation. "I merely called to tell you --"

"To tell me what?" said Miss Rosetta. "How much longer do you mean to keep me in suspense, Mr. Patterson? No doubt you have abundance of spare time, but -- I -- have not."

" -- that your sister, Mrs. Wheeler, has had a letter from a cousin of yours, and she's in Charlottetown. Mrs. Roberts, I think her name is --"

"Jane Roberts," broke in Miss Rosetta. "Jane Ellis she was, before she was married. What was she writing to Charlotte about? Not that I want to know, of course. I'm not interested in Charlotte's correspondence, goodness knows. But if Jane had anything in particular to write about, she should have written to me. I am the oldest. Charlotte had no business to get a letter from Jane Roberts without consulting me. It's just like her underhanded ways. She got married the same way. Never said a word to me about it, but just sneaked off with that unprincipled Jacob Wheeler --"

"Mrs. Roberts is very ill. I understand," persisted Mr. Patterson, nobly resolved to do what he had come to do, "dying, in fact, and --"

"Jane ill! Jane dying!" exclaimed Miss Rosetta. "Why, she was the healthiest girl I ever knew! But then I've never seen her, nor heard from her, since she got married fifteen years ago. I dare say her husband was a brute and neglected her, and she's pined away by slow degrees. I've no faith in husbands. Look at Charlotte! Everybody knows how Jacob Wheeler used her. To be sure, she deserved it, but --"

"Mrs. Roberts' husband is dead," said Mr. Patterson. "Died about two months ago, I understand, and she has a little baby six months old, and she thought perhaps Mrs. Wheeler would take it for old times' sake --"

"Did Charlotte ask you to call and tell me this?" demanded Miss Rosetta eagerly.

"No; she just told me what was in the letter. She didn't mention you; but I thought, perhaps, you ought to be told--"

"I knew it," said Miss Rosetta, in a tone of bitter assurance. "I could have told you so. Charlotte wouldn't even let me know that Jane was ill. Charlotte would be afraid I would want to get the baby, seeing that Jane and I were such intimate friends long ago. And who has a better right to it than me, I should like to know? Ain't I the oldest? And haven't I had experience in bringing up babies? Charlotte needn't think she is going to run the affairs of our family just because she happened to get married. Jacob Wheeler --"

"I must be going," said Mr. Patterson, gathering up his reins thankfully.

"I am much obliged to you for coming to tell me about Jane," said Miss Rosetta, "even though you have wasted a lot of precious time getting it out. If it hadn't been for you I suppose I should never have known it at all. As it is, I shall start for town just as soon as I can get ready."

"You'll have to hurry if you want to get ahead of Mrs. Wheeler," advised Mr. Patterson. "She's packing her trunk and going on the morning train."

"I'll pack a valise and go on the afternoon train," retorted Miss Rosetta triumphantly. "I'll show Charlotte she isn't running the Ellis affairs. She married out of them into the Wheelers. She can attend to them. Jacob Wheeler was the most--"

But Mr. Patterson had driven away. He felt that he had done his duty in the face of fearful odds, and he did not want to hear anything more about Jacob Wheeler.

The Books: Further Chronicles of Avonlea: 'Her Father's Daughter' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "Her Father's Daughter" - by L.M. Montgomery

This is a great little story. David and Isabella Spencer were married and they had a baby girl. (The story starts on the eve of this baby girl's wedding - so she's an adult now) But there is a past full of pain between the two parents. David is a sailor (this is a big theme in Lucy Maud's work - "going to sea") - which makes sense, seeing as where she grew up, and the whole maritime culture of it). But there was something shameful (to some) about those who wanted to 'go to sea' - it wasn't respectable - and also, in other of her stories - it's tragic - because anyone who "goes to sea" usually isn't seen for years on end. So mothers weep, wives mourn, etc. Usually, in Lucy Maud's world, a guy who "goes to sea" does so secretly - sneaking off in the night - to avoid the weeping and wailing. In "Her Father's Daughter", though - Isabella Spencer is flat out prejudicial against sailors, and anyone who works off of the ocean. (Uhm, then why do you live on PEI, Isabella??). She thinks it's not respectable work, only reprobates are sailors - you should stay and work on the LAND, like her forefathers, THAT is respectable work. (I may not be remembering this quite clearly - it's been a while - but that's what I recall) She told him to give up the sea. He (and Lucy Maud understands this so well) feels that it will break his heart. There are just those who cannot LIVE without being on the ocean everyday. I myself grew up in a state with a maritime culture - and I can attest to that personality type. It still exists. These fishermen, yes, they make great money - but many of them do it for other reasons as well. They MUST be out on the ocean every day. There is no other possible life for these people. They would crumple up and die, emotionally, in Kansas. David Spencer is that kind of person. So Isabella makes a completely unreasonable request of him. But he's in love, they're newlyweds, and he says yes. For 6 years all goes well - until suddenly - he starts to get the call again. An old sea-captain friend of his comes back into his life - and offers him a job And suddenly he knows. Not only does he know he must take the job - he also knows that Isabella has been WAY too hard ... and he cannot go so against his own nature like that. They have had a baby girl named Rachel, love of David's life - but he MUST take the job with the captain. Isabella, a hard woman, says, "If you take this job, don't come back." David takes the job. He doesn't come back. Or - he does come back, eventually, but not to Isabella's house. He lives in a small shanty on the shore. It is a huge scandal in the town. Isabella raises Rachel alone. She is bitter and hard - she does not allow Rachel to see her father - as a matter of fact, I think Rachel doesn't even know if her father is alive or dead - even though he lives just across the fields. She is raised as though he does not exist.

During her childhood - she has a couple of encounters on a beach with a kindly smiling man - who seems to take an interest in her. She is just a little girl so she doesn't think too much of it - but later, much later, she remembers his eyes - how they looked at her - and she just knows. That was her father.

Rachel grows up - and is now engaged to be married. She is in love. OAs she and her mother write out invitations, Rachel drops her bomb. Her father must be allowed to come to the wedding. Isabella - who has lived a life where she never admits she has been wrong, never yields, ever - says Absolutely not - I will not allow that man in our lives again. Rachel insists. Isabella argues. And you realize that Rachel, as pretty and sweet and young as she is, has some of her mother's unyielding nature in her. She is willing to NOT get married at ALL if her father is not allowed to be there. It's that important to her. Isabella is beyond frustrated - having met her match in her own daughter. She says "fine, whatever" and flounces out of the room. The invitation goes out to David Spencer.

On the eve of the wedding - Rachel stands up in her room in her wedding dress. A note has been sent to her from her father saying "I cannot enter the house I was turned out of." (2 stubborn people - David and Isabella!) "But I wish you all the happiness in the world." Guests awill be arriving any moment.

The wedding is minutes away. But Rachel - reading this note - suddenly is filled with a sense of purpose. No. No. Her father MUST attend.

So she basically sneaks out of the house - in her wedding dress - and runs across the fields to get him. That's the excerpt.

And can I just say this? I love Frank.

Excerpt from Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "Her Father's Daughter" - by L.M. Montgomery

It was quite dark when she reached the Cove. In the crystal cup of the sky over her the stars were blinking. The sound of rippling waves, lapping on the shore, broke the stillness. A soft little wind was crooning about the eaves of the little gray house where David Spencer was sitting, alone in the twilight, his violin on his knee. He had been trying to play, but could not. His heart yearned after his daughter - yes, and after a long-estranged bride of his youth. His love of the sea was sated forever; his love for wife and child still cried for its own under all his old anger and stubbornness.

The door opened suddenly, and the very Rachel of whom he was dreaming came suddenly in, flinging off her wraps and standing forth in her young beauty and bridal adornments, a splendid creature, almost lighting up the gloom with her radiance.

"Father," she cried brokenly, and her father's eager arms closed around her.

Back in the house she had left, the guests were coming to the wedding. There were jests and laughter and friendly greeting. The bridegroom came, too, a slim, dark-eyed lad who tiptoed bashfully upstairs to the spare room, from which he presently emerged to confront Mrs. Spencer on the landing.

"I want to see Racherl before we go down," he said, blushing.

Mrs. Spencer deposited a wedding present of linen on the table which was already laden with gifts, opened the door of Rachel's room, and called her. There was no reply; the room was dark and still. In sudden alarm, Isabella Spencer snatched the lamp from the hall table and held it up. The little white room was empty. No blushing, white-clad bride tenanted it. But David Spencer's letter was lying on the stand. She caught it up and read it

"Rachel is gone," she gasped. A flash of intuition had revealed to her where and why the girl had gone.

"Gone!" echoed Frank, his face blanching. His pallid dismay recalled Mrs. Spencer to herself. She gave a bitter, ugly little laugh.

"Oh, you needn't look so scared, Frank. She hasn't run away from you. Hush; come in here - shut the door. Nobody must know of this. Nice gossip it would make! That little fool has gone to the Cove to see her -- her father. I know she has. It's just like what she would do. He sent her those presents - look - and this letter. Read it. She has gone to coax him to come and see her married. She was crazy about it. And the minister is here, and it is half-past seven. She'll ruin her dress and shoes in the dust and dew. And what if someone has seen her! Was there ever such a little fool?"

Frank's presence of mind had returned to him. He knew all about Rachel and her father. She had told him everything.

"I'll go after her," he said gently. "Get me my hat and coat. I'll slip down the back stairs and over to the Cove."

"You must get out of the pantry window, then," said Mrs. Spencer firmly, mingling comedy and tragedy after her characteristic fashion. "The kitchen is full of women. I won't have this known and talked about if it can possibly be helped."

The bridegroom, wise beyond his years in the knowledge that it was well to yield to women in little things, crawled obediently out of the pantry window and darted through the birch wood. Mrs. Spencer had stood quakingly on guard until he had disappeared.

So Rachel had gone to her father! Like had broken the fetters of years and fled to like.

"It isn't much use fighting against nature, I guess," she thought grimly. "I'm beat. He must have thought something of her, after all, when he sent her that teapot and letter. And what does he mean about the 'day they had such a good time'? Well, it just means that she's been to see him before, sometime, I suppose, and kept me in ignorance of it all."

Mrs. Spencer shut down the pantry window with a vicious thud.

"If only she'll come quietly back with Frank in time to prevent gossip, I'll forgive her," she said, as she turned to the kitchen.

Rachel was sitting on her father's knee, with both her white arms around his neck, when Frank came in. She sprang up, her face flushed and appealing, her eyes bright and dewy with tears. Frank thought he had never seen her look so lovely.

"Oh, Frank, is it very late? Oh, are you angry?" she exclaimed timidly.

"No, no, dear. Of course I'm not angry. But don't you think you'd better come back now? It's nearly eight and everybody is waiting."

"I've been trying to coax father to come up and see me married," said Rachel. "Help me, Frank."

"You'd better come, sir," said Frank heartily. "I'd like it as much as Rachel would."

David Spencer shook his head stubbornly.

"No, I can't go to that house. I was locked out of it. Never mind me. I've had my happiness in this half hour with my little girl. I'd like to see her married, but it isn't to be."

"Yes, it is to be - it shall be, " said Rachel resolutely. "You shall see me married. Frank, I'm going to married here in my father's house! That is the right place for a girl to be married. Go back and tell the guests so, and bring them all down."

Frank looked rather dismayed. David Spencer said deprecatingly, "Little girl, don't you think it would be --"

"I'm going to have my own way in this," said Rachel, with a sort of tender finality. "Go, Frank. I'll obey you all my life after, but you must do this for me. Try to understand," she added beseechingly.

"Oh, I understand," Frank reassured her. "Besides, I think you are right. But I was thinking of your mother. She won't come."

"Then you tell her that if she doesn't come I shan't be married at all," said Rachel. She was betraying unsuspected ability to manage people. She knew that ultimatum would urge Frank to his best endeavors.

Frank, much to Mrs. Spencer's dismay, marched boldly in at the front door upon his return. She pounced on him and whisked him out of sight into the supper room.

"Where's Rachel? What made you come that way? Everybody saw you!"

"It makes no difference. They will all have to know, anyway. Rachel says she is going to be married from her father's house, or not at all. I've come back to tell you so."

Isabella's face turned crimson.

"Rachel has gone crazy. I wash my hands of this affair. Do as you please. Take the guests - the supper, too, if you can carry it."

"We'll all come back here for supper," said Frank, ignoring the sarcasm. "Come, Mrs. Spencer; let's make the best of it."

"Do you suppose that I am going to David Spencer's house?" said Isabella Spencer violently.

"Oh, you must come, Mrs. Spencer," cried poor Frank desperately. He began to fear that he would lose his bride past all finding in this maze of triple stubbornness. "Rachel says she won't be married at all if you don't go, too. Think what a talk it will make. You know she will keep her word."

Isabella Spencer knew it. Amid all the conflict of anger and revolt in her soul was a strong desire not to make a worse scandal than must of necessity be made. The desire subdued and tamed her, as nothing else could have done.

"I will go, since I have to," she said icily. "What can't be cured must be endured. Go and tell them."

Five minutes later the sixty wedding guests were all walking over the fields to the Cove, with the minister and the bridegroom in front of the procession. They were too amazed to even talk about the strange happening. Isabella Spencer walked behind, fiercely alone.

The Books: "Further Chronicles of Avonlea - 'The Materializing of Cecil'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "The Materializing of Cecil" - by L.M. Montgomery

Second story in this collection - it's hysterical. It's almost like a Three's Company episode (sorry for the low-brow comparison, but it's true.)

Charlotte Holmes is a spinster. Or - gentler term - an old maid. One time, long long ago, a boy wrote a poem to her - while in grade school. That is the extent of her romantic associations. She is known as an old maid. It's over for her - she's 40 years old, whatever, she's not bitter. She admits to herself that it's not that she had thwarted her chances. She knows in her heart that she never "met the right guy" - she just never had her heart engaged with anyone, so she's an old maid now. She's fine with her life. She loves sewing, her cats, church, she loves to write poetry, she's not bitter. The only thing that bugs her is the PITY. People in Avonlea PITY old maids (uhm, that shit is still going on, Lucy Maud - the smug pity of married people with kids - it's still odious!!). Charlotte doesn't want to be pitied because she is quite happy! But then, on her 40th birthday, she is at a sewing circle with a bunch of younger women, who are all chattering about their beaus. She doesn't mind. She sits, listening, pleasantly ... until one of them asks her, out of the blue, "Have you ever had a beau, Miss Holmes?"

And a small demon suddenly enters the placid Charlotte Holmes - she tells a lie - an out and out lie - and eventually ... all freakin' hell breaks loose. It's hilarious (mainly because I didn't have to go thru it!! I'm sure I wouldn't find it hilarious if I had had to LIVE it) - like: the thought of getting so BUSTED in your pathetic lie ...

Great story.

Here's an excerpt from the sewing circle when Charlotte, nice sweet old maid Charlotte, suddenly becomes a demon and begins to weave a web of evil lies.

Excerpt from Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "The Materializing of Cecil" - by L.M. Montgomery

I was sitting by the window and Wilhelmina Mercer, Maggie Henderson, Susette Cross, and Georgie Hall were in a little group just before me. I wasn't listening to their chatter at all, but presently Georgie exclaimed teasingly:

"Miss Charlotte is laughing at us. I suppose she thinks we are awfully silly to be talking about beaux."

The truth was that I was simply smiling over some very pretty thoughts that had come to me about the roses which were climbing over Mary Gillespie's sill. I meant to inscribe them in the little blank book when I went home. Georgie's speech brought me back to harsh realities with a jolt. It hurt me, as such speeches always did.

"Didn't you ever have a beau, Miss Holmes?" said Wilhelmina laughingly.

Just as it happened, a silence had fallen over the room for a moment, and everybody in it heard Wilhelmina's question.

I really do not know what got into me and possessed me. I have never been able to account for what I said and did, because I am naturally a truthful person and hate all deceit. It seemed to me that I simply could not say "No" to Wilhelmina before that whole roomful of women. It was too humiliating. I suppose all the prickles and stings and slurs I had endured for fifteen years on account of never having had a lover had what the new doctor calls "a cumulative effect" and came to a head then and there.

"Yes, I had one once, my dear," I said calmly.

For once in my life I made a sensation. Every woman in that room stopped sewing and stared at me. Most of them, I saw, didn't believe me, but Wilhelmina did. Her pretty face lighted up with interest.

"Oh, won't you tell us about him, Miss Holmes?" she coaxed, "and why you didn't marry him?"

"That is right, Miss Mercer," said Josephine Cameron, with a nasty little laugh. "Make her tell. We're all interested. It's news to us that Charlotte ever had a beau."

If Josephine had not said that, I might not have gone on. But she did say it, and moreover, I caught Mary Gillespie and Adella Gilbert exchanging significant smiles. That settled it, and made me quite reckless. "In for a penny, in for a pound," thought I, and I said with a pensive smile:

"Nobody here knew anything about him, and it was all long, long ago."

"What was his name?" asked Wilhelmina.

"Cecil Fenwick," I answered promptly. Cecil had always been my favorite name for a man; it figured quite frequently in the blank book. As for the Fenwick part of it, I had a bit of newspaper in my hand, measuring a hem, with "Try Fenwick's Porous Plasters" printed across it, and I simply joined the two in sudden and irrevocable matrimony.

"Where did you meet him?" asked Georgie.

I hastily reviewed my past. There was only one place to locate Cecil Fenwick. The only time I had ever been far enough away from Avonlea in my life was when I was eighteen and had gone to visit an aunt in New Brunswick.

"In Blakely, New Brunswick," I said, almost believeing that I had when I saw how they all took it in unsuspectingly. "I was just eighteen and he was twenty-three."

"What did he look like?" Susette wanted to know.

"Oh, he was very handsome." I proceeded glibly to sketch my ideal. To tell the dreadful truth, I was enjoying myself; I could see respect dawning in those girls' eyes, and I knew that I had forever thrown off my reproach. Henceforth I should be a woman with a romantic past, faithful to the one love of her life - a very, very different thing from an old maid who had never had a lover.

"He was tall and dark, with lovely, curly black hair and brilliant, piercing eyes. He had a splendid chin, and a fine nose, and the most fascinating smile!"

"What was he?" asked Maggie.

"A young lawyer," I said, my choice of profession decided by an enlarged crayon portrait of Mary Gillespie's deceased brother on an easel before me. He had been a lawyer.

"Why didn't you marry him?" demanded Susette.

"We quarreled," I answered sadly. "A terribly bitter quarrel. Oh, we were both so young and so foolish. It was my fault. I vexed Cecil by flirting with another man" -- wasn't I coming on! -- "and he was jealous and angry. He went out West and never came back. I have never seen him since, and I do not even know if he is alive. But -- but -- I could never care for another man."

"Oh, how interesting!" sighed Wilhelmina. "I do so love sad stories. But perhaps he will come back some day yet, Miss Holmes."

"Oh, no, never now," I said, shaking my head. "He has forgotten all about me, I dare say. Or if he hasn't, he has never forgiven me."

Mary Gillespie's Susan Jane announced tea at this moment, and I was thankful, for my imagination was giving out, and I didn't know what question those girls would ask next. But I felt already a change in the mental atmosphere surrounding me, and all through supper I was thrilled with a secret exultation. Repentant? Ashamed? Not a bit of it! I'd have done the same thing over again, and all I felt sorry for was that I hadn't done it long ago.

When I got home that night Nancy looked at me wonderingly and said:

"You look like a girl to-night, Miss Charlotte."

"I feel like one," I said, laughing, and I ran to my room and did what I had never done before -- wrote a second poem in the same day. I had to have some outlet for my feelings. I called it "In Summer Days of Love Ago", and I worked Mary Gillespie's roses and Cecil Fenwick's eyes into it, and made it so sad and reminiscent and minor-musicky that I felt perfectly happy.

The Books: "Further Chronicles of Avonlea - 'Aunt Cynthia's Persian Cat'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Further Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery. Another short story collection! We're gonna be doing LM for the next couple of months. Oh, I'm so happy!!

First story in this collection is a very funny little domestic drama - the kind of which Lucy Maud was just a MASTER of. There's also a sprinkling of romance - but the COMEDY is what is paramount here. I love her sense of humor. I just get it, I respond to it.

So anyway, first story is called "Aunt Cynthia's Persian Cat".

The elements in the story:

-- Sue and Ismay are sisters - they are adults, neither married, and are living in the old family house

-- They have a fussy old Aunt Cynthia - of whom they both live in a kind of mild state of fear.

-- Sue has a "friend" named Max - who has asked her to marry him once a year for the past 10 years or whatever. They are best friends - but Sue is just convinced that he is not the man for her, even though she adores him, and loves having him around. (A recurring Lucy Maud theme.) Oh - and funny thing ... Anne Shirley (excerpt here) shows up in a peripheral way here. There's a rumor that maybe Max wants to court Anne Shirley - and even though Sue doesn't want to marry Max, she ... well ... she certainly doesn't want him courting anyone else!!

-- Aunt Cynthia descends upon Sue and Ismay one weekend and she's going out of town or something and she wants them to take care of Fatima - her white Persian cat - a cat that Sue and Ismay both despise. But because they live in fear of Aunt Cynthia, they say "sure, we'll take care of Fatima"

-- Of course - Fatima is lost during her stay with Sue and Ismay. UTTER PANIC ENSUES. It's hysterical - literally, Sue and Ismay are beside themselves. Max gets involved in the drama - mainly because he is such a good "friend" of Sue (you just love Max - he's a very humorous character, the kind of guy I think I would like)

Anyway, it all turns out all right in the end.

But here's an excerpt that gives the flavor of why I love this little story. Lucy Maud, when she's "on", is such a great example of how to keep it simple. She was SO good at that. Her short stories have nothing extraneous - and yet you still get the sense that they are chock-full of reality, and ... you always feel like you are peeking through someone's window - getting a glimpse of a full life lived. She's marvelous.

Here's the excerpt.

Excerpt from Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "Aunt Cynthia's Persian Cat". by L.M. Montgomery.

"You can take care of that horrid Fatima beast yourself," said Ismay, when the door closed behind Aunt Cynthia. "I won't touch her with a yardstick. You had no business to say we'd take her."

"Did I say we would take her?" I demanded, crossly. "Aunt Cynthia took our consent for granted. And you know, as well as I do, we couldn't have refused. So what is the use of being grouchy?"

"If anything happens to her, Aunt Cynthia will hold us responsible," said Ismay darkly.

"Do you think Anne Shirley is really engaged to Gilbert Blythe?" I asked curiously.

"I've heard that she was," said Ismay absently. "Does she eat anything but milk? Will it do to give her milk?"

"Oh, I guess so. But do you think Max has really fallen in love with her?"

"I dare say. What a relief it will be for you if he has."

"Oh, of course," I said, frostily. "Anne Shirley or Anne Anybody Else, is perfectly welcome to Max if she wants him. I certainly do not. Ismay Meade, if that stove doesn't stop smoking I shall fly into bits. This is a detestable day. I hate that creature!"

"Oh, you shouldn't talk like that, when you don't even know her," protested Ismay. "Every one says Anne Shirley is lovely --"

"I was talking about Fatima," I cried in a rage.

"Oh!" said Ismay.

Ismay is stupid at times. I thought the way she said "Oh" was inexcusably stupid.

The Books: "Kilmeny Of The Orchard" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Kilmeny Of The Orchard by L.M. Montgomery.

Okay. So I'm gonna be honest. This book is ridiculous. Doesn't mean I haven't read it a bunch of times - because some of the writing (the nature writing in particular) - is good - and also, it's Lucy Maud - so I've read all of her books multiple times - but the premise is ridiculous, the very REALITY of the book is ridiculous - it's like you have to blind your eyes to REALITY in order to accept this book.

Here are some of the themes:

-- Looks are all that matter. Kilmeny is described as literally the most beautiful girl in the world. Therefore: she is good. Anyone with a physical deformity of any kind should be ashamed of themselves - because basically that means that they have something ugly in their souls.

-- If you have foreign blood in you (meaning: anything other than Scotch or British) - you are not to be trusted.

-- You must believe in deus ex machinae. Kilmeny has not spoken for most of her life (for no apparent reason) - and at the very moment when she needs to - out comes her voice!!!

-- Oh and if you're mute? You should be ashamed and hide yourself away from the world And if you're a person who falls in love with a mute, then you must treat it as the biggest tragedy that has ever befallen you.

I mean, I guess it was a different time - yadda yadda - more provincial, there was more open prejudice against, you know, evil people like ... ITALIANS ... but for the most part, I am not confronted with the fact that Lucy Maud wrote her books at the beginning of the 20th century - her stuff still reads well, it's not sentimental or treacly - but this one? I read it and I want to bust in on all the morons living their stupid provincial racist lives and say, "Okay, guys, here's the deal, mkay? Just because he is half-Italian does not automatically mean that he is more prone to murder. That's the first thing. Second of all: who gives a crap that she's mute? Why does she have to never leave her farm in shame? Why are you all bummed out that she's mute? And lastly: Kilmeny is obviously meant to be a supermodel or something. Dude: STOP obsessing on how beautiful she is. She's not PERFECT, just because she's a babealicious babealolio. Let her be HUMAN, how 'bout that? Stop being so focused on her beauty."

So the story is: Eric Marshall is a 24 year old schoolteacher - and Lucy Maud makes some vague reference to the fact that he has been having a hard time recently. Maybe living a wild life? Running away from the expectations of his father? So he comes to this small sleepy town, and boards with someone, and teaches - and is basically all wrapped up in himself. Until one day - on a walk - he comes across THE MOST BEAUTIFUL GIRL IN THE WORLD, standing in the woods. I think 2 pages are given to describing every nook and cranny of Kilmeny's stupid beauty. We hear about the flush on the cheek, the teeny lovable dimple, the long lashes, the creamy skin, the long black hair ... it goes on and on and on.

Lucy Maud makes Kilmeny's beauty a fetish. It's bizarre. She never really comes to life.

But anyway - blah blah - turns out Kilmeny never leaves her house - she sits there day in day out because she is mute, and this is the most shameful thing in the world. But - she can HEAR. She just can't speak. Nobody can understand why. She has a little slate around her neck and writes what she wants to say on that. You get the sense that there are some deep psychological issues with this babealicious babealoliio. She lives with her very strict aunt and uncle - her mother is dead. There are many many romantic and dramatic secrets in Kilmeny's past. And poor Eric just wants to be her friend. Yeah, right, Eric. You just want to be her friend. WhatEVS. Get a life, Eric.

Oh, and Kilmeny has a half-brother or something like that - and he has Italian blood in him (cue evil music) - and Eric has an immediate revulsion to him. But it just comes off as racist or stupid the way Lucy Maud writes it. It's not anything in his CHARACTER that causes the revulsion. It is the FOREIGN-NESS of him.

Get over it, Lucy. Sheesh. Big world outside of Canada with all kinds of races and peoples living good lives. Get over your damn Scotch Presbyterian self. Also: are you aware that some people who are babealicious babealolios actually have ugly mean little souls? Outer beauty is NOT everything. Stop making a fetish of it. Kilmeny could very well be a bitch on wheels - her beauty has nothing to do with her inner self.

Anyway, I do like the writing in this excerpt. Eric goes to speak with Kilmeny's strict aunt and uncle (whom he has never met) - basically to ask permission to hang out with Kilmeny. I just like the description of this old-timey room. Lucy Maud is able to make me go back in time in such excerpts.

Oh, and Eric is good-looking. And he knows it. He's a metrosexual in 1910. I dislike Eric, too. He's a shallow looks-obsessed pretty boy.

Excerpt from Kilmeny Of The Orchard by L.M. Montgomery.

Eric walked into the parlour and sat down as bidden. He found himself in the most old-fahioned room he had ever seen. The solidly made chairs and tables, of some wood grown dark and polished with age, made even Mrs. Williamson's "parlour set" of horsehair seem extravagantly modern by contrast. The painted floor was covered with round braided rugs. On the centre table was a lamp, a Bible, and some theological volumes contemporary with the square-runged furniture. The walls, wainscoted half way up in wood and covered for the rest of it with a dark, diamond-patterned paper, were hung with faded engravings, mostly of clerical-looking bewigged personages in gowns and bands.

But over the high, undecorated black mantel-piece, in a ruddy glow of sunset light striking through the window, hung one which caught and held Eric's attention to the exclusion of everything else. It was the enlarged "crayon" photograph of a young girl, and, in spite of the crudity of the execution, it was easily the centre of interest in the room.

Eric at once guessed that this must be the picture of Margaret Gordon, for, although quite unlike Kilmeny's sensitive, spirited face in general, there was a subtle, unmistakable resemblance about brow and chin.

The pictured face was a very handsome one, suggestive of velvety dark eyes and vivid colouring; but it was its expression rather than its beauty which fascinated Eric. Never had he seen a countenance indicative of more intense and stubborn will power. Margaret Gordon was dead and buried; the picture was a cheap and inartistic production in an impossible frame of gilt and plush; yet the vitality in that face dominated its surroundings still. What then must have been the power of such a personality in life?

Eric realized that this woman could and would have done whatsoever she willed, unflinchingly and unrelentingly. She could stamp her desire on everything and everybody about her, moulding them to her wish and will, in their own despite and in defiance of all the resistance they might make. Many things in Kilmeny's upbringing and temperament became clear to him.

"If that woman had told me I was ugly I should have believed her," he thought. "Ay, even though I had a mirror to contradict her. I should never have dreamed of disputing or questioning anything she might have said. The strange power in her face is almost uncanny, peering out as it does from a mask of beauty and youthful curves. Pride and stubbornness are its salient characteristics. Well, Kilmeny does not at all resemble her mother in expression and only very slightly in feature."

The Books: "Chronicles of Avonlea - 'The End of a Quarrel'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery. Next story in the collection: "The End of a Quarrel".

So this is the last story in the collection known as The Chronicles of Avonlea. I really like it. It has another Lucy Maud leitmotif: the couple who quarrel over NOTHING, or have a mere misunderstanding - and yet the two have such personal pride that nobody makes up with the other for, oh, 20 years. And suddenly - in one dramatic moment - all those years are brushed away, and all is forgiven. All it takes, in Lucy Maud's world, is 2 minutes to wipe away 20 years of anger. I think she might be onto something there - but still ...

I love the last scene of this story (when all the years are brushed away) - and I think it's actually kind of SEXY. Lucy Maud wasn't really a SEXY writer - she always does the fade-out at sexy moments - and she still does here, but I always just LOVE this last moment ... it's kinda like Rhett Butler taking Scarlett up the stairs. You don't get to SEE what happens next but it's fun to imagine.

Nancy Rogerson grew up in Avonlea. She and Peter Wright "went together" for quite some time - until they mysteriously quarreled - and that was that. What did they quarrel over? Nancy corrected his grammar and he flipped OUT. Nancy was (is) a bit of a snob. She got educated. Peter Wright was just a simple farmer, and he didn't like his school-marm girlfriend telling him not to say "ain't", thank you very much. So after they quarreled - Nancy went off to school to become a nurse - and she has since then lived far away from Avonlea, having a career. She is a career woman. At a time when, you know, women were not doing such a thing. She never married. She thinks she's FINE with that. (Oh, and that's another Lucy Maud theme: people who have no idea what is going on in their own hearts. They literally go for YEARS thinking: "I am fine with this situation, I got no problems with it" - and they truly believe that - until they have one moment of revelation and then they realize: "Wait a minute - I am actually viciously unhappy and I am in LOVE with him!!" etc.) Peter Wright, meanwhile, stayed on his farm, and has (conveniently) never married. In real life, they always marry. Like - when you lose someone in real life, you really LOSE them. But we're in Lucy Maud's world now. Nancy Rogerson has not thought of Peter Wright in 15 years. But she has now come back to Avonlea for a visit, and she sits out on her porch reminiscing with her childhood friend (who has that kind of smiling pity for Nancy, because Nancy has never gotten married or had children). Nancy catches a glimpse of Peter's farm through the trees and asks, innocently, "How is he doing?" She learns he never married. But Nancy doesn't believe that that matters to her. She has forgotten Peter. He belongs to the past. Whether or not he is married makes no difference to HER.

But then one night ... she's taking a walk ... she passes by his house ... and suddenly ......... she finds herself peeking through the windows, he's not home, and she sees what a freakin' MESS the place is. Because we all know that men are perfectly helpless to, you know, wash the damn dishes if he doesn't have a wife. Nancy sees the filth and feels bad ... and suddenly she gets a little mischievous plan. What if she went inside and cleaned up his kitchen for him? And made him a little tea, and a snack - and had it waiting for him when he got back? SHE wouldn't be waiting for him - she would just do this thing as a joke, and then sneak away, and he would come home and wonder: who has been in my house? What good fairy has been here? Nancy thinks this would be very funny, so she gets to work.

This is the last scene of the book. I just find it perfect. I think the two of them have behaved like perfect IDIOTS for 20 years - what a waste of time - but still - I love this drawing-back-the-veil scene, and I love how she has written it.

Excerpt from Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery - "The End of a Quarrel".

Nancy went in, threw off her hat, and seized a broom. The first thing she did was to give the kitchen a thorough sweeping. Then she kindled a fire, put a kettle full of water on to heat, and attacked the dishes. From the number of them, she rightly concluded that Peter hadn't washed any for at least a week.

"I suppose he just uses the clean ones as long as they hold out, and then has a grand wash-up," she laughed. "I wonder where he keeps his dish-towels, if he has any."

Evidently Peter hadn't any. At least, Nancy couldn't find any. She marched boldly into the dusty sitting-room and explored the drawers of an old-fashioned sideboard, confiscating a towel she found there. As she worked, she hummed a song; her steps were light and her eyes bright with excitement. Nancy was enjoying herself thoroughly, there was no doubt of that. The spice of mischief in the adventure pleased her mightily.

The dishes washed, she hunted up a clean, but yellow and evidently long unused, tablecloth out of the sideboard, and proceeded to set the table and get Peter's tea. She found bread and butter in the pantry, a trip to the cellar furnished a pitcher of cream, and Nancy recklessly heaped the contents of her strawberry jug on Peter's plate. The tea was made and set back to keep warm. And, as a finishing touch, Nancy ravaged the old neglected garden and set a huge bowl of crimson roses in the centre of the table.

"Now I must go," she said aloud. "Wouldn't it be fun to see Peter's face when he comes in, thugh? Ha-hum! I've enjoyed doing this - but why? Nancy Rogerson, don't be asking yourself conundrums. Put on your hat and proceed homeward, constructing on our way some reliable fib to account to Louisa for the absence of your strawberries."

Nancy paused a moment and looked around wistfully. She had made the place look cheery and neat and homelike. She felt that queer tugging of her heartstrings again. Suppose she belonged here, and was waiting for Peter to come home to tea. Suppose -- Nancy whirled around with a sudden horrible prescience of what she was going to see! Peter Wright was standing in the doorway.

Nancy's face went crimson. For the first time in her life she had not a word to say for herself. Peter looked at her and then at the table, with its fruit and flowers.

"Thank you," he said politely.

Nancy recovered herself. With a shame-faced laugh, she held out her hand.

"Don't have me arrested for trespass, Peter. I came and looked in at your kitchen out of impertinent curiosity, and, just for fun, I thought I'd come in and get your tea. I thought you'd be so surprised - and I meant to go before you came home, of course."

"I wouldn't have been surprised," said Peter, shaking hands. "I saw you go past the field and I tied the horses and followed you down through the woods. I've been sitting on the fence back yonder, watching your comings and goings."

"Why didn't you come and speak to me at church yesterday, Peter?" demanded Nancy boldly.

"I was afraid I would say something ungrammatical," answered Peter drily.

The crimson flamed over Nancy's face again. She pulled her hand away.

"That's cruel of you, Peter."

Peter suddenly laughed. There was a note of boyishness in the laughter.

"So it is," he said, "but I had to get rid of the accumulated malice and spite of twenty years somehow. It's all gone now, and I'll be as amiable as I know how. But since you have gone to the trouble of getting my supper for me, Nancy, you must stay and help me eat it. Them strawberries look good. I haven't had any this summer - been too busy to pick them."

Nancy stayed. She sat at the head of Peter's table and poured his tea for him. Sje talked to him wittily of the Avonlea people and the changes in their old set. Peter followed her lead with an apparent absence of self-consciousness, eating his supper like a man whose heart and mind were alike on good terms with him. Nancy felt wretched - and, at the same time, ridiculously happy. It seemed the most grotesque thing in the world that she should be presiding there at Peter's table, and yet the most natural. There were moments when she felt like crying - other moments when her laughter was as ready and spontaneous as a girl's. Sentiment and humour had always waged an equal contest in Nancy's nature.

When Peter had finished his strawberries, he folded his arms on the table and looked admiringly at Nancy.

"You look well at the head of a table, Nancy," he said critically. "How is it that you haven't been presiding over one of your own long before this? I thought you'd eet with lots of men out in the wordl that you'd like - men who talked good grammar."

"Peter, don't!" said Nancy, wincing. "I was a goose."

"No, you were quite right. I was a tetchy fool. If I'd had any sense, I'd have felt thankful you thought enough of me to want to improve me, and I'd have tried to kerrect my mistakes instead of getting mad. It's too late now, I suppose."

"Too late for what?" said Nancy, plucking up heart of grace at something in Peter's tone and look.

"For -- kerrecting mistakes."

"Grammatical ones?"

"Not exactly. I guess them mistakes are past kerrecting in an old fellow like me. Worse mistakes, Nancy. I wonder what you would say if I asked you to forgive me, and have me after all."

"I'd snap you up before you'd have time to change your mind," said Nancy brazenly. She tried to look Peter in the face, but her blue eyes, where tears and mirth were blending, faltered before his gray ones.

Peter stood up, knocking over his chair, and strode around the table to her.

"Nancy, my girl!" he said.

The Books: "Chronicles of Avonlea - 'The Miracle at Carmody'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery. Next story in the collection: "The Miracle at Carmody".

A break in the Dean Martin frenzy to go back to my LM Montgomery obsession ...

"The Miracle at Carmody" is about two sisters who have adopted a young boy. The sisters, Salome and Judith, are what I would call LM Montgomery archetypes. Their parents are dead. Judith is 10 years older than Salome - and is a tough tough cookie. Salome is kind of submissive, sweet, and lets Judith be the boss. They had a series of tragedies of a family which left them weakened (and yet also very well-off, having inherited a small fortune). Their mother, sweet and religious, had died when Salome was 10 and Judith was 20. Then when Salome was 19, she had a boyfriend - and he was killed. Then their father died - and right around that same time Salome developed some sort of degenerative hip disease which has left her nearly crippled. She cannot walk without a cane. She has not been upstairs in their house for 15 years. At around that time, of all the tragedies, Judith - who had decided when their mother died - that Salome was going to have EVERYTHING that she could not have (Judith was never courted by anyone, never had a beau, she is kind of stern, not attractive, whatever) - and when Salome became a cripple, Judith went to war with the world, in her mind. She stopped going to church (which is the main issue in the story) - she rails at any minister who tries to talk about everything happening for a reason - Judith is HARD on this issue. She stopped believing in God altogether. What good is this all-loving God if all these bad things can happen? Judith has a "SHOW YOURSELF TO BE THE SAVIOR" rage in her. And when God proves to be as useless as she imagined, when he refuess to show himself, she is DONE with him. Her hatred has become a rock-hard thing in her. She won't let Salome go to church either, even though Salome begs. Salome eventually acquiesces - because she realizes she cannot win an argument with her sister. And so they go along for years - 20 years - in this way. Judith sounds like a tyrant - and she is, kind of - but Lucy Maud also lets us know that she is not a BAD person (she's not like Emmeline Strong, another bossy older sister, in "The Courting of Prissy Strong" - excerpt here). Judith's hard-ness comes from being HURT, not from being a shrew. She feels that God has ROBBED them of happiness. She feels that Salome should be married, with children ... but no, she hobbles through their house, doing little domestic projects, now in her 40s, and it's over. Every time Salome picks up her crutches, Judith burns with rage. Okay - so eventually - they adopt this little boy, who was suddenly left orphaned when his parents were killed in a fire. It is all Salome's idea. She aches for a child. Judith finally caves - and so Lionel Hezekiah, a little 6-year-old hellion. He is a hellion, he gets into all kinds of trouble, he wreaks havoc on their neat lives, and yet - he is lovable. You can't help but love him. Salome loves him more than Judith does - Judith is more of the fierce disciplinarian of the pair. But you do get the sense that Lionel Hezekiah is in good hands.

Eventually though (and I have to say, I think Lucy Maud is a wee bit obvious here) Lionel Hezekiah confides in Salome and says that he thinks he is just going to KEEP being a bad little boy - because he's not allowed to go to Sunday school and church like the other little boys. Salome is horrified. Judith will not allow Lionel Hezekiah to be brainwashed by religion, or by God - that mo-fo up in the sky who likes to MESS with us down here. But Lionel Hezekiah has a whole monologue to Salome where he basically says, "My goal in life now, since I can't go to Sunday school and learn about right and wrong, is to be an old drunken hellraiser like Abel Blair - he lives a great life! He drinks and parties and whores around and I want to be just like him!" (This is a paraphrase. Obviously) Salome is so upset - she literally feels like it is life or death that Lionel Hezekiah get some religion. He is already, at age 6, going down the path of just not caring about ANYthing. Oh, and he also says to Salome something like, "Well, you and Judith don't go to church - so why should I care?"

She and Judith have a huge argument. Salome does have a backbone in there, beneath the sweet submissiveness, and on this she will not budge. She is GOING to go to church. She is GOING to set a good example to Lionel Hezekiah. Judith is in a rage. Salome stays firm.

So she limps over to the church - after 20 years of staying away.

Here's the excerpt of what happens next.

Excerpt from Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery - "The Miracle at Carmody".

When the people began to come in, Salome felt painfully the curious glances directed at her. Look where she would, she met them, unless she looked out of the window; so out of the window she did look unswervingly, her delicate little face burning crimson with self-consciousness. She could see her home and its back yard plainly, with Lionel Hezekiah making mud-pies joyfully in the corner. Presently, she saw Judith come out of the house and stride away to the pine wood behind it. Judith always betook herself to the pines in times of mental stress and strain.

Salome could see the sunlight on Lionel Hezekiah's bare head as he mixed his pies. In the pleasure of watching him, she forgot where she was and the curious eyes turned on her.

Suddenly Lionel Hezekiah ceased concocting pies, and betook himself to the corner of the summer kitchen, where he proceeded to climb up to the top of the storm-fence and from there to mount the sloping kitchen roof. Salome clasped her hands in agony. What if the child should fall? Oh! why had Judith gone away and left him alone? What if -- what if -- and then, while her brain with lightning-like rapidity pictured forth a dozen possible catastrophes, something really did happen. Lionel Hezekiah slipped, sprawled wildly, slid down, and fell off the roof, in a bewildering whirl of arms and legs, plump into the big rain-water hogshead under the spout, which was generally full to the brim with rain-water, a hogshead big and deep enough to swallow up half a dozen small boys who went climbing kitchen roofs on a Sunday.

Then something took place that is talked of in Carmody to this day, and even fiercely wrangled over, so many and conflicting are the opinions on the subject. Salome Marsh, who had not walked a step without assistance for fiteen years, suddenly sprang to her feet with a shriek, ran down the aisle, and out of the door!

Every man, woman, and child in the Carmody church followed her, even the minister, who had just announced his text. When they got out, Salome was already halfway up her lane, running wildly. In her heart was room but for one agonized thought. Would Lionel Hezekiah be drowned before she reached him?

She opened the gate of the yard, and panted across it just as a tall, grim-faced woman came around the corner of the house and stood rooted to the ground in astonishment at the sight that met her eyes.

But Salome saw nobody. She flung herself against the hogshead and looked in, sick with terror at what she might see. What she did see was Lionel Hezekiah sitting on the bottom of the hogshead in water that came only to his waist. He was looking rather dazed and bewildered, but was apparently quite uninjured.

The yard was full of people, but nobody had as yet said a word; awe and wonder held everybody in spellbound silence. Judith was the first to speak. She pushed through the crowd to Salome. Her face was blanched to a deadly whiteness; and her eyes, as Mrs. William Blair afterwards decalred, were enough to give a body the creeps.

"Salome," she said in a high, shrill, unnatural voice, "where is your crutch?"

Salome came to herself at the question. For the first time, she realized that she had walked, nay, run, all that distance from the church alone and unaided. She turned pale, swayed, and would have fallen if Judith had not caught her.

Old. Dr. Blair came forward briskly.

"Carry her in," he said, "and don't all of you come crowding in, either. She wants quiet and rest for a spell."

Most of the people obediently returned to the church, their suddenly loosened tongues chattering in voluble excitement. A few women assisted Judith to carry Salome in and lay her on the kitchen loungge, followed by the doctor and the dripping Lionel Hezekiah, whom the minister had lifted out of the hogshead and to whom nobody now paid the slightest attention.

Salome faltered out her story, and her hearers listened with varying emotions.

"It's a miracle," said Sam Lawson in an awed voice.

Dr. Blair shrugged his shoulders.

"There is no miracle about it," he said bluntly. "It's all perfectly natural. The disease in the hip has evidently been quite well for a long time. Nature does sometimes work cures like that when she is let alone. The trouble was that the muscles were paralyzed by long disuse. That paralysis was overcome by the force of a strong and instinctive effort. Salome, get up and walk across the kitchen."

Salome obeyed. She walked across the kitchen and back, slowly, stiffly, falteringly, now that the stimulus of frantic fear was spent; but still she walked. The doctor nodded his satisfaction.

"Keep that up every day. Walk as much as you can without tiring yourself, and you'll soon be as spry as ever. No more need of crutches for you, but there's no miracle in the case."

Judith Marsh turned to him. She had not spoken a word since her question concerning Salome's crutch Now she said passionately,

"It was a miracle. God has worked it to prove His existence to me, and I accept the proof."

The old doctor shrugged his shoulders again. BNeing a wise man, he knew when to hold his tongue.

The Books: "Chronicles of Avonlea - 'The Courting of Prissy Strong'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery. Next story in the collection: "The Courting of Prissy Strong".

This is one of Lucy Maud's many stories that feature two contrasting old-maid sisters - one who is strong, rigid, and bossy - and one who is weak, retiring and submissive. Sometimes (like in "Miracle at Carmody" - excerpt here) - the strong sister is also a good person, who means well, who is just overly protective. Usually the parents are dead in these stories - and so the sisters only have each other. But sometimes, like in "The Courting of Prissy Strong", the stronger sister is pretty much an evil wench, who refuses to allow her weaker sister to have a will of her own. Prissy Strong is the weak sister, and Emmeline Strong is the strong one. Prissy is not allowed to not only have a LIFE of her own - but not allowed to have her own thoughts, ideas, or plans. Prissy is way too submissive to even really MIND - but eventually - when an old beau comes sniffing around, looking to court Prissy again (who is now in her 40s) - Emmeline puts a stop to it real quick. She will have NONE of this.

A kindly neighbor couple ends up intervening. One of them is the narrator of this story. Basically, there is much sneaking around that has to be done, Emmeline needs to be lied to - sometimes it's way better to lie to someone than to try to reason wiht them - because someone like Emmeline does not deserve respect. She's too evil. heh.

Oh, and Anne and Diana show up, randomly, in this story - I love it when that happens. They somehow get involved in the spirit of this thing - basically: how will Prissy elope with her old beau, without Emmeline catching onto the plan? Emmeline is suspicious, rigid, bossy, and rules Prissy with an iron thumb. Prissy is never left alone. How will this be handled?

I love Thomas, the fat husband of the narrator. He is an "elder" in the church - and there's just something about him, the little we see of him, that I love. He can't STAND Emmeline. He tries to be good and spiritual and proper and religious, as befits as elder, but all of this stops when confronted with the bitch-fest that is Emmeline.

The plot finally involves our narrator having to climb up onto her roof and put a red scarf around a ventilator - which is the signal for Stephen (the old beau) that Emmeline has left the premises - and then he runs over, spends a couple minutes with Prissy, courting her - and then has to hide in the barn if Emmeline comes back unexpectedly. This goes on for a while until they finally decide to get married. But they must elope. Our narrator (while Thomas, her fat husband, who has tried to avoid getting all involved in this) sets the whole thing up - tells Stephen to get the marriage license ready and she will talk to Rev. Leonard (the same Rev. Leonard who was featured so prominently in "Each His Own Tongue" - excerpt here) - and they would need to be ready to get married at the drop of a hat - because it all would depend on Emmeline miraculously leaving Prissy alone for 10 minutes. Oh wait - and Emmeline has gotten so suspicious that Prissy is 'seeing' her old beau again - that whenever she leaves the house, she LOCKS PRISSY INSIDE. So that's the kind of bitch we are dealing with here.

I love this ending scene when it all comes together.

Excerpt from Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery - "The Courting of Prissy Strong".

Then I walked around the house to the only window that hadn't shutters - a tiny one upstairs. I knew it was the window in the closet off the room where the girls slept. I stopped under it and called Prissy. Before long Prissy came and opened it. She was so pale and woe-begone looking that I pitied her with all my heart.

"Prissy, where has Emmeline gone?" I asked.

"Down to Avonlea to see the Roger Pyes. They're sick with measles, and Emmeline couldn't take me because I've never had the measles."

Poor Prissy! She had never had anything a body ought to have.

"Then you just come and unfasten a shutter, and come right over to my house," I said exultantly. "We'll have Stephen and the minister here in no time"

"I can't - Em'line has locked me in here," said Prissy woefully.

I was posed. No living mortal bigger than a baby could have got in or out of that closet window.

"Well," I said finally, "I'll put the signal up for Stephen anyhow, and we'll see what can be done when he gets here."

I didn't know how I was ever to get the signal up on that ventilator, for it was one of the days I take dizzy spells; and if I took one up on the ladder there'd probably be a funeral instead of a wedding. But Anne Shirley said she'd put it up for me, and she did. I have never seen that girl before, and I've never seen her since, but it's my opinion that there wasn't much she couldn't do if she made up her mind to do it.

Stephen wasn't long in getting there, and he brought the minister with him. Then we all, including Thomas - who was beginning to get interested in the affair in spite of himself - went over and held council of war beneath the closet window.

Thomas suggested breaking in doors and carrying Prissy off boldly, but I could see that Mr. Leonard looked very dubious over that, and even Stephen said he thought it could only be done as a last resort. I agreed with him. I knew Emmeline Strong would bring an action against him for housebreaking as likely as not. She'd be so furious she'd stick at nothing if we gave her any excuse. Then Anne Shirley, who couldn't have been more excited if she was getting married herself, came to the rescue again.

"Couldn't you put a ladder up to the closet window," she said, "and Mr. Clark can go up it and they can be married there. Can't they, Mr. Leonard?"

Mr. Leonard agreed that they could. He was always the most saintly-looking man, but I know I saw a twinkle in his eye.

"Thomas, go over and bring our little ladder over here," I said.

Thomas forgot he was an elder, and he brought the ladder as quick as it was possible for a fat man to do it. After all, it was too short to reach the window, but there was no time to go for another. Stephen went up to the top of it and he reached up and Prissy reached down, and they could just barely clasp hands so. I shall never forget the look of Prissy. The window was so small she could only get her head and one arm oout of it. Besides, she was almost frightened to death.

Mr. Leonard stood at the foot of the ladder and married them. As a rule, he makes a very long and solemn thing of the marriage ceremony, but this time he cut out everything that wasn't absolutely necessary; and it was well that he did, for just as he pronounced them man and wife, Emmeline drove into the lane.

She knew perfectly well what had happened when she saw the minister with his blue book in his hand. Never a word said she. She marched to the front door, unlocked it, and strode upstairs. I've always been convinced it was a mercy that closet window was so small, or I believe that she would have thrown Prissy out of it. As it was, she walked her downstairs by the arm and actually flung her at Stephen.

"There, take your wife," she said, "and I'll pack up every stitch she owns and send it after her, and I never want to see her or you again as long as I live."

Then she turned to me and Thomas.

"As for you that have aided and abetted that weak-minded fool in this, take yourselves out of my yard and never darken my door again."

"Goodness, who wants to, you old spitfire!" said Thomas.

It wasn't just the thing for him to say, perhaps, but we are all human, even elders.

The girls didn't escape. Emmeline looked daggers at them.

"This will be something for you to carry back to Avonlea," she said. "You gossips down there will have enough to talk about for a spell. That's all you ever go out of Avonlea for - just to fetch and carry tales."

Finally she finished up with the minister.

"I'm going to the Baptist church in Spencervale after this," she said. Her tone and look said a hundred other things. She whirled into the house and slammed the door.

Mr. Leonard looked around on us with a pitying smile as Stephen put poor, half-fainting Prissy into the buggy.

"I am very sorry," he said in that gentle, saintly way of his, "for the Baptists."

The Books: "Chronicles of Avonlea - 'Pa Sloane's Purchase'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery. Next story in the collection: "Pa Sloane's Purchase".

Lucy Maud Montgomery could write flowery prose with the best of them. Her descriptions of nature - snowy fields, the seashore, flower gardens - are superb. But there are also stories like 'Pa Sloane's Purchase' where NONE of that stuff would be appropriate - because the people themselves are not romantic. Having a sudden intense description of a sunset in the middle of a domestic comedy like 'Pa Sloane's Purchase' would have just been Lucy Maud being self-indulgent. Stories like this one shows me how much she was in control of her own art. Pa and Ma Sloane are taciturn farming people, they have been married for 30 years. Ma Sloane totally bosses Pa, Ma Sloane handles the money, and Pa Sloane works the farm, and pretty much does what Ma Sloane says. Their children are grown. They are doing fine. Pa Sloane doesn't mind being bossed. He is not a man of resentment. The ONLY thing he resents is that Ma Sloane will not allow him to go to auctions - his favorite thing in the world to do on a Saturday is to go to some farm auction, and make some bids. It is one of the greatest pleasures of his life. But Ma Sloane watches him like a hawk, and nixes any of his attempts to go. She is tight-fisted with their money - and Pa Sloane is a weeeeeee bit more relaxed about financial stuff ... but Ma Sloane runs the household. She gets frustrated with Pa Sloane bidding on some broken down piece of equipment with the promise that he will "fix it up" - and then of course, he never does, and the broken down piece of equipment ends up just taking up space in their barn. So ... one day - there;s going to be a big auction because a nearby couple had died - within weeks of each other - and all of their belongings were being auctioned off. Pa Sloane, in his quiet passive-aggressive way, got Ma Sloane to agree to let him go - but only if she went with him. At the last minute, some domestic issue comes up - and Pa Sloane gets to go alone. Ma Sloane is a bit in a panic and shouts after his departing buggy, "DON'T BID ON ANYTHING!' But we're dealing with a true bidding ADDICT here. To ask him "not to bid" WHILE he is at an auction - is really just too much ...

Here's what happens. It's a sweet funny story, written in the simple humorous language of a story told round a fire. No frills. Good job, Maud. Look how she gets into Pa Sloane's little world - and it's FUNNY - but she respects him, too. She's not mocking him.

Excerpt from Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery - "Pa Sloane's Purchase".

When Pa arrived at the Carmody store, he saw that the little yard of the Garland place below the hill was already full of people. The auction had evidently begun; so, not to miss any more of it, Pa hurried down. The sorrel mare could wait for her shoes until afterwards.

Ma had been within bounds when she called the Garland auction a "one-horse affair". It certainly was very paltry, especially when compared to the big Donaldson auction a month ago, which Pa still lived over in happy dreams.

Horace Garland and his wife had been poor. When they died within six weeks of each other, one of consumption and one of pneumonia, they left nothing but debts and a little furniture. The house had been a rented one.

The bidding on the various poor articles of household gear put up for sale was not brisk, but had an element of resigned determination. Carmody people knew that these things had to be sold to pay the debts, and they could not be sold unless they were bought. Still, it was a very tame affair.

A woman came out of the house carrying a baby of about eighteen months in her arms, and sat down on the bench beneath the window.

"There's Marthy Blair with the Garland baby," said Robert Lawson to Pa. "I'd like to know what's to become of that poor young one!"

"Ain't there any of the father's or mother's folks to take him?" asked Pa.

"No. Horace had no relatives that anybody ever heard of. Mrs. Horace had a brother; but he went to Manitoba years ago, and nobody knows where he is now. Somebody'll have to take the baby, and nobody seems anxious to. I've got eight myself, or I'd think about it. He's a fine little chap."

Pa, with Ma's parting admonition ringing in his ears, did not bid on anything, although it will never be known how great was the heroic self-restraint he put on himself, until just at the last, when he did bid on a collection of flower-pots, thinking he might indulge himself to that small extent. But Josiah Sloane had been commissioned by his wife to bring those flower-pots home to her; so Pa lost them.

"There's that's all," said the auctioneer, wiping his face, for the day was very warm for October.

"There's nothing more unless we sell the baby."

A laugh went through the crowd. The sale had been a dull affair, and they were ready for some fun. Someone called out, "Put him up, Jacob." The joke found favour, and the call was repeated hilariously.

Jacob Blair took little Teddy Garland out of Martha's arms, and stood him up on the table by the door, steadying the small chap with one big brown hand. The baby had a mop of yellow curls, a pink and white face, and big blue eyes. He laughed out at the men before him and waved his hands in delight. Pa Sloane thought he had never seen so pretty a baby.

"Here's a baby for sale," shouted the auctioneer. "A genuine article, pretty near as good as brand-new. A real live baby, warranted to walk and talk a little. Who bids? A dollar? Did I hear anyone mean enough to bid a dollar? No, sir, babies don't come as cheap as that, especially the curly-headed brand."

The crowd laughed again. Pa Sloane, by way of keeping on the joke, cried, "Four dollars!"

Everybody looked at him. The impression flashed through the crowd that Pa was in earnest, and meant thus to signify his intention of giving the baby a home. He was well-to-do, and his only son was grown up and married.

"Six," cried out John Clarke from the other side of the yard. John Clarke lived at White Sands, and he and his wife were childless.

That bid of John Clarke's was Pa's undoing. Pa Sloane could not have an enemy; but a rival he had, and that rival was John Clarke. Everywhere at auctions, John Clarke was wont to bid against Pa. At the last auction he had outbid Pa in everything, not having the fear of his wife before his eyes. Pa's fighting blood was up in a moment; he forgot Ma Sloane; he forgot what he was bidding for; he forgot everythinge except a determination that John Clarke should not be victor again.

"Ten," he called shrilly.

"Fifteen," shouted Clarke.

"Twenty," vociferated Pa.

"Twenty-five," bellowed Clarke.

"Thirty," shrieked Pa. He nearly burst a blood-vessel in his shrieking, but he had won. Clarke had turned off with a laugh and a shrug, and the baby was knocked down to Pa Sloane by the auctioneer, who had meanwhile been keeping the crowd in roars of laughter by a quick fire of witticisms. There had not been such fun at an auction in Carmody for many a long day.

Pa Sloane came, or was pushed, forrward. The baby was put into his arms; he realized that he was expected to keep it, and he was too dazed to refuse; besides, his heart went out to the child.

The auctioneer looked doubtfully at the money which Pa laid mutely down.

"I s'pose that part was only a joke," he said.

"Not a bit of it," said Robert Lawson. "All the money won't be too much to pay the debts. There's a doctor's bill, and this will just about pay it."

Pa Sloane drove back home, with the sorrel mare still unshod, the baby, and the baby's meager bundle of clothes. The baby did not trouble him much; it had become well used to strangers in the past two months, and promptly fell asleep on his arm; but Pa Sloane did not enjoy that drive; at the end of it, he mentally saw Ma Sloane.

Ma was there, too, waiting for him on the back doorstep as he drove into the yard at sunset. Her face, when she saw the baby, expressed the last degree of amazement.

"Pa Sloane," she demanded, "whose is that young one, and where did you get it?"

"I -- I -- bought it at the auction, Ma," said Pa feebly. Then he waited for the explosion. None came. This last exploit of Pa's was too much for Ma.

With a gasp, she snatched the baby from Pa's arms and ordered him to go out and put the mare in. When Pa returned to the kitchen, Ma had set the baby on the sofa, fenced him around with chiars so that he couldn't fall off, and given him a molasses cooky.

"Now, Pa Sloane, you can explain," she said.

The Books: "Chronicles of Avonlea - 'The Quarantine at Alexander Abraham's'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery. Next story in the collection: "The Quarantine at Alexander Abraham's".

Okay, here's the magic of Lucy Maud: I can't count how many times I've read this story, and every time - it is a delight. Seriously. How many authors can you say that about? She has SO many stories and books like that for me - that I can just keep coming to them, and finding joy in reading them. This story is HYSTERICAL. Not only that - the two lead characters are emblazoned in my mind - they are such individuals - and it's so fun to just sit back and watch the whole disaster unfold. Even though I already know how the story will end ... it's also one of my favorite "endings". The story ends just perfectly.

We've got the two leads: Angelina MacPherson - an unmarried Sunday School teaching woman. She hates men. She's known for it in Avonlea. She's a feminist. She is so angry at the girlie name her mother foisted on her - that to retaliate she calls herself "Peter" and always has. She doesn't want to be associated with any silly name like "Angelina". She is treated with deference, because - it seems like everyone is, uhm, a little bit AFRAID of her. Men become used to just being ABUSED by her, and women cower in fear. She just stalks through her life, righteously, organizing everyone else, being slightly judgmental towards everyone, and rolling her eyes at the foibles of men.

Then there's Alexander Abraham Bennett, an old bachelor, who lives in complete SQUALOR on his old farm. He is a woman-hater. Known for it in Avonlea. He is a successful man - not a loser, or a drunk - He just won't have a housekeeper, and so everything is falling apart, and coated in dust. He has a dog. He refuses to go to church. He is an eccentric. Ever since his sister died, uhm, 20 years before?? - not one woman has set foot inside his house. As a matter of fact, if a woman comes to ask him to donate to charity or whatever - he has been known to chase them off his property with a pitchfork. He hates women.

Okay, so there's our set-up. Peter McPherson (let's call her what SHE wants to be called) drives out to Alexander Abraham's to find out why Jimmy Spencer, a young boy who works for Alexander, hasn't been in Sunday School for 3 weeks. She has heard the stories about his hatred of women and how he won't let any woman come near him - and SHE is having NONE of it. SHE knows how to handle men. Because she despises them and has contempt for their sorry stupid irresponsible little lives.

(Uhm, and have I mentioned that this story turns into a great romance? One of my favorites of her romances?? hahahahaha These two crackpots who make a huge show of hating the opposite sex ....)

When she arrives at his house, she gets out of her buggy - she has her cat with her for some reason - and they are immediately attacked by his dog - who is so fierce that she is forced to climb up a tree. She hangs out up in the tree for a while (already this is amusing - because in the first 3 pages of the story, you get the picture of this woman - this judgmental perfectionist woman - and now she is shimmying up a tree in alarm.) Finally, she decides she can wait no longer to be saved - so she climbs INTO an open window - into the house of Alexander Abraham - where no woman has set foor in 20 years. She immediately sees what a mess his house is - and her fingers itch to begin cleaning with a vengeance - but for now she has other fish to fry. FURIOUS at how she has been treated by his dog, she stalks downstairs - and there is Alexander Abraham, sitting downstairs - and he looks at her, horrified, as she emerges from WITHIN his house. How on earth did that WOMAN get in here??

At that very moment, the doctor drives up in his buggy - Alexander runs and flings open the door - and the doctor informs him that because of the smallpox outbreak in town, and because Alexander Abraham had not been vaccinated - he has to put him under quarantine. And sadly - because Peter crawled through the window - she also will not be allowed to leave. She will now have to stay at Alexander Abraham's.

These two people are FURIOUS at being stuck with each other. She is contemptuous, he is a crank - she sends for all of her clothes - and so the quarantine begins. One of the first things she MUST do is to clean his house from top to bottom. Not out of kindness towards HIM, oh no. Just because it is a MORAL obligation to ANY fellow human creature that they do not WALLOW IN THEIR OWN FILTH. She cleans - and Alexander Abraham sits back and just GLARES at her.

Guys, this story is just wonderful. You would think that these two self-righteous temperamental people would never fall in love ... but ... but ... OH! I just love it!!

Here's an excerpt from the beginning of the quarantine.

Excerpt from Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery - "The Quarantine at Alexander Abraham's".

Alexander Abraham was sitting on a chair looking at me. Presently he said,

"I am not curious -- but will you kindly tell me why the doctor called you Peter?"

"Because this is my name, I suppose," I answered, shaking up a cushion for William Adolphus and thereby disturbing the dust of years.

Alexander Abraham coughed gently.

"Isn't that -- ahem! -- rahter a peculiar name for a woman?"

"It is," I said, wondering how much soap, if any, there was in the house.

"I am not curious," said Alexander Abraham, "but would you mind telling me how you came to be called Peter?"

"If I had been a boy, my parents intended to call me Peter in honour of a rich uncle. When I -- fortunately -- turned out to be a girl, my mother insisted that I should be called Angelina. They gave me both names and called me Angelina, but as soon as I grew old enough, I decided to be called Peter. It was bad enough, but not so bad as Angelina."

"I should say it was more appropriate," said Alexander Abraham, intending, as I perceived, to be disagreeable.

"Precisely," I agreed calmly. "My last name is MacPherson, and I live in Avonlea. As you are not curious, that will be all the information you will need about me."

"Oh!" Alexander Abraham looked as if a light had broken in on him. "I've heard of you. You -- ah -- pretend to dislike men."

Pretend! Goodness only knows what would have happened to Alexander Abraham just then if a diversion had not taken place. But the door opened and a dog came in -- the dog. I suppose he had got tired waiting under the cherry tree for William Adolphus and me to come down. He was even uglier indoors than out.

"Oh, Mr. Riley, Mr. Riley, see what you have let me in for," said Alexander Abraham reproachfully.

But Mr. Riley - since that was the brute's name - paid no attention to Alexander Abraham. He had caught sight of William Adolphus curled up on the cushion, and he started across the room to investigate him. William Adolphus sat up and began to take notice.

"Call off that dog," I said warningly to Alexander Abraham.

"Call him off yourself," he retorted. "Since you've brought that cat here, you can protect him."

"Oh, it wasn't for William Adolphus' sake I spoke," I said pleasantly. "William Adolphus can protect himself."

William Adolphus could and did. He humped his back, flattened his ears, swore once, and then made a flying leap for Mr. Riley. William Adolphus landed squarely on Mr. Riley's brindled back and promptly took fast hold, spitting and clawing and caterwauling.

You never saw a more astonished dog than Mr. Riley. With a yell of terror he bolted out to the kitchen, out of the kitchen into the hall, through the hall into the room, and so into the kitchen and round again. With each circuit he went faster and faster, until he looked like a brindled streak with a dash of black and white on top. Such a racket and commotion I never heard, and I laughed until the tears came to my eyes. Mr. Riley flew around and around, and William Adolphus held on grimly and clawed. Alexander Abraham turned purple with rage.

"Woman, call off that infernal cat before he kills my dog," he shouted above the din of yelps and yowls.

"Oh, he won't kill him," I said reassuringly, "and he's going too fast to hear me if I did call him. If you can stop the dog, Mr. Bennett, I'll guarantee to make William Adolphus listen to reason, but there's no use trying to argue with a lightning flash."

Alexander Abraham made a frantic lunge at the brindled streak as it whirled past him, with the result that he overbalanced himself and went sprawling on the floor with a crash. I ran to help him up, which only seemed to enrage him further.

"Woman," he sputtered viciously, "I wish you and that fiend of a cat were in -- in --"

"In Avonlea," he finished quickly, to save Alexander Abraham from committing profanity. "So do I, Mr. Bennett, with all my heart. But since we are not, let us make the best of it like sensible people. And in future, you will kindly remember that my name is Miss MacPherson, not Woman!"

With this the end came, and I was thankful, for the noise those two animals made was so terrific that I expected the policeman would be rushing in, smallpox or no smallpox, to see if Alexander Abraham and I were trying to murder each other. Mr. Riley suddenly veered in his mad career and bolted into a dark corner between the stove and the wood-box. William Adolphus let go just in time.

There never was any more trouble with Mr. Riley after that. A meeker, more thoroughly chastened dog you could not find. William Adolphus had the best of it and he kept it.

Seeing that things had calmed down, and that it was five o'clock, I decided to get tea. I told Alexander Abraham that I would prepare it, if he would show me where the eatables were.

"You needn't mind," said Alexander Abraham. "I've been in the habit of getting my own tea for twenty years."

"I daresay. But you haven't been in the habit of getting mine," I said firmly. "I wouldn't eat anything you cooked if I starved to death. If you want some occupation, you'd better get some salve and anoint the scratches on that poor dog's back."

Alexander Abraham said something that I prudenly did not hear. Seeing that he had no information to hand out, I went on an exploring expedition into the pantry. The place was awful beyond description, and for the first time a vague sentiment of pity for Alexander Abraham glimmered in my breast. When a man had to live in such surroundings, the wonder was, not that he hated women, but that he didn't hate the whole human race.

The Books: "Chronicles of Avonlea - 'Aunt Olivia's Beau'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery. Next story in the collection: "Aunt Olivia's Beau".

This story is a total HOOT. I love it! It's Lucy Maud at her best. The plot doesn't show its machinations, everything seems to just unfold naturally, and - I remember the first time reading it - truly not knowing how it would all work out. And the way she DOES work it out? It's so satisfying! It's as good as any romantic-comedy big-finish! I mean, there's no 'slow clap' - but there might as well be!

Lucy Maud had a great love for the delicate spinster character. She despised bitter spinsters - women who hated other women for being happy, etc. - but she had a great affection for those little "aunt" characters, who maintained their femininity, even if they were a bit prissy about it, still took care of their appearance, and still never 'aped' youth - a woman who has grown older gracefully, and who has accepted her spinster status gracefully. Who is a wonderful aunt, fun and girlish, etc. Miss Lavendar is another one - but Lucy Maud's books and stories are full of such characters.

Olivia Sterling is one of those spinster characters. Actually, Lucy Maud would call her an "old maid" - which has a slightly softer connotation than "spinster". Aunt Olivia is a confirmed old maid. She lives alone, she keeps an IMPECCABLE house (she's actually rather OCD about cleanliness), she is good friends with her two mischievous nieces (who are young ladies - one of whom is the narrator of this tale) - Her nieces love to come and hang out at Olivia's house. They sew together, they gather flowers, whatever - but Olivia is a mild non-judgmental fun person to be with. She has sympathy for their young romances, wants to hear all the details ... she's not one of those people who has grown older and has contempt for youth. She loves youth! But she's an old maid - make no mistake about it. She is a fussy personality, you get that right away. Her house is so clean that it's actually almost frightening. She is set in her ways.

So the nieces are DUMBFOUNDED at the beginning of the story when Aunt Olivia shyly tells them that she has a beau and his name is Malcolm McPherson. Malcolm McPherson had lived in East Grafton 20 years prior - and maybe had a crush on the younger Olivia - then he moved away and has not been home in 20 years. But now he is coming home - he sparked up a correspondence with old-maid Olivia - asked her to marry him - and she said yes!

Her nieces are ... they literally have no words. They try to be happy for her ... and they ARE ... but ... Olivia just doesn't seem the marrying TYPE. She had never been courted - and now she is so set in her ways ... who is this Malcolm McPherson? Was he nice? How would he fit in to her fussy type-A sort of lifestyle???? The nieces are DYING to meet him and watch the drama unfold.

I won't tell what eventually happens - because it's all just too funny and too perfect - and I even get a little lump in my throat at times when I read those last 2 scenes (sniff!!) - but my excerpt is the "reunion scene" between Olivia and Malcolm McPherson.

The last sentence of the first paragraph makes me laugh out loud - but there are SO many sentences that do the same thing in this entire story. I love, too, how they always refer to him as "Mr. Malcolm MacPherson". He's never just Malcolm or Mr. MacPherson - he's "Mr Malcolm MacPherson." It's repeated a gazillion times, and it just keeps getting funnier.

This story is one of my favorites of hers.

Excerpt from Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery - "Aunt Olivia's Beau".

The day on which Mr. Malcolm MacPherson was expected, peggy and I went over. We had planned to remain away, thinking that the lovers would prefer their first meeting to be unwitnessed, but Aunt Olivia insisted on our being present. She was plainly nervous; the abstract was becoming concrete. Her little house was in spotless, speckless order from top to bottom. Aunt Olivia had herself scrubbed the garret floor and swept the cellar steps that very morning with as much painstaking care as if she expected that Mr. Malcolm MacPherson would hasten to inspect each at once and she must stand or fall by his opinion of them.

Peggy and I helped her to dress. She insisted on wearing her best black silk, in which she looked unnaturally fine. Her soft muslin became her much better, but we could not induce her to wear it. Anything more prim and bandboxy than Aunt Olivia when her toilet was finished it has never been my lot to see. Peggy and I watched her as she went downstairs, her skirt held stiffly up all around her that it might not brush the floor.

" 'Mr. Malcolm MacPherson' will be inspired with such awe that he will only be able to sit back and gaze at her," whispered Peggy. "I wish he would come and have it over. This is getting on my nerves."

Aunt Olivia went into the parlour, settled herself in the old carved chair, and folded her hands. Peggy and I sat down on the stairs to await his coming in a crisping suspense. Aunt Olivia's kitten, a fat, bewhiskered creature, looking as if it were cut out of black velvet, shared our vigil and purred in maddening peace of mind.

We could see the garden path and gate through the hall window, and therefore supposed we should have full warning of the approach of Mr. Malcolm MacPherson. It was no wonder, therefore, that we positively jumped when a thunderous knock crashed against the front door and re-echoed through the house. Had Mr. Malcolm MacPherson dropped from the skies?

We afterwards discovered that he had come across lots and around the house from the back, but just then his sudden advent was almost uncanny. I ran downstairs and opened the door. On the step stood a man about six feet two in height, and proportionately broad and sinewy. He had splendid shoulders, a great crop of curly black hair, big, twinkling blue eyes, and a tremendous crinkly black beard that fell over his breast in shining waves. In brief, Mr. Malcolm MacPherson was what one would call instinctively, if somewhat tritely, "a magnificent specimen of manhood."

In one hand he carried a bunch of early goldenrod and smoke-blue asters.

"Good afternoon," he said in a resonant voice which seemed to take possession of the drowsy summer afternoon. "Is Miss Olivia Sterling in? And will you please tell her that Mr. Malcolm MacPherson is here?"

I showed him into the parlour. Then Peggy and I peeped through the crack of the door. Anyone would ahve done it. We would have scorned to excuse ourselves. And, indeed, what we saw would have been worth several conscience spasms, if we had felt any.

Aunt Olivia arose and advanced primly, with outstretched hand.

"Mr. MacPherson, I am very glad to see you," she said formally.

"It's yourself, Nillie!" Mr. Malcolm MacPherson gave two strides.

He dropped his flowers on the floor, knocked over a small table, and sent the ottoman spinning against the wall. Then he caught Aunt Olivia in his arms and -- smack, smack, smack! Peggy sank back upon the stair-step with her handkerchief stuffed in her mouth. Aunt Olivia was being kissed!

Presently, Mr. Malcolm MacPherson held her back at arm's legnth in his big paws and looked her over. I saw Aunt Olivia's eyes roam over his arm to the inverted table and the litter of asters and goldenrod. Her sleek crimps were all ruffled up, and her lace fichu twisted half around her neck. She looked distressed.

"It's not a bit changed you are, Nillie," said Mr. Malcolm MacPherson admiringly. "And it's good I'm feeling to see you again. Are you glad to see me, Nillie?"

"Oh, of course," said Aunt Olivia.

She twisted herself free and went to set up the table. Then she turned to the flowers, but Mr. Malcolm MacPherson had already gathered them up, leaving a goodly sprinkling of leaves and stalks on the carpet.

"I picked these for you in the river field, Nillie," he said. "Where will I be getting something to stick them in? Here, this will do."

He grasped a frail, painted vase on the mantel, stuffed the flowers in it, and set it on the table. The look on Aunt Olivia's face was too much for me at last. I turned, caught Peggy by the shoulder, and dragged her out of the house.

"He will horrify the very soul out of Olivia's body if he goes on like this," I gasped. "But he's splendid - and he thinks the world of her - and, oh, Peggy, did you ever hear such kisses? Fancy Aunt Olivia!"

The Books: "Chronicles of Avonlea - 'Old Man Shaw's Girl'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery. Next story in the collection: "Old Man Shaw's Girl".

To me, this story is a bit of a clunker. I mean, it's sweet, and all - but it's a bit too saccharine for me, and also: the plot shows its skeleton way too plainly. It seems to me obvious from the get-go that Old Man Shaw's girl will NOT have been turned into a snooty city girl after her years away from her father. She seems too sweet and loving for that. So Old Man Shaw being thrown into a tizzy seems too artificial. I don't know - it doesn't really work for me (even though I love some of the actual writing in this piece - the bit about the roses especially - the theme of the "rose bush that never blooms - but then one day - spectacularly - it is ALL OVER BLOSSOMS" shows up in Lucy Maud's writing again and again and again). I also think that the characterization of Mrs. Peter Blewett (who shows up in other stories as well as her novels) is really great observation - the kind of person who is truly UPSET when other people are happy. You know those people? The rain on the parade people? The people who rain on your parade and SMILE as they do so? Because they like to spread misery? That's a real kind of person, and Lucy Maud nails it.

I know that Lucy Maud had a fierce protective side to her, when it came to Prince Edward Island. I think if she met someone who said, "I don't know HOW anyone could STAND to live on this remote little island!" - she would write them off forever. That person could have turned out to be Mother Teresa, and Lucy Maud wouldn't have cared. Either you love PEI - or you are the devil's spawn, not worth worrying about. So in this story she's kind of expressing that. Old Man Shaw loves his island, and his little simple cottage - but when he suddenly sees it through the scornful eyes of an outsider - he is horrified. Will his daughter, now that she's educated and a young lady, be satisfied living here? Will she, the light of his life, scorn him? How will he live?

I mean, I get it - but for me, it just doesn't work.

Here's an excerpt where the evil seed is planted in Old Man Shaw's head. He's a widow and his daughter has been spirited away to go to a fancy private school on the mainland somewhere - he has not seen her in 3 years. He is busy making preparations for her return, so excited to see her again, so excited to have her back. But then ... a mischief-maker ruins his hopes ....

Excerpt from Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery - "Old Man Shaw's Girl".

And now those three interminable years were gone, and Sara was coming home. She wrote him nothing of her aunt's pleadings and reproaches and ready, futile tears; she wrote only that she would graduate in June and start for home a week later. Thenceforth Old Man Shaw went about in a state of beatitude, making ready for her homecoming. As he sat on the bench in the sunshine, with the blue sea sparkling and crinkling down at the foot of the green slope, he reflected with satisfaction that all was in perfect order. There was nothing left to do save count the hours until that beautiful, longed-for day after tomorrow. He gave himself over to a reverie, as sweet as a day-dream in a haunted valley.

The red roses were out in bloom. Sara had always loved those red roses - they were as vivid as herself, with all her own fullness and joy of living. And besides these, a miracle had happened in Old Man Shaw's garden. In one corner was a rose-bush which had never bloomed, despite all the coaxing they had given it - "the sulky rosebush," Sara had been wont to call it. Lo! this summer had flung the hoarded sweetness of years into plentiful white blossoms, like shallow ivory cups with a haunting, spicy fragrance. It was in honour of Sara's homecoming - so Old Man Shaw liked to fancy. All things, even the sulky rose-bush, knew she was coming back, and were making glad because of it.

He was gloating over Sara's letter when Mrs. Peter Blewett came. She told him she had run up to see how he was getting on, and if he wanted anything seen to before Sara came.

Old Man Shaw shook his head.

"No'm, thank you, ma'am. Everything is attended to. I couldn't let anyone else prepare for Blossom. Only to think, ma'am, she'll be home the day after tomorrow. I'm just filled clear through, body, soul, and spirit, with joy to think of having my little Blossom at home again."

Mrs. Blewett smiled sourly. When Mrs. Blewett smiled, it foretokened trouble, and wise people had learned to have sudden business elsewhere before the smile could be translated into words. But Old Man Shaw had never learned to be wise where Mrs. Blewett was concerned, although she had been his nearest neighbour for years, and had pestered his life out with advice and "neighborly turns".

Mrs. Blewett was one with whom life had gone awry. The effect on her was to render happiness in other people a personal insult. She resented Old Man Shaw's beaming delight in his daughter's return, and she "considered it her duty" to rub the bloom off straightway.

"Do you think Sara'll be contented in White Sands now?" she asked.

Old Man Shaw looked slightly bewildered.

"Of course she'll be contented," he said slowly. "Isn't it her home? And ain't I here?"

Mrs. Blewett smiled again, with double distilled contempt for such simplicity.

"Well, it's a good thing you're so sure of it, I suppose. If 'twas my daughter that was coming back to White Sands, after three years of fashionable life among rich, stylish folks, and at a swell school, I wouldn't have a minute's peace of mind. I'd know perfectly well that she'd look down on everything here, and be discontented and miserable."

"Your daughter might," said Old Man Shaw, with more sarcasm than he had supposed he had possessed, "but Blossom won't."

Mrs. Blewett shrugged her sharp shoulders.

"Maybe not. It's to be hoped not, for both your sakes, I'm sure. But I'd be worried if 'twas me. Sary's been living among fine folks, and having a gay, exciting time, and it stands to reason she'll think White Sands fearful lonesome and dull. Look at Lauretta Bradley. She was up in Boston for just a month last winter and she's never been able to endure White Sands since."

"Lauretta Bradley and Sara Shaw are two different people," said Sara's father, trying to smile.

"And your house, too," pursued Mrs. Blewett ruthlessly. "It's such a queer, little, old place. What'll she think of it after her aunt's? I've heard tell Mrs. Adair lives in a perfect palace. I'll just warn you kindly that Sary'll probably look down on you, and you might as well be prepared for it. Of course, I suppose she kind of thinks she has to come back, seeing she promised you so solemn she would. But I'm certain she doesn't want to, and I don't blame her either."

Even Mrs. Blewett had to stop for breath, and Old Man Shaw found his opportunity. He had listened, dazed and shrinking, as if she were dealing him physical blows, but now a swift change swept over him. His blue eyes flashed ominously, straight into Mrs. Blewett's straggling, ferrety gray orbs.

"If you've said your say, Martha Blewett, you can go," he said passionately. "I'm not going to listen to another such word. Take yourself out of my sight, and your malicious tongue out of my hearing!"

Mrs. Blewett went, too dumbfounded by such an unheard-of outburst in mild Old Man Shaw to say a word of defence or attack. When she had gone, Old Man Shaw, the fire all faded from his eyes, sank back on his bench. His delight was dead; his heart was full of pain and bitterness. Martha Blewett was a warped and ill-natured woman, but he feared there was altogether too much truth in what she said. Why had he never thought of it before? Of course White Sands would seem dull and lonely to Blossom; of course the little gray house where she was born would seem a poor abode after the splendours of her aunt's home. Old Man Shaw walked through his garden and looked at everything with new eyes. How poor and simple everything was! How sagging and weather-beaten the old house! He went in, and upstairs to Sara's room. It was neat and clean, just as she had left it three years ago. But it was small and dark; the ceiling was discoloured, the furniture old-fashioned and shabby; she woudl think it a poor, mean place. Even the orchard over the hill brought him no comfort now. Blossom would not care for orchards. She would be ashamed of her stupid old father and the barren farm. She would hate White Sands, and chafe at the dull existence, and look down on everything that went to make up his uneventful life.

Old Man Shaw was unhappy enough that night to have satisifed even Mrs. Blewett, had she known.

The Books: "Chronicles of Avonlea - 'The Winning of Lucinda'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery. Next story in the collection: "The Winning of Lucinda".

Lucinda Penhallow, the heroine of this very funny story, is one of Lucy Maud's more memorable adult characters. I'm not sure why - maybe it's just because of what ends up happening and the scene I'm going to excerpt, which I adore. There's somehting about her I have always loved. I love her stubbornness (even though she is obviously a slave to her own pride and stubbornness), I love her sadness that she can barely admit to herself (not being married, feeling that her youth is passing her by), I love her pride, and then I love her behavior in the following excerpt when it all comes undone. I don't know - it just seems like Lucinda would be someone I would like to hang out with.

Also, the plot of this story doesn't have any of the artificial "oh my God what a coincidence" machinations that some of her other stories do. This is straight-up romantic comedy.

The plot: The Penhallows (very similar to the interweaving huge extended family she creates in Tangled Web - excerpt here) are a big sprawling nosy loving obnoxious well-to-do family - where everybody knows everybody else's business, and gossip runs rampant. Lucinda is beautiful, a wee bit haughty, but beloved by all - she's also 35 and unmarried, which is astonishing. The story opens at a Penhallow wedding celebration where the entire family is gathering at "the Grange" - to get ready. We learn, through a bit of exposition, that Lucinda and Romney Penhallow had been in love once - but 15 years ago they had had a quarrel, and Lucinda, in a fit of temper, said that she would never speak to him again. Her pride was stronger than her love for him, apparently, so in 15 years she has not said one word to him. And Romney, hurt, rebuffed, and finally - angry - hasn't said one word to her. For 15 years. They see each other only at family gatherings - somehow they are distantly related - by marriage, I think - and when that happens, when Lucinda and Romney are at the same event - all the ladies sit back, whispering, wondering, watching the 2 NOT speak to each other. Nobody knows what the original argument was about. But 15 years ahve now gone by - and neither of them have married anyone else. (This is such a typical Lucy Maud device. She wrote a lot about people with pride so strong that NOTHING else can live alongside of it.) Lucinda and Romney both have taken the position: "Well ... whatever happens ... I will not be the one to speak first." Lucinda, at times, finds herself getting melancholy - she is now 35 - full in her prime - and not married - and there is Romney, the man she once loved ... and does she still love him?? We don't know - but we do know that Lucinda, in all her pride, has fiercely promised to herself that she will not "speak first". If Romney speaks first, she will not reject him ... she will be open to talking with him ... and maybe more?? But ONLY if he "speaks first".

heh heh

Lucy Maud sets up her characters so well, doesn't she??

So the two of them are at this big shindig. It has been a couple of years since they saw each other. Throughout the wedding celebration, the two are only aware of each other, and neither of them speak to the other. Then - after the wedding - through a total mix-up - Lucinda is left stranded at the church - without a way to get back to the Grange. Her ride left without her. She is in a rage about this. A silent rage. This means she will have to walk back to the Grange across the fields - in her delicate green voile dress and her delicate little slippers - she's so PISSED. It's like her whole life suddenly seems so UNFAIR, and she is PISSED about it.

So - in a rage - she starts off across the fields. It's a moonlit night.

Oh - and I forgot - for some reason it comes up earlier in the story that Lucinda's grandfather ("Old Grandfather Gordon") had spent a lot of time as a miner - and from his mining days he had picked up a horrible habit of swearing. People still talk about his horrific swears - he couldn't seem to help himself. This will end up being important later - Lucy Maud sets up her situation carefully, and then lets all hell break loose later.

I love the episode that follows. (Oh, and I love, too, how Lucy Maud blanks out the swear. It makes it even funnier - it really shows how swearing was kind of beyond the pale at that time.)

Excerpt from Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery- "The Winning of Lucinda".

She gathered up the green voile as trimly as possible, slipped around the house in the kindly shadows, picked her way across the side lawn, and found a gate which opened into a birch-bordered lane where the frosted trees shone with silvery-golden radiance in the moonlight. Lucinda flitted down the lane, growing angrier at every step as the realization of how shamefully she seemed to have been treated came home to her. She believed that nobody had thought about her at all, which was tenfold worse than premeditated neglect.

As she came to the gate at the lower end of the lane, a man who was leaning over it started, with a quick intake of breath, which, in any other man than Romney Penhallow, or for any other woman than Lucinda Penhallow, would have been an exclamation of surprise.

Lucinda recognized him with a great deal of annoyance and a little relief. She would not have to walk home alone. But with Romney Penhalow! Would he think she had contrived it so purposely?

Romney silently opened the gate for her, silently latched it behind her, and silently fell into step beside her. Down across a velvety sweep of field they went; the air was frosty, calm, and still; over the world lay a haze of moonshine and mist that converted East Grafton's prosaic hills and fields into a shimmering fairyland.

At first Lucinda felt angrier than ever. What a ridiculous situation! How the Penhallows would laugh over it!

As for Romney, he, too, was angry with the trick impish chance had played him. He liked being the butt of an awkward situation as little as most men; and certainly to be obliged to walk home over moonlit fields at one o'clock in the morning with the woman he had loved and never spoken to for fifteen years was the irony of fate with a vengeance. Would she think he had schemed for it? And how the deuce did she come to be walking home from the wedding at all?

By the time they had crossed the field and reached the wild cherry lane beyond it, lucinda's anger was mastered by her saving sense of humour. She was even smiling a little maliciously under her fascinator.

The lane was a place of enchantment - a long moonlit colonnade adown which beguiling wood nymphs might have footed it featly. The moonshine fell through the arching boughs and made a mosaic of silver light and clear-cut shadow for the unfriendly lovers to walk in. On either side was the hovering gloom of the woods, and around them a great silence unstirred by wind or murmur.

Midway in the lane, Lucinda was attacked by a sentimental recollection. She thought of the last time Romney and she had walked home together through this very lane, from a party at "young" John's. It had been moonlight then, too, and - Lucinda checked a sigh - they had walked hand in hand. Just here, by the big gray beech, he had stopped her and kissed her. Lucinda wondered if he were thinking of it, too, and stole a look at him from under the lace border of her fascinator.

But he was striding moodily along with his hands in his pockets, and his hat pulled down over his eyes, passing the old beech without a glance at it. Lucinda checked another sigh, gathered up an escaped flutter of voile, and marched on.

Past the lane a range of three silvery harvest fields sloped down to Peter Penhallow's brook - a wide, shallow stream bridged over in the olden days by the mossy trunk of an ancient fallen tree. When Lucinda and Romney arrived at the brook, they gazed at the brawling water blankly. Lucinda remembered that she must not speak to Romney just in time to prevent an exclamation of dismay. There was no tree! There was no bridge of any kind over the brook!

Here was a predicament! But before Lucinda could no more than despairingly ask herself what was to be done now, Romney answered - not in words, but in deeds. He coolly picked Lucinda up in his arms, as if she had been a child instead of a full grown woman of no mean avoirdupois, and began to wade with her through the water.

Lucinda gasped helplessly. She could not forbid him, and she was so choked with rage over his presumption that she could not have spoken in any case. Then came the catastrophe. Romney's foot slipped on a treacherous round stone - there was a tremendous splash - and Romney and Lucinda Penhallow were sitting down in the middle of Peter Penhallow's brook.

Lucinda was the first to regain her feet. About her clung, in heart-breaking limpness, the ruined voile. The remembrance of all her wrongs that night rushed over her soul, and her eyes blazed in the moonlight. Lucinda Penhallow had never been so angry in her life.

"You d-----d idiot!" she said, in a voice that literally shook with rage.

Romney meekly scrambled up the bank after her.

"I'm awfully sorry, Lucinda," he said, striving with uncertain success to keep a suspicious quiver of laughter out of his tone. "It was wretchedly clumsy of me, but that pebble turned right under my foot. Please forgive me - for that - and for other things."

Lucinda deigned no answer. She stood on a flat stone and wrung the water from the poor green voice. Romney surveyed her apprehensively.

"Hurry, Lucinda," he entreated. "You will catch your death of cold."

"I never take cold," answered Lucinda, with chattering teeth. "And it is my dress I am thinking of - was thinking of. You have more need to hurry. You are sopping wet yourself and you know you are subject to colds. There - come."

Lucinda picked up the stringy train, which had been so brave and buoyant five minutes before, and started up the field at a brisk rate. Romney came up to her and slipped his arm through hers in the old way. For a time they walked along in silence. Then Lucinda began to shake with inward laughter. She laughed silently for the whole length of the field; and at the line fence between Peter Penhallow's land and the Grange acres she paused, threw back the fascinator from her face, and looked at Romney defiantly.

"You are thinking of -- that," she cried, "and I am thinking of it. And we will go on, thinking of it at intervals for the rest of our lives. But if you ever mention it to me I'll never forgive you, Romney Penhallow!"

"I never will," Romney promised. There was more than a suspicion of laughter in his voice this time, but Lucinda did not choose to resent it. She did not speak again until they reached teh Grange gate. Then she faced him solemnly.

"It was a case of atavism," she said. "Old Grandfather Gordon was to blame for it."

The Books: "Chronicles of Avonlea - 'Little Joscelyn'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery. Next story in the collection: "Little Joscelyn".

Lucy Maud was a big believer in the importance of moments. That one good moment could balance out a hundred bad moments. There's the beautiful episode in Windy Poplars (excerpt here) about Pauline (I think that's her name, right??) who is basically trapped taking care of her querulous sickly bossy and, frankly, AWFUL mother. Anne befriends Pauline and learns that a good friend of hers is getting married - and Pauline wants to go. It means she would have to be away from taking care of her mother for one weekend. Her mother says NO. Even though Pauline is in her 40s, for God's sake. The answer is NO. Pauline is heartbroken - but years of slavery has weakened her will. Anne ends up coming up with a plan. She offers to "take care" of the awful mother for a weekend so Pauline would be free to go. This is what ends up happening. Pauline returns from this one weekend and tells Anne all about it - the heart to heart she had with her dear cousin, the moonlight on the lake, the fact that a man said a sweet thing to her about how nice her hair was ... These are GEMS. Pauline goes back to slavery with her mother - it's not that she throws off her duties - but she says to Anne, "My mother needs me ... she's not all that bad ... and at least I got to have my perfect weekend." There is a certain pathos in this - but also a certain triumph. Pauline will have the memory of her perfect weekend to last her lifetime. And we leave her, thinking: That's okay. One perfect weekend is nothing to sneeze at.

This is a theme that Lucy Maud visits again and again and again. I think it's a mistake to read into all of this biographically TOO much (or at least to make a fetish of it) - Mainly because I think that takes away from her artistry and the power of her imagination. Yes, she had a real life, and of course that real life informed her work ... but she also, like novelists throughout the ages, just made shit up. She was a storyteller. An amazing one. But this theme - the one shining moment that can last a lifetime theme - comes up again and again - and this is the theme of "Little Joscelyn".

The story is simple. The Morrisons live on a big rambling farm. There's a bossy wife, a kind of henpecked husband, a bunch of kids - and then an aged aunt - who is the star of our story. She is old. Old and infirm. And also - you can tell that senility has begun to creep in. She lives in the past. She is desperately unhappy in her present - her hands are crippled by rheumatism, she can no longer move ... and she is completely dependent on her relatives - who, frankly, don't treat her all that well. Or - they take care of her - but they don't love her. Taking care of her is a duty. She feels this keenly.

But once upon a time - 20 years ago - the family had an orphan girl live with them for a summer - "little Joscelyn". She was a bright and beautiful young child - and out of all the members of the family she bonded the deepest with Aunty Nan. The two were, in the words of Anne Shirley, kindred spirits. You know how the very young and the very old sometimes understand each other perfectly? Because their spirits are close in age. That's what happened. It was the happiest summer of poor Aunty Nan's life. To be loved like that.

And then Joscelyn went away. And gained quite a bit of fame as a singer. She lost touch with Aunty Nan - because she basically had a very unhappy childhood and doesn't want to remember her lean years. She doesn't realize what her disappearance has done to Aunty Nan. She barely remembers Aunty Nan. You know ... little kids can be selfish, too. They are self-centered. They don't realize.

So anyway - Aunty Nan hears that Joscelyn is going to be coming back to the hometown for one night only to give a concert. Aunty Nan wants to go. The answer from the relatives is a resounding NO. Aunty Nan cries like a little child in her disappointment. It's kind of heart-wrenching to read, actually. You wish that you lived right next door and had a buggy - because then YOU would take Aunty Nan to see the concer and see Little Joscelyn after all these years. Aunty Nan sits in her room, crying by herself.

The hired boy - a little scrappy fellow - who loves Aunty Nan - decides that this is ridiculous. She should be able to see Joscelyn. For some reason he gets it. This is actually life or death. Aunty Nan will not live much longer. If she could just see Joscelyn one last time ... So he (beautiful little boy) goes into town by himself, goes to the palatial house where Joscelyn is staying, asks to see her - and basically pleads with Joscelyn to come out to the farm - even for just half an hour - to see Aunty Nan again. Joscelyn hems and haws. She only has a limited amount of time, she is in a rush ... she, you see, has forgotten. She has forgotten the kindness of this little old woman in her childhood ... she had forgotten that this little old woman had loved her. And that she was the only one. But the hired boy, a tough little boy, begs. Joscelyn eventually caves. She goes back to the farm with him.

Aunty Nan has no idea that Joscelyn is coming. That her dream is about to come true. That her "shining moment" has arrived.

Got a lump in my throat here. This shit works, it really does.

Here's the excerpt.

Excerpt from Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery- "Little Joscelyn".

It was sunset when they reached Gull Point Farm. An arc of warm gold was over the spruces behind the house. Mrs. William was out in the barn-yard milking, and the house was deserted, save for the sleeping baby in the kitchen and the little old woman with the watchful eyes in the upstairs room.

"This way, ma'am," said Jordan, inwardly congratulating himself that the coast was clar. "I'll take you up to her room."

Upstairs, Joscelyn tapped at the half-open door and went in. Before it closed behind her, Jordan heard Aunty Nan say, "Joscelyn! Little Joscelyn!" in a tone that made him choke again. He stumbled thankfully downstairs, to be pounced upon by Mrs. William in the kitchen.

"Jordan Sloane, who was that stylish woman you drove into the yard with? And what have you done with her?"

"That was Miss Joscelyn Burnett," said Jordan, expanding himself. This was his hour of triumph over Mrs. William. "I went to Kensington and brung her out to see Aunty Nan. She's up with her now."

"Dear me," said Mrs. William helplessly. "And me in my milking rig! Jordan, for pity's sake, hold the baby while I go and put on my black silk. You might have given a body some warning. I declare I don't know which is the greatest idiot, you or Aunty Nan!"

As Mrs. William flounced out of the kitchen, Jordan took his satisfaction in a quiet laugh.

Upstairs in the little room was a great glory of sunset and gladness in human hearts. Joscelyn was kneeling by the bed, with her arms about Aunty Nan, and Aunty Nan, with her face all irradiated, was stroking Joscelyn's hair fondly.

"O little Joscelyn," she murmured, "it seems too good to be true. It seems like a beautiful dream. I knew you th eminute you opened the door, my dearie. You haven't changed a bit. And you're a famous singer now, little Joscelyn! I always knew you would be. Oh, I want you to sing a piece for me - just one, won't you, dearie? Sing that piece people like to hear you sing best. I forget the name, but I've read about it in the papers. Sing it for me, little Joscelyn."

And Joscelyn, standing by Aunty Nan's bed, in the sunset light, sang the song she had sung to many a brilliant audience on many a noted concert platform - sang it as even she had never sung before, while Aunty Nan lay and listened beatifically, and downstairs even Mrs. William held her breath, entranced by the exquisite melody that floated through the old farmhouse.

"O little Joscelyn!" breathed Aunty Nan in rapture, when the song ended.

Joscelyn knelt by her again and they had a long talk of old days. One by one they recalled the memories of that vanished summer. The past gave up its tears and its laughter. Heart and fancy alike went roaming through the ways of the long ago. Aunty Nan was perfectly happy. And then Joscelyn told her all the story of her struggles and triumphs since they had parted.

When the moonlight began to creep in through the low window, Aunty Nan put out her hand and touched Joscelyn's bowed head.

"Little Joscelyn," she whispered, "if it ain't asking too much, I want you to sing just one other piece. Do you remember when you were here how we sung hymns in the parlour every Sunday n ight, and my favourite always was 'The Sands of Time are Sinking'? I ain't never forgot how you used to sing that, and I want to hear it just once again, dearie. Sing it for me, little Joscelyn."

Joscelyn rose and went to the window. Lifting back the curtain, she stood in the splendour of the moonlight and sang the grand old hymn. At first Aunty Nan beat time to it feebly on the counterpane, but when Joscelyn came to the verse, "With mercy and with judgment," she folded her hands over her breast and smiled.

When the hymn ended, Joscelyn came over to the bed.

"I am afraid I must say good-bye now, Aunty Nan," she said.

Then she saw that Aunty Nan had fallen asleep. She would not waken her, but she took from her breast the cluster of crimson roses she wore and slipped them gently between the toil-worn fingers.

"Good-bye, dear, sweet mother-heart," she murmured.

The Books: "Chronicles of Avonlea - 'Each In His Own Tongue'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Next book on the shelf is Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery. Next story in the collection: "Each In His Own Tongue".

This story is an amazing piece of work - and Lucy Maud herself, as I recall, was very proud of it. It's well-written - but it's also one of those stories where every single person in it is ALIVE and complex and ... distinct. Abel Blair: it seems that he has a full life off the page, his life will continue after the story ends. Janet ... who is she?? Naomi - I mean, there aren't many people in this story, but each person is a three-dimensional mini-portrait of a human being. Kind of extraordinary.

I also love the story because it is Lucy Maud's statement about the sacred-ness of art (that also shows in the title). She lived in a strict rigid Presbyterian community - where any kind of leisure-time outside of a sewing circle - was frowned upon. Not even frowned upon. OPENLY discouraged. Yet ... writing was her art. There was nothing she could do but write. (This comes up in the Emily series, too (excerpt here), when Emily is forbidden to write by her rigid aunt Elizabeth who thinks "making up stories" is the first step on the way to total degradation of the soul.) That attitude is not so out of style as you might think - I've written about it before. This story is Lucy Maud's protest against that kind of rigid uptight STUPID thinking.

The plot is this: Young Felix Moore lives with his grandfather, Reverend Stephen Leonard. Felix's parents are dead. His mother married a musician - a violinist - which apparently broke her father's heart (her father being Rev Stephen Leonard). She had married the musician completely against his wishes - and he soon was proven right: the guy she married was dissipated, drunk, irresponsible, and traveled all the time because of his music. She broke her heart over this and died. But before she died - she gave birth to Felix. Felix comes to live with his grandfather. They love each other with an intensity that is all-encompassing - Lucy Maud doesn't take the easy way out and make the Reverend a bitter old man, with no redeeming qualities. No, she makes him a loving man, a man who truly has a CALLING to be a minister - one of those special special people. But he has a blind spot - and that is music. Felix has a gift for the violin. The whole story opens with Felix playing the fiddle for his neighbor, Abel Blair (a drunken old reprobate - who nevertheless somehow transcends all of that when listening to Felix - he sits there listening to Felix play and promises himself to be better, to stop drinking, to live a good life, to turn his eyes towards God - there is God in Felix's music - this is Lucy Maud's point about art.) But anyway - the Reverend has it in his head and in his heart that Felix will be a minister. This is his plan for his grandson. The thought that Felix might become a musician is ... well, it just will NOT happen. He will NOT have Felix live a drunken dissipated life, traveling with a low class of people, and not living in the light of God. So he forbids Felix to have a violin, even though Felix wants one - and Felix is forced to sneak around. This is what happens when you make someone go against their nature: you make other bad things happen as well. Felix is a good little boy, and he loves his grandfather dearly. He is not malicious, or even bitter ... He's a little kid, but he knows that he must play the violin. It is not even an option to NOT play the violin. His grandfather's ruling FORCES Felix to behave duplicitously. To lie and sneak.

So it's kind of a tortured set-up.

The whole thing comes to a head when a local "bad woman" is lying on her death bed. Lucy Maud doesnt' list this woman's sins exactly - but you can guess. She was beautiful once, she played men for fools, she slept around, she used and abused men, and she wrecked lives. She probably slept with married men - she had absolutely no scruples. Her beauty, which could have been something that marked her for GREAT things, instead turned her down the path of sexual manipulation. Her sins are many. She is on her death bed - and her illness has already chipped away at her sanity. Her beauty is gone. She thrashes about in her bed, tormented. The end is near. She calls for the Reverend. She has to clear her conscience. Or ... that language is so weak - clear her conscience?? No - she needs the Reverend to prepare her to meet her Maker. She has not gone to church since she was a child. She is terrified - terrified - of meeting God. Inconsolable. The Reverend goes to her bedside in the middle of the night - and prays with her - but she will have none of that. Her agony is too acute. And here's where Lucy Maud's title comes into play: Language, while wonderful, can be limited. You must realize that divinity, that God, does not only exist in language - words cannot describe him, contain him ... and sometimes God shows up in something concrete, or in something more abstract. Oh, but this pisses some people off - literal people who feel that they must KNOW. That they do KNOW. Oh well, but those people are stupid, and I try not to worry what stupid people think about important subjects.

Now remember: Lucy Maud has already set up that Reverend Stephen Leonard is not a caricature of a rigid unloving minister. He is the opposite. He is a deeply holy man, beloved by the community. He does GOOD in the world. But his GOOD-ness is no help to Naomi. There is a long tortured scene between the two of them where he tries to tell her that all she needs to do is ask for forgiveness - and God WILL forgive. Repent!! To Naomi, these are just words. They do not take away her torment. The Reverend goes at it in many different ways - sitting with her, talking with her, telling her about the love of God ... but she cannot hear it. Her agony, instead of going away, gets stronger - because she knows the end is so near. If she goes into that bright light screaming in terror - she has no idea what will happen to her afterwards. Finally - the Reverend (you just love him - even though you wish he would get that Felix ALSO has a "calling" - just as divine as the calling to serve God) kneels, puts his head in his hands, he is devastated at his failure to help Naomi - and pleads to God, "Help me, Lord. Help me speak to her in a language she understands."

Suddenly - at the door of Naomi's little shack - is Felix. Standing there with a lantern. He has been sent there by Janet, the maid at the manse - she has sent Felix down with a lantern for Stephen's return home in the dark. He stands there, a little boy looking on this horrible death-struggle. His grandfather's agonized face. Naomi's thrashing about. She catches a glimpse of him and calls him to her. She stares at him with gleaming insane eyes and tells him to take down the fiddle she has on the wall and play for her. She has heard that he plays and she wants to hear some music. Since his grandfather has been so useless to her, and she's going to die at any minute - she might as well enjoy some tunes.

Anyway - the excerpt I've chosen is what happens after that moment. And I've read it a bazillion times, and it still GETS me.

Excerpt from Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery- "Each In His Own Tongue".

"Take down that fiddle on the wall and play something for me," she said imperiously. "I'm dying -- and I'm going to hell - and I don't want to think of it. Play me something to take my thoughts off it - I don't care what you play. I was always fond of music - there was always something in it for me I never found anywhere else."

Felix looked at his grandfather. The old man nodded; he felt too ashamed to speak; he sat with his fine silver head in his hands, while Felix took down and tuned the old violin, on which so many godless lilts had been played in many a wild revel. Mr. Leonard felt that he had failed his religion. He could not give Naomi the help that was in it for her.

Felix drew the bow softly, perplexedly over the strings. He had no idea what he should play. Then his eyes were caught and held by Naomi's burning, mesmeric, blue gaze as she lay on her crumpled pillow. A strange, inspired look came over the boy's face. He began to play as if it were not he who played, but some mightier power, of which he was but the passive instrument.

Sweet and soft and wonderful was the music that stole through the room. Mr. Leonard forgot his heart-break and listened to it in puzzled amazement He had never heard anything like it before. How could the child play like that? He looked at Naomi and marvelled at the change in her face. The fear and frenzy were going out of it; she listened breathlessly, never taking her eyes from Felix. At the foot of the bed the idiot girl sat with tears on her cheeks.

In that strange music was the joy of innocent, mirthful childhood, blent with the laughter of waves and the call of glad winds. Then it held the wild, wayward dreams of youth, sweet and pure in all their wildness and waywardness. They were followed by a rapture of young love -- all-surrendering, all-sacrificing love.

The music changed. It held the torture of unshed tears, the anguish of a heart deceived and desolate. Mr. Leonard almost put his hands over his ears to shut out its intolerable poignancy. But on the dying woman's face was only a strange relief, as if some dumb, long-hidden pain had at last won to the healing of utterance.

The sullen indifference of despair came next, the bitterness of smouldering revolt and misery, the reckless casting away of all good. There was something indescribably evil in the music now -- so evil that Mr. Leonard's white souls huddered in loathing, and Maggie cowered and whined like a frightened animal.

Again the music changed. And in it now there was agony and fear - and repentance and a cry for pardon. To Mr. Leonard there was something strangely familiar in it. He struggled to recall where he had heard it before; then he suddenly knew - he had heard it before Felix came, in Naomi's terrible words! He looked at his grandson with something like awe. Here was a power of which he knew nothing - a strange and dreadful power. Was it of God? Or of Satan?

For the last time the music changed. And now it was not music at all - it was a great, infinite forgiveness, an all-comprehending love. It was healing for a sick soul; it was light and hope and peace. A Bible text, seemingly incongruous, came into Mr. Leonard's mind -- "This is the house of God; this is the gate of heaven."

Felix lowered the violin and dropped wearily on a chair by the bed. The inspired light faded from his face; once more he was only a tired boy. But Stephen Leonard was on his knees, sobbing like a child; and Naomi Clark was lying still, with her hands clasped over her breast.

"I understand now," she said very softly. "I couldn't see it before - and now it's so plain. I just feel it. God is a God of love. He can forgive anybody -- even me -- even me. He knows all about it. I ain't skeered any more. He just loves me and forgives me as I'd have loved and forgiven my baby if she'd lived, no matter how bad she was, or what she did. The minister told me that but I couldn't believe it. I know it now. And He sent you here to-night, boy, to tell it to me in a way that I could feel it."

Naomi Clark died just as the dawn came up over the sea. Mr. Leonard rose from his watch at her bedside and went to the door. Before him spread the harbour, gray and austere in the faint light, but afar out the sun was rending asunder the milk-white mists in which the sea was scarfed, and under it was a virgin glow of sparkling water.

The fir trees on the point moved softly and whispered together. The whole world sang of spring and resurrection and life; and behind him Naomi Clark's dead face took on the peace that passes understanding.

The old minister and his grandson walked home together in a silence that neither wished to break. Janet Andrews gave them a good scolding and an excellent breakfast. Then she ordered them both to bed; but Mr. Leonard, smiling at her, said,

"Presently, Janet, presently. But now, take this key, go up to the black chest in the garret, and bring me what you will find there."

When Janet had gone, he turned to Felix.

"Felix, would you like to study music as your lifework?"

Felix looked up, with a transfiguring flush on his wan face.

"Oh, grandfather! Oh, grandfather!"

"You may do so, my child. After this night I dare not hinder you. Go with my blessing, and may God guide and keep you, and make you strong to do His work and tell His message to humanity in your own appointed way. It is not the way I desired for you - but I see that I was mistaken. Old Abel spoke truly when he said there was a Christ in your violin as well as a devil. I understand what he meant now."

He turned to meet Janet, who came into the study with a violin. Felix's heart throbbed; he recognized it. Mr. Leonard took it from Janet and held it out to the boy.

"This is your father's violin, Felix. See to it that you never make your music the servant of the power of evil - never debase it to unworthy ends. For your responsiblity is as your gift, and God will exact the accounting of it from you. Speak to the world in your own tongue through it, with truth and sincerity; and all I have hoped for you will be abundantly fulfilled."

The Books: "Chronicles of Avonlea - 'Old Lady Lloyd'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Next book on the shelf is Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery. Next story in the collection: "Old Lady Lloyd".

Perhaps her stories would seem sentimental or too obvious today - I know they do at times for me - but in a way, for me, it's like watching old movies when the acting style was different ... I certainly prefer modern short stories, and I certainly wouldn't put any of her work up next to, say, Lorrie Moore - or any other master of the form ... She wrote this stuff for MONEY and she tailored her stories for certain audiences. She wrote horror stories, ghost stories, love stories, stories which would fit right into a Good Housekeeping mag or a Ladies Home Journal - simple little domestic tales. The plots are sometimes clunky and a lot of times they depend on coincidence - unbelievable coincidence - showing up at just the right moment. But this, remember, is the style of the time. If you read Dickens now - while yes, his characters leave an indelible impression - a lot of the times it is in SPITE of the machinations of the Victorian-era plot devices. Again: this is not a criticism. It would be like watching an old movie and being literally unable to get used to the black and white, or noticing that: Hmmm, he's supposed to be poor - yet look at his immaculate jacket! Etc. If you get hung up on the surface of things, you can miss so much of the jewels beneath. I'm not saying that some of Lucy Maud's short stories aren't crap (especially the ones published posthumously in the last 10 years or so) - because, oh boy, they ARE ... but I think it would also be wrong to say that they are uninteresting. Maybe you need to be a Lucy Maud fan to find them interesting, but I find them interesting on a literary level as well. Lucy Maud wrote at a time when there were literally hundreds of magazines devoted to literature. That world no longer exists. If you look at The New Yorker, it's the same names publishing stories there week after week - there just aren't as many options for starting writers to make a little cash. Lucy Maud, too, did not have any illusions ... Ghost stories sold, and those magazines paid well - so she wrote a ton of ghost stories. Her novels are where she shines as a storyteller, a creator of worlds - but she had no shame in working in many different genres, if it paid. Also: that world no longer exists either.

"Old Lady Lloyd" is almost novella length - it's quite long. It tells the story of an interesting old woman who is known to the people in Spencervale as "Old Lady Lloyd". She lives off by herself, she is known to be famously stingy, and she is also known to be haughty and almost frigidly proud. She wears elaborate silk dresses every day. She doesn't go to church. She never donates to worthy causes. People are chased away from her door. Gossip rages about her. But we get to know her, through the story - and we learn a lot about her. We learn that she was left with no fortune at all when her parents died - and her oily cousin controls her money - and so she basically lives in poverty. She wears silk dresses every day because those are left over from her wealthy time and she can't afford new clothes. And she is so humiliated about her poverty-struck state that she never lets on that she needs anything. She lives off of fruit that she picks in the woods, and she rations out her bread for herself. Spencervale has NO idea that she is so hard up. They no longer ask her to join sewing circles or what have you, because they are sick of her haughty airs - they do not recognize that it is all a front, to hide her poverty. We also learn that long ago she loved someone once - and he - in typical Lucy Maud fashion - spurned her. Or - no - they quarreled, and like a typical Lucy Maud heroine, she refused to forgive him when he begged for it. And he BEGGED. But her pride is too strong to give in. She turned him away. And of course - that meant the end of her happiness forever. He married someone else, moved away - etc. etc. He then died.

Old Lady Lloyd lives in the past. She wears old silk dresses, she is laughed at by townspeople, she is feared, little kids think she's a witch - and her life is very very bitter.

But then one spring ... her dead lover's daughter Sylvia (who is now 20 years old) moves back to Spencervale. She has a job as a music teacher. Old Lady Lloyd recognizes the family resemblance immediately - and through the course of the story - begins to leave Sylvia little gifts on the woodland path that Sylvia uses to get to town. She leaves her fresh strawberries (which basically means a full meal to Old Lady Lloyd) ... she leaves her flowers ... she never lets on that it is her, and she doesn't even think that Sylvia would know of her existence. But Old Lady Lloyd, a lonely old soul, sees in Sylvia the daughter she COULD have had ... and so wants to do anything she can for her.

Anyway ... that's the set up. The way it all turns out is, yes, sentimental, but I gotta tell ya - I get a little lump in my throat at the end of the story every time.

Here's an excerpt from "Old Lady Lloyd". She has heard that Sylvia has been accepted to music school - yet she does not have the money to go. Old Lady Lloyd worries herself almost sick about this. It just so happens that Andrew Cameron, her businessman cousin, had a daughter who was also a singer - and I guess she died - so in her memory he set up a very lucrative music scholarship. He has sent 10 young needy people to music school already. Old Lady Lloyd feels that Sylvia MUST go to music school. So she decides to do what she has promised herself she would never do: go into town and ask her slick cousin for help. This is a proud proud woman, and having to beg for money is so against who she is - but love has opened her up. She no longer clings to pride. There are more important things.

Excerpt from Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery - "Old Lady Lloyd"

When the Old Lady reached the town, she ate her slender little lunch and then walked out to the suburb where the Cameron factories and warehouses were. It was a long walk for her, but she could not afford to drive. She felt very tired when she was shown into the shining, luxurious office where Andrew Cameron sat at his desk.

After the first startled glance of surprise, he came forward beamingly, with outstretched hand.

"Why, Cousin Margaret! This is a pleasant surprise. Sit down -- allow me, this is a much more comfortable chair. Did you come out this morning? And how is everybody out in Spencervale?"

The Old Lady had flushed at his first words. To hear the name by which her father and mother and lover had called her on Andrew Cameron's lips seemed like profanation. But, she told herself, the time was past for squeakishness. If she could ask a favor of Andrew Cameron, she could bear lesser pangs. For Sylvia's sake she shook hands with him, for Sylvia's sake she sat down in the chair he offered. For no living human being's sake could this determined Old Lady infuse any cordiality into her manner or her words. She went straight to the point with Lloyd simplicity.

"I have come to ask a favour of you," she said, looking him in the eye, not at all humbly or meekly, as became a supplicant, but challengingly and defiantly, as if she dared him to refuse.

"De-lighted to hear it, Cousin Margaret." Never was anything so bland and gracious as his tone. "Anything I can do for you I shall be only too pleased to do. I am afraid you have looked upon me as an enemy, Margaret, and I assure you I have felt your injustice keenly. I realize that some appearances were against me, but --"

The Old Lady lifted her hand and stemmed his eloquence by that one gesture.

"I did not come here to discuss that matter," she said. "We will not refer to the past, if you please. I came to ask a favour, not for myself, but for a very dear young friend of mine - a Miss Gray, who has a remarkably fine voice which she wishes to have trained. She is poor, so I came to ask you if you would give her one of your musical scholarships. I understand her name has already been suggested to you, with a recommendation from her teacher. I do not know what he has said of her voice, but I do know he could hardly overrate it. If you send her abroad for training, you will not make any mistake."

The Old Lady stopped talking. She felt sure Andrew Cameron would grant her request; but she did hope he would grant it rather rudely or unwillingly. She could accept the favour so much more easily if it were flung at her like a bone to a dog. But not a bit of it, Andrew Cameron was suaver than ever. Nothing could give him greater pleasure than to grant his dear Cousin Margaret's request - he only wished it involved more trouble on his part. Her little protege should have her musical education assuredly - she should go abroad next year - and he was de-lighted --

"Thank you," said the Old Lady, cutting him short again. "I am much obliged to you - and I ask you not to let Miss Gray know anything of my interference. And I shall not take up any more of your valuable time. Good afternoon."

"Oh, you mustn't go so soon," he said, with some real kindness or clannishness permeating the hateful cordiality of his voice - for Andrw Cameron was not entirely without the homely virtues of the average man. He had been a good husband and father; he had once been very fond of his Cousin Margaret; and he was really very sorry that "circumstances" had "compelled" him to act as he had done in that old affair of her father's investment. "You must be my guest tonight."

"Thank you. I must return home tonight," said the Old Lady firmly, and there was that in her tone which told Andrew Cameron that it would be useless to urge her. But he insisted on telephoning for his carriage to drive her to the station. The Old Lady submitted to this, because she was secretly afraid her own legs would not suffice to carry her there; she even shook hands with him at parting, and thanked him a second time for granting her request.

"Not at all," he said. "Please try to think a little more kindly of me, Cousin Margaret."

When the Old Lady reached the station she found, to her dismay, that her train had just gone and that she would have to wait two hours for the evening one. She went into the waiting-room, and sat down. She was very tired. All the excitement that had sustained her was gone, and she felt weak and old. She had nothing to eat, having expected to get home in time for tea; the waiting-room was chilly, and she shivered in her thin, old, silk mantilla. Her head ached and her heart likewise. She had won Sylvia's desire for her; but Sylvia would go out of her life, and the Old Lady did not see how she was to go on living after that. Yet she sat there unflinchingly for two hours, an upright, indomitable old figure, silently fighting her losing battle with the forces of physical and mental pain, while happy people came and went, and laughed and talked before her.

At eight o'clock the Old Lady got off the train at Bright River station, and slipped off unnoticed into the darkness of the wet night. She had two miles to walk, and a cold rain was falling. Soon the Old Lady was wet to the skin and chilled to the marrow. She felt as if she were walking in a bad dream. Blind instinct alone guided her over the last mile and up the lane to her own house. As she fumbled at her door, she realized that a burning heat had suddenly taken the place of her chilliness. She stumbled in over her threshold and closed the door.

The Books: "Chronicles of Avonlea - 'The Hurrying of Ludovic'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Next book on the shelf is Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery.

So I'm going to make what might be a rather controversial executive decision. There are a couple of collections of Lucy Maud's short stories - a couple put together while she was alive - and MANY put together after her death - and of course I will include them in the book excerpt thing, because she wrote them, and they are part of her, uhm, CANON. But I just can't choose ONE story out of each collection to be representative of the whole - because I'm too obsessive - so I'm going to choose excerpts from - well, not ALL the stories - but MANY of them. These collections of stories are pretty wonderful (some of her earlier work - the stuff that was put together after her death - is pretty bad - it was her bread and butter for the many years before Anne was published - so she wrote them "to order" for certain magazines, and it shows - but a lot of these stories are as good as mini-novels). So here we are at Chronicles of Avonlea - a collection that was originally published in 1912, in the first wave of her fame. Anne shows up in some of these stories (always peripherally, though) - She's home on her vacation from Queen's or Redmond - and she manages to do a little matchmaking in her spare time.

The first story in the collection is "The Hurrying of Ludovic". It's an adorable story. Theodora Dix and Ludovic Speed (I mean, come on, the NAMES!!) have been "seeing" each other for 15 years. Ludovic Speed is the opposite of his own last name. He meanders, he walks slowly, he talks slowly. Theodora Dix is a comfy homey sort of woman - and even though Ludovic has never had a sense of urgency in his courting of her, she doesn't really worry about it. She assumes that eventually they'll get married, eventually he'll get around to proposing her. But ... when? It is against Ludovic Speed's nature to hurry - or make a stand. He totally takes Theodora for granted. He walks her home from prayer meeting every week, and then they sit up in her sitting room until 10 o'clock - talking and arguing and conversing - and then Ludovic walks home, only to do it all again the next week. It takes Anne Shirley, home from Redmond for the summer, to hurry Ludovic along. She is friends with Theodora and one night Theodora finally admits that she does want to get married, and she thinks that Ludovic needs a wife (he doesn't eat right, his clothes need mending, he lives with an old aunt who is a terrible housekeeper) - and she also wants to know that Ludovic actually has at least a LITTLE bit of fire in him. So Anne comes up with a plan to make Ludovic jealous. To "hurry" him along.

And of course it all ends happily. Because that's the kind of short stories that Lucy Maud wrote.

Oh - and one last thing: If Lucy Maud had never published "Anne" - if she had never become famous - she probably still would have been making a rather nice living off of short stories. She was ALWAYS writing, and ALWAYS sending stuff out. Her output is incredible. How could one woman write so much in just one lifetime?

And you'll see in the prose below - how rich and full these worlds she creates are - even in the short story form.

Excerpt from Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery - "The Hurrying of Ludovic"

The curtain rose on the first act after prayer meeting on the next Thursday night. It was bright moonlight when the people came out of church, and everybody saw it plainly. Arnold Sherman stood upon the steps close to the door, and Ludovic Speed leaned up against a corner of the graveyard fence, as he had done for years. The boys said he had worn the paint off that particular place. Ludovic knew of no reason why he should paste himself up against the church door. Theodora would come out as usual, and he would join her as she went past the corner.

This was what happened; Theodora came down the steps, her stately figure outlined in its darkness against the gush of lamplight from the porch. Arnold Sherman asked her if he might see her home. Theodora took his arm calmly, and together they swept past the stupefied Ludovic, who stood helplessly gazing after them as if unable to believe his eyes.

For a few moments he stood there limply; then he started down the road after his fickle lady and her new admirer. The boys and irresponsible young men crowded after, expecting some excitement, but they were disappointed. Ludovi strode on until he overtook Theodora and Arnold Sherman, and then fell meekly in behind them.

Theodora hardly enjoyed her walk home, although Arnold Sherman laid himself out to be especially entertaining. Her heart yearned after Ludovic, whose shuffling footsteps she heard behind her. She feared that she had been very cruel, but she was in for it now. She steeled herself by the reflection that it was all for his own good, and she talked to Arnold Sherman as if he were the one man in the world. Poor, deserted Ludovic, following humbly behind, heard her, and if Theodora had known how bitter the cup she was holding to his lips really was, she would never have been resolute enough to present it, no matter for what ultimate good.

When she and Arnold turned in at her gate, Ludovic had to stop. Theodora looked over her shoulder and saw him standing still on the road. His forlorn figure haunted her thoughts all night. If Anne had not run over the next day and bolstered up her convictions, she might have spoiled everything by prematurely relenting.

Ludovic, meanwhile, stood still on the road, quite oblivious to the hoots and comments of the vastly amused small boy contingent, until Theodora and his rival disappeared from his view under the firs in the hollow of her lane. Then he turned about and went home, not with his usual leisurely amble, but with a perturbed stride which proclaimed his inward disquiet.

He felt bewildered. If the world had come suddenly to an end or if the lazy, meandering Grafton River had turned about and flowed up hill, Ludovic could not have been more astonished. For fiteen years he had walked home from meetings with Theodora; and now this elderly stranger, with all the glamor of "the States" hanging about him, had coolly walked off with her under Ludovic's very nose. Worse -- most unkindest cut of all -- Theodora had gone with him willingly; nay, she had evidently enjoyed his company. Ludovic felt the stirring of a righteous anger in his easy-going soul.

When he reached the end of his lane, he paused at his gate, and looked at his house, set back from the lane in a crescent of birches. Even in the moonlight, its weather-worn aspect was plainly visible. He thought of the "palatial residence" rumour ascribed to Arnold Sherman in Boston, and stroked his chin nervously with his sunburned fingers. Then he doubled up his fist and struck it smartly on the gate-post.

"Theodora needn't think she is going to jilt me in this fashion, after keeping company with me for fifteen years," he said. "I'll have something to say to it, Arnold Sherman or no Arnold Sherman. The impudence of the puppy!"

The Books: "The Golden Road" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Next book on the shelf is The Golden Road by L.M. Montgomery.

The Golden Road is the second book in the series about "The Story Girl" (first excerpt here) - the second and final book. The melancholy that was only hinted at in the first book now comes much more to the forefront (you'll see what I mean in the excerpt). "The golden road" means childhood - and in this book - the children are approaching the end of it. It's like little Jackie Paper's betrayal of Puff. That song always killed me as a little kid - because I was SO on Puff's side. I would NEVER betray Puff, etc. But that's what happens ... you grow up ... Puff is left behind. Lucy Maud remembers very well what that moment is like (so many people forget - and often it is up to authors to remind us) - and "The Golden Road" tells about that specific moment. The kids still cling to childhood - although life continues to intervene, pulling them forward.

The Story Girl's father (who basically abandoned her) returns at the end of this book - and amazingly the Story Girl holds no resentment towards him (this is akin to Lucy Maud's whole experience with her father) - she is overjoyed to see her father. But what the advent of her father means is that he is now going to take her away. She will be joining him now in his global gallivanting - and the little band of friends are going to be broken up. Bev and Felix also get the word from their father from Rio de Janiero that he will be coming to fetch them as well - he misses them desperately - and needs to have the family be together again. So everything is going to change ... all at once.

But before that moment - the adventures continue. They get up a newspaper which they publish once a month. Every issue of this newspaper (with etiquette tips, and gossip columns, and "news" stories) is included in this book. Some of it is laugh out loud funny.

There are resolutions that come to mysteries and conundrums set up in the first book. The mysterious and dreamy Awkward Man (that is his name, apparently) finds his love and takes her home with him. He will be lonely no more. The kids finally get to hang out with Peg Bowen, the witch, up close and personal - when they take shelter in her hut during a blizzard. A couple of other loose ends are tied up, including the big ol' loose end of what will happen to the Story Girl. Her humble homely aunts and uncles have a vague sense (even though they are strict unimaginative Presbyterians) that she could "be something" some day ... that she needs to have an education ... that the life of a housewife or a farmer's wife is not for her ... but who will give her this education? Who will provide for her?

At the end of the book - the Story Girl leaves - waving out the window of her buggy - tears streaming down her face - at all of her little friends and cousins, promising to keep in touch, even though now - she will be living in London and Paris with her father.

Childhood has ended. They have come to the end of the Golden Road. These are simple sweet books about childhood, with hilarious tales of mischief, and recipes gone bad, and dares gone haywire - but running through them is a yowl of pain, that all beautiful things must come to an end.

Here is a chapter that comes near the end of the book. The group of friends sense that their time of heavenly togetherness and blissful oblivion is coming to a close. So every moment they have together is piercingly sweet, and almost sad.

At the end of this excerpt comes a perfect example of what I meant when I said that the future flits across these books like a shadow. Bev, the narrator, is writing from the future. He knows the end. He knows what is going to happen. He never shows his cards, because that is not what the books are about - but the knowledge is still there.

Excerpt from The Golden Road by L.M. Montgomery.

"It'll be awfully dull when you fellows go," muttered Dan.

"I'm sure I don't know what we're ever going to do here this winter," said Felicity, with the calmness of despair.

"Thank goodness there are no more fathers to come back," breathed Cecily with a vicious earnestness that made us all laugh, even in the midst of our dismay.

We worked very half-heartedly the rest of the day, and it was not until we assembled in the orchard in the evening that our spirits recovered something like their wonted level. It was clear and slightly frosty; the sun had declined behind a birch on a distant hill and it seemed a tree with a blazing heart of fire. The great golden willow at the lane gate was laughter-shaken in the wind of evening. Even amid all the changes of our shifting world we could not be hopelessly low-spirited - except Sara Ray, who was often so, and Peter, who was rarely so. But Peter had been sorely vexed in spirit for several days. The time was approaching for the October issue of Our Magazine and he had no genuine fiction ready for it. He had taken so much to heart Felicity's taunt that his stories were all true that he had determined to have a really-truly false one in the next number. But the difficulty was to get anyone to write it. He had asked the Story Girl to do it, but she refused; then he appealed to me and I shirked. Finally Peter determined to write a story himself.

"It oughtn't to be any harder than writing a poem and I managed that," he said dolefully.

He worked at it in the evenings in the granary loft, and the rest of us forebore to question him concerning it, because he evidently disliked talking about his lterary efforts. But this evening I had to ask him if he would soon have it ready, as I wanted to make up the paper.

"It's done," said Peter, with an air of gloomy triumph. "It don't amount to much, but anyhow I made it all out of my own head. Not one word of it was ever printed or told before, and nobody can say there was."

"Then I guess we have all the stuff in and I'll have Our Magazine ready to read by tomorrow night," I said.

"I s'pose it will be the last one we'll have," sighed Cecily. "We can't carry it on after you all go, and it has been such fun."

"Bev will be a real newspaper editor some day," declared the Story Girl, on whom the spirit of prophecy suddenly descended that night.

She was swinging on the bough of an apple tree, with a crimson shawl wrapped about her head, and her eyes were bright with roguish fire.

"How do you know he will?" asked Felicity.

"Oh, I can tell futures," answered the Story Girl mysteriously. "I know what's going to happen to all of you. Shall I tell you?"

"Do, just for the fun of it," I said. "Then some day we'll know just how near you came to guessing right. Go on. What else about me?"

"You'll write books, too, and travel all over the world," continued the Story Girl. "Felix will be fat to the end of his life, and he will be a grandfather before he is fifty, and he will wear a long black beard."

"I won't," cried Felix disgustedly. "I hate whiskers. Maybe I can't help the grandfather part, but I can help having a beard."

"You can't. It's written in the stars."

"T'ain't. The stars can't prevent me from shaving."

"Won't Grandpa Felix sound awful funny?" reflected Felicity.

"Peter will be a minister," went on the Story Girl.

"Well, I might be something worse," remarked Peter, in a not ungratified tone.

"Dan will be a farmer and will marry a girl whose name begins with K and he will have eleven children. And he'll vote Grit."

"I won't," cried scandalized Dan. "You don't know a thing about it. Catch me ever voting Grit! As for the rest of it - I don't care. Farming's well enough, though I'd rather be a sailor."

"Don't talk such nonsense," protested Felicity sharply. "What on earth do you want to be a sailor for and be drowned?"

"All sailors aren't drowned," said Dan.

"Most of them are. Look at Uncle Stephen."

"You ain't sure he was drowned."

"Well, he disappeared, and that is worse."

"How do you know? Disappearing might be real easy."

"It's not very easy for your family."

"Hush, let's hear the rest of the predictions," said Cecily.

"Felicity," resumed the Story Girl gravely, "will marry a minister."

Sara Ray giggled and Felicity blushed. Peter tried hard not to look too self-consciously delighted.

"She will be a perfect housekeeper and will teach a Sunday School class and be very happy all her life."

"Will her husband be happy?" queried Dan solemnly.

"I guess he'll be as happy as your wife," retorted Felicity reddening.

"He'll be the happiest man in the world," declared Peter warmly.

"What about me?" asked Sara Ray.

The Story Girl looked rather puzzled. It was so hard to imagine Sara Ray as having any kind of future. Yet Sara was plainly anxious to have her fortune told and must be gratified.

"You'll be married," said the Story Girl recklessly, "and you'll live to be nearly a hundred years old, and go to dozens of funerals and have a great many sick spells. You will learn not to cry after you are seventy; but your husband will never go to church."

"I'm glad you warned me," said Sara Ray solemnly, "because now I know I'll make him promise before I marry him that he will go."

"He won't keep the promise," said the Story Girl, shaking her head. "But it's getting cold and Cecily is coughing. Let us go in."

"You haven't told my fortune," protested Cecily disappointedly.

The Story Girl looked very tenderly at Cecily - at the smooth little brown head, at the soft, shining eyes, at the cheeks that were often over-rosy after slight exertion, at the little sunburned hands that were always busy doing faithful work or quiet kindnesses. A very strange look came over the Story Girl's face, her eyes grew sad and far-reaching, as if of a verity they pierced beyond the mists of hidden years.

"I couldn't tell any fortune half good enough for you, dearest," she said, slipping her arm round Cecily. "You deserve everything good and lovely. But you know I've only been in fun - of course I don't know anything about what's going to happen to us."

"Perhaps you know more than you think for," said Sara Ray, who seemed much pleased with her fortune and anxious to believe it, despite the husband who wouldn't go to church.

"But I'd like to be told my fortune, even in fun," persisted Cecily.

"Everybody you meet will love you as long as you live," said the Story Girl. "There that's the very nicest fortune I can tell you, and it will come true whether the others do or not, and now we must go in."

We went, Cecily still a little disappointed. In later years I often wondered why the Story Girl refused to tell her fortune that night. Did some strange gleam of foreknowledge fall for a moment across her mirth-making? Did she realize in a flash of prescience that there was no earthly future for our sweet Cecily? Not for her were to be the lengthening shadows or the fading garland. The end was to come while the rainbow still sparkled on her wine of life, ere a single peter had fallen from her rose of joy. Long life was before all the others who trysted that night in the old homestead orchard; but Cecily's maiden feet were never to leave the golden road.

The Books: "The Story Girl" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Next book on the shelf is The Story Girl by L.M. Montgomery.

Okay - so now we're moving out of the comfort of the Anne series - into the wilds of all her OTHER books. The Story Girl is first in a two-part series - and the lead girl is Sara Stanley, aka "The Story Girl". However- unlike her Anne books (excerpt here) or her Emily books (excerpt here) - in this one The Story Girl is seen from the outside. The book is a first-person narration - rare in Lucy Maud's work (except, actually, for her short stories - there's a lot of first-person narration there - but The Story Girl and The Golden Road (excerpt here) are the only first-person books.) And the person telling the story is NOT The Story Girl - so we are seeing her from someone else's eyes the whole time, which I think is really interesting.

I love these two books. Lucy Maud wrote them for a couple reasons - one because she didn't JUST want to write about Anne. The Story Girl was published in 1910 - so Lucy Maud is in the first wave of her fame. She didn't just want to repeat herself. Second of all, she wanted to reach out to the young BOY audience as well. These two books are her way of doing that. The first-person narrator is a boy - and the books are light on the nature descriptions - there's next to no romance (the kids are all young - The Story Girl is the oldest one, and she is only 14) - and the books are FULL of hi-jinx. Lucy Maud has never been so mischievous as in these books. Everything that could go wrong does go wrong. The kids scheme, plan, make up games, decide to cook dinner for their elders and use sawdust instead of flour by accident, they get freaked out, they have serious problems, they get ill, they sit around on snowy nights and tell stories - but mainly, it is the story of all the MISCHIEF they get into, on purpose or not. This is a book about childhood, on the ground-level. She's right there in it with them. BUT (and here is why I think she's such a special writer): you also get the sense, somehow, that Bev (the narrator) is not telling us about these events NOW - but he is looking back on them, way back on them, from his own adulthood. There's a certain nostalgia that keens through these pages - there's also (at times) a shadow that falls over the narration here and there - a shadow from the future. Like with Cecily. You know, somehow - through things Bev says and hints at - that Cecily will die young. She doesn't die within the course of the two books - but you know that she is not going to make it, and that ... Oh. It's going to be so so sad for those kids. It will be the moment they leave childhood behind. So these books are elevated somehow - by this sense of retrospect. I LOVE that aspect of them. It's painful. It's like the last paragraph of Stephen King's It which ... gives me a little pang inside every time I read it, or even right now, when I am just thinking about it (excerpt here). The nostalgia for the intensity of childhood. The pain of separating from your childhood friends, and also moving off "The Golden Road" of childhood. Nostalgia is great. But it doesn't feel good, all the time. You miss those days gone by. You miss them so much that it aches. This is what I get from these two books.

Bev is our narrator. Bev is a boy. Bev??? Don't ask me. Bev and Felix are being sent to live with relatives because their father is being sent on business to Rio de Janiero. I believe their mother is dead. Bev and Felix have never been to see these relatives - so it is all new to them. It is also their father's childhood home (on PEI, of course) - so they have heard all about it - the red roads, the cherry blossoms, all the little landmarks (trees and stones and walls, etc.) that their father had described to them so lovingly. So even though Bev and Felix miss their dad, they feel so close to him - seeing where he grew up.

They stay with Uncle Alec and Aunt Janet who have 3 kids - Felicity, Cecily and Dan. At the next farm over stays Sara Stanley with her Aunt Olivia (Sara's mother is dead). The other kids who hang out in this gang are Peter, the "hired boy" (you just love him) - and Sara Ray - a small pale kind of annoying little worrywart. They all embrace Bev and Felix ... and the adventures then begin.

The Story Girl is a born storyteller. The book is full of her stories - some of them are true, or legends from the town - how so-and-so proposed to his wife, etc. Some are hilarious, others are tragic. She tells stories about ancient Greece and Rome - but she also tells poetic stories, about how the Milky Way became the Milky Way, etc. Her voice holds everyone in thrall. She knows it, too. She knows she has a special voice. And whatever else her storytelling ability is - it is also a gift. There are times when it is even an uncanny gift - when she has the ability to transform herself into an ancient crone, back to a straight tall prince, back to the crone .... and those listening see the ENTIRE thing unfold in their mind's eye. Sara Stanley is that good. All the kids love her stories, and say, "Oh, tell this one! Tell that one!"

The excerpt I chose is this: the kids are usually very stuck as to what they can "play" on Sundays. Their normal games would not do, because it's the Sabbath, and so ... usually the alternatives they come up with are almost worse than their normal games. Much trouble is caused on Sundays. Sara has an idea ... why don't the boys have a sermon-writing and sermon-saying contest? And the girls will be the judges. That sounds like a good Sunday game!

The boys are all stressed out ... they sit and work on their sermons, they write them out, they murmur the words to themselves, they are in an agony of stress about having to PERFORM them ... totally terrifying. Then comes the day of the contest. They all go into the orchard to what is known as The Pulpit Stone. The girls sit in a semi-circle, waiting, ready, agog. The boys start to do their sermons. Felix is terrified. Bev is proud of his writing. Blah blah ... they all do okay.

But then comes Peter. The 'hired boy'. And the entire game changes. That's the excerpt I'll do - because it's pretty damn funny. I love it.

Excerpt from The Story Girl by L.M. Montgomery.

Peter made quite a handsome little minister, in his navy blue coat, white collar, and neatly bowed tie. His black eyes shone, and his black curls were brushed up in quite a ministerial pompadour, but threatened to tumble over at the top in graceless ringlets.

It was decided that there was no use in waiting for Sara Ray, who might or might not come, according to the humour in which her mother was. Therefore Peter proceeded with the service.

He read the cahpter and gave out the hymn with as much sang froid as if he had been doing it all his life. Mr. Marwood himself could n ot have bettered the way in which Peter said,

"We will sing the whole hymn, omitting the fourth stanza."

That was a fine touch which I had not thought of. I began to think that, after all, Peter might be a foeman worthy of my steel.

When Peter was ready to begin he thrust his hands into his pockets - a totally unorthodox thing. Then he plunged in without further ado, speaking in his ordinary conversational tone - another unorthodox thing. There was no shorthand reporter present to take the sermon down; but, if necessary, I could preach it over verbatim, and so, I doubt not, could everyone that heard it. It was not a forgettable kind of sermon.

"Dearly beloved," said Peter, "my sermon is about the bad place - in short, about hell."

An electric shock seemed to run through the audience. Everybody looked suddenly alert. Peter had, in one sentence, done what my whole sermon had failed to do. He had made an impression.

"I shall divide my sermon into three heads," pursued Peter. "The first head is, what you must not do if you don't want to go to the bad place. The secon dhead is, what the bad place is like" -- sensation in the audience -- "and the third head is, how to escape going there.

"Now, there's a great many things you must not do, and it's very important to know what they are. You ought not to lose no time in finding out. In the first place you mustn't ever forget to mind what grown-up people tell you - that is, good grown-up people."

"But how are you going to tell who are the good grown-up people?" asked Felix suddenly, forgetting that he was in church.

"Oh, that is easy," said Peter. "You can always just feel who is good and who isn't. And you m ustn't tell lies and you mustn't murder any one. You must be specially careful not to murder any one. You might be forgiven for telling lies, if you was real sorry for them, but if you murdered any one it would be pretty hard to get forgiven, so you'd better be on the safe side. And you mustn't commit suicide, because if you did that you wouldn't have any chance of repenting it; and you mustn't forget to say your prayers and you mustn't quarrel with your sister."

At this point Felicity gave Dan a significant poke with her elbow, and Dan was up in arms at once.

"Don't you be preaching at me, Peter Craig," he cried out. "I won't stand it. I don't quarrel with my sister any oftener than she quarrels with me. You can just leave me alone."

"Who's touching you?" demanded Peter. "I didn't mention no names. A minister can say anything he likes in the pulpit, as long as he doesn't mention any names, and nobody can answer back."

"All right, but just you wait till to-morrow," growled Dan, subsiding reluctantly into silence under the reproachful looks of the girls.

"You must not play any games on Sunday," went on Peter, "that is, any week-day games -- or whisper in church, or laugh in church -- I did that once but I was awful sorry - and you mustn't take any notice of Paddy - I mean of the family cat at family prayers, not even if he climbs up your back. And you mustn't call names or make faces."

"Amen," cried Felix, who had suffered many things because Felicity so often made faces at him.

Peter stopped and glared at him over the edge of the Pulpit Stone.

"You haven't any business to call out a thing like that right in the middle of a sermon," he said.

"They do it in the Methodist church at Markdale," protested Felix, somewhat abashed. "I've heard them."

"I know they do. That's the Methodist way and it is all right for them. I haven't a word to say against Methodists. My Aunt Jane was one, and I might have been one myself if I hadn't been so scared of the Judgment Day. But you ain't a Methodist. You're a Presbyterian, ain't you?"

"Yes, of course. I was born that way."

"Very well then, you've got to do things the Presbyterian way. Don't let me hear any more of your amens or I'll amen you."

"Oh, don't anybody interrupt again," implored the Story Girl. "It isn't fair. How can any one preach a good sermon if he is always being interrupted? Nobody interrupted Beverley."

"Bev didn't get up there and pitch into us like that," muttered Dan.

"You mustn't fight," resumed Peter undauntedly. "That is, you mustn't fight for the fun of fighting, nor out of bad temper. You must not say bad words or swear. You mustn't get drunk - although of course you wouldn't be likely to do that before you grow up, and the girls never. There's prob'ly a good many other things you mustn't do, but these I've named are the most important. Of course, I'm not saying you'll go to the bad place for sure if you do them. I only say you're running a risk. The devil is looking out for the people who do these things and he'll be more likely to get after them than to waste time over the people who don't do them. And that's all about the first head of my sermon."

At this point Sara Ray arrived, somewhat out of breath. Peter looked at her reproachfully.

"You've missed my whole first head, Sara," he said. "That isn't fair, when you're to be one of the judges. I think I ought to preach it over again for you."

"That was really done once. I know a story about it," said the Story Girl.

"Who's interrupting now?" said Dan slyly.

"Never mind, tell us the story," said the preacher himself, eagerly leaning over the pulpit.

"It was Mr. Scott who did it," said the Story Girl. "He was preaching somewhere in Nova Scotia, and when he was more than half way through his sermon - and you know sermons were very long in those days -- a man walked in. Mr. Scott stopped until he had taken his seat. Then he said, 'My friend, you are very late for this service. I hope you won't be late for heaven. The congregation will excuse me if I recapitulate the sermon for our friend's benefit.' And then he just preached the sermon over again from the beginning. It is said that that particular man was never known to be late for church again."

"It served him right," said Dan, "but it was pretty hard lines on the rest of the congregation."

"Now, let's be quiet so Peter can go on with his sermon," said Cecily.

Peter squared his shoulders and took hold of the edge of the pulpit. Never a thump had he thumped, but I realized that his way of leaning forward and fixing this one or that one of his hearers with his eye was much more effective.

"I've come now to the second head of my sermon -- what the bad place is like."

He proceeded to describe the bad place. Later on we discovered that he had found his material in an illustrated translation of Dante's Inferno which had once been given to his Aunt Jane as a school prize. But at the time we supposed he must be drawing from Biblical sources. Peter had been reading the Bible steadily ever since what we always referred to as "the Judgment Sunday", and he was by now almost through it. None of the rest of us had ever read the Bible completely through, and we thought Peter must have found his description of the world of the lost in some portion with which we were not acquainted. Therefore, his utterances carried all the weight of inspiration, and we sat appalled before his lurid phrases. He used his own words to clothe the ideas he had found, and the result was a force and simplicity that struck home to our imaginations.

Suddenly Sara Ray sprang to her feet with a scream -- a scream that changed into strange laughter. We all, preacher included, looked at her aghast. Cecily and Felicity sprang up and caught hold of her. Sara Ray was really in a bad fit of hysterics, but we knew nothing of such a thing in our experience, and we thought she had gone mad. She shrieked, cried, laughed, and flung herself about.

"She's gone clean crazy," said Peter, coming down out of his pulpit with a very pale face.

"You've frightened her crazy with your dreadful sermon," said Felicity indignantly.

She and Cecily each took Sara by an arm and, half leading, half carrying, got her out of the orchard and up to the house. The rest of us looked at each other in terrified questioning.

"You've made rather too much of an impression, Peter," said the Story Girl miserably.

"She needn't have got so scared. If she'd only waited for the third head I'd have showed her how easy it was to get clear of going to the bad place and go to heaven instead. But you girls are always in such a hurry," said Peter bitterly.

"Do you s'pose they'll have to take her to the asylum?" said Dan in a whisper.

"Hush, here's your father," said Felix.

Uncle Alec came striding down the orchard. We had never before seen Uncle Alec angry. But there was no doubt that he was very angry. His blue eyes fairly blazed at us as he said,

"What have you been doing to frighten Sara Ray into such a condition?"

"We -- were just having a sermon contest," explained the Story Girl tremulously. "And Peter preached about the bad place, and it frightened Sara. That is all, Uncle Alec."

"All! I don't know what the result will be to that nervous, delicate child. She is shrieking in there and nothing will quiet her. What do you mean by playing such a game on Sunday, and making a jest of sacred things? No, not a word --" for the Story Girl had attempted to speak. "You and Peter march off home. And the next time I find you up to such doings on Sunday or any other day I'll give you cause to remember it to your latest hour."

The Story Girl and Peter went humbly home and we went with them.

"I can't understand grown-up people," said Felix despairingly. "When Uncle Edward preached sermons it was all right, but when we do it it is 'making a jest of sacred things.' And I heard Uncle Alec tell a story once about being nearly frightened to death when he was a little boy, by a minister preaching on the end of the world; and he said, 'That was something like a sermon. You don't hear such sermons nowadays.' But when Peter preaches just such a sermon, it's a very different story."

"It's no wonder we can't understand the grown-ups," said the Story Girl indignantly, "because we've never been grown-up ourselves. But they have been children, and I don't see why they can't understand us. Of course, perhaps we shouldn't have had the contest on Sundays. But all the same I think it's mean of Uncle Alec to be so cross. Oh, I do hope poor Sara won't have to be taken to the asylum."

The Books: "Rilla of Ingleside" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Next book on the shelf is Rilla of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery.

Lucy Maud Montgomery wrote this book in a fiery passion and it was published in 1921. She considered it the best thing she ever wrote. Even years later. She considered this her best book. There were a couple of things going on in her life as she wrote it: Uhm, WWI. So there was THAT. The whole book takes place during WWI - which wrenched Canada into the 20th century. Also - her dearly beloved kindred-spirit cousin Frede had died in the 1918 influenza epidemic - and she basically never recovered from the loss. She was still in pretty much OPEN mourning 10 years later, 11 years later ... she never made another "friend", that was it for her. So Frede died in 1918 - the world war completely consumed her every waking breath - she didn't passively wait out the war, she LIVED it. Every battle, every move forward, every setback ... she was extremely patriotic, she hated 'the Huns' - she devoured newspapers, she felt sickened at the bloodshed, she was a woman consumed. Rilla of Ingleside is her book about all of that.

Anne and Gilbert's children are now almost all grown up. Rilla, the youngest, is 14 years old. So when war breaks out - her sons all go. Anne doesn't know how to find the strength - there is a heart-wrenching scene when she gets the word that Walter, her son who abhors war (he's the poet), has signed up. (He's like Sergeant York, a bit.) She tries not to be "selfish" - when other mothers have lost sons, have sacrificed so much - she tries to be brave - and she IS brave - but it breaks her heart.

The household becomes a war household. The town is a war town. There are parades of soldiers going off to war. The women stay home, join the Red Cross, and read the newspaper every day, and learn how to pronounce the names of towns they have never heard of before, towns in foreign lands. Canada loses its provincial isolation. Women (or a lot of women - not all women) are just as involved in the war effort as the men - even though they don't go to battle. It is not just emotional involvement - although there is THAT. Having a girlfriend or wife or mother to write home to when you are at war is not a small thing. But they sew, they make bandages, they become nurses - the entire country basically stops what it's doing, and turns its entire focus onto winning this apocalyptic battle.

Lucy Maud's journals during WWI are an amazing historical document - I think anybody who is interested in WWI, and first-person experiences, should not leave those journals out of their library. Every day - she'll report to her journal what happened in Europe the day before - and the response of the town - etc. Every single inch gained ... every inch lost ... the big battles, the ones still remembered, the small ... Every single one is hashed out in those journals. Lucy Maud used her journals as the basis for much of Rilla of Ingleside.

Of course there are romances, and small comedic episodes - but for the most part: this is a war book. This is also a book about Canada. I'm surprised this book isn't more remembered. It should be.

"Real life" also moves on ... there's a very funny 'war wedding' that goes on, Rilla has a sweet beginning romance with one of the Ford boys (member Leslie Moore? It's her son) - but then he goes off to war - and now she just writes him letters, and waits it out, and tries to bear it. Rilla is kind of a silly girl, you can see that - she's the youngest of 6, so she was fussed over, petted, babied. She's kind of vain, and has a rather frivolous personality. Lucy Maud does this on purpose, obviously. The war, and what the Blythe family loses, changes everyone forever. Rilla - without having one "a-ha" moment - which would be phony - changes. She finds depths of strength within her she never knew she had. She becomes a woman. A grown woman. Strong, deep, reliable, and in touch with the deeper wellsprings of life. She gives up frivolity.

I wanted to choose an excerpt, though, that shows the book's true feel - the feeling of the WAR - and I knew exactly what chapter to choose.

Like I said: any person who is really serious about WWI (in the way I'm serious about the Soviet empire - and collect any and all books about it - fiction or non) - should read Rilla and should also read Lucy Maud's war journals. They're amazing historical documents - not just the history of Canada, but the whole world at that time.

This excerpt is from the chapter called "Black Sunday". Oh - and "Mrs. Blythe", of course, is Anne. The "Cousin Sophia" mentioned is a total drip who thinks that the war has been sent to them to punish them all for their collective sinful ways. She's one of THOSE morons. The great thing too about this book is that it's all the same stuff going on then that's gone on in every war: there are the pacifists, there are those who actuall sympathize with the enemy, there are those (all women, of course) who just don't care about world events and go on with their idiotic trivial lives of childrearing and cooking and sewing (that's what Rebecca West calls such women: "idiots" - women who don't read the newspaper - who make a big deal out of REFUSING to read the newspaper, as though that is something to be proud of, women who willfully huddle in their domestic concerns while the world tailspins into horror and carnage - women who only pay attention to world events when it affects them PERSONALLY - idiots) - there are defeatists, there are extremists, there are people who are blood-thirsty for the Huns, and those who just know that the threat caused by Germany must be stopped ... etc. It's all the same. You would recognize the world she described. But oh - to not have the Internet to race to when you hear horrible news ... That's part of the agony. Having to WAIT for the news.

Excerpt from Rilla of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery.

In March of the year of grace 1918 there was one week into which must have crowded more of searing human agony than any seven days had ever held before in the history of the world. And in that week there was one day when all humanity seemed nailed to the cross; on that day the whole planet must have been agroan with universal convulsion, everywhere the hearts of men were failing them for fear.

It dawned calmly and coldly and greyly at Ingleside. Mrs. Blythe and Rilla and Miss Oliver made ready for church in a suspense tempered by hope an dconfidence. The doctor was away, having been summoned during the wee sma's to the Marwood household in Upper Glen, where a little war-bride was fighting gallantly on her own battleground to give life, not death, to the world. Susan announced that she meant to stay home tha tmorning - a rare decision for Susan.

"But I would rather not go to church this morning, Mrs. Dr. dear," she explained. "If Whiskers-on-the-moon were there and I saw him looking holy and pleased, as he always looks when he thinks the Huns are winning, I fear I would lose my patience and my sense of decorum and hurl a Bible or a hymn-book at him, thereby disgracing myself and the sacred edifice. No, Mrs. Dr. dear, I shall stay home from church till the tide turns and pray hard here."

"I think I might as well stay home, too, for all the good church will do me today," Miss Oliver said to Rilla, as they walked down the hard-frozen red road to the church. "I can think of nothing but the question, 'Does the line still hold?'"

"Next Sunday will be Easter," said Rilla. "Will it herald death or life to our cause?"

Mr. Meredith preached that morning from the text, "He that endureth to the end shall be saved," and hope and confidence rang through his inspiring sentences. Rilla, looking up at the memorial tablet on the wall above their pew, "sacred to the memory of Walter Cuthbert Blythe", felt herself lifted out of her dread and filled anew with courage. Walter could not have laid down his life for naught. His had been the gift of prophetic vision and he had foreseen victory. She would cling to that belief - the line would hold.

In this renewed mood she walked home from church almost gaily. The others, too, were hopeful, and all went smiling into Ingleside. There was no one in the living-room, save Jims, who had fallen asleep on the sofa, and Doc, who sat "hushed in grim respose" on the heart-rug, looking very Hydeish indeed. No one wa in the dining-room either -- and, stranger still, no dinner was on the table, which was not even set. Where was Susan?

"Can she have been taken ill?" exclaimed Mrs. Blythe anxiously. "I thought it strange that she did not want to go to church this morning."

The kitchen door opened and Susan appeared on the threshold with such a ghastly face that Mrs. Blythe cried out in sudden panic.

"Susan, what is it?"

"The British line is broken and the German shells are falling on Paris," said Susan dully.

The three women stared at each other, stricken.

"It's not true -- it's not," gasped Rilla.

"The thing would be -- ridiculous," said Gertrude Oliver -- and then she laughed horribly.

"Susan, who told you this -- when did the news come?" asked Mrs. Blythe.

"I got it over the long-distance phone from Charlottetown half an hour ago," said Susan. "The news came to town late last night. It was Dr. Holland phoned it out and he said it was only too true. Since then I have done nothing, Mrs. Dr. dear. I am very sorry dinner is not ready. It is the first time I have been so remiss. If you will be patient I will soon have something for you to eat. But I am afraid I let the potatoes burn."

"Dinner! Nobody wants any dinner, Susan," said Mrs. Blythe wildly. "Oh, this thing is unbelievable -- it must be a nightmare."

"Paris is lost - France is lost - the war is lost," gasped Rilla, amid the utter ruins of hope and confidence and belief.

"Oh God --- oh God," moaned Gertrude Oliver, walking about the room and wringing her hands. "Oh --- God!"

Nothing else -- no other words -- nothing but that age-old plea - an old, old cry of supreme agony and appeal, from the human heart whose every human staff has failed it.

"Is God dead?" asked a startled little voice from the doorway of the living room. Jims stood there, flushed from sleep, his big brown eyes filled with dread. "Oh, Willa - oh, Willa, is God dead?"

Miss Oliver stopped walking and exclaiming, and stared at Jims, in whose eyes tears of fright were beginning to gather. Rilla ran to his comforting, while Susan bounded up from the chair upon which she had dropped.

"No," she said briskly, with a sudden return of her real self. "No, God isn't dead -- nor Lloyd George either. We were forgetting that, Mrs. Dr. dear. Don't cry, little Kitchener. Bad as things are, they might be worse. The British line may be broken but the British navy is not. Let us tie to that. I will take a brace and get up a bite to eat, for strength we must have."

They made a pretence of eating Susan's "bite", but it was only a pretence. Nobody at Ingleside ever forgot that black afternoon. Gertrude Oliver walked the floor -- they all walked the floor; except Susan, who got out her grey war sock.

"Mrs. Dr. dear, I must knit on Sunday at last. I have never dreamed of doing it before for, say what might be said, I have considered it was a violation of the third commandment. But whether it is or whether it is not I must knit today or I shall go mad."

"Knit if you can, Susan," said Mrs. Blythe restlessly. "I would knit if I could -- but I cannot -- I cannot."

"If we could only get fuller information," moaned Rilla. "There might be soemthing to encourage us -- if we knew all."

"We know that the Germans are shelling Paris," said Miss Oliver bitterly. "In that case they must have smashed through everywhere and be at the very gates. No, we have lost -- let us face the fact as other peoples in the past have had to face it. Other nations, with right on their side, have given their best and bravest -- and gone down to defeat in spite of it."

"I won't give up like that," cried Rilla, her pale face suddenly flushing. "I won't despair. If Germany overruns all France we are not conquered. I am ashamed of myself for this hour of despair. You won't see me slump again like this. I'm going to ring up town at once and ask for particulars."

But town could not be got. The long-distance operator there was submerged by similar calls from every part of the distracted country. Rilla finally gave up and slipped away to Rainbow Valley. There she knelt down on the withered grey grasses in the little nook where she and Walter had had their last talk together, with her head bowed against the mossy trunk of a fallen tree. The sun had broken through the black clouds and drenched the valley with a pale golden splendour. The bells on the Tree Lovers twinkled elfinly and fitfully in the gusty March wind.

"Oh God, give me strength," Rilla whispered. "Just strength - and courage." Then like a child, she clasped her hands together and said, as simply as Jims could have done, "Please send us better news tomorrow."

She knelt there a long time, and when she went back to Ingleside she was calm and resolute. The doctor had arrived home, tired but triumphant, little Douglas Haig Marwood having made a safe landing on the shores of time. Gertrude was still pacing restlessly but Mrs. Blythe and Susan had reacted from the shock, and Susan was already planning a new line of defence for the channel ports.

"I heard up at Marwood's of the line being broken," said the doctor, "but this story of the Germans shelling Paris seems to be rather incredible. Even if they broke through they were fifty miles from Paris at the nearest point and how could they get their artillery close enough to shell it in so short a time? Depend upon it, girls, that part of the message can't be true."

This point of view cheered them all a little, and helped them through the evening. And at nine o'clock a long-distance message came through at last, that helped them through the night.

"The line broke only in one place, before St. Quentin," said the doctor, as he hung up the receiver, "and the British troops are retreating in good order. That's not so bad. As for the shells that are falling on Paris, they are coming from a distance of seventy miles - from some amazing long-range gun the Germans have invented and sprung with the opening offensive. That is all the news to date, and Dr. Holland says it is reliable."

"It would have been dreadful news yesterday," said Gertrude, "but compared to what we heard this morning it is almost like good news. But still," she added, trying to smile, "I am afraid I will not sleep much tonight."

"There is one thing to be thankful for at any rate, Mrs. Oliver, dear," said Susan, "and that is that Cousin Sophia did not come in today. I really could not have endured her on top of all the rest."

The Books: "Rainbow Valley" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Next book on the shelf is Rainbow Valley by L.M. Montgomery.

Published in 1919 - this is the second book about Anne's 6 children ... and the spectre of World War I slowly approaches. Lucy Maud is writing it during the war - and although the book takes place prior to World War I, the shadow hangs over it. It is as though she realizes (as the whole world realizes) that the old world has died away. Welcome to the 20th century. Modern warfare. A carnage unlike anything humanity had ever experienced. Technology. All that. Rainbow Valley is her last "Anne" book to take place PRIOR to all of that, to the horrible awakening. And Lucy Maud manages to convey the consciousness of that old world, and its fragility, and the fact that it doesn't have long to live, in her prose. She has a way of letting us know what is coming. Listen to the second to the last paragraph:

He stood up on a hillock, tall and splendid, with his open brow and his fearless eyes. There were thousands like him all over the land of the maple.

There's the whole thing in the book about responding to the 'call of the Piper'. In the innocent world of the book, it just means - approaching adulthood, facing the unknown - who is ready to heed the call of the Piper? But Lucy Maud manages to suggest a more ominous meaning. The call of the Piper is actually (although no one knows it yet) war.

Nobody knows that war is coming, that it will wrench their worlds apart, that all the boys who we now know as cute little guys with fishing poles will be going off to Europe to the trenches. That the womenfolk (who are all now still little girls with pinafores) will have thier hearts dragged along behind them, living the war in every agonizing breath. None of that is here yet - but you can feel it. In the way Lucy Maud writes. Somehow, it's melancholy. Even though the whole book is a funny heartwarming book about a rowdy group of kids playing in their favorite spot, Rainbow Valley ... the overall impression left from the book is almost one of a keening sadness. Did anyone else pick up on this? It's not sentimental, or overt ... Lucy Maud is just writing about a world that no longer exists and she is grieving it. Grieving for what this young generation will have to go through. Grieving for the lost innocence of her country. I really feel that in Rainbow Valley.

So we have Anne and Gilbert's kids - 6 of them. They're lovely kids, individuals, each distinct and separate from the other. The Blythes live next door to the old dusty manse where the widowed minister lives with HIS brood of kids. The minister (Rev. Meredith) is a lovely man, a wonderful minister, and he LOVES his children - but he kind of sucks as a father. He lets them run wild. He has no idea what they are doing, where they are going. The kids dress themselves (sometimes to disastrous results) - they sit and sing in the graveyard (causing huge scandals in the town) - they run WILD. They are a huge scandal. They are very mch loved by everyone, because they are kind-hearted sweet smart kids - but they are just insanely mischievous. They are always daring each other to do stuff, to disastrous results. Oh - and they are totally aware that their father is basically in a prolonged state of mourning for their mother - and so they are very very sensitive about anything that will hurt him. So if they get in trouble, because someone in the town "told" on them, and their father tells them how disappointed he is in them ... then they realize that they must "do penance" and punish themselves for hurting their father yet again. These "penances" usually cause even more trouble than the original mischief.

But you just love these kids. Especially Faith Meredith. Fatih Meredith, the oldest girl in that family, a golden-haired red-cheeked MANIAC, is one of Lucy Maud's great child creations. I was disappointed to see her fade into the distance in the next book (she goes to Europe with the Red Cross, I believe). I think Faith could have had her own book as an adult - it would have been really interesting to see who she would have become. She's gorgeous, she's wild, she has a fiery temper, she has a good sense of right and wrong - but she's just WILD. There's one episode where she rides a pig through the middle of the town on a dare - and i swear, every time I read that episode tears of laughter fall down my face. I don't know why it strikes me so funny - maybe because of Lucy Maud's description of the terrified pig ... of the scandalized townspeople watching Faith gallop by ON A PIG ... It's just hilarious to me.

There are side plots. Mary Vance - the white-haired orphan girl who Miss Cornelia eventually adopts after she is basically camping out at the manse for weeks, after running away. Now SHE is a trouble-maker. Big-time. Also - eventually - Rev. Meredith starts to court someone again (in his own dreamy abstracted way) and the Meredith kids are terrified (even though they love Rosemary) because Mary Vance told them that all stepmothers are evil, even if they started OUT nice.

The excerpt I chose is a small one. It always makes me laugh. It is ridiculous - but it's an example, i think, of why Mark Twain loved her writing. She gets into childhood like almost no other author (except for maybe Twain himself., And Dickens. But let's just say: very few authors really GET IT.) She does. This episode is SO FUNNY to read, but so tragic to the little 6 year old girl involved.

Excerpt from Rainbow Valley by L.M. Montgomery.

Rilla Blythe walked proudly, and perhaps a little primly, through the main 'street' of the Glen and up the manse hill, carefully carrying a small basketful of early strawberries, which Susan had coaxed into lusciousness in one of the sunny nooks of Ingleside. Susan had charged Rilla to give the basket to nobody except Aunt Martha or Mr. Meredith, and Rilla, very proud of being entrusted with such an errand, was resolved to carry out her instructions to the letter.

Susan had dressed her daintily in a white, starched and embroidered dress, with sash of blue and beaded slippers. Her long ruddy curls were sleek and round, and Susan had let her put on her best hat, out of compliment to the manse. It was a somewhat elaborate affair, wherein Susan's taste had more to say than Anne's, and Rilla's small soul gloried in its splendours of silk and lace and flowers. She was very conscious of her hat, and I am afraid she strutted up the manse hill. The strut, or the hat, or both, got on the nerves of Mary Vance, who was swinging on the lawn gate. Mary's temper was somewhat ruffled just then, into the bargain. Aunt Martha had refused to let her peel the potatoes and had ordered her out of the kitchen.

"Yah! You'll bring the potatoes to the table with strips of skin hanging to them and half boiled as usual! My, but it'll be nice to go to your funeral," shrieked Mary. She went out of the kitchen, giving the door such a bang that even Aunt Martha heard it, and Mr. Meredith in his study felt the vibration and thought absently that there must have been a slight earthquake shock. Then he went on with his sermon.

Mary slipped from the gate and confronted the spick-and-span damsel of Ingleside.

"What you got there?" she demanded, trying to take the basket.

Rilla resisted. "It'th for Mithter Meredith," she lisped.

"Give it to me. I'll give it to him," said Mary.

"No. Thuthan thaid I wathn't to give it to anybody but Mithter Mer'dith or Aunt Martha," insisted Rilla.

Mary eyed her sourly.

"You think you're something, don't you, all dressed up like a doll! Look at me. My dress is all rags and I don't care! I'd rather be ragged than a doll baby. Go home and tell them to put you in a glass case. Look at me -- look at me -- look at me!"

Mary executed a wild dance around the dismayed and bewildered Rilla, flirting her ragged skirt and vociferating "Look at me -- look at me" until poor Rilla was dizzy. But as the latter tried to edge away towards the gate Mary pounced on her again.

"You give me that basket," she ordered with a grimace. Mary was past mistress in the art of "making faces". She could give her countenance a most grotesque and unearthly appearacne out of which her strange, brilliant, white eyes gleamed with weird effect.

"I won't," gasped Rilla, frightened but staunch. "You let me go, Mary Vanth."

Mary let go for a minute and looked around her. Just inside the gate was a small "flake", on which half a dozen large codfish were drying. One of Mr. Meredith's parishioners had presented him with them one day, perhaps in lieu of the subscription he was supposed to pay to the stipend and never did. Mr. Meredith had thanked him and then forgotten all about the fish, which would have promptly spoiled had not the indefatigable Mary prepared them for drying and rigged up the "flake" herself on which to dry them.

Mary had a diabolocial inspiration. She flew to the "flake" and seized the largest fish there - a huge, flat thing, nearly as big as herself. With a whoop she swooped down on the terrified Rilla, brandishing her weird missile. Rilla's courage gave way. To be lambasted with a dried codfish was such an unheard-of thing that Rilla could not face it. With a shriek she dropped her basket and fled. The beautiful berries, which Susan had so tenderly selected for the minister, rolled in a rosy torrent over the dusty road and were trodden on by the flying feet of pursuer and pursued. The basket and contents were no longer in Mary's mind. She thought only of the delight of giving Rilla Blythe the scare of her life. She would teach her to come giving herself airs because of her fine clothes.

Rilla flew down the hill and along the street. Terror lent wings to her feet, and she just managed to keep ahead of Mary, who was somewhat hampered by her own laughter, but who had breath enough to give occasional blood-curdling whoops as she ran, flourishing her codfish in the air. Through the Glen street they swept, while everybody ran to the windows and gates to see them. Mary felt she was making a tremendous sensation and enjoyed it. Rilla, blind with terror and spent of breath, felt that she could run no longer. In another instant that terrible girl would be on her with the codfish. At this point the poor mite stumbled and fell into the mud-puddle at the end of the street just as Miss Cornelia came out of Carter Flagg's store.

Miss Cornelia took the whole situation in at a glance. So did Mary. The latter stopped short in her mid career and before Miss Cornelia could speak she had whirled around and was running up as fast as she had run down. Miss Cornelia's lips tightened ominously, but she knew it was no use to think of chasing her. So she picked up poor, sobbing, dishevelled Rilla instead and took her home. Rilla was heart-broken. Her dress and slippers and hat were ruined and her six year old pride had received terrible bruises.

The Books: "Anne of Ingleside" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Next book on the shelf is Anne of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery.

Sixth in the Anne series - but I think this was one of the last books she wrote. I'll have to check. [Checked: It was the second to last. Her last book was "Jane of Lantern Hill" (excerpt here)] Anne of Ingleside was published in 1939 - which always amazes me. What a horrible year that was. A horrible year for the world. There are a couple of foreshadowing moments in this book - because, after all, she has already written Rilla of Ingleside (excerpt here) - so she knows what happens. There's a moment when Anne sees a shadow of a cross over her son Walter's bed - and "later she would look back on that ...." etc.

Anne of Ingleside is the story of Anne and Gilbert raising their brood of children. Each child has his or her own big episode in the book - and the narrative is told from that child's point of view. So we're inside Jem's head, or Walter's head, or whatever. We see Anne and Gilbert, characters we now love and feel we know, through their kids eyes - as parents. They're called "Mother" and "Dad". I admit that when I was a teenager, reading the books for the first time, I got kind of frustrated. Because ... where is Anne??? What's going on with HER? But as an adult, it seems right. Anne is in the book, as herself, with her point of view, in the beginning, and intermittently throughout - and then there's a huge brou-haha that takes up the end of the book - where Anne feels that Gilbert is neglecting her, and then she becomes convinced that Gilbert still pines for his college girlfriend Christine. This is really the only hint we ever get that Anne and Gilbert ever have marital strife. Or - not even strife - how 'bout an ARGUMENT? How 'bout a little reality? Lucy Maud's marriage was so bad and so ... shameful to her (mental illness being so stigmatized) that she never really wrote about marriage - I think it was too hot to go near. Leslie Moore is tragic and interesting (excerpt from Anne's House of Dreams here) - and then she gets married and we never hear of her again. Lucy Maud's books END with marriages. I'm not saying there's anything bad with that - it just becomes noticeable as a theme. Anne and Gilbert are the only married couple that we really follow through their marriage, we see from the inside out, and Lucy Maud turns her focus onto the kids, rather than onto the grown-ups. In a way, this was VERY smart of her - because it kept the interest going for new generations. Anyway, just an observation.

Some of my favorite episodes in this book:

-- the nightmare of Aunt Mary Maria - who comes to stay and then just won't go home. What a drip. I was frustrated with Gilbert for not standing up to her.

-- the tragic chapter where Nan becomes convinced (because a little evil child TOLD her) that she was adopted - that she is actually the daughter of a horrible old fishwife down on the shore

-- when Walter walks all the way home because he's convinced that something bad is happening at home ... Turns out Anne is just having another baby - named Marilla - who eventually will star in her own book Rilla of Ingleside.

-- Anne's disastrous match-making attempt - very very funny

And frankly, I'm gonna be honest here: I just flipped through this book this morning and remembered a lot of it - but it's not lodged in my memory the way the events of some of the other books are. But the excerpt I chose? It's in my head forever. I probably think about this episode, oh, once a month? Seriously. It comes floating through my mind, and I sit, and ponder it for a second, before moving on. I remember the details - the descriptions - but mostly I remember the EVENT. Lucy Maud gets DARK here, and maybe that's why I remember it so clearly. Not sure.

Anyway - Walter (Anne's son) asks her, after overhearing someone mention it: "What happened at Peter Kirk's funeral?"

Anne refuses to tell him. It is not a story for children. But then, in a moment of reflection, she sits and remembers it, thinks back on it.

In my opinion, this is Lucy Maud at her best. All the names, the gossip, the stories, the glimpses into other people's hearts ...

Excerpt from Anne of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery.

It had been in November ... the first November they had spent at Ingleside ... following a week of Indian summer days. The Kirks lived at Mowbray Narrows but came to the Glen church and Gilbert was their doctor; so he and Anne both went to the funeral.

It had been, she remembered, a mild, calm, pearl-grey day. All around them had been the lonely brown-and-purple landscape of November, with patches of sunlight here and there on upland and slope where the sun shone through a rift in the clouds. "Kirkwynd" was so near the shore that a breath of salt win blew through the grim firs behind it. It was a big, prosperous-looking house but Anne always thought that the gable of the L looked exactly like a long, narrow, spiteful face.

Anne paused to speak to a little knot of women on the stiff flowerless lawn. They were all good hard-working souls to whom a funeral was a not unpleasant excitement.

"I forgot to bring a handkerchief," Mrs. Bryan Blake was saying plaintively. "Whatever will I do when I cry?"

'Why will you have to cry?" bluntly asked her sister-in-law Camilla Blake. Camilla had no use for women who cried too easily. "Peter Kirk is no relation to you and you never liked him."

"I think it is proper to cry at a funeral," said Mrs. Blake stiffly. "It shows feeling when a neighbour has been summoned to his long home."

"If nobody cries at Peter's funeral except those who liked him there won't be many wet eyes," said Mrs. Curtis Rodd drily. "That is the truth and why mince it? He was a pious old humbug and I know it if nobody else does. Who is that coming at the little gate? Don't ... don't tell me it's Clara Wilson."

"It is," whispered Mrs. Bryan incredulously.

"Well, you know after Peter's first wife died she told him she would never enter his house again until she came to his funeral and she's kept her word," said Camilla Blake. "She's a sister of Peter's first wife ..." In an explanatory aside to Anne, who looked curiously at Clara Wilson as she swept past them, unseeing, her smouldering topaz eyes staring straight ahead. She was a thin slip of a woman with a dark-browed, tragic face and black hair under one of the absurd bonnets elderly women still wore ... a thing of feathers and "bugles" with a skimpy nose veil. She looked at and spoke to no one, as her long black taffeta skirt swished over the grass and up the verandah steps.

"There's Jed Clinton at the door, putting on his funeral face," said Camilla sarcastically. "He's evidently thinking it is time we went in. It's always been his boast that at his funerals everything goes according to schedule. He's never forgiven Winnie Clow for fainting before the sermon. It wouldn't have been so bad afterwards. Well, nobody is likely to faint at this funeral. Olivia isn't the fainting kind."

"Jed Clinton ... the Lowbridge undertaker," said Mrs. Reese. "Why didn't they have the Glen man?"

"Who? Carter Flagg? Why, woman dear, Peter and him have been at daggers drawn all their lives. Carter wanted Amy Wilson, you know."

"A good many wanted her," said Camilla. "She was a very pretty girl, with her coppery red hair and inky black eyes. Though people thought Clara the handsomer of the two then. It's odd she never married. There's the minister at last ... and the Rev. Mr. Owen of Lowbridge with him. Of course he is Olivia's cousin. All right except that he puts too many 'Oh's' in his prayers. We'd better go in or Jed will have a conniption."

Anne paused to look at Peter Kirk on her way to a chair. She had never liked him. "He has a cruel face," she thought, the first time she had ever seen him. Handsome, yes ... but with cold steely eyes even then becoming pouchy, and the thin pinched merciless mouth of a miser. He was known to be selfish and arrogant in his dealings with his fellow-men in spite of his profession of piety and his unctuous prayers. "Always feels his importance," she had heard someone say once. Yet, on the whole, he had been respected and looked up to,.

He was as arrogant in his death as in his life and there was something about the too-long fingers clasped over his still breast that made Anne shudder. She thought of a woman's heart being held in them and glanced at Olivia Kirk, sitting opposite to her in her mourning. Olivia was a tall, fair, handsome woman with large blue eyes ... "no ugly woman for me," Peter Kirk had said once ... and her face was composed and expressionless. There was no apparent trace of tears ... but then, Olivia had been a Random and the Randoms were not emotional. At least she sat decorously and the most heartbroken in the world could not have worn heavier weeds.

The air was cloyed with the perfume of the flowers that banked the coffin ... for Peter Kirk, who had never known flowers existed. His lodge had sent a wreath, the church had sent one, the Conservative Assocation had sent one, the school trustees had sent one, the Cheese Board had sent one. His oine, long-alienated son had sent nothing, but the Kirk clan at large had sent a huge anchor of white roses with "Harbour At Last" in red rosebuds across it, and there was one from Olivia herself .. .a pillow of calla-lilies. Camilla Blake's face twitched as she loked at it and Anne remembered that she had once heard Camilla say that she had been at Kirkwynd soon after Peter's second marriage when Peter had fired out of the window a potted calla-lily which the bride had brought with her. He wasn't, so he said, going to have his house cluttered up with weeds.

Olivia had apparently taken it very coolly and there had been no more calla-lilies at Kirkwynd. Could it be possible that Olivia ... but Anne looked at Mrs. Kirk's placid face and dismissed the suspicion. After all, it was generally the florist who suggested the flowers.

The choir sang "Death like a narrow sea divides that heavenly land from ours" and Anne caught Camilla's eye and knew they were both wondering just how Peter Kirk would fit into that heavenly land. Anne could almost hear Camilla saying, "Fancy Peter Kirk with a harp and halo if you dare."

The Rev. and Mrs. Owen read a chapter and prayed, with many "Oh's" and many entreaties that sorrowing hearts might be comforted. The Glen minister gave an address which many privately considered entirely too fulsome, even allowing for the fact that you had to say something good of the dead. To hear Peter Kirk called an affectionate father and a tender husband, a kind neighbour and an earnest Christian was, they felt, a misuse of language. Camilla took refuge behind her handkerchief, not to shed tears, and Stephen Macdonald cleared his throat once or twice. Mrs. Bryan must have borrowed a handkerchief from someone, for she was weeping into it, but Olivia's down-dropped blue eyes remained tearless.

Jed Clinton drew a breath of relief. All had gone beautifully. Another hymn ... the customary parade for a last look at "the remains" ... and another successful funeral would be added to his long list.

There was a slight disturbance in a corner of the large room and Clara Wilson made her way through the maze of chairs to the table beside the casket. She turned there and faced the assembly. Her absurd bonnet had slipped a trifle to one side and a loose end of heavy black hair had escaped from its coil and hung down on her shoulder. But nobody thought Clara Wilson looked absurd. Her long sallow face was flushed, her haunted tragic eyes were flaming. She was a woman possessed. Bitterness, like some gnawing incurable disease, seemed to pervade her being.

"You have listend to a pack of lies ... you people who have come here 'to pay your respects' ... or glut your curiosity, whicher it was. Now I shall tell you the truth about Peter Kirk. I am no hypocrite ... I never feared him living and I do not fear him now that he is dead. Nobody has ever dared to tell the truth about him to his face but it is going to be told now ... here at his funeral where he has been called a good husband and a kind neighbour. A good husband! He married my sister Amy ... my beautiful sister, Amy. You all know how sweet and lovely she was. He made her life a misery to her. He tortured and humiliated her ... he liked to do it. Oh, he went to church regularly ... and made long prayers ... and paid his debts. But he was a tyrant and a bully ... his very dog ran when he heard him coming.

"I told Amy she would repent marrying him. I helped her make her wedding dress ... I'd rather have made her shroud. She was wild about him then, poor thing, but she hadn't been his wife a week before she knew what he was. His mother had been a slave and he expected his wife to be one. 'There will be no arguments in my household,' he told her. She hadn't the spirit to argue ... her heart was broken. Oh, I know what she went through, my poor pretty darling. He crossed her in everything. She couldn't have a flower-garden ... she couldn't even have a kitten ... I gave her one and he drowned it. She had to account to him for every cent she spent. Did ever any of you see her in a decent stitch of clothes? He would fault her for wearing her best hat if it looked like rain. Rain couldn't hurt any hat she had, poor soul. Her that loved pretty clothes! He was always sneering at her people. He never laughed in his life ... did any of you ever hear him really laugh? He smiled ... oh yes, he always smiled, calmly and sweetly when he was doing the most maddening things. He smiled when he told her after her little baby was born dead that she might as well have died, too, if she couldn't have anything but dead brats. She died after ten years of it ... and I was glad she had escaped him. I told him then I'd never enter his house again till I came to his funeral. Some of you heard me. I've kept my word and now I've come and told the truth about him. It is the truth ... you know it" ... she pointed fiercely at Stephen Macdonald ... "you know it" ... the long finger darted at Camilla Blake ... "you know it" ... Olivia Kirk did not move a muscle ... "you know it" ... the poor minister himself felt as if that finger stabbed completely through him. "I cried at Peter Kirk's wedding but I told him I'd laugh at his funeral. And I am going to do it."

She swished furiously about and bent over the casket. Wrongs that had festered for years had been avenged. She had wreaked her hatred at last. Her whole body vibrated with triumph and satisfaction as she looked down at the cold quiet face of a dead man. Everybody listened for the burst of vindictive laughter. It did not come. Clara Wilson's angry face suddenly changed ... twisted ... crumpled up like a child's. Clara was ... crying.

She turned, with the tears streaming down her ravaged cheeks, to leave the room. But Olivia Kirk rose before her and laid a hand on her arm. For a moment the two women looked at each other. The room was engulfed in a silence that seemed like a personal presence.

"Thank you, Clara Wilson," said Olivia Kirk. Her face was as inscrutable as ever but there was an undertone in her calm, even voice that made Anne shudder. She felt as if a pit had suddenly opened before her eyes. Clara Wilson might hate Peter Kirk, alive and dead, but Anne felt that her hatred was a pale thing compared to Olivia Kirk's.

The Books: "Anne's House of Dreams" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Next book on the shelf is Anne's House of Dreams by L.M. Montgomery.

What a wonderful book this is. I love every book in the series - and in each one I have my favorite episodes - but for some reason, this one really GETS me. I think it has something to do with the saga of the heartbroken Leslie Moore, and how much that character gets under my skin.

It is easy, at times (and I think Lucy Maud was cognizant of this) to feel like Anne strolls under a lucky star or something. Her unhappiness occurred as a young girl ... and after that, the power of her personality has just swayed everyone she has met. Even her heartache has a sort of ... charmed quality to it. She never gets REALLY dark. (That's one of the reasons why I love the Emily books too (one excerpt here) - even more than the Anne books. They are much closer to Lucy Maud's actual autobiography - and what can I say, I like DARK. I like to at least know that even if a character DOESN'T succumb to the darkness, they COULD. It seems like Anne's philosophy of life is such that it could never really bring her to her knees. This is not a criticism. There are people like that in real life as well.) Cranks become good friends, foes become admirers, etc. Leslie Moore is the first friend to really challenge this. Anne's charm will not work on Leslie. Why? Because Leslie's life has been TOO hard, and there are some tragedies that CANNOT be smiled their way out of, or charmed out of existence. I am making Anne sound shallow here and that is totally not the case - but there are some people who seem to have things work out for them (thru karma or good luck or whatever) - and others carry the weight of the world. Now Anne, in her sensitivity, does not understand why Leslie would automatically dislike her - like: what did she do??? She has never before been disliked for being FORTUNATE. After all, she was an orphan! She was impoverished! She had a hardscrabble life until Matthew and Marilla came along - but even then: she was always the oddball in Avonlea. Her clothes weren't right. She didn't have parents. Nobody in their right mind would be JEALOUS of Anne because of her good fortune! Maybe they would be jealous of her because of how she writes, or because of how she uses her imagination, but because of her good fortune? No. Not until Leslie Moore. Leslie's soul has been warped by her own life tragedy - and no matter what Anne does, it wouldn't matter. Anne has something Leslie knows she will never have: a husband, companionship, happiness ... and this loneliness has corrupted Leslie. She stares at Anne with dull smouldering resentment - Anne cannot fight this. She doesn't know how to "win Leslie Over" because ... there is nothing she can do. What can she do - be less happy with Gilbert in order for Leslie to be happy? This, in my mind, is such an insightful observation about the married and unmarried of this world. There can be smugness about married people - that is completely unconscious - and there can be a prickly bitterness about single people - that is completely unconscious. It's hard to bridge that gap.

Anne suffers a tragedy during House of Dreams - her first real tragedy as an adult. A loss that makes her question her belief in God, that makes her almost go crazy. We love Anne even more for faltering in the face of such strife. Don't we? I know I did. A "plucky heroine" who shows no sign of doubt or uncertainty would become an insufferable prig after a while. Being optimistic is all well and good ... but what about people who truly suffer loss? How on earth could "put on a happy face" help them? Leslie and Anne eventually do become "friends" - but it's almost like they are two wild animals, circling around each other warily. Anne senses that her very existence is an insult to Leslie. If she's happy about making baby booties, Leslie's heart breaks. This is not because Leslie is a selfish bitch. It is because loneliness messes people UP and that fact needs to be acknowledged. Not to wallow in victimhood or whatever - but to just acknowledge the reality that loneliness can twist what was once straight. It is NOT easy to bear (for some). It is not easy for Leslie to bear. Loneliness can make you GLORY in other people's hardships, and you can RESENT other people's ease. It's evil - you feel like you are evil. Lucy Maud, with her life of ... unrelenting loneliness (famous to the masses, but oh, what a home life) ... understood this so so well. She doesn't write about it a lot - but glimpses of it are there in the Leslie Moore character in House of Dreams. What is it like to feel that you are barred forever from ease? Peace? Happiness? Contentment? What is it like when the things that other people take so for granted (having a nice chat at the end of the day with their husband, sharing a meal, knowing that someone else is in the house with you) ... are SO foreign to you? Lucy Maud was behind that glass wall. She had nothing that other people had. Her marriage was not a real marriage. It was a nightmare. She ENDURED it. He was a petulant child. He was no mate. But she looked around and saw ... people coupling up ... sharing life's struggles ... TOGETHER ... That was not for her.

I have gone on and on ... but as you can see, this is what this particular book means to me.

In a way, it is her first ADULT book. Leslie Moore is a character who made an indelible mark on my mind ... and I love love love Anne's journey in relation to her.

Anne confides to Captain Jim (another great character) how she feels that Leslie will never open up to her, be her friend. Captain Jim says to her that Leslie's life has been so unrelentingly tragic that it must be hard for Leslie to deal with anyone who seems so happy. Anne thinks about this, remembers her own awful childhood, and says, "I wasnt happy before I came to Green Gables." Captain Jim says, "Yes, but that was just the normal unhappiness of a child who is not looked after. You haven't had any tragedy. And that's why there's a barrier there."

Anne, with her optimistic belief in the good of people, in the good that a bit of laughter can do on a dark day ... she is troubled by this. And yet she doesn't give up on Leslie. She doesn't PUSH herself on Leslie ... she just tries to be there for her ... and when Leslie suddenly rebuffs her, or suddenly the claws come out - she tries not to take it personally.

For me - this book is all about Leslie. The scene where she breaks down - and lets Anne in - (the chapter called "barriers swept away") still brings me to tears today even though I have read it a gazillion times.

But there's so much else in here to love. Uhm - Miss Cornelia? The man-hater? With the bright green house and the fierce political opinions? I love her. Dammit. I love her. And how she up and marries at the end of the book?? hahahaha Anne and Gilbert are literally stunned into silence when she breaks the news. Gilbert's like: "But ... don't you hate men?"

And Captain Jim - the crusty old sea captain with all the old stories - who takes a liking to Anne and Gilbert (who wouldn't??). He runs the lighthouse - and they spend many a night up there with him, listening to him tell tales.

And then of course - Anne and Gilbert are in their honeymoon phase. So everything is beautiful. I think Lucy Maud outdoes herself with some of her descriptive passages in this book. The chapter where she and Gilbert drive into Four Winds for the first time - and they catch a glimpse of Leslie - and the sun is setting - and Anne sees her home for the first time ... that whole chapter is some of the best writing Lucy Maud has ever done, I think.

But naturally, I have to choose an excerpt about Leslie. Anne has only seen Leslie once - and did not know who she was. Anne was just struck by her intense beauty, and also by the fact that this girl obviously dislikes her on sight, glaring at her as she and Gilbert drive by in the buggy. Anne is baffled by this, but more than that - she is hurt. What has she done? What has she ever done to this woman?

Here's the excerpt where ... well, Anne and Leslie meet on the shore. Notice here how - for example - when Anne thinks she is bonding with Leslie about the "house of dreams" -she goes on about being happy with her prince in a small house - totally assuming that she and Leslie are on the same page - when she has really misread the situation horribly (we the reader don't know Leslie's full story until the next chapter). Lucy Maud makes a point here about the casual cruelty (unconscious!!) of happy people. The casual assumptions they make. Because THEY are happy ... they think everyone should be happy. But also, they assume that everyone will speak the same language. This is not about smug self-righteous people. This is something that is very human. Anne, at this point, does not know Leslie's tragedy - so she does not know that her every word is a knife in Leslie's heart. And, of course, none of that is her fault. It's not HER fault that she's happy and that Leslie is not ... but in order to truly become Leslie's friend - a serious shifting has to occur, on both sides. And again: the fact that Anne, in the beginning, mis-reads Leslie because of her own happiness makes Anne even more lovable. Because it's such a human thing to do.

Excerpt from Anne's House of Dreams by L.M. Montgomery.

She loved the gentle, misty harbour shore and the silvery, wind-haunted sand shore, but best of all she loved the rock shore, with its cliffs and caves and piles of surf-worn boulders, and its coves where the pebbles glittered under the pools; and it was to this shore she hied herself tonight.

There had been an autumn storm of wind and rain, lasting for three days. Thunderous had been the crash of billows on the rocks, wild the white spray and spume that blew over the bar, troubled and misty and tempest-torn the erstwhile blue peace of Four Winds Harbour. Now it was over, and the shore lay clean-washed after the storm; not a wind stirred, but there was still a fine surf on, dashing on sand and rock in a splendid white turmoil -- the only restless thing in the great, pervading stillness and peace.

"Oh, this is a moment worth living through weeks of storm and stress for," Anne exclaimed, delightedly sending her far gaze across the tossing waters from the top of the cliff where she stood. Presently she scrambled down the steep path to the little cove below, where she seemed shut in with rocks and sea and sky.

"I'm going to dance and sing," she said. "There's no one here to see me -- the sea-gulls won't carry tales of the matter. I may be as crazy as I like."

She caught up her skirt and pirouetted along the hard strip of sand just out of reach of the waves that almost lapped her feet with their spent foam. Whirling round and round, laughing like a child, she reached the little headland that ran out to the east of the cove; then she stopped suddenly, blushing crimson; she was not alone; there had been a witness to her dance and laughter.

The girl of the golden hair and sea-blue eyes was sitting on a boulder of the headland, half-hidden by a jutting rock. She was looking straight at Anne with a strange expression - part wonder, part sympathy, part -- could it be? -- envy. She was bare-headed, and her splendid hair, more than ever like Browning's "gorgeous snake," was bound about her head with a crimson ribbon. She wore a dress of some dark material, very plainly made; but swathed about her waist, outlining its fine curves, was a vivid girdle of red silk. Her hands, clasped over her knee, were brown and somewhat work-hardened; but the skin of her throat and cheeks was as white as cream. A flying gleam of sunset broke through a low-lying western cloud and fell across her hair. For a moment she seemed the spirit of the sea personified -- all its mystery, all its passion, all its elusive charm.

"You -- you must think me crazy," stammered Anne, trying to recover her self-possession. To be seen by this stately girl in such an abandon of childishness --she, Mrs. Dr. Blythe, with all the dignity of the matron to keep up -- it was too bad!

"No," said the girl, "I don't."

She said nothing more; her voice was expressionless; her manner slightly repellant; but there was something in her eyes -- eager yet shy, defiant yet pleading -- which turned Anne from her purpose of walking away. Instead, she sat down on the boulder beside the girl.

"Let's introduce ourselves," she said, with the smile that had never yet failed to win confidence and friendliness. "I am Mrs. Blythe - and I live in that little white house on the harbour shore."

"Yes, I know," said the girl. "I am Leslie Moore -- Mrs. Dick Moore," she added stiffly.

Anne was silent for a moment from sheer astonishment. It had not occurred to her that this girl was married - there seemed nothing of the wife about her. And that she should be the neighbour whom Anne had pictured as a commonplace Four Winds housewife! Anne could not quickly adjust her mental focus to this astonishing change.

"Then -- then you live in that gray house up the brook," she stammered.

"Yes. I should have gone over to call on you long ago," said the other. She did not offer any explanation or excuse for not having one.

"I wish you would come," said Anne, recovering herself somewhat. "We're such near neighbours we ought to be friends. That is the sole fault of Four Winds - there aren't quite enoguh neighbours. Otherwise it is perfection."

"You like it?"

"Like it! I love it! It is the most beautiful place I ever saw."

"I've never seen many places," said Leslie Moore slowly, "but I've always thought it was very lovely here. I -- I love it, too."

She spoke as she looked, shyly, yet eagerly. Anne had an odd impression that this strange girl -- the word "girl" would persist - could say a good deal if she chose.

"I often come to the shore," she added.

"So do I," said Anne. "It's a wonder we haven't met here before."

"Probably you come earlier in the evening than I do. It is generally late - almost dark - when I come. And I love to come just after a storm - like this. I don't like the sea so well when it's calm and quiet. I like the struggle - and the crash - and the noise."

"I love it in all its moods," declared Anne. "The sea at Four Winds is to me what Lover's Lane was at home. Tonight it seemed so free - so untamed - something broke loose in me, too, out of sympathy. That was why I danced along the shore in that wild way. If Miss Cornelia Bryant had seen me she would have foreboded a gloomy prospect for poor young Dr. Blythe."

"You know Miss Cornelia?" said Leslie, laughing. She had an exquisite laugh; it bubbled up suddenly and unexpectedly with something of the delicious quality of a baby's. Anne laughed, too.

"Oh, yes. She has been down to my house of dreams several times."

"Your house of dreams?"

"Oh, that's a dear, foolish little name Gilbert and I have for our home. We just call it that between ourselves. It slipped out before I thought."

"So Miss Russell's little white house is your house of dreams," said Leslie wonderingly. "I had a house of dreams once -- but it was a palace," she added, with a laugh, the sweetness of which was marred by a little note of derision.

"Oh, I once dreamed of a palace, too," said Anne. "I suppose all girls do. And then we settle down contentedly in eight-room houses that seem to fulfil all the desires of our hearts - because our prince is there. You should have had your palace really, though -- you are so beautiful. You must let me say it - it has to be said - I'm nearly bursting with admiration. You are the loveliest thing I ever saw, Mrs. Moore."

"If we are to be friends you must call me Leslie," said the other with an odd passion.

"Of course I will. And my friends call me Anne."

"I suppose I am beautiful," Leslie went on, looking stormily out to sea. "I hate my beauty. I wish I had always been as brown and plain as the brownest and plainest girl at the fishing village over there. Well, what do you think of Miss Cornelia?"

The abrupt chagne of subject shut the door on any further confidences.

"Miss Cornelia is a darling, isn't she?" said Anne. "Gilbert and I were invited to her house to a state tea last week. You've heard of groaning tables."

"I seem to recall seeing the expression in the newspaper reports of weddings," said Leslie, smiling.

"Well, Miss Cornelia's groaned - at least, it creaked - positively. You couldn't have believed she would have cooked so much for two ordinary people. She had every kind of pie you could name, I think - except lemon pie. She said she had taken the prize for lemon pie at the Charlottestown Exhibition ten years ago and had never made any since for fear of losing her reputation for them."

"Were you able to eat enough pie to please her?"

"I wasn't. Gilbert won her heart be eating - I won't tell you how much. She said she never knew a man who didn't like pie better than his Bible. Do you know, I love Miss Cornelia."

"So do I," said Leslie. "She is the best friend I have in the world."

Anne wondered secretly why, if this were so, Miss Cornelia had never metnioned Mrs. Dick Moore to her. Miss Cornelia had certainly talked freely about every other individual in or near Four Winds.

"Isn't that beautiful?" said Leslie, after a brief silence, pointing to the exquisite effect of a shaft of light falling through a cleft in the rock behind them, across a dark green pool at its base. "If I had come here - and seen nothing but jsut that - I would go home satisfied."

"The effects of light and shadow all along these shores are wonderful," agreed Anne. "My little sewing room looks out on the harbour, and I sit at the window and feast my eyes. The colours and shadows are never the same two minutes together."

"And you are never lonely?" asked Leslie abruptly. "Never - when you are alone?"

"No. I don't think I've ever been really lonely in my life," answered Anne. "Even when I'm alone I have real good company - dreams and imaginations and pretendings. I like to be alone now and then, just to think over things and taste them. But I love friendship - and nice, jolly little times with people. Oh, won't you come to see me - often? Please do. I believe," Anne added, laughing, "that you'd like me if you knew me."

"I wonder if you would like me," said Leslie seriously. She was not fishing for a compliment. She looked out across the waves that were beginning to be garlanded with blossoms of moonlit foam, and her eyes filled with shadows.

"I'm sure I would," said Anne. "And please don't think I'm utterly irresponsible because you saw me dancing on the shore at sunset. No doubt I shall be dignified after a time. You see, I haven't been married very long. I feel like a girl, and sometimes like a child yet."

"I have been married twelve years," said Leslie.

Here was another unbelievable thing.

"Why, you can't be as old as I am!" exclaimed Anne. "You must have been a child when you were married."

"I was sixteen," said Leslie, rising, and picking up the cap and jacket lying beside her. "I am twenty-eight now. Well, I must go back."

"So must I. Gilbert will probably be home. But I'm so glad we both came to the shore tonight and met each other."

Leslie said nothing, and Anne was a little chilled. She had offered friendship frankly but it had not been accepted very graciously, if it had not been absoutely repelled. In silence they climbed the cliffs and walked across a pasture-field of which the feathery, bleached, wild grasses were like a carpet of cramy velvet in the moonlight. When they reached the shore lane Leslie turned.

"I go this way, Mrs. Blythe. You will come over and see me some time, won't you?"

Anne felt as if the invitation had been thrown at her. She got the impression that Leslie Moore gave it reluctantly.

"I will come if you really want me to," she said a little coldly.

"Oh, I do - I do," exclaimed Leslie, with an eagerness which seemed to burst forth and beat down some restraint that had been imposed on it.

"Then I'll come. Good-night -- Leslie."

"Good-night, Mrs. Blythe."

The Books: "Anne of Windy Poplars" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction shelves:

Next book on the shelf is Anne of Windy Poplars by L.M. Montgomery.

Chronologically (in Anne's life) this book comes after Anne of the Island (excerpt here) - but in Lucy Maud's chronology, she wrote Anne's House of Dreams (excerpt here) next. Later, she went back and filled in the Windy Poplars blank. This also happened with Anne of Ingleside (excerpt here) - I think that was the last "Anne" novel she wrote - but it is not the last in the series, Rilla of Ingleside is. (excerpt here). World War I came along and swept away all of her distractions, all of her former concerns - Lucy Maud had to write about WWI, so she skipped ahead to Anne's children so that she could incorporate the war into a book.

Anne of Windy Poplars is the story of the 3 years Anne spends teaching in Summerside, PEI. She is now engaged to Gilbert Blythe - but they can't get married right away because he is going to medical school. She finds a room in a house in Summerside (and, of course, because she is Anne Shirley, the room has "scope for imagination") - and begins her adventures teaching there. The majority of this book is letters to Gilbert. And I've got to say this: Poor Gilbert. He's in medical school, probably buried in books, and he literally is receiving 30 page letters almost every other day from his chatty fiance - who blithers on about the smell of the violets, and the bitchy Pringle family, and the red cheeks of Rebecca Dew, and .... I mean, I'm just trying to see it from his perspective. Did he ever roll his eyes when he saw a BIG FAT letter in his mailbox? Did he ever feel like: "I cannot keep up with this ..." These have to be the most detailed letters in the history of letter writing. When did Anne have time to write them?? Because presumably she was also corresponding with Marilla, with Diana, and etc. etc. Also, the first time I read this book I was 15 or something like that - and I was SO frustrated that the lovey-dovey parts of the letters were NOT shared! Lucy Maud was very coy in that respect and I HATED that. Let me hear how Anne tells Gilbert she loves him! Also: Anne: why the hell does it matter what type of pen you have? Don't be such a tease. I guess (ahem) I'm still annoyed at that!! hahahahaha

So Anne lives in Summerside for 3 years. In that time she is responsible for, 5 matchmaking successes? I lost count. The best part of the book, I think, is her blossoming friendship with Katherine Brooke, another teacher at the school. Katherine is a tough nut to crack. She is bitter, snarky, and at times truly MEAN to Anne. She makes personal digs at her, as though she harbors some personal resentment. Anne doesn't get it. But Anne, being Anne, senses that ... there is "something" there ... that they could be friends if only Katherine would let go of whatever it is she's holding onto. Anne invites her home to Green Gables for the Christmas holiday. And lo and behold, the ice melts. Katherine is a really good character - very well-written.

Other episodes in the book that come to mind:

-- Anne is nearly run out of town by the Pringle family, who can't stand her - until she inadvertently shuts them up with an old journal she finds in an attic of their sea captain ancestor. In the journal, he descirbes a shipwreck he experienced - where he and his shipmates ate one of their friends who had died. The Pringles are so horrified that Anne has this blackmail chip held over their heads - that they call off the dogs, and never give her any problems again.

-- the whole Little Fellow thing ("I know his dog's name was Carlo") - and the mean father - and the photograph that changes everything

-- Rebecca Dew. Great characte.r Actually - both of the Aunts are great characters, too. You think they're gonna be picky and spinsterish - but in reality they are kind of dreamy, filled with fantasies - which they hide from one another, but feel perfectly fine whispering to Anne.

-- the triumph of Sophy Sinclair! I always loved that.

-- the ridiculous (and very VERY funny) episode in the Tomgallon House (for once, Anne has met her match in terms of TALKING - Anne can barely get a word in edgewise)

I decided to choose the following excerpt because it always made me laugh - and it also shows Lucy Maud's wicked and original sense of humor. I love that about her - especially now that I know the circumstances under which she wrote her books, and her general nervous disorder (or whatever she had - she had something, that's for certain).

Anne Shirley very quickly becomes the confidante of the young women in the town. Since she is engaged, she is 'safe' - she won't be their rival. So Trix Taylor comes to ask Anne for help. Her sister Esme is the shyest thing imaginable, afraid of everything ... and a handsome young doctor (Lennox Carter) is courting her ... but the entire Taylor family lives in TOTAL fear of their father's "sulking fits" - If he has a "sulking fit" on, forget it - don't even ask if you can borrow the buggy - just wait out the storm. Cyrus Taylor, the father, sulks - but not just sulks - he glowers - he sits in a towering silence - he TERRIFIES everyone around him. So Lennox Carter is going to come and have dinner at the Taylor household - obviously to ask Cyrus for Esmes hand in marriage - but it just so happens that Cyrus Taylor has suddenly taken on a "sulking fit" - and will not be snapped out of it. Trix is panicked. Esme HAS to marry Lennox ... but if Lennox asks for her hand THAT night, Cyrus will certainly say No. Because of the sulking fit. So she asks Anne if she wouldn't mind coming to dinner and ... working her magic ... smoothing the edges ... maybe drawing Cyrus out of his shell, so that Lennox and Esme can get married, and all will be well. Everything is quite urgent ... Trix basically BEGS. Anne says fine, she'll do what she can.

When she arrives at the Taylor household, she can feel the tension in the air. Everyone is tiptoeing around Cyrus - they have made his favorite meal for supper - they wait on him - and he just sits, in a towering sulky silence.

They sit down to dinner. So here's the excerpt. I love Mrs. Cyrus, just need to say that. I love her.

Excerpt from Anne of Windy Poplars by L.M. Montgomery.

Cyrus would not say grace. Mrs. Cyrus, blushing beet-red, murmured almost inaudibly, "For what we are about to receive the Lord make us truly thankful." The meal started badly by nervous Esme dropping her fork on the floor. Everybody except Cyrus jumped, because their nerves were likewise keyed up to the highest pitch. Cyrus glared at Esme out of his bulging blue eyes in a kind of enraged stillness. Then he glared at everybody and froze them into dumbness. He glared at poor Mrs. Cyrus when she took a helping of horseradish sauce, with a glare that reminded her of her weak stomach. She coudn't eat any of it after that ... and she was so fond of it. She didn't believe it would hurt her. But for that matter she couldn't eat anything, nor could Esme. They only pretended. The meal proceeded in a ghastly silence, broken by spasmodic speeches about the weather from Trix or Anne. Trix implored Anne with her eyes to talk, but Anne found herself for once in her life with absolutely nothing to say. She felt desperately that she must talk, but only the most idiotic things came into her head ... things it would be impossible to utter aloud. Was everyone bewitched? It was curious, the effect one sulky, stubborn man had on you. Anne couldn't have believed it possible. And there was no doubt that he was really quite happy in the knowledge that he had made everybody at his table horribly uncomfortable. What on earth was going on in his mind? Would he jump if any one stuck a pin in him? Anne wanted to slap him ... rap his knuckles ... stand him in a corner ... treat him like the spoiled child he really was, in spite of his spiky gray hair and truculent mustache.

Above all she wanted to make him speak. She felt instinctively that nothing in the world would punish him so much as to be tricked into speaking when he was determined not to.

Suppose she got up and deliberately smashed that huge, old-fashioned vase on the table in the corner ... an ornate thing covered with wreaths of roses and leaves which it was ost difficul to dust but which must be kept immaculately clean. Anne knew that the whole family hated it, but Cyrus Taylor would not hear of having it banished to the attic, because it had been his mother's. Anne thought she would do it fearlessly if she really believed that it would make Cyrus explode into vocal anger.

Why didn't Lennox Carter talk? If he would, she, Anne, could talk, too, and perhaps Trix and Pringle would escape from the spell that bound them and some kind of conversation would be possible. But he simply sat there and ate. Perhaps he thought it was really the best thing to do ... perhaps he was afraid of sayiing something that would still further enrage the evidently already enraged parent of his lady.

"Will you please start the pickles, Miss Shirley?" said Mrs. Taylor faintly.

Something wicked stirred in Anne. She started the pickles ... and something else. Without letting herself stop to think she bent forward, her great, gray-green eyes glimmering limpidly, and said gently,

"Perhaps you would be surprised to hear, Dr. Carter, that Mr. Taylor went deaf very suddenly last week?"

Anne sat back, having thrown her bomb. She could not tell precisely what she expected or hoped. If Dr. Carter got the impression that his host was deaf instead of in a towering rage of silence, it might loosen his tongue. She had not told a falsehood ... she had not said Cyrus Taylor was deaf. As for Cyrus Taylor, if she had hoped to make him speak she had failed. He merely glared at her, still in silence.

But Anne's remark had an effect ofn Trix and Pringle that she had never dreamed of. Trix was in a silent rage herself. She had, the moment before Anne had hurled her rhetorical question, seen Esme furtively wipe away a tear that had escaped from one of her despairing blue eyes. Everything was hopeless ... Lennox Carter would never ask Esme to marry him now ... it didn't matter any more what any one said or did. Trix was suddenly possessed with a burning desire to get square with her brutal father. Anne's speech gave her a weird inspiration, and Pringle, a volcano of suppressed impishness, blinked his white eyelashes for a dazed moment and then promptly followed her lead. Never, as long as they might live, would Anne, Esme or Mrs. Cyrus forget the dreadful quarter of an hour that followed.

"Such an affliction for poor papa," said Trix, addressing Dr. Carter across the table. "And him only sixty-eight."

Two little white dents appeared at the corners of Cyrus Taylor's nostrils when he heard his age advanced six years. But he remained silent.

"It's such a treat to have a decent meal," said Pringle, clearly and distinctly. "What would you think, Dr. Carter, of a man who makes his family live on fruit and eggs ... nothing but fruit and eggs ... just for a fad?"

"Does your father ...?" began Dr. Carter bewilderedly.

"What would you think of a husband who bit his wife when she put up curtains he didn't like ... deliberately bit her?" demanded Trix.

"Till the blood came," added Pringle solemnly.

"Do you mean to say your father ...?"

"What would you think of a man who would cut up a silk dress of his wife's just because the way it was made didn't suit him?" said Trix.

"What would you think," said Pringle, "of a man who refuses to let his wife have a dog?"

"When she would so love to have one," sighed Trix.

"What would you think of a man," continued Pringle, who was beginning to enjoy himself hugely, "who would give his wife a pair of goloshes for a Christmas present ... nothing but a pair of goloshes?"

"Goloshes don't exactly warm the heart," admitted Dr. Carter. His eyes met Anne's and he smiled. Anne reflected that she had never seen him smile before. It changed his face wonderfully for the better. What was Trix saying? Who would have thought she could be such a demon?

"Have you ever wondered, Dr. Carter, how awful it must be to live with a man who thinks nothing ... nothing -- of picking up the roast, if it isn't perfectly done, and hurling it at the maid?"

Dr. Carter glanced apprehensively at Cyrus Taylor, as if he feared Cyrus might throw the skeletons of the chickens at somebody. Then he seemed to remember comfortingly that his host was deaf.

"What would you think of a man who believed the earth was flat?" asked Pringle.

Anne thought Cyrus would speak then. A tremor seemed to pass over his rubicund face, but no words came. Still, she was sure his mustaches were a little less defiant.

"What would you think of a man who let his aunt ... his only aunt ... go to the poorhouse?" asked Trix.

"And pastured his cow in the graveyard?" said Pringle. "Summerside hasn't got over that sight yet."

"What would you think of a man who would write down in his diary every day what he had for dinner?" asked Trix.

"The great Pepys did that," said Dr. Carter with another smile. His voice sounded as if he would like to laugh. Perhaps after all he was not pompous, thought Anne ... only young and shy and overserious. But she was feeling positively aghast. She had never meant things to go as far as this. She was finding out that it is much easier to start things than finish them. Trix and Pringle were being diabolically clever. They had not said that their father did a single one of those things. Anne could fancy Pringle saying, his round eyes rounder still with pretended innocence, "I just asked those questions of Dr. Carter for information."

"What would you think," kept on Trix, "of a man who opens and reads his wife's letters?"

"What would you think of a man who would go to a funeral ... his father's funeral ... in overalls?" asked Pringle.

What would they think of next? Mrs. Cyrus was crying openly and Esme was quite calm with despair. Nothing amttered any more. She turned and looked squarely at Dr. Carter, whom she had lost forever. For once in her life she was stung into saying a really clever thing.

"What," she asked queitly, "would you think of a man who spent a whole day hunting for the kittens of a poor cat who had been shot, because he couldn't bear to think of them starving to death?"

A strange silence descended on the room. Trix and Pringle looked suddenly ashamed of themselves. And then Mrs. Cyrus piped up, feeling it her wifely duty to back up Esme's unexpected defense of her father.

"And he can crochet so beautifully ... he made the loveliest centerpiece for the parlor table last winter when he was laid up with lumbago."

Every one has some limit of endurance and Cyrus Taylor had reached his. He gave his chair such a furious backward push that it shot instantly across the polished floor and struck the table on which the vase stood. The table went over and the vase broke in the traditional thousand pieces. Cyrus, his bushy white eyebrows fairly bristling with wrath, stood up and exploded at last.

"I don't crochet, woman! Is one contemptible doily going to blast a man's reputation forever? I was so bad with that blamed lumbago I didn't know what I was doing. And I'm deaf, am I, Miss Shirley? I'm deaf?"

"She didn't say you were, Papa," cried Trix, who was never afraid of her father when his temper was vocal.

"Oh, no, she didn't say it. None of you said anything. You didn't say I was sixty-eight when I'm only sixty-two, did you? You didn't say I wouldn't let your mother have a dog! Good Lord, woman, you can have forty thousand dogs if you want to and you know it! When did I ever deny you anything you wanted ... when?"

"Never, Poppa, never," sobbed Mrs. Cyrus brokenly. "And I never wanted a dog. I never even thought of wanting a dog, Poppa."

"When did I open your letters? When have I ever kept a diary? A diary! When did I ever wear overalls to anybody's funeral? When did I pasture a cow in the graveyard? What aunt of mine is in the poorhouse? Did I ever throw a roast at anybody? Did I ever make you live on fruit and eggs?"

"Never, Poppa, never," wept Mrs. Cyrus. "You've always been a good provider ... the best."

"Didn't you tell me you wanted goloshes last Christmas?"

"Yes, oh yes; of course I did, Poppa. And my feet have been so nice and warm all winter."

"Well, then!" Cyrus threw a triumphant glance around the room. His eyes encountered Anne's. Suddenly the unexpected happened. Cyrus chuckled. His cheeks actually dimpled. Those dimples worked a miracle with his whole expression. He brought his chair back to the table and sat down.

"I've got a very bad habit of sulking, Dr. Carter. Every one has some bad habit ... that's mine. The only one. Come, come, Momma, stop crying. I admit I deserved all I got except that crack of yours about crocheting. Esme, my girl, I won't forget that you were the only one who stood up for me. Tell Maggie to come and clear up that mess ... I know you're all glad the darn thing is smashed ... and bring on the pudding."

The Books: "Anne of the Island" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction shelves:

Next book on the shelf is Anne of the Island by L.M. Montgomery.

I love this one. I love all of them but I love this one especially. This is the story of Anne's college years - and so many people come into the story here who become Anne's lifelong friends - and I just love them all. I LOVE Philippa (Phil, for short). She is a college chum - and a group of them end up renting a house together. Phil, Anne, Priscilla and Stella. These four girls make up the heart and soul of this book. You just wish you lived in that town and you could go hang out at Patty's Place (the name of their house). It's all very exciting - their classes, professors, their various romances ... Each girl is distinct. Lucy Maud is so good at letting us know WHO someone is, and then keeping that character consistent (through multiple books, written over a 30 year period - now that is quite a feat). Phil doesn't talk like Priscilla - you could tell who was speaking even if Lucy Maud didn't write: "Phil said" or "Priscilla said".

Gilbert Blythe is also at college - (as well as google-eyed Charlie Sloane. Poor Charlie Sloane.) He and Anne hang out together. They are "friends". Any time Gilbert tries to make it something more, he gets the brush-off. But Gilbert is now on the other side of the fence - he can't let it go. He tries to be her friend - but his feelings for her are more, and that's final. Anne, for reasons best known to herself (it has something to do with her Ideal Man, and Gilbert just is NOT that) just doesn't want to "go there" with Gilbert. She still has girlhood dreams of Prince Charming, and getting swept away by a tall dark stranger, and all that. Gilbert has been her friend since they were 11. He's studying to be a doctor. He just doesn't have that romantic aura of mystery. Gilbert goes through hell in this book. Eventually, he just comes out and states his intentions (GO, GILBERT!) He stops trying to move the conversation towards romance, or the future - and says what he means and what he wants. He tells her he loves her, and he wants to marry her. Anne, heart-stricken (because she does really "like" Gilbert) tells him no. And to please never mention it again. Their friendship is kind of ruined. Lucy Maud has one paragraph where she describes Gilbert's response - and it says it all:

There was another pause -- so long and so dreadful that Anne was driven at last to look up. Gilbert's face was white to the lips. And his eyes -- but Anne shuddered and looked away. There was nothing romantic about this. Must proposals be either grotesque or -- horrible? Could she ever forget Gilbert's face?

That happens halfway through the book. In the second half, Anne does meet a tall dark romantic stranger. During a rainstorm in the park, they meet up in a gazebo to keep dry. He is new at school. He is rich. His name is Royal Gardner. I mean, come ON. As a reader, it's frustrating - because you read about Royal - and you see how he says all the right things, lovey-dovey things, and he sends her flowers, and blah blah ... but ... but ... how on earth could they possibly be right together? But we've all made mistakes in love. We've all put our Ideals before Reality. Well, maybe not all of us, but many of us. Anne sees the trappings, and decides that he is Prince Charming. No matter that he doesn't really have a sense of humor. No matter that his mother is a total nightmare (the story of her surprise visit to Patty's Place is so funny!! Of course she shows up unannounced on the day the girls are cleaning). Anne is "in love". All of her friends, though, are kind of skeptical. They like Roy, but ...

This is not the only storyline in the book, of course. Other things happen: Diana gets married. Ruby Gillis develops consumption (the chapter where Anne goes to visit Ruby at night, and they sit in the moonlit garden and talk about the death that is approraching - is one of my favorite chapters in the book. SO GOOD. Her writing ...) Anne also does some summer-school teaching. The story of Phil's romance (or - her last romance, I should say) is wonderful. Phil is a great character: she's rich, she's smart, she's gorgeous, and she is not serious about anything. Or, no, that's not true: she's serious about math. She's a math whiz. She gets straight As. But other than her schoolwork, all she does is date 3 or 4 guys at the same time, keeping everyone hanging. And she has two guys at home waiting for her every word (uhm - Alec and Alonzo are their names, of course). If you look just at the surface of Phil, you might think she was a vain and silly girl. And maybe she is. But she also admits it. She says flat out, "I can't be poor. I'm just going to have fun while I can - and then marry a rich rich man." She seems to have a huge ego - and no sense that she could actually lose herself in someone else, that she could actually fall in love. Until she does. And of course it is with someone so inappropriate for her (in the eyes of the world, and her blueblood family) - someone she never would have picked out for herself - someone who has none of the "qualifications" she has listed for a husband ... but ... she falls head over heels. Why? Because he makes her laugh, and he also looks at her as though he SEES her. He sees right THROUGH her. He sees past the vanity, and the clothes, and the fun-girl facade - and sees the serious-hearted beautiful soul inside. She feels revealed. He is a minister. He is POOR. But she falls head over heels. And put a fork in Phil, she's done. No more dating, she kicks all the hovering guys to the curb, and decides: well, I guess I'm going to be a poor minister's wife. Because there's no other man for me. There's something in that whole Phil subplot that I really love, and always have. To me, it shows Lucy Maud's understanding of the depths we can go to to fool ourselves, and also - that sometimes all it takes is one person to say: "Yes. I SEE you. You know I do. I SEE you." And the best part is that Phil is the LAST person you would think would have such an experience. Isn't that the way it so often goes in life?

What are some of the other episodes you all love?? So many good ones to choose from this book.

Here's an excerpt. Anne is home in Avonlea for her summer vacation. Gilbert has proposed to her - and she said no. Not only does Anne have to deal with her own grief that she has ruined a good friendship, she also has to deal with all of her friends saying: "ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND, ANNE SHIRLEY?"

Excerpt from Anne of the Island by L.M. Montgomery.

Apart from this, Anne enjoyed her summer. Priscilla came for a merry visit in June; and when she had gone, Mr. and Mrs. Irving. Paul and Charlotta the ourth came "home" for July and August.

Echo Lodge was the scene of gaeities once more, and the echoes over the river were kept busy mimicking the laughter that rang in the old garden behind the spruces.

"Miss Lavender" had not changed, except to grow even sweeter and prettier. Paul adored her, and the companionship between them was beautiful to see.

"But I don't call her 'mother' just by itself," he explained to Anne. "You see, that name belongs just to my own little mother, and I can't give it to any one else. You know, teacher. But I call her 'Mother Lavender' and I love her next best to father. I -- I even love her a little better than you, teacher."

"Which is just as it ought to be," answered Anne.

Paul was thirteen now and very tall for his years. His face and eyes were as beautiful as ever, and his fancy was still like a prism, separating everything that fell upon it into rainbows. He and Anne had delightful rambles to wood and field and shore. Never were there two more thoroughly "kindred spirits".

Charlotta the Fourth had blossomed out into young ladyhood. She wore her hair now in an enormous pompador and had discarded the blue ribbon bows of auld lang syne, but her face was as freckled, her nose as snubbed, and her mouth and smiles as wide as ever.

"You don't think I talk with a Yankee accent, do you, Miss Shirley, ma'am?" she demanded anxiously.

"I don't notice it, Charlotta."

"I'm real glad of that. They said I did at home, but I thought likely they just wanted to aggravate me. I don't want no Yankee acent. Not that I've a word to say against the Yankees, Miss Shirley, ma'am. They're real civilized. But give me old P.E. Island every time."

Paul spent his first fortnight with his grandmother Irving in Avonlea. Anne was there to meet him when he came, and found him wild with eagerness to get to the shore -- Nora and the Golden Lady and the Twin Sailors would be there. He could hardly wait to eat his supper. Could he not see Nora's elfin face peering around the point, watching for him wistfully? But it was a very sober Paul who came back from the shore in the twilight."

"Didn't you find your Rock People?" asked Anne.

Paul shook his chestnut curls sorrowfully.

"The Twin Sailors and the Golden Lady never came at all," he said. "Nora was there -- but Nora is not the same, teacher. She is changed."

"Oh, Paul, it is you who are changed," said Anne. "You have grown too old for the Rock People. They like only children for playfellows. I am afraid the Twin Sailors will never again come to you in the pearly, enchanged boat with the sail of moonshine' and the Golden Lady will play no more for you on her golden harp. Even Nora will not meet you much longer. You must pay the penalty of growing up, Paul. You must leave fairyland behind you."

"You two talk as much foolishness as ever you did," said old Mrs. irving, half-indulgently, half-reprovingly.

"Oh, no, we don't," said Anne, shaking her head gravely. "We are getting very, very wise, and it is such a pity. We are never half so interesting when we have learned that language is given us to enable us to conceal our thoughts."

"But it isn't -- it is given us to exchange our thoughts," said Mrs. Irving anxiously. She had never heard of Tallyrand and did not understand epigrams.

Anne spent a fortnight of halcyon days at Echo Lodge in the golden prime of August. While there she incidentally contrived to hurry Ludovic Speed in his leisurely courting of Theodora Dix, as related duly in another chronicle of her history. Arnold Sherman, an elderly friend of the Irvings, was there at the same time, and added not a little to general pleasantness of life.

"What a nice play-time this has been," said Anne. "I feel like a giant refreshed. And it's only a fortnight more till I go back to Kingsport, and Redmond, and Patty's Place. Patty's Place is the dearest spot, Miss Lavender. I feel as if I had two houses -- one at Green Gables and one at Patt's Place. But where has the summer gone? It doesn't seem a day since I came home that spring evening with the Mayflowers. When I was little I couldn't see from one end of the summer to the other. It stretched before me like an unending season. Now ''tis a handbreadth, 'tis a tale.'"

"Anne, are you and Gilbert Blythe as good friends as you used to be?" asked Miss Lavender quietly.

"I am just as much Gilbert's friend as ever I was, Miss Lavender."

Miss Lavender shook her head.

"I see something's gone wrong, Anne. I'm going to be impertinent and ask what. Have you quarrelled?"

"No, it's only that Gilbert wants more than friendship and I can't give him more."

"Are you sure of that, Anne?"

"Perfectly sure."

"I'm very, very sorry."

"I wonder why everybody seems to think I ought to marry Gilbert Blythe," said Anne petulantly.

"Because you were made and meant for each other, Anne -- that is why. You needn't toss that young head of yours. It's a fact."

The Books: "Anne Of Avonlea" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction shelves:

Next book on the shelf is Anne Of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery.

As Anne fans will remember: at the end of Anne of Green Gables - [SPOILER ALERT - THIS SPOILER ALERT IS MAINLY FOR TRACEY WHO HASN'T READ THEM YET BUT WHO REALLY SHOULD - JUST BECAUSE I REALLY REALLY THINK SHE WILL FLIP OVER THEM]

Okay - so at the end of Anne of Green Gables (excerpt here) Matthew dies, and this huge life-event puts Anne's plans into a tailspin. She had graduated from Queen's College - a 2 year teaching college - and was going to go on for further education. The first girl on the Island to do so. But in lieu of the changed circumstances, she really didn't feel like she should leave Marilla all alone. Gilbert Blythe had been "given" the Avonlea school - he was going to be teaching there in the fall - but when he heard about Anne's situation, he secretly went to the Board and asked if Anne could take the position in the school, instead of himself. Because it would be so convenient for her - she could live at home, to help Marilla, AND have a job. It is a selfless act on Gilbert's part ... and for most of the book of Anne of Green Gables - she and Gilbert have been sworn enemies. Because he had pulled her hair and called her "carrot-top". When he was 11 years old. Anne is still holding a haughty grudge at age 17. hahahaha Actually, I wouldn't say that she and Gilbert are sworn enemies - because that would imply Gilbert feeling the same way. I think it's just that Anne considers Gilbert to be her sworn enemy, and even as she grows older - she feels that she just cannot give up her grudge. She is too proud for that. (Naturally, in the context of the book - all of this is VERY romantic.) So anyway - the fact that her sworn enemy would make such a sacrifice to help HER out - sort of snaps her out of her haughty hatred of him. He would do this ... for her??? The last scene in Green Gables is Anne going up to Gilbert - as they pass each other on the lane - and saying, "I don't know how to thank you ..." and finally, finally, these two people make up. They don't KISS and make up - oh no - not yet - we have a couple more books to wait for all THAT stuff to start happening ... but they shake hands, and from them on - they are friends. It's like they have walked out of childhood in that moment. They're going to be adults now. Adults don't hold grudges. And these two should definitely be friends. Gilbert, in a way, with his male intuition (often more primal and instinctive than female intuition), always sensed the, shall we say, chemistry between the two of them. He might not have been like, "I will marry her some day!" But he was like: "Wow. Look at that new girl. I NEED her to notice me. Because I think she's smart and I bet we could get along great." So - in his 11 year old boy personality - pulling her hair and shouting "carrot top" was his way of doing that, of saying "I like you. You;'re different. We should be friends." Anne is a bit slower to catch onto this. She truly believes that she hates Gilbert. Sometimes you want to SHAKE ANNE out of her ridiculous ideas! Especially when you get to Anne of the Island (excerpt here). I mean: GILBERT IS RIGHT THERE, ANNE. AND YOU GO OUT WITH THAT DARK-HARIED FOP??? OPEN YOUR EYES! Oh well, I guess we all have to go through something like that - although I have usually been on the Gilbert side of the fence, staring in horror at some guy I truly believed was IT - a guy I loved more than anything - and watching, in horror, as he marries some bossy bitch who treats him like shit.

But I digress.

So the next book in the series is about Anne's year of teaching in the little Avonlea schoolhouse.

There are some great episodes in this book - and one of my favorite ones in ALL the series happens in this book - when she and Diana are going to ask a neighboring woman if they can buy her platter (they really need it - and they THINK she has one just like the one they need) - and the lady is not home, so Anne crawls up onto the roof (Anne. That is so inappropriate) of the little pantry shed so that she can peek through the window in the roof, I believe, just to PEEK and see if she can see the platter. She doesn't want to STEAL it, she just wants to SEE it. And naturally the roof caves in. But not entirely. Anne is stuck halfway down. So her torso emerges from the damn roof, and her legs dangle down into this lady's shed. I am laughing out loud as I type this. I laugh out loud every time I read the episode. Diana tries to pull her out - but the beams poke into Anne's side - it cannot be done. So they just have to wait for the lady to return. Naturally, a huge rainstorm comes. Diana runs to the buggy, gets the umbrella, and gives it to Anne - then Diana sits in the buggy. So there is Anne, sticking halfway out of a neighbor's roof, HOLDING AN UMBRELLA. Seriously - I am laughing out loud right now. And naturally, the lady drives up the lane right at this point. And she is, naturally, somewhat amazed to see a girl sticking up out of her roof holding an umbrella. I just can see the whole tableau in my mind and it NEVER strikes me as anything less than hilarious.

I also love when she accidentally sells her neighbor's cow. She thinks she is selling her own cow, but in reality - she sells Mr. Harrison's cow. Like: Anne. Please don't sell other people's livestock. Her response when she discovers what she has done ... and of course, in true Anne fashion, she goes over to confess to her scary neighbor what she has done ... and eventually, they become lifelong friends. He is an old crank, a true curmudgeon - but there's something about Anne that delights him. She seems to have that effect on people.

Other episodes from the book (and please, dear fellow readers - tell me your favorite episodes from this book!!) are:

-- befriending Paul - her favorite student. A fanciful little boy who Anne truly believes is a genius
-- dealing with Anthony Pye - the sullen bully of the school
-- Marilla adopts twins. Marilla! Davy and Dora ... they are orphaned ... they are 8 years old, I believe and they come to stay at Green Gables. Davy is an absolute terror and Dora is goodness personified. Davy gets into some horrible scrapes - but of course - you love him more. You always love those who struggle more.
-- Oh, and Miss Lavender!! Diana and Anne discover an old romantic stone house out in the middle of the woods one day ... and there's a beautiful "old" lady living there - her hair is white, but I think she's only in her 40s. She is sort of like Anne - living in a fantasy world - only she's a full adult. Anne recognizes a kindred spirit immediately. They become friends. Dear dear friends. of course there was a sad thwarted romance in Miss Lavender's past - we eventually hear the whole thing (Lucy Maud is very big on MISUNDERSTANDING being the root of all evil. So many of her huge plot points, especially with romances, hinge on one person completely misunderstanding the message. Or not getting the message at all. "40 years ago, I wrote you a letter asking you to come join me and marry me!" The response is: "I never got the letter." Etc.)

Let's see. What else. Oh yes - Anne and Diana create an "Improvement Society" - they want to plant public gardens in Avonlea, and have rotted trees removed, and have so and so pull down his old crumbling barn, and basically improve the look of the place. A group of their friends join - and they take subscriptions and deal with resistance - and in general, try to shake Avonlea into some sense of civic responsibility.

There are many more great episodes - I'd love to hear some of your favorites.

The book ends with Mr. Lynde dying - and Rachel Lynde decides to move in with Marilla. Although they bicker and snipe at each other, they are truly good friends, and a comfort to one another. Mrs. Lynde can help raise the twins and help out Marilla. Which then frees Anne up. She then decides that she will go to college. The book ends there - on the crossroads. Anne is going to go to college. Her year of teaching is at an end. Oh - and Gilbert will be at the same college. So .... hmmmmmmm

Anyway, I had a hard time picking an excerpt - but I decided to go with something that I think demonstrates the true special-ness of Lucy Maud Montgomery's storytelling ability (as well as her writing). In a lot of her books - we read the protagonist's letters. Windy Poplars (excerpt here) is almost ALL letters. In the Emily series (which I actually like better than the Anne series - amazing!!) - the second book in the series has extensive excerpts from Emily's private journal. Lucy Maud doesn't just go for straight narration.

And listen to this letter. Anne is describing her teaching experiences to a friend. But ... I don't know ... what I really get from this excerpt is how many STORIES Lucy Maud has to tell. This letter feels REAL to me - as though she might have copied it verbatim from a letter she either once wrote or received. It seems that real to me. It also makes me laugh out loud. The student "Barbara Shaw" is the most clumsy girl in school. Disasters follow in her wake. Stoves blow up. Roofs cave in. Barbara is a magnet for tripping, falling, rolling, bruised knees ... anyway, the excerpt ends with Barbara's composition. We have already gotten to know Barbara's disasters. So listen to what she writes.

Excerpt from Anne Of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery.

"Teaching is really very interesting work," wrote Anne to a Queen's Academy chum. "Jane says she thinks it is monotonous but I don't find it so. Something funny is almost sure to happen every day, and the children say such amusing things. Jane says she punishes her pupils when they make funny speeches, which is probably why she finds teaching monotonous. This afternoon little Jimmy Andrews was trying to spell 'speckled,' and couldn't manage it. 'Well,' he said finally, 'I can't spell it but I know it means.'

"'What does it mean?' I asked.

"'St. Clair Donnell's face, miss.'

"St. Clair is certainly very much freckled, although I try to prevent the others from commenting on it ... for I was freckled once and well do I remember it. But I don't think St. Clair minds. It was because Jimmy called him 'St. Clair' that St. Clair pounded him on the way home from school. I heard of the pounding, but not officially, so I don't think I'll take any notice of it.

"Yesterday I was trying to teach Lottie Wright to do addition. I said, 'If you had three candies in one hand and two in the other, how many would you have altogether?' 'A mouthful,' said Lottie. And in the nature study class, when I asked them to give me a good reason why toads shouldn't be killed, Benjie Sloane gravely answered, 'Because it would rain the next day.'

"It's so hard not to laugh, Stella. I have to save up all my amusment until I get home, and Marilla says it makes her nervous to hear wild shrieks of mirth proceeding from the east gable without any apparent cause. She says a man in Grafton went insane once and that was how it began.

"Did you know that Thomas a Becket was canonized as a snake? Rose Bell says he was ... also that William Tyndale wrote the New Testament. Claude White says a 'glacier' is a man who puts in window frames!

"I think the most difficult thing in teaching, as well as the most interesting, is to get the children to tell you their real thoughts about things. One stormy day last week I gathered them around me at dinner hour and tried to get them to talk to me just as if I were one of themselves. I asked them to tell me the things they most wanted. Some of the answers were commonplace enough ... dolls, ponies, and skates. Others were decidedly original. Hester Boulter wanted 'to wear her Sunday dress every day and eat in the sitting room.' Hannah Bell wanted 'to be good wihtout having to take any trouble about it.' Marjory White, aged ten, wanted to be a widow. Questioned why, she gravely said that if you weren't married people called you an old maid, and if you were your husband bossed yo; but if you were a widow there'd be no danger of either. The most remarkable wish was Sally Bell's. She wanted a 'honeymoon'. I asked her if she knew what it was and she said she thought it was an extra nice kind of bicycle because her cousin in Montreal went on a honeymoon when he was married and he had always had the very latest in bicycles!

"Another day I asked them all to tell me the naughtiest thing they had ever done. I couldn't get the older ones to do so, but the third class answered quite freely. Eliza Bell had 'set fire to her aunt's carded rolls.' Asked if she meant to do it she said, 'not altogether.' She just tried a little end to see how it would burn and the whole bundle blazed up in a jiffy. Emerson Gillis had spent ten cents for candy when he should have put it in his missionary box. Annetta Bell's worst crime was 'eating some blueberries that grew in the graveyard.' Willie White had 'slid down the sheephouse roof a lot of times with his Sunday trousers on.' 'But I was punished for it 'cause I had to wear patched pants to Sunday school all summer, and when you're punished for a thing you don't have to repent of it,' declared Willie.

"I wish you could see some of their compositions ... so much do I wish it that I'll send you copies of some written recently. Last week I told the fourth class I wanted them to write me letters about anything they pleased, adding by way of suggestion that they might tell me of some place they had visited or some interesting thing or person they had seen. They were to write the letters on real note paper, seal them in an envelope, and address them to me, all without any assistance from other people. Last Friday morning I found a pile of letters on my desk and that evening I realized afresh that teaching has its pleasures as well as its pains. Those compositions would stone for much. Here is Ned Clay's, address, spelling, and grammar as originally penned.

"'Miss teacher ShiRley
"'Green gabels.
"'p.e. Island can

"'birds

"Dear teacher I think I will write you a composition about birds. birds is very useful animals. my cat catches birds. His name is William but pa calls him tom. he is oll striped and he got one of his ears froz of last winter. only for that he would be a goodlooking cat. My unkle has adopted a cat. it come to his house one day and wouldent go away and unkle says it has forgot more than most people ever knowed. he lets it sleep on his rocking chare and my aunt says he thinks more of it than he does of his children. that is not right. we ought to be kind to cats and give them new milk but we ought not to be better to them than to our children. this is oll I can think of so no more at present from

"'edward black ClaY.'

"St. Clair Donnell's is, as usual, short and to the point. St. Clair never wastes words. I do not think he chose his subject or added the postscript out of malice aforethought. It is just that he has not a great deal of tact or imagination.

"'Dear Miss Shirley

"'You told us to describe something strange we have seen. I will describe the Avonlea Hall. It has two doors, an inside one and an outside one. It has six windows and a chimney. It has two ends and two sides. It is painted blue. That is what makes it strange. It is built on the lower Carmondy road. It is the third most important building in Avonlea. The others are the church and the blacksmith shop. They hold debating clubs and lectures in it and concerts.

"'Yours truly,
"Jacob Donnell.

"'P.S. The hall is a very bright blue.'

"Annetta Bell's letter was quite long, which surprised me, for writing essays is not Annetta's forte, and hers are generally as brief as St. Clair's. Annetta is a quiet little puss and a model of good behaviour, but there isn't a shadow of originality in her. Her is her letter; --

"'Dearest teacher,

"'I think I will write you a letter to tell you how much I love you. I love you with my whole heart and soul and mind ... with all there is of me to love ... and I want to serve you for ever. It would be my highest privilege. Taht is why I try so hard to be good at school and learn my lessons.

"'You are so beautiful, my teacher. Your voice is like music and your eyes are like pansies when the dew is on them. You are like a tall stately queen. Your hair is like rippling gold. Anthony Pye says it is red, but you needn't pay any attention to Anthony.

"'I have only known you for a few months but I cannot realize that there was ever a time when I did not know you ... when you had not come into my life to bless and hallow it. I will always look back to this year as the most wonderful in my life because it brought you to me. besides, it's the year we moved to Avonlea from newbridge. My love for you has made my life very rich and it has kept me from much of harm and evil. I owe this all to you, my sweetest teacher.

"'I shall never forget how sweet you looked the last time I saw you in that black dress with flowers in your hair. I shall see you like that for ever, even when we are both old and gray. You will always be young and fair to me, dearest teacher. I am thinking of you all the time ... in the morning and at the noontide and at the twilight ... I love you when you laugh and when you sigh ... even when you look disdainful. I never saw you look cross though Anthony Pye says you always look so but I don't wonder you look cross at him for he deserves it. I love you in every dress ... you seem more adorable in each new dress than the last.

"'Dearest teacher, good night. The sun has set and the stars are shining ... stars that are as bright and beautiful as your eyes. I kiss your hands and face, my sweet. May God watch over you and protect you from all hard.

"'Your afecksionate pupil
"'Annetta Bell.'

"This extraordinary letter puzzled me not a little. I knew Annetta couldn't have composed it any more than she could fly. When I went to school the next day I took her for a walk down to the brook at recess and asked her to tell me the truth about the letter. Annetta cried and 'fessed up freely. She said she had never written a letter and she didn't know how to, or what to say, but there was a bundle of love letters in her other's top bureau drawer which had been written to her by an old 'beau'.

"'It wasn't father,' sobbed Annetta, 'it was someone who was studying for a minister, and so he could write lovely letters, but ma didn't marry him after all. She said she couldn't make out what he was driving at half the time. But I thought the letters were sweet and that I'd just copy things out of them here and there to write you. I put "teacher" where he put "lady" and I put in something of my own when I could think of it and I changed some words. I put "dress" in place of "mood". I didn't know just what a "mood" was but I s'posed it was something to wear. I didn't s'pose you'd know the difference. I don't see how you found out it wasn't all mine. You must be awful clever, teacher.'

"I told Annetta it was very wrong to copy another person's letter and pass it off as her own. But I'm afraid that all Annetta repented of was being found out.

"'And I do love you, teacher,' she sobbed. 'It was all true, even if the minister wrote it first. I do love you with all my heart.'

"It's very difficult to scold anybody properly under such circumstances.

"Here is Barbara Shaw's letter. I can't reproduce the blots of the original.

"'Dear teacher,

"'You said we might write about a visit. I never visited but once. It was at my Aunt Mary's last winter. My Aunt Mary is a very particular woman and a great housekeeper. The first night I was there we were at tea. I knocked over a jug and broke it. Aunt Mary said she had had that jug ever since she was married and nobody had ever broken it before. When we got up I stepped on her dress and all the gathers tore out of her skirt. The next morning when I got up I hit the pitcher against the basin and cracked them both and I upset a cup of tea on the tablecloth at breakfast. When I was helping Aunt Mary with the dinner dishes I dropped a china plate and it smashed. That evening I fell downstairs and sprained my ankle and had to stay in bed for a week. I heard Aunt Mary tell Uncle Joseph it was a mercy or I'd have broken everything in the house. When I got better it was time to go home. I don't like visiting very much. I like going to school better, especially since I came to Avonlea.

"'Yours respectfully,
"'Barbara Shaw.'"

The Books: "Anne Of Green Gables" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction shelves:

Next book on the shelf is Anne Of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery.

Buh-bye, Madeleine. Hello, Lucy Maud. Two of my obsessions back to back. Life is good. By the way, I went to Amazon to find a link to the book "Anne of Green Gables" - just flat out the book - just THE BOOK - and literally had a hard time finding a link to it. It has been so taken over - I;'ve seen copies of it that are abridged - ABRIDGED - it's not a long book to begin with!! Or dumbed-down vocabulary versions - for kids who have never heard of a dictionary. There are also Anne of Green Gables cookbooks, and journals, and audio books - and look, fine, you people are making a ton of money off of this industry, while Lucy Maud sleeps peacefully (God willing - and God knows she deserved it, after her miserable life) in her grave - but at LEAST let the first link on your stupid page be a link to, you know, THE ACTUAL BOOK THAT STARTED THIS WHOLE THING. HER book, not your dumbass abridged versions, or your dumbed-down "my first classics" versions. How 'bout giving me a link to HER BOOK? The one that compelled Mark Twain (MARK TWAIN) to write her a letter and say that "Anne is one of the immortal girls of literature, just like Alice ..." How 'bout that? I was pissed off scrolling through until page 9 or 10 to find a straight link to her actual book - with no doo-dads of gee-gaws or bric-a-brac added to it.

I got a comment rom an irate Canadian when I said I loved this book - this was long ago on this blog. The irate Canadian wrote in mostly caps: "YOU LIKED THIS BOOK? Canadians HATE this book!" I said to the irate Canadian that although it is hard to believe, I do not choose my beloved books using the criteria: Whether Or Not Canadians Would Approve.

The importance of this book in my life runs on multiple levels - first of all, it's flat out a great book. Anne is an amazing character - a complete original - I mean, once you meet that girl, you can never EVER forget her. She is emblazoned upon my brain. And it's also one of those books where - certain episodes seem to never fade from my mind. It's an episodic book - of the kind people don't really write anymore - and some of the episodes are now considered classic:

Anne dyeing her hair green
Anne getting Diana drunk by accident
The mouse drowned in the pudding
Smashing her slate over Gilbert's head when he calls her "carrot top"
Puffed sleeves

I mean, I could go on and on. L.M. Montgomery has woven some sort of spell - you literally watch this girl grow and change - You love her SO much, and there are times when you laugh out loud at some of the problems she causes, or some of the things she does - but ... it's never cute, or too moralistic, or too NEAT. Anne is strictly a human girl. She's not a lesson-to-be-taught, she's not a symbol. She LIVES.

Basically, the plot is: Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert are an elderly brother and sister, who live on a farm on Prince Edward Island. Their house is called Green Gables. They are in their 60s, and they figure they need some help on the farm - so they send to an orphanage for a young boy. They could raise him properly, but mainly - he could grow up to be a perpetual hired hand,. Some sort of fatal error occurs, the message is mixed up - and a girl is sent. A young fantasist with long carrot-orange braids - named Anne Shirley. An orphan. Who has had a hard-knock life so far, being shuffled about as a servant girl in horrible situations. A brou-haha ensues. Marilla is strict, stern (what an awesome character she is, huh??) ... eventually, of course, Anne stays.

The story is also about - how love can transform you. Marilla and Matthew find themselves LOVING this girl. For Matthew it is easy to love her. He is quiet, shy, kind, and just basically falls in love with Anne immediately. Marilla is a bit of a tougher nut to crack. "What use would she be to us???" she says sternly to Matthew. Matthew replies, 'We might be of some use to her."

So Anne stays.

This is a classic book of literature - even with all the brou-haha surrounding it - even with the INDUSTRY now devoted to keeping the Anne of Green Gables thing going - come hell or high water ... It's a classic book. Mark Twain was right. Anne Shirley is one of the "immortals".

Also, it's Lucy Maud's first novel. Way to hit it out of the park, LM.

One of the funniest parts of the book is watching Marilla - strict practical Marilla - try to deal with Anne ... especially in the beginning. Marilla has never been married, she doesn't have experience with kids anyway ... but this type of child? The type of child who lives in a fantasy world and who literally can talk for 20 minutes straight without a pause? Marilla has a hard time with that.

Here's an excerpt from the beginning of the book. Anne has just arrived. There is the brou-haha over her gender. Anne stays at Green Gables until the mistake can be sorted out. Marilla realizes, through experiencing Anne a bit, that she is almost a primitive child - like: she has not been brought up at ALL. She has all sorts of heathen-ish ideas about God and prayer - she hates church - she makes no bones about saying anything that pops into her head OUT LOUD ... so Marilla decides this child needs to be brought up proper, so she lets Anne stay. (Of course - you already get the idea that there are unplumbed depths in Marilla ... that perhaps this little redheaded witch has started to melt her down a bit ... )

This excerpt is where she tried (TRIES) to teach Anne to pray properly. She gives Anne a little card with a prayer on it and tells her to learn it by heart. Watch how Marilla desperately tries to deal with Anne ... it's so funny, in a way. Marilla is so stern and practical - and Anne just babbles on and on as though Marilla will completely understand what she is talking about .... It's hysterical, too, because the mere FACT that Marilla does not interrupt some of these long long monologues, shows that she gets sucked in in spite of herself.

Excerpt from Anne Of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery.

Anne set the card up against the jugful of apple blossoms she had brought in to decorate the dinner-table -- Marilla had eyed that decoration askance, but had said nothing -- propped her chin on her hands, and fell to studying it intently for several silent minutes.

"I like this," she announced at length. "It's beautiful. I've heard it before -- I heard the superintendent of the asylum Sunday-school say it over once. But I didn't like it then. He had such a cracked voice and he prayed it so mournfully. I really felt sure he thought praying was a disagreeable duty. This isn't poetry, but it makes me feel just the same way poetry does. 'Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed by Thy name.' That is just like a line of music. Oh, I'm so glad you thought of making me learn this, Miss --- Marilla."

"Well, learn it and hold your tongue," said Marilla shortly.

Anne tipped the vase of apple blossoms near enough to bestow a soft kiss on a pink-cupped bud, and then studied diligently for some moments longer.

"Marilla," she demanded presently, "do you think that I shall ever have a bosom friend in Avonela?"

"A -- a what kind of a friend?"

"A bosom friend -- an intimate friend, you know -- a really kindred spirit to whom I confide my inmost soul. I've dreamed of meeting her all my life. I never really supposed I would, but so many of my loveliest dreams have come true all at once that perhaps this one will, too. Do you think it's possible?"

"Diana Barry lives over at Orchard Slope and she's about your age. She's a very nice little girl, and perhaps she will be a playmate for you when she comes home. She's visiting her aunt over at Carmody just now. You'll have to be careful how you behave yourself, though. Mrs. Barry is a very particular woman. She won't let Diana play with any little girl who isn't nice and good."

Anne looked at Marilla through the apple blossoms, her eyes aglow with interest.

"What is Diana like? Her hair isn't red, is it? Oh, I hope not. It's bad enough to have red hair myself, but I positively couldn't endure it in a bosom friend."

"Diana is a very pretty little girl. She has black eyes and hair and rosy cheeks. And she is good and smart, which is better than being pretty."

Marilla was as fond of morals as the Duchess in Wonderland, and was firmly convinced that one should be tacked on to every remark made to a child who was being brought up.

But Anne waved the moral inconsequently aside and seized only on the delightful possibilities before it.

"Oh, I'm so glad she's pretty. Next to being beautiful oneself -- and that's impossible in my case -- it would be best to have a beautiful bosom friend. When I lived with Mrs. Thomas she had a bookcase in her sitting room with glass doors. There weren't any books in it; Mrs. Thomas kept her best china and her preserves there -- when she had any preserves to keep. One of the doors was broken. Mr. Thomas smashed it one night when he was slightly intoxicated. But the other was whole and I used to pretend that my reflection in it was another little girl who lived in it. I called her Katie Maurice, and we were very intimate. I used to talk to her by the hour, especially on Sunday, and tell her everything. Katie was the comfort and consolation of my life. We used to pretend that the bookcase was enchanted and that if I only knew the spell I could open the door and step right into the room where Katie Maurice lived, instead of into Mrs. Thomas' shelves of preserves and china. And then Katie Maurice would have taken me by the hand and led me out into a wonderful place, all flowers and sunshine and fairies, and we would have lived there happy for ever after. When I went to live with Mrs. Hammond it just broke my heart to leave Katie Maurice. She felt it dreadfully, too, I know she did, for she ewas crying when she kissed me good-bye through the bookcase door. There was no bookcase at Mrs. Hammond's. But just up the river a little way from the house there was a long green little valley, and the loveliest echo lived there. It echoed back every word you said, even if you didn't talk a bit loud. So I imagined that it was a little girl called Violetta and we were great friends and I loved her almost as well as I loved Katie Maurice -- not quite, but almost, you know. The night before I went to the asylum I said good-bye to Violetta, and oh, her good-bye came back to me in such sad, sad tones. I had become so attached to her that I hadn't the heart to imagine a bosom friend at that asylum, even if there had been any scope for imagination there."

"I think it's just as well there wasn't," said Marilla drily. "I don't approve of such goings-on. You seem to half believe your own imaginations. It will be well for you to have a real live friend to put such nonsense out of your head. But don't let Mrs. Barry hear you talking about your Katie Maurices and your Violettas or she'll think you tell stories."

"Oh, I won't. I couldn't talk of them to everybody -- their memories are too sacred for that. But I thought I'd like to have you know about them. Oh, look, here's a big bee just tumbled out of an apple blossom. Just think what a lovely place to live -- in an apple blossom! Fancy going to sleep in it when the wind was rocking it. If I wasn't a human girl I think I'd like to be a bee and live among the flowers."

"Yesterday you wanted to be a sea gull," sniffed Marilla. "I think you are very fickle minded. I told you to learn that prayer and not talk. But it seems impossible for you to stop talking if you've got anybody that will listen to you. So go up to your room and learn it."

"Oh, I know it pretty nearly all now -- all but the last line."

"Well, never mind, do as I tell you. Go to your room and finish learning it well, and stay there until I call you down to help me get tea."

"Can I take the apple blossoms with me for company?" pleaded Anne.

"No; you don't want your room cluttered up with flowers. You should have left them on the tree in the first place."

"I did feel a little that way, too," said Anne. "I kind of felt I shouldn't shorten their lovely lives by picking them -- I wouldn't want to be picked if I were an apple blossom. But the temptation was irresistible. What do you do when you meet with an irresistible temptation?"

"Anne, did you hear me tell you to go to your room?"

Anne sighed, retreated to the east gable, and sat down in a chair by the window.

"There -- I know this prayer. I learned that last sentence coming upstairs. Now I'm going to imagine things into this room so that they'll always stay imagined. The floor is covered with a white velvet carpet with pink roses all over it and there are pink silk curtains at the windows. The walls are hung with gold and silver brocade tapestry. The furniture is mahogany. I never saw any mahogany, but it does sound so luxurious. This is a couch all heaped with gorgeous silken cushions, pink and blue and crimson and gold, and I am reclining gracefully on it. I can see my reflection in that splendid big mirror hanging on the wall. I am tall and regal, clad in a gown of trailing white lace, with a pearl cross on my breast and pearls in my h air. My hair is of midnight darkness and my skin is a clear ivory pallor. My name is the Lady Cordelia Fitzgerald. No, it isn't -- I can't make that seem real."

She danced up to the little looking-glass and peered into it. Her pointed freckled face and solemn gray eyes peered back at her.

"You're only Anne of Green Gables," she said earnestly, "and I see you, just as you are looking now, whenever I try to imagine I'm the Lady Cordelia. But it's a million times nicer to be Anne of Green Gables than Anne of nowhere in particular, isn't it?"

She bent forward, kissed her reflection affectionately, and betook herself to the open window.

"Dear Snow Queen, good afternoon. And good afternoon, dear birches down in the hollow. And good afternoon, dear gray house on the hill. I wonder if Diana is to be my bosom friend. I hope she will, and I shall love her very much. But I must never quite forget Katie Maurice and Violetta. They would feel so hurt if I did and I'd hate to hurt anybody's feelings, even a little bookcase girl's or a little echo girl's. I must be careful to remember them and send them a kiss every day."

Anne blew a couple of airy kisses from her fingertips past the cherry blossoms and then, with her chin in her hands, drifted luxuriously out on a sea of daydreams.

The Books: "And Both Were Young" (Madeleine L'Engle)

Next book on my young adult shelves:

Next book on the shelf is And Both Were Young by Madeleine L'Engle.

When Madeleine L'Engle was 12 or 13, it became apparent that her father was dying. Her parents were consumed with their own tragedy and basically just could not deal with their daughter. Not in a bad way - they still loved her - they just didn't have the space to deal with her and raise her. So they sent her to a Swiss boarding school. L'Engle has written eloquently of those years - how lonely she was at first in the school, how she ached, how awful it was to be away from her parents, how she was never a real "joiner" - and boarding school was all about being a "joiner". She was a loner. She wanted to read. She wasn't a jock. Etc. She had a real tough time at first - but gradually, all of that changed - and she began to flourish. It's amazing what young people can not only get used to - but accept fully. L'Engle looks back on that time as one of the most formative of her life, in terms of becoming an artist.

Anyway - And Both Were Young (which was written when L'Engle was young, in her 20s - this was the 1940s) - and then, in the early 80s, L'Engle decided to update the book and reissue it. That's the version of it I have. L'Engle writes a little foreword, explaining that back then there were certain topics that were deemed unacceptable for a young audience - the main one being death. Death hangs over this book. It takes place directly in the wake of WWII - and in Europe - so it's a haunted place. Paul (the kid in the book) has lost his memory - because of withstanding a bombing raid on his town - he has no idea who he is - Also, the romance between Philippa and Paul (an innocent romance - they're 14 years old) had to be toned down. So later in her life - 40 years later - L'Engle put back in all the stuff she had been forced to take out and republished the book to great success. It's still in print. You can find it at any Barnes and Noble.

Any girl who has ever had a boarding school fantasy - this book will be like CANDY.

Philippa Hunter (nickname Flip) is dumped off at the Swiss boarding school - mainly because her father has a new young wife, and the wife SO does not want to have an awkward adolescent daughter. Philippa has led a sheltered American life - and all of the girls in this boarding school are breezily international, they all speak a gazillion languages, have boyfriends, and are fully ensconced. Philippa just doesn't fit in. She's a loner. She likes to read by herself - which is just seen as WEIRD. All of the other girls want to go skiing and flirt with men - or play ping-pong - or field hockey - and they don't get why Philippa wants to just be by herself!! They're mean to her at first. Not brutally mean - but mean in the way a pack of teenage girls can be mean to someone they sniff out as different. Eventually, though, Philippa proves herself to them - and she's accepted. L'Engle never takes the easy way out which I really like. She doesn't paint Philippa out to be an innocent victim - and all the other girls as bitches. No. She lets us know that Philippa has a lot of growing up to do. That sometimes it's better to not be so rigid with who you think you are - and maybe freakin' play some ping pong - because maybe you'll like it, and maybe you'll come out of your awkward shell a little bit.

Philippa, during one of her solitary walks, meets a boy named Paul. A beautiful boy. They click. In a very soulmate teenage kind of way. Philippa begins sneaking off the boarding school grounds to go hang out with him. This is strictly against the rules. But she doesn't care. Paul and Philippa just hang out in an abandoned barn (if I recall) and talk, and - become friends. Paul eventually reveals his secret - that he has no idea who he is. He was found in a bombed-out cellar, half-dead - and now he has no memory of the time before. He is tormented by this. Frankly, I can't remember how it all plays out.

But it does. Of course.

Lovely book. Perfect for teenage girls. I ate this shit UP when I was a young girl.

Here's an excerpt from the first chapter - when Philippa is having a HELLUVA time adjusting.

And the writing. I just want to mention one image - which is so good and yet - it's subtle - L'Engle doesn't LINGER on her good writing, she's not a showoff - but some of her images, and how she paints word pictures are startlingly fantastic. For example: //only a branch of elm appearing with shy abruptness as the mist was torn apart.// That whole section. Gorgeous. Well done.

Excerpt from And Both Were Young by Madeleine L'Engle.

Almost the most difficult thing, Flip found, was never being alone. From the moment she woke up in the morning until she fell asleep at night, she was surrounded by girls. She was constantly with them, but she never felt that she was of them. She tried to talk and laugh, to be like them, to join in their endless conversations about boys and holidays, and clothes and boys, and growing up and again boys, but always it seemed that she grew clumsier than ever and the wrong words tumbled out of her mouth. She felt like the ugly sister in the fairy tale she had loved when she was younger, the sister whose words turned into hideous toads, and all the other girls were like the beautiful sister whose words became pieces of gold. And she would stand on the hockey field when they chose teams, looking down at her toe scrounging in the grass, and pretend that she didn't care when the team that had the bad luck to get her let out a groan, or the gym teacher, Fraulein Hauser, snapped, "Philippa Hunter! How can you be so clumsy?" And Miss Tulip glossed over Jackie's untidy drawers and chided Flip because her comb and brush were out of line. And Miss Armstrong, the science teacher, cried, "Really, Philippa, can't you enter the classroom without knocking over a chair?" And when she fell and skinned her knees Miss Tulip was angry with her for tearing her stockings and even seemed to begrudge the iodine that she put on Flip's gory wounds.

If only I knew a lot of boys and could talk about them, she thought, or if I was good at sports.

But she had never really known any boys, and sports were a nightmare to her.

So in the common room she stood awkwardly about and tried to pretend she liked the loud jazz records Esmee played constantly on the phonograph. Usually she ended up out on the balcony, where she could at least see the mountains and the lake, but soon it became too cold out on the balcony in the dark, windy night air and she was forced to look for another refuge. If she went to the empty classroom, someone always came in to get something from a desk or the cupboard. They were not allowed to be in their rooms except at bedtime or when they were changing for dinner or during the Sunday afternoon quiet period. She was lonely, but never alone, and she felt that in order to preserve any sense of her own identity, to continue to believe in the importance of Philippa Hunter, human being, she must find, for at least a few minutes a day, the peace of solitude. At last, when she knew ultimately and forever how the caged animals constantly stared at in the zoo must feel, she discovered the chapel.

The chapel was in the basement of the school, with the ski room, the coat rooms, and the trunk rooms. It was a bare place with rough white walls and rows of folding chairs, a harmonium, and a small altar on a raised platform at one end. Every evening after dinner the girls marched from the dining room down the stairs to the basement and into the chapel, where one of the teacher read the evening service. Usually Flip simply sat with the others, not listening, not hearing anything but the subdued rustlings and whisperings about her. But one evening Madame Perceval took the service, reading in hre sensitive contralto voice, and Flip found herself listening for the first time to the beauty of the words: "Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all the earth: make a loud noise, and rejoice, and sing praise. Sing unto the Lord with th eharp, and the voice of the psalm ... let the hills be joyful together." And Flip could feel all about her in the night the mountains reaching gladly toward the sky, and the sound of the wind on the white peaks must be their song of praise. The others, too, as always when Madame Perceval was in charge, were quieter, not more subdued but suddenly more real; when Flip looked at them they seemed more like fellow creatures and less like alien beings to fear and hate.

After chapel that evening, when they were back in the common room, Flip pretended that she had left her handkerchief and slipped downstairs again to the cold basement. She was afraid of the dark, but she walked slowly down the cold corridor, lit only by a dim bulb at the far end, blundering into the trunk room, filled with the huge and terrifying shapes of trunks and suitcases, before she opened the door to the chapel.

Down one wall of the chapel were windows, and through these moonlight fell, somehow changing and distorting the rows of chairs, the altar, the reading stand. Flip drew in her breath in alarm as she looked at the organ and saw someone seated at it, crouched over the keys. But it was neither a murderer lying in wait for her nor a ghost, but a shadow cast by the moon. She slipped in and sat down on one of the chairs and she was trembling, but after a while her heart began beating normally and the room looked familiar again.

She remembered when she was a small girl, before her mother died, she had had an Irish nurse who often took her into the church just around the corner from their apartment. It was a small church, full of reds and blues and golds and the smell of incense. Once her nurse had taken her to a service and Flip had been wildly elated by it, by the singing of the choirboys, the chanting of the priest, the ringing of the bells; all had conspired to give her a sense of soaring happiness. It was the same kind of happiness that she felt when she saw the moonlight on the mountain peaks or the whole Rhone valley below her covered with clouds, and she could lean out over the balcony and be surrounded by cloud, lost in cloud, with only a branch of elm appearing with shy abruptness as the mist was torn apart.

Here in the nondenominational chapel at school she felt no sense of joy; there was no overwhelming beauty here between these stark walls, but gradually she began to relax. There was no sound but the wind in the trees; she could almost forget the life of the school going on above her. She did not try to pray, but she let the quiet sink into her, and when at last she rose she felt more complete; she felt that she could go upstairs and remain Philippa Hunter who was going to be an artist, and she would not be ashamed to be Philippa Hunter, no matter what the girls in her class thought of her.

The Books: "Camilla" (Madeleine L'Engle)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is Camilla by Madeleine L'Engle.

Camilla is a book that is not in the Austin series or the Murry series ... although (of course) some of the characters do reappear in those books. For instance - Frank, the person Camilla befriends in this book, ends up being one of the members of the conference that Polly works at in House Like a Lotus - only now he is a middle-aged man. Camilla also "stars" in another later book - which is, I believe, the last novel that L'Engle (so far) has written - called Live Coal in the Sea. Camilla is 15 in the first book, and in the second book she is an adult.

Camilla was written in 1965. Camilla is another one of L'Engle's indelible teenage characters. She is a native New Yorker (just like L'Engle was - L'Engle grew up on the streets of Manhattan) - and her parents are wealthy. Camilla has a nurse, they have a maid, whatever - it's a kind of New York that is completely divorced from most people's reality. Camilla is very fortunate. BUT ... everything SUCKS ... because suddenly, her parents - her ROCKS - are behaving like strangers to each other. There's tension between them. Anger. Her mother starts taking calls from some random French dude named Jacques. Camilla hates Jacques with the burning of a thousand suns. Basically, Camilla's nice neat little world starts to fall apart. It is shattering. L'Engle gets how shattering something like that is. Seeing your parents, for the first time, as fallible, and human ... Camilla's best friend is Luisa (another great character) - Luisa's family has always been all messed up, and Luisa never wants to go home because she hates the atmosphere at her house. Now suddenly, Camilla understands. Luisa's older brother Frank (and I can't remember where he had been ... maybe off to World War II??) - for whatever reason, Camilla had never met Frank - and suddenly, during this crisis in her life - she does. And they hit it off. It's a kindred spirit soulful friendship. There's also deeply romantic feelings from Camilla - well, from Frank as well. They wander the wintry streets of New York City - both avoiding going home - sititng in drugstores talking about the world, going to museums, the zoo ... It all ends up with Camilla getting her heart broken for the first time. But for her - the crisis has passed. She has separated herself from her parents who are, in the end, kind of selfish people. She differentiates herself, through her friendship with Frank. I loved this book - I should read this one again as well.

Oh - and Camilla is a science whiz. Forgot about that. Science is her THING.

Here's an excerpt where Frank takes her into a music shop to play her some music he wants her to hear.

Excerpt from Camilla by Madeleine L'Engle.

The music shop was empty when we went in and a gray-haired man and woman were sitting behind the counter. The woman came around the counter and put her arms round Frank, and just said, "Franky, Franky," and kissed him as though she were his mother.

Frank kissed her and just said, "Hi, Mrs. Stephanowski," and then he shook Mr. Stephanowski's hand and then he said, "This is Camilla. I brought her today because I want you to know her."

They both looked at me and I felt somehow that what they thought of me was terribly important and I was filled with relief when Mrs. Stephanowski smiled and took my hand in hers. Some customers came in then and Mr. Stephanowski said, "Take Camilla into one of the booths and give her a concert if you feel like it, Franky."

"Thanks, Mr. Stephanowski," Frank said. "I'd like to." He picked out an album and we went into the last of the small listening booths. Frank had me sit down in the chair. "Do you know Holst's The Planets?" he asked.

I shook my head. "No. What is it?"

"It's kind of queer," Frank told me, "but it's kind of wonderful. I thought maybe it might be interesting to you. Of course it isn't scientific or anything, but I think it's sort of interesting to listen to a musician's conception of stars. There's one place that sounds to me like the noise the planets must make grinding against space."

He put the record on and it was different from anything I knew. I knew Bach, and Beethoven and Brahms and Chopin and I loved them, especially Bach, but this music - it was like stars before you understand them, when you think an astronomer is an astrologer, when they are wild, distant, mysterious things. And as I listened I realized that the music had a plan to it, that none of the conflicting notes came by accident.

"Why haven't I heard this before!" I cried, and Frank smiled at me and changed the record. When he smiled, his face lit up in a way that I have never seen Luisa's light up, and he seemed to me completely beautiful.

When The Planets was finished, Frank said, "What next, Camilla? You choose something."

But I shook my head. "I'd rather listen to something you like particularly."

"Well," Frank said, "I have a game I play. I have music for everybody. That was Johnny's idea, doing that, and now David and I do it too. I'll play yours." He went out into the shop, where several customers were now gathered about the counter, and came back with another album.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Prokofiev's Third Piano Concerto. Particularly the andantino. You probably won't think it sounds like you." His voice was suddenly gruff and embarrassed.

I listened and it didn't sound to me like me, but it was as exciting and different as The Planets had been, and as I listened I was filled with a great tremendous excitement. Oh, I love I love I love! I cried inside myself. So many people, so many things! Music and stars and snow and weather! Oh, if one could always feel this warm love, this excitement, this glory of the infinite possibilities of life!

And as I listened to the music I knew that everything was possible.

"I think that's enough for a start," Frank said, and we went back into the shop.

The Books: "An Acceptable Time" (Madeleine L'Engle)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is An Acceptable Time by Madeleine L'Engle.

This is another book in the "time series" - meaning: the story of the Murry family and now the O'Keefe family. Polly O'Keefe, daughter of Meg and Calvin, has gone to live with her grandparents in the country - they're the Nobel Prize winning scientists, the parents in Wrinkle in Time. She's been sent to live with them because of her aptitude for science - and the science program in her local high school is way too slow and rudimentary. Her parents think she would benefit from time studying and working with her grandparents - so Polly takes time off and goes to live with them. The book opens slowly - meanderingly - Polly walking through the autumn woods, admiring the foliage ... and suddenly there in the woods - she sees Zachary - the guy she had met in Athens. What the ... what is he doing there?? He apparently is doing an internship at a law firm in Hartford and he tracked her down. He wants a romance. She pushes him off. Also, in the first chapter - during her walk - she sees a man first - standing there with a dog - he looks ... out of place ... odd - his hair is long and in a braid - and then later - she has a brief encounter with a girl ... also odd-looking ....

Anyway, it turns out that Polly has basically strolled through a time gate in the woods. There's a rip in the space-time continuum and Polly keep strolling through it ... back 3,000 years in time. There are basically Druids roaming through the New England woods.

It turns out that a Bishop in the nearby town had also discovered this time-gate and has been traveling back and forth with some frequency - collecting Ogam stones, doing research, etc. Bishop Colubra is friends with the Murrys - and when Polly mentions, casually, at the dinner table (before she knows about the time gate) that she saw these two odd-looking people in the woods, Bishop Colubra freaks out. He fears that Polly might get caught back in the past- that she will not be able to find her way back. There are other things going on back then, 3,000 years ago: warring civilizations, human sacrifices, Samhain is somehow involved ... the details are lost to me. I haven't read the book in almost 10 years.

What I can say about it - and what I do remember about it - is the loveliness of the writing. The vividness of all of the worlds created (the Murry farmhouse - the Druid world) ... and also the characters. Zachary, again, in his specificity and complexity - L'Engle has been including him in books for 30 years now, and you never feel that it gets old. He is incredibly consistent. But also the Druidic people - especially the two that Polly befirends - Anaral and Karralys ... They're foreign to us, they're from another time completely ... but L'Engle has this way of letting us into their experience, they become real to us. You start to get the sense of the continuity of human experience - that even back then, all the same shit was going on. People are people. People were loving, living, learning, growing back in remote times as well. Time flows backwards as well as forwards. I wish I could remember more of the book but you know what I wish even more? I wish she would write more books about Polly. I wish I could learn what kind of adult Polly would be, who she ended up as. An artist? A scientist? A CIA operative? For Polly - anything would be possible ... I love her, too. I'm sad that this, probably, is it. No more about her.

Anyway - here's an excerpt from the beginning of the book - when it becomes clear to the Murry grandparents that Polly has tripped through a rip in the space-time continuum and also that the Bishop has been going there all along.

Excerpt from An Acceptable Time by Madeleine L'Engle.

Polly's grandparents were in the kitchen. Everything was reassuringly normal. Her grandfather was reading the paper. Her grandmother was making pancakes. Breakfast was usually catch-as-catch-can. Mrs. Murry often took coffee and a muffin to the lab. Mr. Murry hurried outdoors, working about the yard while the weather held.

"Good morning, Polly, Nason." Mrs. Murry sounded unsurprised as they pannted in, Polly scratched and disheveled from her plunge down the precipice. "Alex requested pancakes, and since he's a very undemanding person, I was happy to oblige. Join us. I've made more than enough batter."

"I hope I'm not intruding." The bishop seated himself.

Polly tried to keep her voice normal. "Here's another Ogam stone. Where shall I put it?"

"If there's room, put it beside the one Nase brought in last night," her grandmother said. "How many pancakes can you eat, Nase?"

"I don't know. I'm not sure I can eat anything. I don't think I'm hungry."

"Nason! What's wrong? Don't you feel well?"

"I'm fine." He looked at Polly. "Oh, dear. What have I done?"

"What have you done?" Mr. Murry asked.

Polly said, "You didn't do anything, Bishop. It just happened."

Mrs. Murry put a stack of pancakes in front of him, and absently he lavished butter, poured a river of syrup, ate a large bite, put down his fork. "I may have done something terrible."

"Nason, what's going on?" Mrs. Murry asked.

The bishop took another large bite. Shook his head. "I didn't think it would happen. I didn't think it could."

"What?" Mrs. Murry demanded.

"I thought the time gate was open only to me. I didn't think --" He broke off.

"Polly," her grandfather asked, "do you know what all this is about?"

Polly poured herself a mug of coffee and sat down. "The man by the oak, the one both Zachary and I saw, lived at the time of the Ogam stones." She did her best to keep her voice level. "This morning when I went off for a walk, I -- well, I don't know what it's all about, but somehow or other I went through the bishop's time gate."

"Nase!"

The bishop bent his head. "I know. It's my fault. It must be my fault. Mea culpa."

Mrs. Murry asked, "Polly, what makes you think you went through a time gate?"

"Everything was different, Grand. The trees were enormous, sort of like Hiawatha -- this is the forest primeval. And the mountains were high and jagged and snow-capped. Young mountains, not ancient hills like ours. And where the valley is, there was a large lake."

"This is absurd." Mrs. Murry put a plate of pancakes in front of her husband, then fixed a plate for Polly.

"Nason!" Mrs. Murry expostulated.

The bishop looked unhappy. "Whenever I've tried to talk about it, you've been disbelieving and, well -- disapproving, and I don't blame you for that, so I've kept quiet. I wouldn't have beleived it, either, if it hadn't kept happening. But I thought it was just me -- part of being old and nearly ready to move on to -- But Polly. That Polly should have -- well! of course!"

"Of course what?" Mr. Murry sounded more angry with each question.

"Polly saw Annie first at the pool." The bishop used the diminutive of Anaral tenderly.

"Annie who?"

"Anaral," Polly said. "She's the girl who came to the pool last night."

"When you were digging for the pool," the bishop asked, "what happened?"

"We hit water," Mr. Murry said. "We're evidently over an aquifer -- an underground river."

"But this is the highest point in the state," Polly protested. "Would there be an underground river this high up?"

"It would seem so."

The bishop put down his fork. Somehow the stack of pancakes had disappeared. "You do remember that most holy places - such as the sites of the great cathedrals in England - were on ground that was already considererd holy before even the first pagan temples were built? And the interesting thing is that under most of these holy places is an underground river. This house, and the pool, are on a holy place. That's why Anaral was able to come to the pool."

"Nonsense --" Mrs. Murry started.

Mr. Murry sighed, as though in frustration. "We love the house and our land," he said, "but it's a bit farfetched to call it holy."

"This house is -- what? --" the bishop asked, "well over two hundred years old?"

"Parts of it, yes."

"But the Ogam stones indicate that there were people here three thousand years ago."

"Nason, I've seen the stone. I believe you that there is Ogam writing on them. I take them seriously. But I don't want Polly involved in any of your -- your --" Mr. Murry pushed up from his place so abruptly that he overturned his chair, righted it with an irritated grunt. The phone rang, making them all jump. Mr. Murry went to it. "Polly, it's for you."

This was no time for an interruption. She wanted her grandparents to put everything into perspective. If they could believe what happened, it would be less frightening.

"Sounds like Zachary." Her grandmother handed her the phone.

"Good morning, sweet Pol. I just wanted to tell you how good it was to see you yesterday, and I look forward to seeing you on Thursday."

"Thanks, Zach. I look forward to it, too."

"Okay, see you then. Just wanted to double-check."

She went back to the table. "Yes. It was Zachary, to confirm getting together on Thursday."

"Something nice and normal," her grandfather said.

"Is it?" Polly asked. "He did see someone from three thousand years ago."

"All Hallows' Eve," the bishop murmured.

"At least he'll get you away from here," her grandmother said. "Strange, isn't it, that he should know about the Ogam stones."

Polly nodded. "Zachary tends to know all kinds of odd things. But what happened this morning is beyond me."

The bishop said gently, "Three thousand years beyond you, Polly. And, somehow or other, I seem to be responsible for it."

Mr. Murry went to the dresser and picked up one of the Ogam stones. "Nason, one reason I've tended to disbelieve you is that, if what you say is true, then you, a theologian and not a scientist, have made a discovery which it has taken me a lifetime to work out."

"Blundered into it inadvertently," the bishop said.

Mr. Murry sighed. "I thought I understood it. Now I'm not sure."

"Granddad. Please explain."

Mr. Murry sat down again, creakily. "It's a theory of time, Polly. You know something about my work."

"A little."

"More than Nase, at any rate. You have a much better science background. Sorry, Nase, but --"

"I know," the bishop said. "This is no time for niceties." He looked at Mrs. Murry. "Would it be possible for me to have another helping of pancakes?" Then, back to Mr. Murry: "This tesseract theory of yours --"

Mrs. Murry put another stack of pancakes on the bishop's plate.

Mr. Murry said, "Tessering, moving through space without the restriction of time, is, as you know, a mind thing. One can't make a machine for it. That would be to distort it, disturb the space/time continuum, in a vain effort to relegate something full of blazing glory to the limits of technology. And of course that's what's happening, abortive attempts at spaceships designed to break the speed of light and warp time. It works well in the movies and on TV but not in the reality of the created universe."

"What you ask is too difficult," the bishop said. "How many people are willing to take lightning into their bodies?

Mr. Murry smiled, and to Polly it was one of the saddest smiles she had ever seen. "You are," her grandfather said.

The bishop said softly, "It was as if lightning flashed into my spirit ... and with the light such a profound peace and joy came into my heart. In one moment I felt as if wholly revitalized by some infinite power, so that my body would be shattered like an earthen vessel." He sighed. "That's John Thomas, a Welshman in the mid-1700s. But it's a good description, isn't it?"

"Very good," Mr. Murry agreed. "But it also shocks me."

"Why?" the bishop asked.

"Because you know more than I do."

"No -- no --"

"But you don't know enough, Nase. You've opened a time gate that Annie -- Anaral, whatever her name is - seems to be able to walk through and which has drawn Polly through it, and I want it closed."

The Books: "A House Like a Lotus" (Madeleine L'Engle)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is A House Like a Lotus by Madeleine L'Engle.

I can't really describe how much this book meant to me when I first read it - I always think of it, in a way (even though it's not) as a companion book to Ring of Endless Light. They have nothing to do with each other (although they do share some characters - mainly Zachary) - but to me, they are thematically similar - and - I found the reading of them to be an incredibly cathartic and healing thing. Hard to talk about them without making them sound like "message" books - or books meant to be uplifting. I don't think they are. I think L'Engle knows the story she wants to tell, first of all - but underneath all of that, underneath the plot points - is the theme she wants to bring out. Like in Arm of the Starfish - we have Adam making all these choices in the beginning which end up having devastating consequences. Stuff he will have to live with for the rest of his life. He is destroyed, emotionally (we can see that when he shows up in Ring of Endless Light) But - and L'Engle is subtle about this, no hammering over the head - Calvin O'Keefe in that same book is working with starfish, trying to learn about regeneration. Regeneration of limbs. A scientific pursuit. But by the end of the book, you can see that L'Engle has also been working on another level, a metaphoric or spiritual level. We all make terrible choices in life. And some of those choices have repercussions that will last a lifetime. Can we regenerate ourselves like the starfish? Are some wounds forever? What can the starfish teach us about forgiveness - forgiving yourself? I love that about L'Engle. The multiple levels. I always feel like I'm a better feckin' PERSON after reading one of her books - and that's really something, isn't it??

I read House Like a Lotus in the middle of a huge crisis in my life - one of the biggest, at that time. I read it my first year of college - after my senior year of high school had ended in a rather - sharply defined horrible crisis. I was left hurt, scared, and - I can only say scarred. I thought I'd never recover. And the reality was - it took me years to get over it, and I still go back and forth on what happened - and we all still have to deal with the ramifications of what went down back then. My friends will know of what I speak - I'm being vague, because - duh - I choose not to share the details. But anyway - this book came out at around that time, when I just ... did not know how to go on. I was in college and supposed to be all excited about the new experience. But I was - dragging my shadow around in a circle (thanks, Sylvia Plath!!). This book is ALL ABOUT this kind of experience. I read it over and over again. I remember finishing it (the book made me cry - it still does) - and starting it again immediately. It was a deep healing drink. No easy answers. Eventually, when you get right down to it, you have to take responsibility for your own life. You have to admit: I need to heal myself. Otherwise - you let the situation victimize you. I was in need of healing. I could not get over it. This book helped me at least clarify the depths of the situation. It couldn't be avoided. I couldn't ignore what had gone down. I had to deal.

Here's the plot, briefly:

Polly O'Keefe (daughter of Calvin O'Keefe and Meg Murry) is 17 years old. When the book opens, she is sitting at an outdoor cafe in Athens - writing in her journal. It's a first-person narrative book - which is the first time we've been inside Polly's head like that. So we know immediatley that something is wrong with Polly. She feels shell-shocked. She stares at her surroundings, but - she feels dead to them. There's a pain in her. Her heart has been broken. We don't know why. And we won't for a while. The book unfolds slowly. (Uhm ... like a lotus??)

Turns out - that Polly is on her way to the island of Cyprus to be a "girl Friday" at an international conference. And she ends up having an unexpected layover in Greece for a couple of days. Her uncle Sandy (uhm - member him? Sandy Murry??) was supposed to meet her there - he's some kind of secret contractor with the US government - he travels the world - nobody knows what he really does - But anyway, he was supposed to meet her in Greece, spend a day or so with her, and then get her to Cyprus. He was going to be delayed - so Polly has a couple of days to kill by herself. She is so raw at this point that this unexpected delay from her beloved uncle feels like yet another betrayal. But she settles in to being by herself.

She promptly meets a glamorous guy named Zachary (uhm - we've met him before) - who pretty much picks her out of a crowd and pursues her. Polly is confused and put off and flattered - He turns on the charm. But Polly is not available - she's too hurt, by whatever happened. Too damaged. Zachary senses this - and doesn't push - but he definitely keeps pursuing her.

As this present-day story develops - we also go back to the beginnings of the story of whatever it was that so destroyed Polly. Back in South Carolina - where her family now lives - she was kind of an outsider at high school. Polly has lived abroad and on islands all her life (Calvin being a marine biologist) - she speaks a gazillion languages - she's a weirdo. Her uncle Dennys (Sandy's twin - ahem) is a neurologist - and he arranges an introduction between Polly and a woman named Max who lives nearby. Max is a patient of his - and he somehow thinks they would hit it off. Max is an older woman, she's a painter - she lives in this amazing house (L'Engle describes it so well) ... and ... she and Polly do, indeed, hit it off - even with the age difference. Max becomes a kind of loving mentor to Polly. Polly blossoms. Max becomes the most important person in her life.

L'Engle has a lot to say here - about the dangers of idolizing those who mean the most to us.

It's a fantastic book, everyone - again, I think it's a shame, sometimes, that her books are relegated to the children's section of bookstores - because - many of them don't belong there. I mean, yes, 14 year olds can read them and love them ... but does that mean it's not serious literature? To an adult who isn't into young adult fiction - a book like House Like a Lotus doesn't read like "young adult fiction" - it reads like a damn good book, and that's final.

Polly eventually gets to Osia Theola - the conference center on Cyprus - and a whole second section of the book begins: the people she meets ... they're all so vivid, so flawed and so real. YOu love them all. Polly works her ass off at the conference - and learns so much - just from being in the presence of all of these people, many of whom have had tragic things happen to them - many of them coming from war-torn countries. It's not that Polly learns to trivialize her own hurt ... it's that during this experience she basically joins the human race, she joins the world of adults ... where no one is exempt from being hurt, no one is excused, and also: no one is perfect. Children can think other people are perfect. But adults can't get away with that for long. It's hard to give up childish things. But that's what happens for Polly, working at this conference.

She meets a man from an island called Baki - his name is Omio - and they basically become kindred spirits. There's something in him she needs, she senses it immediately. She is still cringing inside her shell - and through her friendship with kindly Omio - she starts to come out again. A bit chastened, perhaps - that's what your first hurt will do to you ... but she's coming out again. Oh - and Zachary, true to form, tracks her down to Cyprus. Keeps calling her at the conference center ... but she's already in a new headspace ... Zachary's glamour and his pushing for sex and his cynical view of the world - is not for her. Even though, in a way, she likes him. But Omio is the one who ushers her into healing. (There's a whole section in the beginning of the book about Epidaurus - and in an example of L'Engle's weaving of two different levels through her book - the Epidaurus episode happens, Polly is unable to accept healing yet - it baffles her ... but then there is Omio - at the end ... who basically becomes an Epidaurus for her.)

I haven't read this book in a while - it's one of my favorites.

Here's an excerpt from the second half of the book. Polly's at the conference, getting to know everyone. Omio rising ....

Excerpt from A House Like a Lotus by Madeleine L'Engle.

Bashemath and Millie were drinking tea, sitting at the table. I hoped I didn't look as though I'd been crying. Norine came toward me. "Where were you, Polly?" she accused. "That same young man phoned you again, and I couldn't find you."

Bashemath said, in her calm, deep voice, "She doesn't have to tell you whenever she goes for a walk, Norine."

"Well, you missed him once more," Norine said to me.

"Is he going to call again?" I asked.

"He didn't say."

I wasn't sure whether I wanted him to or not. This world of Osia Theola was a completely different world from Athens, and Zachary seemed alien to it. Still, I was glad he had called. I was glad he had sent flowers.

"Tea, Norine?" Millie asked. "Polly?"

"No, thank you," Norine said. "I have work to do."

"Do you need me?" I asked. "I've typed Bashemath's stencil. Shall I run it off?"

"Not now, Polly. I'm going over some of my lectures."

"Then I'd love some tea," I said.

Norine trotted across the dusty compound to the office, and Bashemath got a mug, and Millie poured me tea from the large pot on the table.

Millie said, "There are some hot peppers by the dormitory building. I've picked a few, to add to the dinner tonight. This food is good, but not overly seasoned."

Bashemath spoke, following her own train of thought. "Do not let Norine bother you with her sharp ways. She has a heart of gold."

"She doesn't bother me," I replied. "And I'm here to work."

"But not to be overworked."

"Oh, I'm not, and I like work."

Omio drained his mug. "We're not likely to have another free afternoon. How about a swim? Or is it too hot?"

"Much too hot," Bashemath said.

"I don't swim. I'm afraid of crocodiles," Millie said.

Omio laughed. "But this is Cyprus, not Cameroon.

"Nevertheless," Millie said firmly, "no. Thank you."

"I'd love a swim," I said.

"Let's meet under the fig sycamore." Omio smiled at me.

He was there, waiting for me, and we started downhill. "Polly, forgive me."

"For what?"

"I have given you, lo, a romantic picture of Baki. It is not only the Christians there who have done bad things. If the missionaries were not overly concerned, about whether or not the women covered themselves, it was because they were more concerned about the black magic, the witchcraft. Using hateful, hurting magic was as bad as beating a man and rubbing salt in the wounds. Worse. It could kill. We Bakians and the Christians were alike, some good people, turning the heart to love, others wicked, turning to greed and power."

He was holding my hand, swinging it, as we walked. I said, "I guess everybody's like that." And then I asked, "Does your Laughing Christ always laugh?"

His hand squeezed mine. "It is said that in time of great disaster tears fall from his eyes. My great-grandfather is supposed to have seen him cry before a tidal wave which killed many of our people. I have seen only the laughter, and there have been bad things in Baki. But if I ever saw him cry, I think I would be very afraid."

Did the statue on Max's landing ever weep?

We left the houses of the village and moved quietly along the path protected by high walls of grasses plumed with pale fronds, bleached by the fierce sun. And then we came to a tiny pasture I hadn't noticed the night before in the dark. In the pasture were the most beautiful little goats I'd ever seen, with soft, silky hair, and long, drooping ears. We stopped and admired them. They looked at us with great, startled eyes, then went back to grazing.

When we reached the place which Vee had tried to clear of stones, Omio sat down in the water and began to throw stones far up on the shore, to make the path wider. I joined him, throwing the rounded stones as far as possible.

"If we keep at this a little every day," Omio said, "we will keep the path open. I think Vee has tender feet. She is a poet."

That seemed rather a non sequitir, but I thought it likely that Vee did have tender feet, or she wouldn't have bothered to move the stones. My cut foot was not that tough, either. I was glad of the path.

When we had finished throwing what Omio decided were enough stones, he said, "Last night you held back because of Vee, and that was nice of you. But I think you swim well. Let's race." And he splashed into the water and threw himself under a breaker.

I followed. I have learned that it is not a good idea for a girl to beat a man in a race, even though I think that's stupid. However, I did not have to hold back with Omio. It was all I could do to keep up with him.

"How do you come to swim so well?" he asked while we were splashing into shore. The sun was low on the horizon; evening came early to Cyprus; and the sky was flushed with a lovely light.

"I've lived on islands most of my life. We swim a lot."

Omio took my hand, and we walked on up the beach. "You are promised?" he asked.

"What?"

"You have a boyfriend? A special one?"

"No."

"In Baki, by your age, a woman is at least promised."

"In my country I'm considered too young. At least my parents would certainly think so."

Omio swung my hand. "It's time we went home." He gave me his shining smile. "It's home, isn't it?"

Yes. Already the monastery was home.

After the evening meal, with the dark closing in, Krhis said that we would stay in the cloister for the staff meeting instead of going to the upper room. He had each of the staff members talk a little bit about what they planned to do. Bashemath expected to have everything ready for a book fair, posters and all, by the first weekend. Millie hoped they'd be telling their own stories. Frank talked about the hope for small presses, and then, at his urging, Millie sang for us, and then Norine suggested that Omio do one of the Bakian dances.

Without embarrassment, Omio stood up and stripped off his T-shirt, kicked off his sandals. Then he moved into a dance which started with his entire body undulating in slow rhythm. Then the tempo accelerated until Krhis began to clap, joined by Frank, then Millie and Norine. Then Omio squatted low to the ground, with one leg, then the other, stretching out, somewhat like Russian Cossack dances, but much more quickly, incredibly quickly, and then he rose, rose, until he was leaping high into the air, fingers stretching him taller, higher ...

Then the clapping began to come more slowly, winding him down. He was glistening with sweat, breathing in short, panting gasps, and the clapping changed from being an accompaniment to the dance, to applause.

"Lo, now we must sing Saranam." His voice was breathless, and he looked to Millie, who started singing.

In the midst of foes I cry to thee,
From the ends of earth, wherever I may be,
My strength in helplessness, O answer me,
Saranam, saranam, saranam.

Make my heart to grow as great as thine,
So through my hurt your love may shine,
My love be yours, your love be mine,
Saraname, saranam, saranam.

"What does it mean, 'saranam'?" I asked.

"Refuge," Norine said.

"God's richest blessing," Millie added.

Krhis said, "There is no English equivalent."

Frank laughed. "There doesn't need to be. Saranam says it all, loving, giving, caring."

Omio said, "I think it is like a Bakian word which means that love does not judge."

Vee added, "Love is not love which alters which it alteration finds."

"What's that?" Bashemath asked.

"Shakespeare, from one of the sonnets."

"Shakespeare?" Millie asked.

"Sonnets?" asked Bashemath.

Suddenly I realized that things I'd taken for granted, as part of my background, were unknown to people of other cultures.

"Shakespeare is probably our greatest writer in the English language," Vee said, "and the sonnet is a form of poetry. I'll talk about it in one of the workshops. I even hope to have people writing sonnets."

Another thing I realized was how little I knew about Vee. I knew from her poems and novels that she had loved, and passionately. Because of Norine I knew she had an insane husband. There were a few chinks my imagination could fill in, but I realized something else that evening. I realized I was too young to understand much that had happened in the lives of these people who had quickly become my friends.

We finished the lemonade, which was tart and lovely, and Krhis sent us off to bed. I walked across the compound with Omio and Vee.

"Too late for a swim," she said. "Ah, well, we'll make time tomorrow."

"Too bad Frank can't come with us," I said.

Vee nodded. "He does swim at home, in a pool. He misses it."

"Lo, he is a kind man, is Frank," Omio said.

"Yes," Vee agreed. "I wonder if someone who has never suffered, known loss and pain, is capable of true kindness?"

Omio took my hand. "We find much true kindness here in Osia Theola."

The Books: "The Arm of the Starfish" (Madeleine L'Engle)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is The Arm of the Starfish by Madeleine L'Engle.

I don't care how old you are - this is a great book. It's NOT just for adolescents - so in a way, I wish it would be integrated into fiction shelves for adults - becaues I bet some adults would miss it otherwise, and that is a damn shame. This book has it all. It's basically an international spy thriller - but there's also that L'Engle touch of having it also be about a young man's coming of age. L'Engle knows that "coming of age" is almost never a graceful process - and a lot of times, something awful has to happen to jerk someone up out of childhood. Something wrenching.

This is a book starring Adam Eddington (the Adam from Ring of Endless Light) - and from the very start, he makes a decision to trust Kali - the hottie he meets at Kennedy International Airport. This ends up being a fatal decision with truly devastating consequences. When we meet Adam in Ring of Endless Light he is still recovering from the experience, still trying to forgive himself, live with his own actions.

Arm of the Starfish has an intricate plot - it involves foreign countries, and embassies, and limousines cruising through the midnight streets of Lisbon, carrying international businessmen up to NO GOOD ... but it also is about the confrontation between good and evil. Innocence and corruption. What happens to innocence in this world? What happens to innocence in the face of corruption? What is true innocence? Does innocence = naivete? Or is there a deeper kind of innocence - an innocence that accepts the corruption of the world but refuses to succumb? Adam is caught up in that battle from page 1 of this book. Kali is a babealicious international hottie with a rich father. But it's her looks ... and her flattery of Adam ... that get him hooked. He mistakes beauty for goodness. A lot of people do. Most people do, I would say. Beauty seems to equal Good. Adam learns, eventually, how wrong he was in his assessment of Kali - but the true thing about Kali is not that she is EVIL, not so much. But she is corrupt. She represents a corrupt world. Corruption will NEVER trust innocence because corruption always thinks there needs to be an angle. Corruption will NEVER trust that anyone would behave altruistically. I know "corrupt" people. In the context of L'Engle's book, corruption doesn't just mean: Oh, he cheats on his taxes, and he ciphers money out of the company and buys private jets ... Corruption is often used only in a financial context. But there's a spiritual context as well. L'Engle is looking at both contexts in this book. Adam throws his trust with Kali - and he sees the O'Keefes and Canon Tallis through her eyes - She has told him not to trust them. So even though they come at him with openness, friendliness, and goddness - because he is seeing through Kali's eyes, he wonders to himself, "What's their angle? Are they really what they seem??"

Great book. I HIGHLY recommend you pick it up - I won't even tell you more about it.

Let's just say that Adam, a marine biology student, is traveling to a small island off the coast of Portugal - to work with Calvin O'Keefe for the summer (from Wrinkle, of course) - Calvin is now married to Meg - and he is a famous marine biologist - but because, of course, he's in a L'Engle book - he's working on some stuff that powerful forces out there want to control. His main interest is in starfish, and limb regeneration. Adam is going to live with the O'Keefe family (and their bazillion kids) for the summer and be Calvin's assistant. Polly (and actually I was wrong - this book comes before Dragons in the Waters - Polly is 14 in Dragons - and she's only 12 years old here - still a little girl) attaches herself to Adam. She adores Adam. Adam - because of the distrust placed in his head by his encounter with Kali - doesn't really succumb to the experience. He's more spying on Calvin than learning from him.

Horrible-ness ensues. It's a fantastic book.

Oh - and there's another great character - his name is Joshua Archer. Friend of the O'Keefe family and friend of Canon Tallis. Adam is asleep in a hotel room in Portugal - he will be picked up by Calvin later in the day, apparently - so he is sleeping off his jet lag. When he opens his eyes - after hours of sleep - an unknown man is sitting in his hotel room with him. It turns out that his name is Joshua. He is there to take Adam to the O'Keefe family. But ... well, there's way more to Joshua than meets the eye. He is an amazing character. L'Engle tells a great story about the writing of this book. She had been on a trip to Portugal - and the place was so rich for her, so ... vivid ... that she knew she had to write a book that took place there. She was in a fever. The plot came to her. O'Keefe family ... starfish ... young man coming into the mix ... and she said that she was writing about Adam sleeping, and suddenly Joshua showed up. She had not planned Joshua, she had not made Joshua up - she was writing the episode, and AS she wrote it - she was like: "Wait ... where did HE come from? Who is he?" Joshua is the vortex of the book - he becomes the moral center of this entire book. But L'Engle hadn't planned for him, made space for him ... He just HAPPENED. She has said that Joshua Archer is one of the only times in her writing life when that ever happened to her. When her writing took her over. When she didn't create Joshua, oh no - Joshua INSISTED on being part of the story. I love that.

Anyway - here's an excerpt from the beginning of the book. Adam has woken up to find Joshua in his room. Joshua is in charge of taking Adam to the O'Keefe's. A lot of crazy shit has already gone down - Adam a pawn - Adam has to choose whether or not to go on to the O'Keefe's. Nobody knows about Kali and her powerful tycoon father ... who have basically hired Adam to spy.

Excerpt from The Arm of the Starfish by Madeleine L'Engle.

They left the hotel without speaking to anybody, without giving in keys at the desk, without further communication with Arcangelo. Joshua turned to the right and they walked briskly for about ten minutes through the sweet summer darkness. They stopped before a narrow house faced in gleaming blue-and-white patterned tile. "Ever seen the Portugese tile before?" Joshua asked absently, not waiting for Adam to respond. "It's quite famous." He put his key in the door. "I have the top floor. Modest, but mine. I love this stairway. Pink marble. Beautiful, isn't it?"

"Yes." Adam followed him up three flights.

At the top was a blue painted door, which Joshua also unlocked, saying, "Gone are those innocent days when I didn't worry about keys. I got awfully tired of having my things gone through. So 'Gelo very kindly helped me fashion a lock that is impossible to pick or duplicate."

"Who is Arcangelo?" Adam demanded.

"My very good friend." Joshua flicked a switch and in the ceiling a crystal chandelier sparkled into life.

Adam looked around. They were in a fair-sized room, a room that smelled of tobacco and books. It was, indeed, more of a library than a living room, as there were books not only on all four walls but piled on tables and window sills. Adam saw in a quick glance a record player and shelves of records, a sagging couch covered with an Indian print, an old red rep easy chair, a large desk that looked as though it had been discarded from an office. It was a good room, the kind of room Adam had dreamed of having some day. He looked at a Picasso print over one of the bookshelves, a sad-eyed harlequin on a white horse. The harlequin reminded him of someone, and suddenly he realized that it was Joshua himself.

Joshua pointed to an open door. "Bedroom and bath. Go in and make yourself at home. Your stuff's all in there. I'll make us some coffee. I don't have a proper kitchen, just a hot plate, but it does."

Adam nodded and went into the bedroom. It was a small, bare room, furnished only with a narrow brass bed, a chest of drawers, a straight chair. The walls were white and absolutely bare. The room was cold and austere in comparison to the cluttered warmth of the living room.

Adam washed his hands and face. He was not being sent back to America. He was going to Gaea. He could not help liking Joshua. But if he should see Kali again how would he feel? So far he had managed to tell Joshua nothing of any importance, and Joshua did not seem to be going to pursue his questioning.

-- Play it cool, Adam, he seemed to hear a voice in his ear. Kali's voice.

As long as nobody knew that it was Kali who had come to him at the Avenida Palace, that it was to Kali's apartment he had gone, that he was expected to work for Typhon Cutter as a -- what had Mr. Cutter said? Patriotic duty, wasn't it? -- then he had not yet committed himself to either side. And as long as he didn't commit himself he couldn't do anything too terribly wrong. Could he?

-- I wish thing were black and white, he thought savagely. -- I wish things were clear.

He remembered his math teacher back at school, a brilliant young Irishman, telling of his personal confusion when he first began to study higher mathematics and discovered that not all mathematical problems have one single and simple answer, that there is a choice of answers and a decision to be made by the mathematician even when dealing with something like an equation that ought to be definite and straightforward and to allow of no more than one interpretation. "And that's the way life is," the teacher had said. "Right and wrong, good and evil, aren't always clear and simple for us; we have to interpret and decide; we have to commit ourselves, just as we do with this equation."

As though reading his thoughts Joshua came and lounged in the doorway. "Don't hold off too long, Adam. The time comes when you have to make a choice and you're not going to be able to put it off much longer. Unless you've already made it?"

"I don't know." Adam rubbed his face with a clean rough towel.

"The trouble is," Joshua said, "that I can't guarantee you anything. If you decide to work with Dr. O'Keefe I can't in any honesty tell you that anything is going to be easier for you than it has been for the past few days. I can tell you that nobody expected things to start breaking quite so soon, or we wouldn't have let you come. You were never supposed to be in any kind of danger. It was pure coincidence that it was this summer that Old Doc decided you were worth sending to Dr. O'Keefe to be educated. Of course neither Canon Tallis nor Dr. O'Keefe believe in coincidence. I'm afraid that I do, and that we're often impaled upon it. Then, on the other hand, I can't help wondering if it was pure coincidence that made Canon Tallis finish his work in Boston at just the moment he did so that he and Poly were on the plane with you."

"But if he was lecturing there," Adam protested, "he'd know when he was going to be through."

"Oh, did he tell you he was lecturing? Well, probably he was," Joshua said somewhat vaguely. "The main thing is that if you're worth educating then I suppose you ought to be up to facing whatever there is to face, oughtn't you?"

"What is there to face?" Adam sat at the foot of Joshua's bed.

Joshua did not answer his question. Instead: "Maybe it'll help you if I tell you that it wasn't easy for me, either. I don't know about you, Adam, but I can't look forward to pie in the sky. I'm a heretic and a heathen, and I let myself depend far too much on the human beings I love, because -- well, just because. I guess the real point is that I care about having a decent world, and if you care about having a decent world you have to take sides. You have to decide who, for you, are the good guys, and who are the bad guys. So, like the fool that I am, I chose the difficult side, the unsafe side, the side that guarantees me not one thing besides danger and hard work."

"Then why did you choose it?" Adam demanded.

Joshua continued to lean against the door. "Why? I'm not sure I did. It seemed to choose me, unlikely material though I be. And it's the side that -- that cares about people like Polyhymnia O'Keefe." He wheeled and went back into the living room. In a moment the sound of music came clear and gay, Respighi's The Birds, Adam thought, following him into the living room. Joshua grinned. "It's the fall of the sparrow I care about, Adam. But who is the sparrow? We run into problems there, too. Now let's have our coffee."

He picked up a battered white enamel percolator from the hot plate on one of the bookcases. "Want to go to the Embassy when we're through?"

Adam watched Joshua pour the dark and fragrant brew. "Why? Do we have to?"

Joshua handed him a cup, indicated sugar and milk. "No. Not if you don't want to."

"I'm not sure it would make things any clearer." Adam put three heaping spoons of sugar in his coffee. "I don't want to telephone anybody. I mean, why bother Old Doc? I think he feels about me kind of the way you feel about Poly, if you know what I mean, so it would just be upsetting to him to have me ask him to help make up my own mind. I mean, I have to do it msyelf, don't I?"

"When you get right down to it, yes," Joshua said.

"And the whole idea of the Embassy business is very confusing to me. I mean, you working there, and then both the O'Keefes and the Cutters seeming to know everybody, and everybody thinking the Embassy's on their side and it can't be on everybody's side. I think I'd rather stay clear of any more confusion for a while."

"Okay," Joshua said. "I follow you. I thought it might help, but I see your point. What about your passport, by the way?"

Adam felt the by-now-familiar jolt in the pit of his stomach. "I suppose it's still at the Avenida Palace. I'd forgotten all about it."

Joshua reached in his breast pocket and handed the thin green book to Adam. "Here. But it's something you'd better remember from now on. Think you could do any more sleeping?"

"You wouldn't think I could, would you?" Adam asked, yawned, and laughed.

"Good. Let's just have coffee and maybe listen to a little music and go to bed. I'll take the sofa in here; I'm used to it. In the morning we'll go to Gaea. I hope you won't mind flying with me. Actually I'm a pretty fair pilot."

Without knowing why Adam realized that he would feel perfectly safe with Joshua at the controls of plane, boat, or car. It was an instinct that the wariness acquired in the past three days could not shake, no matter how little at the moment he trusted his instincts.

The Books: "Dragons in the Waters" (Madeleine L'Engle)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is Dragons in the Waters by Madeleine L'Engle. This is the first book in the next generation of the Murry family ... I LOVE this one. Okay - so Meg Murry marries Calvin O'Keefe. We know this from Swiftly Tilting Planet. Meg and Calvin proceed to have a bazillion children - two of whom are named Polyhymnia (Poly for short - although in later books she adds an "l" so she's a more conventional "Polly" - she's one of my favorite characters L'Engle ever wrote) - and Charles (obviously after their uncle Charles Wallace).

This is another one of those books where characters from other series appear. L'Engle is not creating a linear world with all of her books - it's more like a tangled web. It's just so fun. So we have Mr. Theo - the music teacher from The Young Unicorns - we also have Canon Tallis - who shows up in many of L'Engle's books (he is, actually, a real person - L'Engle admits that - he was obviously very important in her life, her Crosswicks journals show that). But she uses him in her fiction all the time. Simon Renier, the 13 year old "star" of this book is a member of an illustrious (now fallen on hard times) Charleston family - and if I recall correctly, the Reniers are also the subject of her earlier novel The Other Side of the Sun. There's more overlap here - but all of that just gives you an idea of the kind of tangled-up and interconnected thing that L'Engle was always going for. I adore that part of her books.

Anyway, the plot - briefly - Simon Renier lives with his Aunt Leonis - a doddering wise old woman - one of L'Engle's great creations. The book opens with Simon boarding a boat - on its way to Venezuela - and he is with his cousin (a grown man) named Forsyth Phair. It all comes out later that: Simon and Forsyth are on a journey to Venezuela - in order to return an heirloom painting (of Simon Bolivar) to its rightful place. (The book is written in a chopped-up way - going back and forth in time - short sections - past to present and back - I really like the style here, it's a bit different from most of her other books). It's not a cruise line or anything like that - it's a small steamer, and there aren't many passengers. Poly, Charles and Calvin O'Keefe are 3 of the other passengers. Poly is 14 years old, with flame-red hair, and she's kind of a prodigy. Speaks a ton of languages - but she's not a prodigy in a precocious or obnoxious way (or - she's no more obnoxious than any rambunctious early teenager) ... She's a prodigy in the way her Uncle Charles Wallace was a prodigy - only maybe she's a bit more lighthearted. You kind of love her from the minute you see her. Her younger brother Charles is more of an intuitive prodigy - you know those kinds of people with intense emotional understanding? That sometimes goes beyond what is feasible or can be grasped? The people who just KNOW things about other people? Charles is like that.

Simon, with his fallen-from-grace family background, and his lack of exposure to kids his own age - doesn't quite know how to handle Poly and Charles ... but Poly and Charles basically decide to befriend him. They are the only kids on the boat.

Things take a sinister turn almost immediately - In the opening scene, Simon, while walking on the dock toward the boat - is suddenly pushed into the water by Poly (they don't know each other yet) - and she goes falling in after him. Turns out - there was a forklift coming towards them, huge, and dangerous - the "accelerator stuck" and it could have run them over flat. Charles (with the intuition) feels that - it wasn't an accident. Something tells him that something is not right.

Very soon after their journey is underway, Cousin Forsyth (a man who showed up at Aunt Leonis' shack to inquire about the Bolivar painting) is murdered.

Great book. It's got a lot in it. L'Engle's books sometimes have intricate plots - but her books never ARE the plots. There's always something more. I always end up feeling like a better and deeper person after reading one of her books.

So here's an excerpt from the beginning of the book - before Forsyth is murdered - when Poly and Charles come over to Simon in the ship's dining room- which is full of chattering adults - and befriend him.

Excerpt from Dragons in the Waters by Madeleine L'Engle.

Simon closed his eyes, suddenly overwhelmed with sleep.

"Simon ..." It was a whisper.

He jumped. Poly and Charles stood in front of him. "Oh. Hi. I was just sleepy for a minute."

Geraldo came up with a small tray of half-filled demitasses and a pitcher of hot milk, put it down on the table, and then bustled back to the other passengers.

Poly sat down beside Simon. "I'll pour. Have some, Simon?"

He nodded. "I've never had coffee before. Aunt Leonis and I drink tea."

"You may not like it, then. Put lots of sugar and milk in; then it tastes sort of like hot coffee ice cream."

Simon followed her instructions, tasted, and smiled.

"Oh, Simon," Poly said, her long legs in green tights stretching out under her plaid skirt, "I'm so glad you're you. Suppose you'd been some awful creep? Whatever would we have done, all cooped together like this?"

Simon nodded in solemn agreement. "I'm glad yawl are you, too." Now that he was relaxed, his voice was warm and rhythmic.

Poly flashed her brightest smile. "I like the way you talk, Simon. It isn't all nasal and whiny like some of the Southerners we've met."

"I was born in Charleston." It was a simple statement of fact.

Poly giggled. "Snob."

Simon blushed slightly. "I like the way you talk, too. It isn't British -"

"Of course not! We're American!"

"-- It's just clean and clear. Aunt Leonis loves music more than anything in the world, so voices are very important to her. Her voice is beautiful, not a bit cracked and aged. Somebody compared her voice to Ethel Barrymore's -- I guess she was some kind of famous actress in the olden days."

Poly poured Simon some more coffee and hot milk. "Hey, look at all the grownups over there, nosing each other out. And we knew about each other right away."

"Well, they didn't almost get drowned together," Simon said. "You saved my life, so that means --"

"It means we belong together forevermore," Poly said solemnly.

Charles was looking across the salong at the adults. "They've forgotten how to play Make Believe. That's a sure way to tell about somebody -- the way they play, or don't play, Make Believe. Poly, you won't ever grow too old for it, will you?"

"I hope not." But she sounded dubious.

Simon pushed back a lock of fair hair from his face. "My Aunt Leonis is very good at it. Actually, she's my great-grandaunt, or something. When people get ancient they seem to remember how to play again - although I don't think Aunt Leonis ever forgot. She says you can tell about people - whether they're friend or foe - by your sense of smell, and that most people lose it."

"Fe fi fo fum," Charles intoned, "I smell the blood of an Englishman."

"It's probably our pheromones," Poly said.

"Our what?" Simon asked.

"Pheromones. They're really quite simple molecules, eight or ten carbon atoms in a chain, and what they do is send out -- well, sort of a smell, but it's nothing we smell on a conscious level, we just react to it. For instance, a female moth sends out pheromones at mating time, and a male moth comes flying, but he doesn't know why, he just responds to the pheromones, and we're not any more conscious of it than moths. At least most of us aren't. Charles is, sometimes." She stopped, then said, "It's obvious that we're children of scientists. Maybe Aunt Leonis's sense of smell is simpler and just as good." She sniffed delicately and looked with quick affection at Simon. "You smell superb, Simon."

He sniffed in his turn. "You smell right lovely yourself. Maybe it's your red hair."

But Poly sighed. "I haven't worn a hat in years because I keep hoping that if I keep my hair uncovered and let the salt air and wind and sun work on it, maybe I'll bleach out and turn into a blonde. It hasn't shown any signs of happening yet, but I keep on hoping."

"You look right nice exactly the way you are," Simon said firmly.

He might be a year younger than she was, but Poly felt a warm glow. "Look, your Cousin Forsyth is playing bridge with the Smiths and Dr. Eisenstein. That's a funny combination."

Simon looked at the card table. Bridge was another unexpected facet in Cousin Forsyth, who was shuffling with great expertise.

"At any rate," Poly said, "we're certain about Mr. Theo."

"Certain?" Simon asked.

"That he's all right. He's a friend of Uncle Father's and that means he's okay."

"Uncle Father?" Simon asked.

"My godfather. Canon Tom Tallis. You remember, we were talking about him at tea."

"Why do you call him Uncle Father?"

Poly gave her infectious giggle. "Rosy, our baby sister, started it when she was just beginning to talk, and we all took it up. We see more of Uncle Father than we do of our own grandparents, because we live so many thousands of miles apart, but Uncle Father was in and out of Portugal for a while, so he's sort of an extra grandparent for us. And I guess I trust him more than I trust anybody in the world."

Charles said, "But he warns you about that, Pol. He says that no human being is a hundred percent trustworthy, and that he's no exception."

Poly shrugged. "I know, but I trust him anyhow. Trust isn't a matter of reason. It's a matter of pheromones. I trust Simon."

Simon beamed with pleasure.

The Books: "Troubling a Star " (Madeleine L'Engle)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is Troubling a Star by Madeleine L'Engle.

This is the second to last novel L'Engle has written (so far)- since then, all of her books have been Christian theological books (all of which I own and posted excerpts from a gazillion years ago when I was on my "religion shelf". I swear. I'm borderline autistic.) I mean - the woman is still alive, so I guess there's still hope that she will write more fiction - but I'm doubting it. She's 500 years old by now. She seems to want to concentrate on the glory of God, and the Bible - and who can blame her? She's strolling into that ol' white light soon - maybe her imagination is no longer going into the fiction landscape. Sniff. Her last novel was A Live Coal in the Sea - which, in all honesty, I can say is the only novel of hers that I DIDN'T like. Hard to imagine - since her books are all so amazing to me - but in my opinion she started to lose the drive in that last book.

Troubling a Star is the next Austin family series - written 15 years after Ring of Endless Light - so when it came out - and I was a young woman living in Chicago - and I happened upon it in a Bares & Noble, I freaked OUT. I was basically in junior high when I read Ring of Endless Light ... so ... omigod .... is it another Vicky Austin book??? What?

She had written a million OTHER books in between - also beloved books to me - but they were mainly having to do with the O'Keefe family ... so anyway, Troubling A Star came out of what felt like nowhere, and I was really excited about it.

The plot is, briefly: Vicky's grandfather is now dead. The Austin family has moved back to Thornhill, their country home. Vicky, after her summer with Adam and the dolphins and all that, feels very weird - like she can't adjust to normal life again, and just being a regular high school student. She has grown up, basically. There are school dances - she's never invited ... and yet she gets these amazing letters from Adam, the older guy (let's say he's 20 or so) who took an interest in her the summer of the dolphins. She's not interested in high school life. So she is very excited when Adam comes back to town - and invites her to come have dinner with his great-aunt Serena who lives nearby or some such other literary coincidental device.

His Great-Aunt Serena is a fascinating old lady - who I believe was a marine biologist in her younger days (the details are lost in the fogs of time) - Her husband - also named Adam - was also a marine biologist and if I'm remembering correctly - he disappeared during one of his jaunts to Antarctica ... Bah. Can't remember. Anyway - Vicky goes over to meet her and Serena ends up becoming a kind of mentor to Vicky. Vicky who is such an adolescent BRAT. Serena senses this in her - and basically ends up offering Vicky a trip to Antarctica. There's a boat going - with a bunch of scientists - Serena somehow wangles a way to get Vicky a spot on the boat, thinking it will be really good for her to see the world, stop brooding, stop writing bad poetry, and stop feeling so different and self-absorbed. Somehow, Dr. and Mrs. Austin end up letting Vicky go. She has a chaperone - a dude named Cook - who has a very interesting background, the details of which are lost in the fogs of time. He's one of those great L'Engle characters - wise, patient, understanding - something every teenager needs.

Oh wait -now I remember - After it is decided that Vicky is going to join the expedition - she gets a couple of strange anonymous postcards - threatening - warning her NOT to go on this trip.

Why? Cannot remember.

So then there is Vicky - alone on this boat - with an international group of scientists. Oh yeah, and she's also really excited because Adam, supposedly, is going to be at Antarctica at the Marine Biology station there - so she is soooo looking forward to seeing him. Looking forward to it TOO much perhaps??

But then everything takes a turn. The boat they are on stops in port in Vespugia (L'Engle fans: hmmmm, sound familiar??) - a small dictatorship in Central America - which is basically a police state. But they are there to see ... uhm ... the Mayan pyramids or some such Inca nonsense? Again: fogs of time. Vicky - who has lived a sheltered life - suddenly finds herself asking questions about politics, becoming aware of repression, how other people live, how awful this fascistic Vespugia is.

Vicky ends up becoming a pawn in an international intrigue having to do with somehow shipping radioactive material out of (or into??) Vespugia ... and Vicky somehow becomes the linchpin of this whole thing, dangerous forces moving in on her, using her ... she ends up being kidnapped and deposited on a lonely glacier, bobbing in the southern ocean.

Of course she is saved. And the plot is discovered. And all is well again - but in all honesty - I can't remember why these powerful forces choose VICKY to be their pawn ... it all makes sense in the book, though.

The parts that I remember in the book (naturally) have to do with Vicky's internal journey. Her awe at the beauty of Antarctica. Her secret love for Adam, and how you can just sense that ... her heart's gonna get broke. Not that he's a bad guy, but that the timing is not right.

Here's an excerpt from the beginning of the book - when Vicky and Great-aunt Serena talk about her upcoming trip to Antarctica.

It's funny - I find Vicky kind of annoying here - like: Stop holding onto your illusions! LIfe is ROUGH, sister, and the sooner you know that the better!

But ... uhm ... that's not the point. If I were a teenager, I might relate to Vicky's resistance here - and also: Vicky needs to come through things on her OWN, she needs to learn things on her OWN ... and she's lucky enough to have found people in her life who let her have her own journey.

Excerpt from Troubling a Star by Madeleine L'Engle.

I went downstairs as I heard Daddy's car drive up. He was coming directly from the office. I met him in the sitting room, and the photograph album was open and on the table, waiting. Stassy said she'd bring Aunt Serena right down, and for us to make ourselves at home. We bent over the album and looked at snapshots of penguins, the babies huddled together in what Aunt Serena had told me were called creches. They were balls of fluff, and very cute.

I turned to my father. "I'm actually going to see them!"

Aunt Serena, leaning slightly on Stassy, came in and joined us. "You will find that penguins are totally communal creatures. If one penguin heads for the sea, two or three others will follow. If they stray from each other, they become easy prey for their predators."

"Who are their predators?" I asked.

"Skuas, which are large, brown, carnivorous birds. Raptors. And seals. But while penguins are communal, living in community, they have no intimacy. They are dutiful with their babies, but they do not love."

"Why?" I looked at a snapshot of a line of penguins which seemed to be hurrying down to the water.

"Life is too treacherous. If you become intimate with spouse or child who may be eaten in the next hour, you are too vulnerable. You cannot afford affection."

Something in her voice made me shiver. "Penguins," I said. "But human beings can't live that way."

"Sometimes they have to," Aunt Serena said. "When parents knew that they are going to lose their babies and young children to scarlet fever, diptheria, measles, they could not afford the kind of secure love that exists between parents and children today."

My father said, "It's only in the past few generations that parents have been able to count on raising their children to adulthood. Modern medicine has changed a lot of things."

"But people still loved each other, I mean, they always have!" I cried.

"True," Daddy said. "But we allow ourselves to love more easily now that we have a greater hope for a reasonable life expectancy."

I looked at a fluffy grey ball cuddling up to a grown penguin. "But mothers nursed the babies! How could they help being intimate?" I'd watched Mother nursing Rob. I'd watched Daddy watching Mother nursing Rob.

"They couldn't help it," Aunt Serena agreed, "but you already know, Vicky, that the more people you love, the more vulnerable you are."

Yes, that was true. If I hadn't loved my grandfather in a most deep and wonderful way, I wouldn't miss him so much. If I didn't love Adam, I wouldn't be hurt because he'd signed his second letter "All the best," instead of "Love".

I said, "Maybe our intimacies are more precious if we know they may be taken away."

Daddy looked at me and smiled and nodded slightly.

Aunt Serena said, "You are wise, my child. I do not regret my intimacies, no matter how expensive, not with any of the people I have loved: my husband, Adam. I loved him with great utterness, and when he died my life was split in two as though by lightning. And then my son --" She caught her breath. "I have known people who have drawn back after one devastating hurt, but that is a kind of suicide, at least to my mind. I am very fond of you, my dear, and I think you are fond of me."

"I am! I love you!"

"But you know quite well that I will die long before you do."

I whispered, "I know it's a -- a statistic."

"It's what being mortal is all about. I believe that Antarctica will awe and delight you, but you will be glad that you are a human being."

"I am glad." Then I added, "But I don't think I like statistics."

Aunt Serena nodded. "Statistics help free us from the compassion that is part of intimacy. Statistics do not understand that until we accept our mortality we canot even glimpse the wonder of our immortality."

Before I had time to digest that, Stassy came in to announce that Mother had arrived with Suzy and Rob. They had come in the back way, so they could chat with Cook, and would join us in a moment.

We could hear voices and laughter from the direction of the kitchen. Then Mother and Suzy and Rob came in, and Rob hugged Aunt Serena, and Suzy turned right to the photograph album and the pictures of the penguins.

"I'm green with envy," she said to me. "Promise me you'll keep a list of everything you see."

"Sure. There isn't that much wildlife, but I'll do my best."

"There are lots of different kinds of penguins," she said. "What's this?" And she pointed to a picture of a church outside which was a very large double arch.

"The jawbones of two whales," Aunt Serena said. "It gives you an idea what enormous creatures they are, the largest in the world."

We moved into the dining room. Stassy helped Aunt Serena into her chair. "Meanwhile, my dear Vicky" -- Aunt Serena reached for a crystal glass and took a sip of water -- "we need to double-check that you have all the right clothes for Antarctica."

We'd checked and rechecked my wardrobe several times. "Two pairs of lined jeans. Long johns. Thick socks."

Mother said, "And I think we'll get Vicky a new pair of boots, because the treads on her old ones are one down."

Stassy came back in with a cheese souffle, high and puffy and golden.

"Aunt Serena," Suzy asked, "why did Adam - your Adam - want to go to Antarctica?"

Aunt Serena smiled. "He had an inquiring mind, like you." Suzy smiled with pleasure. Aunt Serena continued, "He loved marine biology. And he'd traveled to the Falklands with Adam Cook to visit Seth, Cook's brother. Seth had been to Antarctica several times and waxed lyrical about it, and the two Adams were always ready for adventure."

"Two Adams?"

"Adam Eddington and Adam Cook."

I could tell that Suzy had a lot more questions, but she let Aunt Serena talk about some work Adam II had done with icefish, fish which adapt to the low temperature of the water by becoming transparent. The conversation was mostly about marine life, which kept Suzy happy, and it was an okay evening, though I realized that I was used to having Aunt Serena to myself.

The Books: "A Ring of Endless Light" (Madeleine L'Engle)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is A Ring of Endless Light by Madeleine L'Engle.

This is my favorite of all of her books. Can you have 2 favorites? Because Wrinkle in Time is also a favorite ... but this book? It's taken on an almost Harriet the Spy level of importance in my own life personally. I couldn't BELIEVE it when I first read it - I still remember my first impressions. I wanted to step into the book. I loved every damn page. It seemed to describe life - yet not everyday life. It seemed to describe everyday life from the eyes of someone who was intensely aware of everything. So there is an intensity on every page. The meals they eat, the books they read, the sunsets they see ... all of it takes on this deep rich intensity which I SO responded to. The book is about a family gathering around their beloved Grandfather who is dying - they spend one last summer with him, basically knowing it will be their last. And so because of that awareness of death approaching - everything else takes on this unbelievably potency. It comes across in the writing.

This is the next book in the Austin series (although - chronologically - it should come AFTER one of my favorite books in the Murry series - The Arm of the Starfish - haven't gotten to that one yet - I love how these series overlap). The Austin family, after spending a year in New York, have moved to be with their Grandfather who lives on Seven Bay Island - where he was a minister for many years. The Austin family would go and visit him every summer and stay for a month. But now they are going to stay indefinitely. They are going to stay until he dies.

So it's already intense. Vicky is as introspective and moody as ever - and she's trying to deal with her grief of losing her grandfather. And yet ... he's still alive! So how do you grieve beforehand? And how do you celebrate someone's life in the little time you have left? These are some of the challenges Vicky faces. She's not always graceful as she is learning these lessons - that's what I love about Vicky Austin and about Madeleine L'Engle's writing. She knows that learning life lessons is HARD and that sometimes, in order to learn the lesson, you have to give up something. And giving up something is not always easy - even if it makes you unhappy. You have to give up, say, your penchant for feeling sorry for yourself. Or you have to give up blaming your parents for everything. You have to "give up childhood things" - and that is not always a graceful process. Looking back, we might wish it were - but Madeleine L'Engle writes about these moments from the ground-level. If you're Vicky's age when you read the book (she's 15) - then you will TOTALLY relate to her.

Vicky has quite a summer. Zachary (member Zachary?) tracks her down - much to the family's chagrin. Oh - him again?? They go out on dates. Zachary tries to impress her. Takes her flying. Takes her out to expensive meals. Somehow she still likes him - even though he is CLEARLY a mess. In a very key moment, though, he abandons her. This is not a fun-loving summer for Vicky - and - when push comes to shove, Zachary can't handle what she's going through. He takes off. This will not be forgiven. She might not hold a grudge forever - but Zachary revealed his character once and for all in that moment.

Vicky's older brother John is now at MIT - and he has an internship that summer on Seven Bay Island where there is an internationally known Marine Biology research center. He immediately befriends a guy named Adam (who also is in Arm of the Starfish - Adam knows the O'Keefes from the Murry series - okay, I'll stop now) - who works at the station. Adam works with dolphins. And this, for me, is where the book stops being a typical (although wonderfully written) young adult novel - and starts being a really GOOD book period, about BIG subjects. Vicky comes to visit the Marine Biology station one day and Adam observes her interactions with some of the dolphins. Her intuitive understanding of their behavior - and the rapport she immediately gets with them - peaks his interest. He asks her if she wouldn't mind being his assistant on his own special independent project he's doing. He is an older guy - he's 20. But he treats her with respect. As an equal. Vicky is head over heels. But she also just falls in love with the work she does with the dolphins. The work involves ESP.

That's enough to set up the excerpt. Adam takes Vicky out into the ocean - they swim out (Vicky's a great swimmer) and hang out with some wild dolphins. They all have names. Vicky gets to know them. A couple days a week, she swims out and hangs out with them. Adam observes her. They then swim back to shore, sit on the sand, and have long conversations about their observations about the dolphins.

Here is one of those days.

Excerpt from A Ring of Endless Light by Madeleine L'Engle.

"Hey, I'll race you along the beach to the big rock and then you can change into your bathing suit and we'll go out and communicate with Basil and Co. And -- each other."

"I have to get my suit out of the bike basket." I scrambled to mym feet.

"I'll get it for you."

I padded along the beach, and then speeded up as Adam came along with my bathing suit.

We swam out and I floated and thought: Njord.

Njord.

He came, but not alone.

Norberta was with him, and as they approached she flapped her flukes at me, splashing me with great deliberation, as though to scold me for summoning Njord without her, telling me in no uncertain terms that Njord was not old enough to go off on his own.

I burst into laughter.

"What's so funny about being splashed?" Adam asked.

I told him.

He laughed, too. "You're absolutely right. That's just what she was telling you."

Njord flicked toward me and nudged me. I caught hold of his dorsal fin and away we went, like a tachyon, toward the horizon.

Speed.

Much faster than Zachary with his foot down on the gas pedal.

I was gloriously excited and frightened at the same time. A baby dolphin may be a lot smaller than a grown one, but it's a lot bigger than I am, and Njord was stronger than he realized. He would never hurt me on purpose, but he might overestimate my strength.

Norberta wouldn't let him.

If I trusted him to come when I called, I had to trust him all the way.

He swung around so suddenly that I almost let go, but not quite, and we went racing back to Norberta. Njord dove and dumped me, and I came up to the surface, sputtering, and both Njord and Norberta began to splash me, making loud laughing noises.

"Calm them down," Adam said. "Tell them you want to ask them some serious questions."

What should I ask? What would be serious to both the dolphins and to me - and to Adam?

Dearest Norberta and Njord. Do you live in the now, or do you project into the future, the way I do, far too often?

I felt a gentle puzzlement coming from Njord.

Maybe he's too young to understand about the future. When Rob was a baby, everything was now for him. Now embraced both yesterday and tomorrow.

Norberta?

Again I felt puzzlement, not puzzlement about her understanding, but my own. Norberta wasn't sure I'd be able to understand.

Try me.

I rolled over onto my back and floated and Norberta moved her great body toward me until we were touching, and I was pressed against the beautiful resiliency of dolphin skin. And a whole series of pictures came flashing across the back of my eyes, in the dream part of my head.

The ocean.

Rain.

A rainbow, glittering with rain.

Snow, falling in great white blossoms to disappear as it touched the sea.

And then the snow turned to stars, stars in the daytime, drenched in sunlight, becoming sunlight.

and the sunlight was the swirling movement of a galaxy

and the ocean caught the light and was part of the galaxy

and the stars of the galaxies lifted butterfly wings and flew together, dancing

And then Norberta, with Njord echoing her, began making strange sounds, singing sounds, like the alleluia sounds Basil had made, and they did something to my understanding of time, so that I saw that it was quite different from the one-way road which was all I knew.

Norberta was right. There was much she understood that was beyond anything I'd ever dreamed of.

She and Njord slapped the water with their flukes in farewell and vanished over the horizon.

I rolled over and began to tread water.

"What did you ask them?" Adam swam to me.

"About time. Adam, their time and ours is completely different."

"How?"

"Norberta tried to tell me, but it was in a language I didn't know, and it translated itself into images, not words."

Treading water, he held out his hands to me. "Hold. And try to tell me what she told you."

I held his hands tightly. Kept moving my legs slowly. Closed my eyes. Imaged again what Norberta had imaged me.

I heard Adam sigh and opened my eyes.

"Nonlinear time," he said. "She was trying to tell you about nonlinear time."

"What's that?" I was still holding on to the beauty of Norberta's images, so it didn't quite hit me that Adam and I had communicated in the same way that I communicated with the dolphins.

"Time is like a river for most of us, flowing in only one direction. Get John to explain it to you. Physics isn't my strong point. But there's a possibility that time is less like a river than a tree, a tree with large branches from which small branches grow, and where they touch each other it might be possible to get from one branch of time to another." He let go my hands. "I'm not explaining it well."

"Do you mean maybe for dolphins time is less - less restricted and limited than it is for us?"

"Isn't that what Norberta was trying to tell you?"

"Yes. Adam, did you see the butterflies?"

He nodded. "Like the one we saw at the cemetery."

"You saw it, too?"

"And so did your grandfather."

"And Grandfather would kow what Njojrd and Norberta were singing."

"Dolphins don't sing." Adam's voice was flatly categorical. "Only humpbacked whales sing."

"Call it what you like," I said. "To me it was singing."

He was staring out to the horizon, where they had vanished. "Granted I've never heard dolphins sound like that before. Hey, are you sure you don't want to go in for marine biology?"

"It's a thought," I said, "but somehow I have a hunch that if I were scientific about them I might not be able to talk with them."

"You may be right. Maybe that's why I resisted you, because I'm too scientific."

"No," I replied quickly. "I was wrong. I went at you without thinking what I was doing."

"And today?"

My body felt as though the water had instantly dropped several degrees. "Did you really see what Norberta showed me?"

"I think so. You're cold, sweetie, and your lips are blue. Let's swim in and have some tea and then we can check it out."

"Okay." He'd called me "sweetie" again. It was as beautiful as the dolphins singing.

"Then I have to spend the rest of the afternoon working on my report. Forgive my repetition, but you've thrown my project for a loop."

"Do you mind?"

"Minding doesn't have anything to do with it. I simply did not expect John Austin's kid sister would be thunder and lightning and electricity."

Cautiously, I asked, "Not -- not like whoever it was last summer?"

"Not like. Very definitely not like. Okay. I'll come along back over to the stable in plenty of time for that moussie or mucksie --"

"Moussaka."

"Yah. I'll be there for it." Imitating the dolphins, he dove down and swam underwater, emerging yards away.

The song of Norberta and Njord echoed in my ears.

And it was joy.

And joy, Grandfather would remind me, joy is the infallible sign of the presence of God.

But I couldn't tell Adam that. Not yet.

The Books: "The Young Unicorns" (Madeleine L'Engle)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is The Young Unicorns by Madeleine L'Engle.

It's been a while since I read this book (which I love) - I think this is the beginning of Madeleine's mystery/suspense books - usually having to do with the Austin family. The Murry family time-travel and help build Noah's Ark and tesseract ... the Austin family gets mixed up in international intrigues. So here's what happens:

The Austin family is now living in New York City - where Dr. Austin has been hired to come on board with some research project. So suddenly, the country kids are in the city. L'Engle wrote this book in 1968 - when Manhattan waa much more visibly dangerous than it is now in its Disneyfied incarnation. She's writing about the New York we see in Midnight Cowboy - when the subways were almost like a Mad Max situation, grafitti everywhere, and a sense of lawlessness and anything-goes. I remember that New York. So there's a sense of real danger on the outskirts of the little family unit.

Now as I recall it - There are a couple of new people in the Austin family's lives now. There is Emily - a young girl, a teenager - who had been blinded in some mysterious accident - (she was attacked?? Nobody knows why or who it was - although through the course of the book it all becomes clear). Emily is a piano prodigy. She stays with the Austin family - the apartment they are renting used to be where Emily lived - and it is thought by her doctors that to stay in a familiar place might help Emily. Oh - and I believe that there is no medical reason for her blindness. It is a mystery ... Emily's best friend is a great character, a teenager named Josiah Davidson, although everyone thankfully calls him Dave. Dave used to be in a gang. He was a bad kid. He has since turned his life around - mainly because of his devotion to Emily. He helps her to and from her music lessons. He reads out loud to her. Meanwhile, the opening scene of the book shows him hurrying through the darkened streets - with old gang members taunting him from the shadows. He is trying to stay clean.

Uhm - it gets really involved. There's something called a Micro-Ray - there are two physicists who are working on some huge project (I'm thinking of Austin Powers right now) - if this Micro-Ray got in the wrong hands it would mean ... apocalypse - or something like that.

Also - the book opens on a creepy haunted autumn night. The Austins sit around the dinner table. Emily and Dave are both there. And it comes out that all the kids, walking home from school that day, had passed a weird little antique shop called Phooka's Antiques. They see a genie's lamp sitting on a crate outside - and as a joke, they pick it up and try to call up a genie. Darkness is falling. And suddenly from behind them they hear a voice - they turn - and there is standing a huge scary-looking genie. He asks them if they have any wishes. Emily blurts out, "Please make me see again." Suzy Austin gets angry at that wish and knocks the lamp out of Emily's hand. Then, from behind them, comes an English-accented voice, "I think you are beyond that kind of wishing." They all turn, and there stands a man holding a big black umbrella. He has no eyebrows. They have no idea who he is. He says to them, "I would be suspicious of a twentieth-century genie, children." and then walks away. The genie, meanwhile, has vanished into the night. Leaving the children baffled and a little afraid. They end up telling Mr. and Mrs. Austin about this. The Austins believe them. It turns out, later - that the genie is actually not a real genie - but somehow part of the dark evil forces who want to co-opt this Micro-Ray thingie - shit, I am totally not remembering how it all comes out ... but there are many different angles into this, and it's very dangerous - the Austin kids, along with Emily and Dave - decide to solve this mystery - which ends up bringing them into contact with some very dangeorus people - people who know the secret behind Emily's attack - and I think who know that Dr. Austin is working on this Micro-Ray project - and want to steal it from him. To use it for their own nefarious purposes. If anyone remembers more details about all of this, let me know.

My memories of the book have to do with the beauty of the characters. Emily is not an easy girl. She is pissed at being blind ... she now has to re-learn how to play the piano - Music is her only solace, but not only that; it is her WORK. Madeleine L'Engle understands that: people who have WORK to do. Even if they are only a child. There is such a thing as genius and Emily has it. But she's temperamental, and not adjusting to blindness with grace. Dave is a WONDERFUL character - you just love him. It is not easy for him to turn his back on a life of crime ... but the kindness of the Austin family, their belief in him, as well as Emily's need of him - helps him.

Throughout all of this intrigue - we get the typical L'Engle touches of ... life lessons being learned. Redemption being possible.

Oh - and this is also her first book where the Cathedral of St. John the Divine - up near Columbia - is almost another character. L'Engle was very involved in that cathedral - she probably still is. She went to church there with her family, she also worked part-time in their library. It is a second home to her. The Cathedral shows up in many of her books as a kind of vortex. A place where the truth eventually will come out.

I love this book - I should read it again.

The excerpt I chose is from the beginning. It's after the kids confess about their encounter with the genie. Dr. Austin says he will go by the antiques shop the next day to ask some questions ... Vicky Austin, actually, was NOT with the others when the genie appears. She is bummed about it. She also is worried about her father - who seems different, troubled, secretive. One of L'Engle's running themes is that moment all children have: when they realize their parents are HUMAN. Fallible. It can be a very upsetting thing ... Vicky has noticed her father's preoccupation and is obsessing over what it means. She and Emily have a conversation about it all before going to bed.

Excerpt from The Young Unicorns by Madeleine L'Engle.

In the bath Emily was singing. Vicky had learned that Emily did two kinds of singing: when she was happy she invented her own melodies; when she was angry or upset she picked more formal themes from the composers she was studying. Bach always indicated deep and serious thinking, coming to terms with some kind of problem. Chopin or Schumann were indications of self-pity, but were seldom heard. A purely intellectual problem, like trouble with her studies at school or memorizing from the unwieldy Braille manuscripts, was apt to be approached with Beethoven or, by contrast, Scarlatti.

Tonight the music that came from the tub was Bach, not a theme from one of the fugues, but one of the more introspective chorale preludes.

-- What would I be singing, Vicky wondered, -- if I sang out my moods?

If Emily had been one of her friends in the country, Vicky would have blurted out, "I'm scared. Something's wrong with my father. Always, always he's wanted to work in a big hospital where he could concentrate on his research, and now that he's got exactly what he's always wanted something's wrong. It isn't just tonight, but the way he snaps at Mother for no reason. And I went into his study once and he was just sitting there with his head in his hands."

But she couldn't wail in front of Emily. If she thought for a moment about all the problems Emily had to face, then a complaint even about somehting as fundamental as a change in her father, who had always seemed perfect, wasn't possible.

Emily came out of the bathroom, wrapped in a large white towel, her long fine hair dark against it. "Vicky --"

"Yes. I'm here."

Emily moved towards the voice and sat by the other girl on the window seat. Vicky turned from the river, from watching the lights across in New Jersey, a barge crawling up the river, cars streaming north and south on the West Side Highway, the lights of the park baring the dark branches of the trees, and looked at Emily. -- I wonder, she thought, -- if Emily used to sit here this way, looking out and dreaming ...

"Vicky," Emily said, "I love your mother, you know."

"I know."

"I don't even remember my own mother, not really. I was only four when she died. Sometimes I think I remember things, but I'm never sure whether or not it's something Papa's told me. All I've really known have been housekeepers, and some of the teachers at school. Oh, Vicky --" Emily spread out her arms and Vicky dodged to avoid being hit on the nose, "when Mrs. McTavish went back to Scotland to live, and you all came to stay in Dr. Shasti's and Dr. Shen-shu's apartment, I thought I'd absolutely hate it when Papa arranged with your mother to have me eat with you and everything. I thought I was going to lose my freedom. I even talked to Dave about running away with him. But it's been -- splendiferous."

"It's been pretty splendiferous for us, too," Vicky said. "Not financially, but getting to know you and Dave, and being friends."

Emily gave a small sigh. "Mr. Theo think my guardian angel arranged it. He says it's about time it started paying attention to me. Vic, I know Suzy was right, to knock the genie's beastly old lamp out of my hands yesterday, but it's you I want to talk to about it."

Vicky said nothing, simply sat there on the window seat, waiting. The small boat moved on up the river under the delicate pale green lights of the George Washington Bridge, and slid out of sight. The wind moved the trees on the Drive back and forth across the street lamps so that light and shadow mingled and intermingled. She wanted to touch Emily for comfort, as she would have Rob, but she kept her hands in the lap of her bathrobe and looked steadily out over the river. The arch of the great bridge seemed to sway lightly in the wind. She shivered.

As though she had seen, Emily said, "It's cold tonight." She put her arms out and spread the palm of her hand against the window glass. "Well ... when I could see, and I was practicing the piano, and I'd forget something - and the funny thing is that the pieces you forget are the ones you've memorized the longest - well, what would happen would be that if I tried to think what the notes were, I couldn't, or if I tried to think with my mind which was the fingering Mr. Theo had worked out, I couldn't. My mind just wouldn't remember. You've had piano lessons. Do you know what I mean?"

"Yes," Vicky said. "And just the way you say, always with the pieces I'd known by heart best. I'd get my fingers mixed up and get stuck."

"So what did you do then? Look it up in the music?"

"Not always," Vicky said slowly.

"Well, what did you do?"

Vicky said reluctantly. "I closed my eyes and thought about something else. If I sort of went into a daydream, or made plans about something or thought about homework - then, usually, I'd remember the notes."

Emily's strong fingers closed about the cushion of the window seat. "But it wasn't your mind that remembered, was it? Your fingers would remember for you?"

"Yes. It always struck me as sort of funny, how my fingers could do it when my eyes or my mind couldn't. But I'm not a musician, Emily. I love music, all our family does, but Mother's the only one who really might have been good at it if she hadn't married Daddy. I love to fiddle around at the piano, but I used to goof off on my practicing."

Emily frowned, turning the subject back. "I hated to have to look something up in the music after I'd memorized it. I used to make my fingers remember for me, when my mind had forgotten, and they almost always would. I think it's called kinesthetic memory or something. Anyhow, I always had it, you see. And that made things easier, I suppose. I mean about what was most important. Even so, I've never quite believed it. Being blind. I know it with my mind. I mean, I do understand that there isn't going to be a grand and splendid operation the way there is in TV or the movies. But I don't know it with me. I don't suppose I ever will, no matter how used I get to it. I still dream seeing. I dream seeing all of you. I wonder if you really look the way I dream you? I know your mother has purply-blue eyes Suzy's, but I see them as grey. And your father's a brown person. So're you, but not as dark a brown."

"Mouse," Vicky muttered rather bitterly.

"And I can see your apartment. Your mother described all the colors and furniture to me one day, and I can see it. I used to be afraid to go back up, but now the apartment is you, all of you, the Austins ... Well. I forgot to brush my teeth. Be right back." She hitched the towel around her like a Roman toga and left the window seat. From the bathroom she called over the sound of the water, "You know the Englishman --"

"What Englishman?" Vicky asked vaguely. This was the first time Emily had ever talked about her blindness, or had referred, even directly, to the accident that had caused it.

But Emily had moved far beyond her last thought. She sounded impatient. "Oh, you know, Vicky, the one who spoke to me after I called the genie up. The one Rob said had no eyebrows. Do you suppose we'll ever see him again?"

"I doubt it."

"I don't," Emily said.

The Books: "Moon by Night" (Madeleine L'Engle)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is Moon by Night by Madeleine L'Engle.

This is the second book in the Austin Family series. The book opens with Mr. Austin announcing to the family that he has been offered a great job in a hospital in New York City - and so the entire family is going to re-locate there. They are country kids, living in a farmhouse - so it's all gonna be a big change. But before they move to Manhattan - they've decided to take the summer off, and drive across country. Sort of a way to transition their lives. So they pack up the station wagon - they're going to go camping - see all the national parks, visit family in Oklahoma, in California ... and when the summer is done, they will fly back - and start up their new lives in New York City.

Big changes for the Austin Family!! Vicky is 14 years old and is deeply into her awkward introspective difficult teenage years ... she's not interested in hanging out with the family all the time, she needs time "to herself" - to write poetry, and think, and have her own experiences - but of course because she's 14 she's kind of obnoxious about it. She doesn't want to be a little girl anymore - but her parents are insistent that this is a family trip - and they have to do things as a FAMILY. (Hmmm. I am thinking of the O'Malleys in Ireland when I refused to get out of the car to go see yet another monastery!)

So they drive across the country. At one of the campsites - a rich family sets up camp beside them - the Austins are vaguely judgmental towards them and their hoity toity camping equipment that they don't know how to use. There is a son in this family - who will become hugely important not only in this book but in MANY other books L'Engle writes. He crosses over between the Austin Family series and the Murry Family series - he's a major character in both. Obviously L'Engle found him fascinating enough to keep him going through multiple books. He is a great character - troubled, annoying, complex, devious, contrite - His name is Zachary. He's a rich kid - he's about 16 years old. His parents kind of ignore him - he's a troubled person so he's shuffled off to boarding schools, because no one knows what to do with him. He's a know-it-all. He wrote the book on "been there, seen it". Nothing can surprise him. There's something cynical and corrupt about him. And yet - on a dime - all of that can collapse, and suddenly all of his sadness comes out, he knows he's a fuck-up, he wishes he could change ... he's lonely, he's sad ... Also, let's just admit it: He (apparently) is gorgeous. From L'Engle's descriptions, he sounds like Peter Gallagher. THAT kind of good-looking. Black hair, pale skin, black eyebrows - a sharp intelligent face - he's got charisma. Oh, and let's just add this to it: He also has rheumatic fever. He's not well. He gets out of breath doing the simplest things - which totally sets him apart from the jocky atmosphere of boarding schools - He can't be an athlete because of his illness.

All of this comes out slowly over Moon by Night - because basically Zachary befriends Vicky - she finds him unlike anyone she has ever met, and even though she hates his cynicism - they end up going for walks together, and arguing about things - the 2 families keep meeting up at different campsites. At first it seems coincidental, but then it becomes clear that Zachary is making his parents follow the Austins and go wherever the Austins go. Mr. and Mrs. Austin are not wacky about this new friend of Vicky's. Actually nobody is. Nobody likes Zachary. But Vicky is sort of dazzled by his interest in her ... by the fact that he has chosen her ... also by the fact that she has never met anyone like him before. But Zachary ends up causing all KINDS of trouble - Mr. and Mrs. Austin want Vicky to spend all her time with the family. Vicky rebels. She wants to hang out with Zachary - even though his cynicism drives her insane. She wants Zachary to just accept that people are GOOD, that there is a possibliity for GOODNESS on this earth - it becomes one of her missions.

Everything comes to a head when they are in California. The Austins are staying with Uncle Douglas - a beloved uncle, who's a painter. Zachary and his family are nearby, I believe - and Zachary ends up taking Vicky out on a date to see a play of The Diary of Anne Frank. And Vicky ends up having a soul-crisis watching that play. She can barely speak of what is happening inside her - and Zachary can't really understand (want to be clear that there is a strange sort of sweetness to Zachary) - she is having a crisis of faith, basically is what has happened.

Her family interprets this "crisis of faith" in the same way they interpreted her sulking fits, or her tantrums. "Oh, that's just Vicky being Vicky." Rolling their eyes. L'Engle SO gets that adolescent moment - the moment when you need to separate yourself from your family - and try to work things out on your own. And even if your family loves you - they probably won't like it that you have separated yourself from them - but that's part of life. Vicky can't talk to her family about what the Anne Frank play meant to her - she can barely be with it herself - so Uncle Douglas steps up to the plate - and the conversation that he has with Vicky is the excerpt I've chosen for the book.

It may sound preachy to some ears, but it doesn't to mine. Messages like this were ESSENTIAL for me when I was 14 years old and very much like Vicky.

And later in the book - when a REAL crisis comes up - Vicky harkens back to this conversation withi Uncle Douglas - it gives her the strength to meet the challenges in front of her.

I love this book. L'Engle takes teenagers seriously. L'Engle knows that any person worthy of the name "human being" will probably ask the question at some point in their lives - "Why did Anne Frank have to die?" - and she takes that moment seriously. And if you think there's an easy and certain answer to that question? Then you do not understand sensitive teenagers and it's a good thing that YOU'RE not writing young adult novels for them. I worked through my own rage about Anne Frank while reading this book.

Excerpt from Moon by Night by Madeleine L'Engle

Uncle Douglas came into the room where I was lying on the bed, not reading or anything, just lying there. Vicky's moping again, Suzy would say. "How about letting me do a few sketches of you, Vicky? Come on into the studio."

I sat with my arms on the back of a chair and my head down on my arms and Uncle Douglas began sketching me. I don't know how long it was with me just sitting and Uncle Douglas working before he said, "What's up, Vicky?"

I shrugged. When I shrug it infuriates the family, but Uncle Douglas doesn't get enough of it to have it bother him. We don't see him that often, and when we do I'm usually at my best instead of my worst. This was his first real dose of what I suppose you'd call my worst.

He asked, very gently, "Want to tell me about it, Vic?"

"I want to," I said. "But I don't think I can."

"Try."

"If I try it'll just sound dopey. I mean, I know everybody thinks it's something that happened with Zachary. But it isn't that. It's sort of everything. Uncle Douglas, why did Anne Frank have to die?"

"Because the Nazis put her in a concentration camp," he answered in a reasonable way.

"But it wasn't right."

"No. It was terribly wrong. But it happened."

"But it wasn't fair!"

Uncle Douglas just nodded slowly, as though to himself, and went on sketching me. Finally he said, "It's a bit of a shock, isn't it, when you realize that things aren't fair in life? It comes particularly hard to you, Vicky, because your parents are eminently fair. IT comes hard because of your grandfather. But it was your grandfather who once recited a little poem to me. Want to hear it?"

"Sure," I said without much enthusiasm. I expected something religious and comforting, and the whole point was that the comforting things were what scared me most, because Zachary was right; they didn't make sense.

"The rain is raining all around,"

Uncle Douglas quoted,

"It rains on both the just and the unjust fellow.
But more, it seems on the just than on the unjust,
For the unjust hath the just's umbrella.

All I'm trying to get at, Vicky, is that life isn't fair, and your grandfather, who is one of the greatest human beings I've ever known, is quite aware of it. He doesn't have anything to do with pie in the sky." (Pie in the sky again. It almost sounded as though Uncle Douglas could read people's minds.) "Your grandfather knows that the wicked flourish and the innocent suffer. But it doesn't destroy him, Vicky. He still believes, with a wonderful and certain calm, that God is our kind and loving father."

"But how can he!" I cried. "If God lets things be unfair, if He lets things like Anne Frank happen, then I don't love Him, I hate Him!"

Uncle Douglas didn't look shocked. He just looked thoughtful. "Tilt your head a little to the right, Vicky. That's better. Hold it." Then he said, "I guess you know I'm the heathen of the family."

"You're not a heathen."

"Thanks, dear. Happily your grandfather doesn't think so, either. Nor that I'm a heretic, bless him, though I have some pretty unorthodox ideas. I get mad at God, too, Vicky. I've gone out alone and bellowed in rage at God at the top of my lungs. But the fact that I bellow at him I suppose proves that I think he's there, doesn't it? Go ahead and be mad at God if you feel like it, Vicky. I happen to agree with your grandfather that the greatest sin against God is indifference. But remember when you're yelling at God, what you're doing is saying, Do it MY way, God, not YOUR way, MY way."

"How can things like Anne Frank be God's way? I don't want God if things like that are His way. It's a cockeyed kind of way. Look at Maggy. Both her mother and father died and she was too young. And the most cockeyed part of it is that she's probably turned out a much nicer kid than if they hadn't died the way she was being brought up and everything. Does that make sense? It's crazy. What kind of a God does things like that!"

"Do you mind if I give you a little lecture?" Uncle Douglas asked. "Your mother says that you've been very resistant to parental preaching lately. Do you mind a little avuncular philosophy?"

"Go ahead," I said stiffly.

"As I told you, sweetheart, I'm the heathen of the family. This is nothing to be proud of. It's just a fact we have to face. But if you go on the assumption - and I do - that man has freedom of choice, then you have to assume responsibility for your own actions. You can't go on passing the buck to God." I must have looked blank, because Uncle Douglas wriggled his eyebrows. "How can I explain it to you? Look, Vicky, you remember your bike accident, don't you?"

"How could I forget it?"

"Why did you have the accident? Because you exercised freedom of choicde to do something you knew perfectly well you oughtn't to do. When you went on the back road in the dark you did wrong and you knew you were doing wrong, and when you were in the hospital afterwards, you didn't whine around saying why did God do this to me? You accepted the responsibility for your own actions."

"But Anne Frank didn't do anything wrong. She didn't do anything to put her in a concentration camp."

"When you had your bike accident do you think you were the only one who suffered? Everyone in your family was hurt. And what you had done was not so terribly wrong, after all. But when the Germans set up concentration camps that was a very big wrong, and certainly many millions of people suffered because of it. Man exercised the freedom of choice to do wrong, and innocent people paid for it, but I don't think you can go around blaming God for it."

"He could have stopped it," I said stubbornly.

"IF he interferes every time we do wrong where's our freedom of choice?"

"But it wasn't fair. It wasn't right." I persisted.

Uncle Douglas sighed. For a while he worked on his sketch of me. Then he sighed and said, "One of the biggest facts you have to face, Vicky, is that if there is a God he's infinite, and we're finite, and therefore we can't ever understand him. The minute anybody starts telling you what God thinks, or exactly why he does such and such, beware. People should never try to make God in man's image, and that's what they're constantly doing. Not your grandfather. But he's extraordinary. So in my heathen way, Vicky, when I wasn't much older than you, I decided that God, a kind and loving God, could never be proved. In fact there are, as you've been seeing lately, a lot of arguments against him. But there isn't any point to life without him. Without him we're just a skin disease on the face of the earth, and I feel too strongly about the human spirit to be able to settle for that. So what I did for a long time was to live life as though I believed in God. And eventually I found out that the as though had turned into a reality. I think the thing that did it for me was a jigsaw puzzle."

"A jigsaw puzzle?"

"A jigsaw puzzle. Hold still. Chin a little higher. You know those puzzles with hundreds of tiny pieces? YOu take one of those pieces by itself and it doesn't make sense, does it? You look at one piece and it doesn't even seem to be part of a picture. But you put all the pieces together and you see the meaning of it all. Well, what I, in my heathenish way, Vicky, feel about life, and unfairness, is that we find it hard to realize that there is a completed puzzle. We jump to conclusions and decide that the one little piece we have in our hand is all there is and it doesn't make sense. We find it almost impossible to think about infinity, much less comprehend it. But life only makes sense if you see it in infinite terms. If the one piece of the puzzle that is this life were all, then everything wouold be horrible and unfair and I wouldn't want much to do with God, either. But there are all the other pieces, too, the pieces that make up the whole picture. Now I'm just going to slap some water color on this. Can you hold it a while longer? Maybe when I'm done I'll cut it up into tiny pieces and put them in an envelope and give them to you to fit together. So you can find out what Vicky is. The jigsaw puzzle is a nice, stretchable metaphor. You can use it for almost anything. Now let's stop talking abstractions and get down to specifics. Did Zachary do anything to you that he shouldn't have done?"

I started to shake my head, then remembered that Uncle Douglas was painting me. "You mean did he make out too much and stuff?"

"And stuff," Uncle Douglas said.

"No stuff," I said. I don't know why I wasn't furious with Uncle Douglas. I would have been if it had been Mother or Daddy.

"Then ..." he left it up in the air.

"You guessed it," I said. "It was all the stuff you were talking about. Did Daddy tell you about Zachary's rheumatic fever and his heart and all?"

"Yes."

"Does Daddy think Zachary's going to die?"

"Why don't you ask him? Your father hasn't examined Zachary, so he can't really tell. But, he says, on a superficial guess, it looks more as though Zachary were trying to kill himself than as though he really had to die young. I don't honestly think he's a very healthy person for you to see, Vicky."

"Nobody likes him," I said bitterly. "Nobody's even bothered to know him."

"You like him?"

"I don't know."

"We're not trying to interfere, Vicky. And we're not trying to keep you from growing up. We'd just like to try to make it as easy as possible, because we love you."

"But you said that nothing that was worth anything was easy."

"Touche. But it doesn't need to be quite as difficult as you can make it if you insist on going at it completely alone. After all, the only way man has gone as far as he has is by benefitting from other people's experience."

Aunt Elena'd finally switched from her finger exercises which had been sort of boring into our subconscious like a drill, and gone into a Bach fugue.

"It's like a fugue, too," Uncle Douglas said, as Aunt Elena started the fugue over again. "Elena and I are lucky ones. She has music and I have painting. They give form and shape to everything we do. It was music that kept Elena from being destroyed when Hal died. You'll be better off when you know what you want to be, Vicky."

"But I haven't any talents," I said, "the way John and Suzy do."

"I think the trouble is that you have too many talents. There are all kinds of directions you could go. You're an artist of some kind. That I'm sure of. It's the roughest of all lives, and the most rewarding. There. That's all I'm going to do today. Want to see it?"

I got up and looked at the painting. "I'd just as soon you didn't cut it up into little pieces."

"Like it? So do I. You're on your way to being a real beauty, child, but it's all in what's behind your face. Right now everything's promise. I'm not going to let you have this because I like it too. As a matter of fact it's one of the best darned things I've ever done. Let's go show it to Elena."

"But she's practicing."

"Right. And I never interrupt her except for something special. Bless you, Vicky, my darling!" His voice soared happily. "I've finally broken through to something I've been reaching for for weeks and was beginning to despair about. Come on! Hi, Elena! Vicky and I've done it!" He grabbed me by the hand and pulled me in to Aunt Elena, and he was so happy that I completely forgot that I was miserable.

The Books: "Meet the Austins" (Madeleine L'Engle)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is Meet the Austins by Madeleine L'Engle.

So we're now done with the Time Quartet - although those characters still show up in her books - She has another series - I guess it's called The Austin Family series. These are not science fiction - these people do not have supernatural experiences, just real-life ones. The Austin family is loosely based on Madeleine L'Engle's own family (the one she had as an adult). There's a father who's a doctor, and four kids: John the oldest, Vicky, Suzy and Rob. In the first chapter, a tragedy happens - I think they get the call that an uncle died, a favorite uncle - this is Vicky's first encounter with death (the book is a first-person book, told from Vicky's point of view) - and they end up adopting Maggy, the uncle's daughter. L'Engle and her husband also did this - there was an adopted child. Maggy is a handful. According to Vicky, she doesn't seem to be grieving properly. Vicky has a lot to learn. Maggy is a brat, and her big fat brattiness is one of the ways she expresses her rage at being left an orphan. The family needs to adjust to Maggy - and that's what this whole book is about. It's a simple book - no unicorns or time travel - but L'Engle has a way of writing about family life that seems very real. For example, there is an entire chapter about the aftermath of little Suzy reading Charlotte's Web. Suzy realizes, in a terribler a-ha moment - that the bacon she eats every morning could be Wilbur! So she refuses to eat bacon. But the whole thing becomes a family crisis - Suzy literally cannot recover from reading that book, it has rocked her little 9 year old world. It's that kind of observational stuff that L'Engle does best - the DETAILS.

Anyway, it's not a great book - but it is the introduction of the family who is the star in many more of her books (some of which are my favorites) - so of course I love it.

I'm going to post my favorite bit of writing in the book. I knew exactly what I wanted to choose. There is an ice storm. The farmhouse where they live loses power. Mr. Austin is stuck at the hospital. So the family hangs out at the house - and ... it's just how L'Engle describes the whole thing. If you've lived through an actual ice storm, you'll know that she writes it down perfectly.

This book has an ease to it ... it's not about anything big, it's not trying too hard to make a point, or have a lesson ... It's about a couple of months in the life of this one family. L'Engle commits to the details: what the kitchen is like, how Mrs. Austin plays the piano when she's stressed out, how the family talks to each other over dinner, what they argue about, where people get STUCK in life - how sometimes you need to be smacked out of a bad mood (not literally - but there's a nice "tough love" aspect to the Austin parents) ... It's just a nice simple book.

Excerpt from Meet the Austins by Madeleine L'Engle.

During the afternoon the wind shifted, swinging around from the southeast to the northwest, and the thermometer dropped down to a shivering ten degrees. Even when the furnace is working full time the house is coldest when the wind is blowing hard from the northwest. Mother stationed us in front of the fireplaces and we kept putting logs on and as long as we stayed right close we weren't too cold. Mother began to worry about the pipes, and she and John went upstairs and draped blankets over the radiators to try to keep them from freezing. The office phone rang once, but when we went to answer it, it was completely dead.

Have you ever noticed how things look different when it's terribly cold? I don't think it's imagination to say that things look harder - the grasses and small trees especially. And things don't have as much color, they fade. Uncle Douglas says that this is observant of me, and absolutely true. And then there's the feel, the cold against your face as though your skin had been turned to polished metal. And I always feel, for some reason, terribly clean when it's specially cold. And all kinds of wood, trees, and the wood of the house, creak in protest.

About six o'clock Daddy walked in, and we all rushed at him and tried to climb up on him, until Mother shouted, "Children! Daddy's tired! Leave him alone!" And she sent us all to sit in front of the fireplace in the kitchen while she got dinner at the fireplace in the living room, and John and I knew she was telling Daddy about who Sally really was and everything that had happened.

We all went to bed early because in an ice storm that's the coziest, warmest thing to do.

I don't know how long we'd been asleep when I felt someone shaking me, and I opened my eyes and it was Mother, holding a flashlight. "Put something warm on, Vicky," she said, "and come downstairs and see fairyland."

I put on my bathrobe and fuzzy slippers and wrapped a blanket around myself and ran downstairs, and so did everybody else. Daddy had Rob rolled up in a blanket and was carrying him, which pleased Rob very much. We looked outdoors and the moon was high and full and it streamed through the trees and every single tiny twig was cased in ice and shimmering like diamonds. And the ground shimmererd, too, because it was covered with spangles of ice. The two birches were twin shining arcs of ice that seemed to be spraying off rays of light. As the wind shook the trees tiny bits of ice would break off and catch the moonlight as they fell to the ground. Little clouds scudded across the moon, and it made the moon look as though it were flying across the sky; and then the trees made long delicate shadows that came and went along the icy ground. It was so beautiful we couldn't speak, any of us. We just stood there and looked and looked. And suddenly I was so happy I felt as though my happiness were flying all about me, like sparkles of moonlight off the ice. And I wanted to hug everybody, and tell how much I loved everybody and how happy I was, but it seemed as though I were under a spell, as though I couldn't move or speak, and I just stood there, with joys streaming out of me, until Mother and Daddy sent us up to bed.

The Books: "Many Waters" (Madeleine L'Engle)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is Many Waters by Madeleine L'Engle.

Chronologically, this should be the third book in the Time Quartet - falling in between Wind in the Door and Swiftly Tilting Planet - but she wrote it many years (many waters?) after Swiftly Tilting Planet. It came out when I was in high school.

I LOVE THIS BOOK. I have read it over and over and over. It never palls. There's magic in it. There's magic in all of her books - but for whatever reason, this one completely haunts me. Also, it's one of those books where: every time I read it it feels like a new book. It has new messages for me, new lessons to teach, new themes ... things I feel like I missed the first time around. But no, I didn't miss them. I just wasn't ready for those particular messages.

Marvelous book. I tormented myself with picking out an excerpt.

Meg, Calvin and Charles Wallace have nothing to do with this book - which makes it stand out from the rest of the quartet. The "stars" of this book are the twins - Sandy and Dennys - the ones in the other books who are practical, "normal", good students, jocks, good-looking - they don't worry about echthroi or tesseracts .... They are good kids, but they feel like they are the only regular people in a family full of weirdos. They're smart, too - they don't have the tortured genius thing of Meg and Charles Wallace. They read, they absorb what they read, they do well on tests ... they're "average". I love it that this book is about them - because there's a point to be made there, a very important point. The Murrys are not your average family - the parents are Nobel prize winning scientists ... Meg is awkward, does horribly in school, and yet has some kind of genius. Charles Wallace is 5 years old and could give Einstein a run for his money. The twins in the other books are peripheral .... but if L'Engle had kept it that way she could have been seen to have making a point about worth. Who is worthy to go on these time-traveling adventures? Certainly not AVERAGE people. I'm not saying I picked up on that in the other 3 books - I just know that reading Many Waters is a delight, and one of the reasons it is a delight is because Sandy and Dennys, the so-called "normal" ones - are actually extraordinary people. Deep, smart, willing to learn and grow ... They are just as amazing as the rest of their amazing family - it's just that the two of them have a much better "game face" - They are much more socially acceptable. They play hockey. They get in fights to defend their sister. They gripe about tests and chores. But does that mean that they are not capable of having great lives? I feel like I'm not making the point here .... but for me the book packs a punch because the two heroes are so "normal". It gives hope to us all. Not all of us are geniuses, or amazing, or weird, or out of the ordinary ... But the possibility of greatness and depth reside within us ALL. L'Engle was right to give Sandy and Dennys their moment in the sun.

The book takes no time in set-up. Sandy and Dennys are home alone. They are teenagers. The two of them are connected in a way only twins are. They kind of speak with one voice, they're totally attuned to one another. They're home, they're making an after-school snack, it's a freezing cold day - the winter is long - they end up going into their parents lab - where Mrs. Murry is in the middle of some kind of experiment. As a joke, Dennys goes over to the computer and types: "TAKE ME SOMEPLACE WARM". Sandy says, "Hey - we shouldn't mess with that ..." but before anything else can happen - there is a huge sonic BOOM - and the two of them are suddenly standing in the middle of a desert. A blazing hot desert - stretching out on all sides, nothing else in sight. Much confusion and alarm ensues. What did we do? Where are we? How do we reverse what we just did????

They wander about, they think they see palm trees, they are dying of the heat. Eventually, they meet a small (4 foot tall) hairy man - there is much alarm - a clash of civilizations basically - who are these 2 tall pale giants??? Who is this short hairy midget??? One of the twins begins to get ill - from the heat. They end up being taken back to an oasis.

Now - long story short - and as always - describing her plots make them sound hokey - eventually it becomes clear that they have gone back in time. WAY back in time. To the time of Noah. This is revealed very slowly - Sandy and Dennys are both quite ill from the desert heat - one of them almost dies from it and spends a good deal of time healing - but eventually they realize where they are and what the did.

The book, though, really develops all of these characters - characters that we know from the bible. Noah isn't just the dude in the bible. He's a kind of cranky crazy father of a large family - a man who gets messages from "El" on a daily basis - who is confused by the messages. He seems like a real person. The women in the story also become real - and they're barely mentioned in the Bible. We get to know Noah's daughters - the wives of his sons -

Great changes are coming. There is going to be a clash of some kind - of the old world and the new - of good and evil - .

There are creatures who roamed the earth then - seraphim and nephilim - and to me, this is where L'Engle's genius comes out. Her descriptions of this race of beings - what they are, what they do, what their argument is with one another - It's one of the many "ways in" to this book. There will always be those who are in alignment with the light. Meaning: good. And there will always be those who are in alignment with the dark. Meaning: bad. The age-old struggle. The seraphim and nephilim do battle over the humans in their midst - corrupting or enlightening - trying to protect, or trying to bring down ... It's terrifying.

Sandy and Dennys, once they realize what story they are in, become alarmed. They know the end. They try to remember the details of the story from the Bible but they can't. Both of them become great friends with Yalith - one of Noah's daughters. She is not mentioned in the Bible. Sandy and Dennys wonder, tormentedly, why not. Why didn't she "make it' into the story? What is going to happen to her??

It's a terrific book. I love it. Just flipping through it this morning made me want to read it again.

Here's an excerpt where Yalith walks across the oasis ... it is night ... seraphim and nephilim appear ... you get the sense of big frightening changes coming. Yalith is young. She has no eye for the future, but she can feel the transformation approaching.

Why I love this book is in its healing message. But I also love it for the details of the writing. Like how she describes the smell of the nephil's wings below.

Excerpt from Many Waters by Madeleine L'Engle.

After leaving the grazing grounds around Lamech's tent, she walked through one of his groves that led her onto the desert of white sand lapping against brown grasses. Wherever there were not enough wells to provide for irrigation, the desert took over. But she preferred walking across the street to the dusty, dirty paths of the oasis. Stars were bright against the velvet black of sky. At her feet, a late beetle hustled to burrow itself under the sand until morning. To her right, high in the trees of Lamech's groves, the baboons were chittering sleepily.

She looked toward the horizon, and on an outcropping of rock similar to the one the earthquake had made when Sandy and Dennys met Japheth and the mammoth Higgaion, she saw the shadow of a supine form. She looked to make sure it was a lion, then called softly, "Aariel!"

The creature rose slowly, languidly, and then leapt down from the rock and loped toward her, and she saw that she had been deceived in the starlight, for it was not a lion but one of the great desert lizards, called dragons by most people, although its wings were atrophied and it could not fly.

She stood frozen with anxiety on the starlit sand, her hand holding one of the tiny arrows. As the lizard neared her, it rose straight upward to a height of at least six feet, and suddenly arms were outstretched above the head; the tail forked into two legs, and a man came running toward her, a man of extraordinary beauty, with alabaster-white skin and wings of brilliant purple. His long hair was black with purple glints, and his eyes were the color of amethysts.

"You called me, lovely one?" He bent down toward her tenderly, a questioning smile on his lips, which were deeply rosy in his white face.

"No, no," she stammered. "Not you. I thought -- I thought you were Aariel."

"No. I am Eblis, not Aariel. And you called, and here I am," his voice soothed, "at your service. Is there anything you want?"

"Oh, no, thank you, no."

"No baubles for your ears, your lovely little neck?"

"Oh, no, thank you, no," she repeated. Her sisters would think her stupid for refusing his offer. The nephilim were generous. This nephil could give her everyhthing he had offered and more.

"And all of a sudden you have changed," he said. "You were a child, and now you are not a child any longer."

Instinctively, she folded her hands across her breasts, stammering, "B-but, I am a child. I'm not nearly a hundred years old yet ..."

He reached out one long, pale hand and softly pushed her starlit hair back from her forehead. "Do not be afraid of growing up. There are many pleasures ahead for you to taste, and I would help you to enjoy them all."

"You?" She looked, startled, at the glorious creature by her, light shimmering like water from the purple wings.

"I, sweet little one, I, Eblis, of the nephilim."

No nephil had paid attention to her before. She was too young. Then she saw, in her mind's eye, the strange young giant in her grandfather's tent. She was no longer a child. She did not react to the young giant as a child.

"There are many changes to come," Eblis said, "and you will need help."

Her eyes widened. "Changes? What kind of changes?"

"People are living too long. El is going to cut the lifespan back. How old is your father?"

"He must be, oh, close to six hundred years. Middle-aged." She looked at her fingers. Ten. That was really as far as she could count accurately.

"And your Grandfather Lamech?"

"Let's see. He was very young when he had my father, not quite two hundred years old. He, too, has lived very long. His father, Methuselah, my great-grandfather, lived for nine hundred and sixty-nine years. And his father was Enoch, who walked with El, and lived three hundred and sixty and five years and then El took him --" Involved in the great chronologies of her fathers, she was not prepared for him to unfurl his great wings and gather her in, enveloping her in great swirls of purple touched with brilliance as with stars. She gasped in surprise.

He laughed softly. "Oh, little one, little innocent one, how much you have to learn, about men's ways, and about El's ways, which are not men's ways. Will you let me teach you?"

To be taught by a nephil was an honor she had never expected. She was not sure why she was hesitant. She breathed in the strange odor of his wings, smelling of stone, of the cold, dark winds which came during the few brief weeks of winter.

Enveloped in Eblis's wings, she did not hear the rhythmic thud as a great lion galloped toward them across the desert, roaring as it neared them. Then both Yalith and Eblis turned and saw the lion rising to its hind legs, as the lizard had done, leaping up into the sky, a great tawny body with creamy wings, gilt-tipped, unfurling and stretching to a vast span. The great amber eyes blazed.

Eblis removed his wings from around Yalith, hunched them behind his back. "Why this untoward interruption, Aariel?"

"I ask you to leave Yalith alone."

"What's it to you? The daughters of men mean nothing to the seraphim." Eblis smiled down at Yalith, stroking his long fingers delicately across her burnished hair.

"No?" Aariel's voice was low.

"No, seraph. A nephil may go to a daughter of man. A nephil understands pleasure." He touched a fingertip to Yalith's lips. "I would teach you, sweeting. I think you would like what I can give you. I will leave you now to Aariel's tender ministries. But I will see you again." He turned away from them, toward the desert, and his nephil form dropped into that of the great dragon/lizard. He loped away into the shadows.

Yalith said, "Aariel, I don't understand. I thought I saw you on the rock. I was sure it was you, and I called, and then it wasn't you, it was Eblis."

"The nephilim are masters of mimicry. He wanted you to think it was I. I beg you, little one, be cautious."

Her eyes were troubled. "He was very kind to me."

Aariel put his hand under her chin and looked into her eyes, clear and still childlike. "Who would not be kind to you? Are you on your way somewhere?"

"Home. I took Grandfather Lamech his night-light. But, oh, Aariel, there is a strange young giant in Grandfather Lamech's tent. Japheth carried him there. He has a terrible sunburn. He can't be from anywhere around here. He says he is not a giant, and I have never seen anyone like him. He is as tall as you are, and his body is not hairy, it is smooth like yours, like the nephilim, and his skin, where it wasn't burned red, was pale. Not white, like the skin of the nephilim, but pale and tender, like a baby's."

"You seem to have observed him carefully," Aariel said.

"There's never been anyone like him on the oasis before." She flushed, turned slightly away.

Aariel asked, "What is being done for his burn? Does he have fever?"

"Yes. Higgaion is keeping him sprayed with cool water, and they are going to ask a seraph what to do for him."

"Adnarel?"

"Yes. The scarab beetle."

"Good."

"He is not one of you, this young giant, and he is not one of the nephilim. Their skin burns white and whiter in the sun, like white ash when the fire has burned fiercely in the winter weeks."

The creamy wings trembled, the golden tips shimmering in the starlight. "If his skin burns, he is not of the nephilim."

"Nor of you."

"Does he have wings?"

"No. In that, he is like a human. He seemed very young, though he is as long as you, and thin."

"Did you observe his eyes?"

She did not notice the twinkle in his own. "Grey. Nice eyes, Aariel. Steady. Not burning, like -- not giving out light, like yours. More like human eyes, mine, and my parents' and brothers' and sisters'."

Aariel touched her gently on the shoulder. "Go on home, child. Do not fear to cross the oasis. I will see that you are not harmed."

"You and Eblis. Thank you." Like a child, she held her face up for a kiss, and Aariel leaned down and pressed his lips gently against hers. "You will not be a child much longer."

"I know ..."

He touched her lips again, lightly, and a moment later a large lion was running lightly across the desert.

The Books: "A Swiftly Tilting Planet" (Madeleine L'Engle)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L'Engle.

Third in the Time Quartet. Actually - years later - Madeleine wrote Many Waters - which, chronologically, would come after Wind in the Door - but she wrote Swiftly Tilting Planet first. We're back with the Murry family. Meg is now married to Calvin and pregnant with their first chidl (who will end up being Polly - and the star of yet another one of L'Engle's series!) - and ... it's been a while since I read this one. Charles Wallace is now 15 - and - he's gotten even weirder and more brilliant. The book opens on a Christmas holiday - everyone is home at the old farmhouse - Calvin is a doctor, and is out of town, but his mother - a drunk woman named Mrs. O'Keefe - is at the Murrys. And Mr. Murry is called to the phone to consult with the President ... because (as I recall) some insane dictator of a tiny country is threatening to send off nuclear missiles to destroy the earth. Something like that - the details are not clear. Mr. Murry is an adviser to the president, obviously. So the family sits around - and there's a sense of danger in the air - intense danger - imminent destruction - how I imagine the Cuban missile crisis felt to those who lived through it. Life is sharp, poignant, sweet - but there are evil forces at work out there, to threaten the light. Charles Wallace - with his intuition - somehow knows that there is something he must do - and naturally, he hooks up with a unicorn, and goes back in time to adjust some of the might-have-beens that have led the world to this point. Again, it's nearly impossible to talk about her books without making them sound silly. Charles Wallace has a gift - what is known as "kything" - a very specific kind of telepathic communication - the opening sequence of Wrinkle in Time makes reference to it - how connected he is to Meg, how he always seems to "know" about her ... As he gets older, this "kything" thing becomes more urgent - a gift he has been given that he can actually use. But not without paying a huge price. Charles Wallace, a little boy, essentially, carries the weight of the world on his shoulders. He internalizes suffering - he understands so much - he is incredibly wise. He is old before his time.

The book becomes a journey of kything - Meg lying in her bed at home, pregnant - Charles Wallace time-traveling - the two of them intimately connected, feeling what the other is feeling - across space and time.

If anyone remembers anything else more specific about this book, please share it. I am blurry on the details. I do know that the drunken Mrs. O'Keefe who seems like she would be no good in a crisis starts to chant this old ancient rune - which seems meaningless and annoying - but it ends up being the connecting thread - the thematic glue that holds the book together. L'Engle is great that way.

Here's a scene from the beginning when Charles Wallace - suddenly knows that somehow - even though this is a political world issue - he knows that there is something HE must do about it. But what? He can't figure out - so he goes out into the garden - to think. To ponder and reflect.

Excerpt from A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L'Engle.

Charles Wallace continued to walk along the familiar route.

Hand resting on Ananda, the tingling warmth flowing back and forth between them, Meg followed her brother's steps. When he reached the open space where the star-watching rock was, Ananda's breathing quickened; Meg could feel the rise and fall of the big dog's rib cage under her hand.

There was no moon, but starlight touched the winter grasses with silver. The woods behind the rock were a dark shadow. Charles Wallace looked across the valley, across the dark ridge of pines, to the shadows of the hills beyond. Then he threw back his head and called,

"In this fateful hour
I call on all Heaven with its power!"

The brilliance of the stars increased. Charles Wallace continued to gaze upward. He focused on one star which throbbed with peculiar intensity. A beam of light as strong as a ladder but clear as water flowed between the star and Charles Wallace, and it was impossible to tell whether the light came from the piercing silver-blue of the star or the light blue eyes of the boy. The beam became stronger and firmer and then all the light resolved itself in a flash of radiance beside the boy. Slowly the radiance took on form, until it had enfleshed itself into the body of a great white beast with flowing mane and tail. From its forehead sprang a silver horn which contained the residue of the light. It was a creature of utter and absolute perfection.

The boy put his hand against the great white flanks, which heaved as though the creature had been racing. He could feel the warm blood coursing through the veins as the light had coursed between star and boy. "Are you real?" he asked in a wondering voice.

The creature gave a silver neigh which translated itself into the boy's mind as "I am not real. And yet in a sense I am that which is the only reality."

"Why have you come?" The boy's own breath was rapid, not so much with apprehension as with excitement and anticipation.

"You called on me."

"The rune --" Charles Wallace whispered. He looked with loving appreciation at the glorious creature standing beside him on the star-watching rock. One silver-shod hoof pawed lightly, and the rock rang with clarion sound. "A unicorn. A real unicorn."

"That is what you call me. Yes."

"What are you, really?"

"What are you, really?" the unicorn countered. "You called me, and because there is a great need, I am here."

"You know the need?"

"I have seen it in your mind."

"How is it that you speak my language?"

The unicorn neighed again, the sound translucent as silver bubbles. "I do not. I speak the ancient harmony."

"Then how is it that I understand?"

"You are very young, but you belong to the Old Music."

"Do you know my name?"

"Here, in this When and Where, you are called Charles Wallace. It is a brave name. It will do."

Charles Wallace stretched up on tiptoe to reach his arms about the beautiful beast's neck. "What am I to call you?"

"You may call me Gaudior." The words dropped on the rock like small bells.

Charles Wallace looked thoughtfully at the radiance of the horn. "Gaudior. That's Latin for more joyful."

The unicorn neighed in acquiescence.

"That joy in existence without which ..."

Gaudior struck his hoof lightly on the rock, with the sound of a silver trumpet. "Do not push your understanding too far."

"But I'm not wrong about Gaudior?"

"In a sense, yes; in a sense, no."

"You're real and you're not real; I'm wrong and I'm right."

"What is real?" Gaudior's voice was as crystal as the horn.

"What am I supposed to do, now that I've called on all Heaven with its power and you've come?"

Gaudior neighed. "Heaven may have sent me, but my powers are closely defined and narrowly limited. And I've never been sent to your planet before. It's considered a hardship assignment." He looked down in apology.

Charles Wallace studied the snow-dusted rock at his feet. "We haven't done all that well by our planet, have we?"

"There are many who would like to let you wipe yourselves out, except it would affect us all; who knows what happen? And as long as there are even a few who belong to the Old Music, you are still our brothers and sisters."

Charles Wallace stroked Gaudior's long, aristocratic nose. "What should I do, then?"

"We're in it together." Gaudior knelt delicately and indicated that Charles Wallace was to climb up onto his back. Even with the unicorn kneeling, it was with difficulty that the boy clambered up and sat astride, up toward the great neck, so that he could hold onto the silver mane. He pressed his feet in their rubber boots as tightly as he could against the unicorn's flanks.

Gaudior asked, "Have you ridden the wind before?"

"No."

"We have to be careful of Echthroi," Gaudior warned. "They try to ride the wind and throw us off course."

"Echthroi --" Charles Wallace's eyes clouded. "That means the enemy."

"Echthroi," Gaudior repeated. "The ancient enemy. He who distorted the harmony, and who has gathered an army of destroyers. They are everywhere in the universe."

Charles Wallace felt a ripple of cold move along his spine.

"Hold my mane," the unicorn advised. "There's always the possibility of encountering an Echthros, and if we do, it'll try to unseat you."

Charles Wallace's knuckles whitened as he clutched the heavy mane. The unicorn began to run, skimming over the tops of the grasses, up, over the hills, flinging himself onto the wind and riding with it, up, up, over the stars ...

The Books: "A Wind in the Door" (Madeleine L'Engle)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L'Engle.

Here's the sequel to Wrinkle in Time - the second book in what is now known as The Time Quartet. It takes place shortly after the end of Wrinkle. Mr. Murry is now home from his intergalactic existential captivity. Calvin and Meg have continued to hang out (how much do we just love Calvin?) - and Charles Wallace is still eerily prescient and intelligent. This book opens with him saying to Meg, "There are dragons in the garden." Meg, at first, cannot see them. Turns out, it is NOT a dragon - but that's not the point. SOMETHING is out there and Charles Wallace senses it. Charles Wallace is 6 now - and Meg can tell that something is wrong with him. The book becomes a discovery process of what it is that is tormenting Charles Wallace -

Ack - her books are hard to talk about. I'm making it sound very dull. On a higher level, the book is about the melding of the macro and the micro worlds. What happens in an outer galaxy affects us, here on earth, on a cellular level. We're all one. Made of the same stuff. If a star dies, we feel it - as a loss. We may not even know what we are grieving - but we are in pain.

If Wrinkle in Time was a journey out into the galaxy - (the macro) - then Wind in the Door is a journey into the micro world. Specifically, mitochondria. The whole book ends up being about mitochondria ... and that's really all I'm gonna say - because to describe it further would make it sound dumb. I won't say Wind in the Door is better than Wrinkle - it is not - but it is a sequel that is vibrant, well-written, very moving - and keeps the themes going from the first book, in a strong and unexpected way. I LOVE this book - I find its message to be really poignant, almost painfully so - and I pick up this book when I need a reminder of it. The book ends up being about the universal power of love, and how inextricably intertwined love is with identity. This is played out in the book in a literal as well as a metaphoric way, micro and macro - I've shed tears when reading this book, its message is so healing and redemptive.

Also - I just love all of these characters. I love Meg and Calvin and Charles Wallace and the twins and Mr and Mrs Murry - they seem so real to me - and the beauty of L'Engle's books is that - they KEEP showing up. You can put off the final goodbyes to them - because those characters come in and out of most of her books - sometimes they're peripheral, sometimes they're the stars - but you get this sense of continuity - of connection with them - and I have always loved that.

So here's an excerpt from the beginning of Wind in the Door before it has become clear that drastic measures (uhm - going into mitochondria) have to be taken. It's a family discussion at dinner. All the themes are introduced right here.

Excerpt from A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L'Engle.

Meg was not thinking about spaghetti, although she was sprinkling Parmesan over hers. She wondered what their mother would say if Charles Wallace told her about his dragons. If there really were dragons, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, in the north pasture, oughtn't their parents to know?

Sandy said, "When I grow up I'm going to be a banker and make money. Someone in this family has to stay in the real world."

"Not that we don't think science is the real world, Mother," Dennys said, "but you and Father aren't practical scientists, you're theoretical scientists."

Mrs. Murry demurred, "I'm not wholly impractical, you know, Sandy, and neither is your father."

"Spending hours and hours peering into your micro-electron microscope and listening to that microsonar whatsit isn't practical," Sandy annouced.

"You just look at things nobody else can see," Dennys added, "and listen to things nobody else can hear, and think about them."

Meg defended her mother. "It would be a good idea if more people knew how to think. After Mother thinks about something long enough, then she puts it into practice. Or someone else does."

Charles Wallace cocked his head with a pleased look. "Does practical mean that something works out in practice?"

His mother nodded.

"So it doesn't matter if Mother sits and thinks. Or if Father spends weeks over one equation. Even if he writes it on the tablecloth. His equations are practical if someone else makes them work out in practice." He reached in his pocket, as though in answer to Meg's thoughts about dragons, and drew out a feather, not a bird feather, but a strange glitter catching the light. "All right, my practical brothers, what is this?"

Sandy, sitting next to Charles Wallace, bent over the dragon feather. "A feather."

Dennys got up and went around the table so that he could see. "Let me --"

Charles Wallace held the feather between them. "What kind is it?"

"Hey, this is most peculiar!" Sandy touched the base of the feather. "I don't think it's from a bird."

"Why not?" Charles Wallace asked.

"The rachis isn't right."

"The what?" Meg asked.

"The rachis. Sort of part of the quill. The rachis should be hollow, and this is solid, and seems to be metallic. Hey, Charles, where'd you get this thing?"

Charles Wallace handed the feather to his mother. She looked at it carefully. "Sandy's right. The rachis isn't like a bird's."

Dennys said, "Then what --"

Charles Wallace retrieved the feather and put it back in his pocket. "It was on the gorund by the big rocks in the north pasture. Not just this one feather. Quite a few others."

Meg suppressed a slightly hysterical giggle. "Charles and I think it may be fewmets."

Sandy turned to her with injured dignity. "Fewmets are dragon droppings."

Dennys said, "Don't be silly." Then, "Do you know what it is, Mother?"

She shook her head. "What do you think it is, Charles?"

Charles Wallace, as he occasionally did, retreated into himself. When Meg decided he wasn't going to answer at all, he said, "It's something that's not in Sandy's and Dennys's practical world. When I find out more, I'll tell you." He sounded like their mother.

"Okay, then." Dennys had lost interest. He returned to his chair. "Did Father tell you why he has to go rushing off to Brookhaven, or is it another of those top-secret classified things?"

Mrs. Murry looked down at the checked tablecloth, and at the remains of an equation which had not come out in the wash; doodling equations on anything available was a habit of which she could not break her husband. "It's not really secret. There've been several bits about it in the paper recently."

"About what?" Sandy asked.

"There's bee an unexplainable phenomenon, not in our part of the galaxy, but far across it, and in several other galaxies - well, the easiest way to explain it is that our new supersensitive sonic instruments have been picking up strange sounds, sounds which aren't on any normal register, but much higher. After such a sound - a cosmic scream, the Times rather sensationally called it - there appears to be a small rip in the galaxy."

"What does that mean?" Dennys asked.

"It seems to mean that several stars have vanished."

"Vanished where?"

"That's the odd part. Vanished. Completely. Where the stars were there is, as far as our instruments can detect, nothing. Your father was out in California several weeks ago, you remember, at Mount Palomar."

"But things can't just vanish," Sandy said. "We had it in school - the balance of matter."

Their mother added, very quietly, "It seems to be getting unbalanced."

"You mean like the ecology?"

"No. I mean that matter actually seems to be being annihilated."

Dennys said flatly, "But that's impossible."

"E = MC²," Sandy said. "Matter can be converted into energy, and energy into matter. You have to have one or the other."

Mrs. Murry said, "Thus far, Einstein's law has never been disproven. But it's coming into question."

"Nothingness -" Dennys said. "That's impossible."

"One would hope so."

"And that's what Father's going off about?"

"Yes, to consult with several other scientists, Shasti from India, Shen Shu from China - you've heard of them."

Outside the dining-room windows came a sudden brilliant flash of light followed by a loud clap of thunder. The windows rattled. The kitchen door burst open. Everybody jumped.

Meg sprant up, crying nervously, "Oh, Mother -"

"Sit down, Meg. You've heard thunder before."

"You're sure it's not one of those cosmic things?"

Sandy shut the door.

Mrs. Murry was calmly reassuring. "Positive. They're completely inaudiable to human ears." Lightning flashed again. Thunder boomed. "As a matter of fact, there are only two instruments in the world delicate enough to pick up the sound, which is incredibly high-pitched. It's perfectly possible that it's been going on for billennia, and only now are our instruments capable of recording it."

"Birds can hear sounds way above our normal pitch," Sandy said. "I mean, way up the scale, that we can't hear at all."

"Birds can't hear this."

Dennys said, "I wonder if snakes can hear as high a pitch as birds?"

"Snakes don't have ears," Sandy contradicted.

"So? They feel vibrations and sound waves. I think Louise hears all kinds of things out of human range. What's for dessert?"

Meg's voice was still tense. "We don't usually have thunderstorms in October."

"Please calm down, Meg." Mrs. Murry started clearing the table. "If you'll stop and think, you'll remember that we've had an unseasonable storm for every month in the year."

Sandy said, "Why does Meg always exaggerate everything? Why does she have to be so cosmic? What's for dessert?"

"I don't --" Meg started defensively, then jumped as the rain began to pelt against the windows.

"There's some ice cream in the freezer," Mrs. Murry said. "Sorry, I haven't been thinking about desserts."

"Meg's supposed to make desserts," Dennys said. "Not that we expect pies or anything, Meg, but even you can't go too wrong with Jello."

Charles Wallace caught Meg's eye and she closed her mouth. He put his hand in the pocket of his robe again, though this time he did not produce the feather, and gave her a small, private smile. He may have been thinking about his dragons, but he had also been listening carefully, both to the conversation and to the storm, his fair head tilting slightly to one side. "This ripping of the galaxy, Mother - does it have any effect on our solar system?"

"That," MRs. Murry replied, "is what we would all like to know."

Sandy brushed this aside impatiently. "It's all much too complicated for me. I'm sure banking is a lot simpler."

"And more lucrative," Dennys added.

The windows shook in the wind. The twins looked through the darkness at the slashing rain.

"It's a good thing we brought in so much stuff from the garden before dinner."

"This is almost hail."

Meg asked nervously, "Is it dangerous, this -- this ripping in the sky, or whatever it is?"

"Meg, we really know nothing about it. It may have been going on all along, and we only now have the instruments to record it."

"Like farandolae," Charles Wallace said. "We tend to think things are new because we've just discovered them."

"But is it dangerous?" Meg repeated.

"Meg, we don't know enough about it yet. That's why it's important that your father and some of the other physicists get together at once."

"But it could be dangerous?"

"Anything can be dangerous."

Meg looked down at the remains of her dinner. Dragons and rips in the sky. Louise and Fortinbras greeting something large and strange. Charles Wallace pale and listless. She did not like any of it. "I'll do the dishes," she told her mother.

The Books: "A Wrinkle in Time" (Madeleine L'Engle)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle.

Okay. Now I'm all nervous and excited - because I'm starting in on my Madeleine collection. We're gonna be here for a while. I'm scared! I love her SO much. Hard to talk about. It's just that her work means so much to me. I'd read a grocery list penned by L'Engle and have a profound experience.

Wrinkle in Time is not just one of my favorite books from my childhood but one of my favorite books ever. It's the kind of thing where if I hear someone hasn't read it, someone who I know will love it - I will literally BEG them to read it. Wrinkle in Time has reduced me to begging.

I actually wrote Madeleine L'Engle a letter once - I was in my mid-20s. This was before the Internet. I sent the letter to her publisher, Farrar, Straus Giroux ... and a couple months later - she wrote me back. The most beautiful personal letter ... I mean, how many letters must she get a month?? She had obviously read my letter, and thought about her response. Unbelievable. She's one of my personal idols - for so so many reasons.

The story of Wrinkle in Time getting published is almost (ALMOST) as good as the book itself. She and her husband, Hugh Franklin, an actor - had given up on the city - bought a general store in a little town in Connecticut - and moved there to raise their family. They had kids. She wrote. She published nothing. She had published a novel in her early 20s - and then a couple other books - quite a bit of early success, actually. Then - for 10 years - 10 long long years - nothing. Not even a story published. Not even a poem published. The rejections piled up. Madeleine has written eloquently about those years. Full rich years of childbearing and mothering and house-wife-ing - but on another level, there was an abyss of despair. Who was she really - if not a writer? She wrestled with the angels. The devils. It is that classic battle: between art and commerce. I've written about this before - in terms of being in a relationship with an artist. I expressed some of my feelings about this in my post about Annie, the wife in 'Field of Dreams'. If you fall in love with an artist, and choose to spend your life with that person - then you cannot fall in love with the end result. You have to love the journey itself. Madeleine L'Engle was a writer whether or not she got published ... but during those hard years of rejection and oblivion, she truly wondered if she could justify the time spent away from her family, writing in her study - if she wasn't making any money at it ... This is the struggle - this is what that struggle personifies. Of course you want to make money. But that is NOT why people get into this whole art game. Not people like L'Engle anyway. She writes because she MUST. She describes a black moment, when yet another rejection slip came in for a novel she had written - and she was pacing back and forth in her study, sobbing - panicky - like: what am I doing?? WHAT AM I DOING??? And suddenly, a sort of unearthly calm came over her - after a couple of hours of crying - and she sat down at her typewriter, and started writing again. That was the moment she knew. There was no monetary value she could place on this writing thing. Whether or not she sold anything ever again, she had to write. But it was NOT easy. She was lucky her husband was an artist as well, and had had the presence of mind to walk away from his career (when it was at its height!!) - and try something new. But then - when that "something new" (running a general store, living in the country, not being an actor) got old ... after 15 years ... he was brave enough to say to his wife, "I think we need to sell the store and I think we need to move back to Manhattan. I need to be an actor again." So that's what they did. And he was hugely successful until the day he died - with a long-running huge part on a soap opera. Anyway - there are many ways to have a marriage, many ways to work out these issues - and I admire Madeleine and Hugh for figuring out what worked for THEM, not trying to fit into some round hole that wasn't right .... I'd need a marriage like that.

Madeleine's breakthrough was with Wrinkle in Time. All her other books had been thoughtful novels about thoughtful people - nothing supernatural, nothing too out there - and they were successful, but - you know, they disappeared. They did not make her famous. After a gazillion publishers rejected Wrinkle in Time ("Is it a children's book?" "It's too dark - could you lighten it up?" "I don't get it ..." etc.) - Farrar Straus Giroux said Yes - and they gave her so much freedom - they just let Madeleine be Madeleine - that she STILL is with them. After 40 years. If she writes a religious book, they publish it. If she writes a book of poetry, they publish it. Children's books, adult books, memoirs - they publish it all. Kind of extraordinary. But Wrinkle in Time was such a huge success that it is still a best-seller - to this day. It's rare. She tapped into something. She "hit it", so to speak.

But the great thing - the inspirational thing - is that she wrote the book in isolation, in the middle of those bleak 10 years of rejection slips - She wrote it because it was a story she NEEDED to tell. She had had such bad luck getting published that she had no expectation that anyone would want the book - but she HAD to write it. And look what happened. It made her name.

Sigh. It's just so inspiring.

Here's an excerpt from the awesome first chapter that starts with the words: "It was a dark and stormy night."

If you haven't read it - I won't give you a plot synopsis. All I can do is beg. PLEASE. Read this damn book.

Excerpt from A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle.

In the kitchen a light was already on, and Charles Walace was sitting at the table driking milk and eating bread and jam. He looked very small and vulnerable sitting there alone in the big old-fashioned kitchen, a blond little boy in faded blue Dr. Dentons, his feet swinging a good six inches above the floor.

"Hi," he said cheerfully. "I've been waiting for you."

From under the table where he was lying at Charles Wallace's feet, hoping for a crumb or two, Fortinbras raised his slender dark head in greeting to Meg and his tail thumped against the floor. Fortinbras had arrived on their doorstep, a half-grown puppy, scrawny and abandoned, one winter night. He was, Meg's father had decided, part Llewellyn setter and part greyhound, and he had a slender, dark beauty that was all his own.

"Why didn't you come up to the attic?" Meg asked her brother, speaking as though he were at least her own age. "I've been scared stiff."

"Too windy up in that attic of yours," the little boy said. "I knew you'd be down. I put some milk on the stove for you. It ought to be hot by now."

How did Charles Wallace always know about her? How could he always tell? He never knew - or seemed to care - what Dennys or Sandy were thinking. It was his mother's mind, and Meg's, that he probed with a frightening accuracy.

Was it because people were a little afraid of him that they whispered about the Murry's youngest child, who was rumored to be not quite bright? "I've heard that clever people often have subnormal children," Meg had once overheard. "The two boys seem to be nice, regular children, but that unattractive girl and the baby boy certainly aren't all there."

It was true that Charles Wallace seldom spoke when anybody was around, so that many people thought he'd never learned to talk. And it was true that he hadn't talked at all until he was almost four. Meg would turn white with fury when people looked at him and clucked, shaking their heads sadly.

"Don't worry about Charles Wallace, Meg," her father had once told her. Meg remembered it very clearly because it was shortly before he went away. "There's nothing the matter with his mind. He just does things in his own way and in his own time."

"I don't want him to grow up to be dumb like me," Meg had said.

"Oh, my darling, you're not dumb," her father answered. "You're like Charles Wallace. Your development has to go at its own pace. It just doesn't happen to be the usual pace."

"How do you know?" Meg had demanded. "How do you know I'm not dumb? Isn't it just because you love me?"

"I love you, but that's not what tells me. Mother and I've given you a number of tests, you know."

Yes, that was true. Meg had realized that some of the "games" her parents played with her were tests of some kind, and that there had been more for her and Charles Wallace than for the twins. "IQ tests, you mean?"

"Yes, some of them."

"Is my IQ okay?"

"More than okay."

"What is it?"

"That I'm not going to tell you. But it assures me that both you and Charles Wallace will be able to do pretty much whatever you like when you grow up to yourselves. You just wait till Charles Wallace starts to talk. You'll see."

How right he had been about that, though he himself had left before Charles Wallace began to speak, suddenly, with none of the usual baby preliminaries, using entire sentences. How proud he would have been!

"You'd better check the milk," Charles Wallace said to Meg now, his diction clearer and cleaner than that of most five-year-olds. "You know you don't like it when it gets skin on top."

"You put in more than twice enough milk." Meg peered into the saucepan.

Charles Wallace nodded serenely. "I thought Mother might like some."

"I might like what?" a voice said, and there was their mother standing in the doorway.

"Cocoa," Charles Wallace said. "Would you like a liverwurst-and-cream-cheese sandwich? I'll be happy to make you one."

"That would be lovely," Mrs. Murry said, "but I can make it myself if you're busy."

"No trouble at all." Charles Wallace slid down from his chair and trotted over to the refrigerator, his pajamaed feet padding softly as a kitten's. "How about you, Meg?" he asked. "Sandwich?"

"Yes, please," she said. "But not liverwurst. Do we have any tomatoes?"

Charles Wallace peered into the crisper. "One. All right if I use it on Meg, Mother?"

"To what better use could it be put?" Mrs. Murry smiled. "But not so loud, please, Charles. That is, unless you want the twins downstairs, too."

"Let's be exclusive," Charles Wallace said. "That's my new word for the day. Impressive, isn't it?"

"Prodigious," Mrs. Murry said. "Meg, come let me look at that bruise."

Meg knelt at her mother's feet. The warmth and light of the kitchen had relaxed her so that her attic fears were gone. The cocoa steamed fragrantly in the saucepan; geraniums bloomed on the window sills and there was a bouquet of tiny yellow chrysanthemums in the center of the table. The curtains, red, with a blue and green geometrical pattern, were drawn, and seemed to reflect their cheerfulness throughout the room. The furnace purred like a great, sleepy animal; the lights glowed with steady radiance; outside, alone in the dark, the wind still battered against the house, but the angry power that had frightened Meg while she was alone in the attic was subdued by the familiar comfort of the kitchen. Underneath Mrs. Murry's chair Fortinbras let out a contented sigh.

Mrs. Murry gently touched Meg's bruised cheek. Meg looked up at her mother, half in loving admiration, half in sullen resentment. It was not an advantage to have a mother who was a scientist and a beauty as well. Mrs. Murry's flaming red hair, creamy skin, and violet eyes with long dark lashes, seemed even more spectacular in comparison with Meg's outrageous plainness. Meg's hair had been passable as long as she wore it tidily in braids. When she went into high school it was cut, and now she and her mother struggled with putting it up, but one side would come out curly and the other straight, so that she looked even plainer than before.

"You don't know the meaning of moderation, do you, my darling?" Mrs. Murry asked. "A happy medium is something I wonder if you'll ever learn. That's a nasty bruise the Henderson boy gave you. By the way, shortly after you'd gone to bed his mother called up to complain about how badly you'd hurt him. I told her that since he's a year older and at least twenty-five pounds heavier than you are, I thought I was the one who ought to be doing the complaining. But she seemed to think it was all your fault."

"I suppose that depends on how you look at it," Meg said. "Usually no matter what happens people think it's my fault, even if I have nothing to do with it at all. But I'm sorry I tried to fight him. It's just been an awful week. And I'm full of bad feeling."

Mrs. Murry stroked Meg's shaggy head. "Do you know why?"

"I hate being an oddball," Meg said. "It's hard on Sandy and Dennys, too. I don't know if they're really like everybody else, or if they're just able to pretend they are. I try to pretend, but it isn't any help."

"You're much too straightforward to be able to pretend to be what you aren't," Mrs. Murry said. "I'm sorry, Meglet. Maybe if Father were here he could help you, but I don't think I can do anything till you've managed to plow through some more time. Then things will be easier for you. But that isn't much help right now, is it?"

"Maybe if I weren't so repulsive-looking - maybe if I were pretty like you -"

"Mother's not a bit pretty; she's beautiful," Charles Wallace announced, slicing liverwurst. "Therefore I bet she was awful at your age."

"How right you are," Mrs. Murry said. "Just give yourself time, Meg."

"Lettuce on your sandwich, Mother?" Charles Wallace asked.

"No, thanks."

He cut the sandwich into sections, put it on a plate, and set it in front of his mother. "Yours'll be along in just a minute, Meg. I think I'll talk to Mrs Whatsit about you."

"Who's Mrs Whatsit?" Meg asked.

"I think I want to be exclusive about her for a while," Charles Wallace said. "Onion salt?"

The Books: "The Girl Who Wanted a Boy" (Paul Zindel)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is The Girl Who Wanted a Boy by Paul Zindel.

There's a funny story behind this book - which I loved as a teenager. I signed it out of the high school library. I read it. I loved it. Months later - perhaps YEARS - Betsy and Mere were going through a library-hijinx phase. I think it was Betsy and Mere. They had a free period, they would hang out in the library, and basically scroll through the shelves looking for silly-sounding books, and then sign them out (at least put their names in the back) to people they knew. So suddenly it looked like I had taken out a book called How To Get a Boy to Love You in 30 Days. Stupid stuff - but very funny, too. Betsy even took it far enough to make an announcement over the loudspeaker one morning - I think she might have even made up a fake contest for Mere to 'win' - so Betsy went on the loudspeaker and said, "Congratulations to Meredith - winner of the such-and-such contest - and her prize is her very own copy of her favorite book: Programmed for Love!" Needless to say, Programmed for Love is not and never was Mere's favorite book. But those words blasted throughout the school. I still remember sitting in math class, hearing Betsy's triumphant voice declaring, "Programmed for Love" over the loudspeaker and sitting there shaking with laughter. The point was to embarrass each other over goofy-titled books. So. I happened to be in the library with Betsy and Mere, and we were goofing off in the stacks, getting more and more hysterical. We were pulling books off the shelves, checking the back to see who had signed it out (this was when there were little actual library cards in the back of the book) - and making jokes. Then the worst thing possible happened. Betsy saw a book on the shelf - drew it out - and immediately started making fun of the title - which was The Girl Who Wanted a Boy. Yes!! Horrible title! I knew immediately that I was in big BIG trouble - but it all happened so fast I didn't have a chance to defend myself - Betsy pulled it out, and said, in a cooing voice, "Ohhhhh, isn't this cute? The Girl Who Wanted a Boy!! So adorable!" Then she opened the back of the book, pulled out the library card - and there was my name. I had actually signed it out. Ahhhhh! I could not defend myself! We all just LOST it - Betsy gaped at me - and then we were out of commission, laughing so hysterically that we had to leave the library. I kept trying to say, "Guys ... guys ... it's a really good book!" - but naturally, with a title like that, they were both like, "Suuuuuuuuuuuure it is."

The main character is an oddball girl named Sibella. She's 17. She has no real friends - and her parents are very worried about her. She's not a normal girl. She's a mechanical genius, can fix anything, and walks around with a toolbox - which should just let you know how unsuccessful she really is, socially. But inside, Sibella is all heart. She is waiting for the right one. She lies in bed at night, aching for "the right one". You kind of worry about Sibella, to tell you the truth. It seems like she is gonna get her heart broke BAD. So then - one random day - she sees a picture in the newspaper - of a young race car driver who lives in her town. I guess maybe there's a small race-track on the outskirts of town -can't remember. But anyway - she sees this guy's picture and she immediately knows: That's him. She's never seen him before - he's 24 - she's in high school - he has no idea who she is ... but she knows. She just knows in her heart that he is The One. So she goes out to find him. It's all kind of awful and awkward and comedic ... Zindel, in my opinion, doesn't make a misstep here. Dan, of course, turns out to be just a guy - not perfect, not The One ... but ... Sibella was right ... there is something about him ... Sibella, frankly, acts like a crazy person and Dan is right to be wary of her. But against all odds - a kind of strange friendship starts up ... but you can see that one of the reasons Dan likes her, and tolerates her - is that he likes being seen the way she sees him. He's kind of a loser, truth be told. Down on his luck. He likes having Sibella see into his soul, see the good in him, look up to him.

Here's an excerpt I always loved. Sibella goes to confide in her father about all of this. Her parents are divorced - her mother is kind of a pain - she's a busybody, she's a dating maniac, she thinks her daughter's a weirdo - and her father, a scientist who works in a lab - is the guy she goes to when she has real problems.

Excerpt from The Girl Who Wanted a Boy by Paul Zindel.

Sibella made it to the laboratory by ten-thirty, and took the elevator to the fifth floor - where she remembered exactly which door led to her favorite person in the world. She knew he would be preoccupied, probably wouldn't even notice the door opening. Most of all she knew he would love being surprised. Inside, she looked across the half dozen lab tables and labyrinthine tubes connected to retorts and distillation apparati. He was alone, busy with a titration, carefully watching the drops fall into a beaker to see when acid would become base.

"Daddy," Sibella called softly.

Her father looked up. "Sibella! How are you? Come on over. I'll be finished in a second."

"I don't want to interrupt."

"No, no, don't worry about it."

She watched him expertly guide the titration to its conclusion. He still looked exactly as he did in the big photograph on her bedstand. Kind loving eyes, distinguished - just a touch of gray in his hair. He was the one person she felt hadn't changed on her.

"Your mother called," he said, taking her into his arms and giving her a big hug and a kiss.

"I figured she would," she said, unwrapping his coffee and doughnuts. "I haven't seen you since Thanksgiving, so I thought I'd just take a ride in."

"Ah, my favorite doughnuts." He beamed and then added, "Your mother sounds as spaced out as ever. She was telling me about her new boyfriend. How affectionate and considerate he is. But she seemed very disturbed about Maureen and what she's been doing to you - giving you a hard time as usual."

"Yes, Dad."

"There's a kit to build a computer I could get you. You could just make a code and keep your diary in that. Nobody would be able to pull it out and retrieve it except you. You look like you're feeling pretty good." He smoothed the hair on top of her head.

"Well, I am," Sibella admitted. "So I said this morning, to hell with school, I've got to go and see the wizard."

"I don't know how much of a wizard I am. But I've been meaning to tell you, I've got a secondhand binocular microscope for you for Christmas."

"Oh, Dad, you didn't!"

"Look, I said I would. I did. It's a honey. They were using it in the National Aniline Division on Rector Street - but they're phasing that lab out. Remember when I had you doing the experiments on supersaturated solutions and you ran up here with those flasks of copper sulfate? This is the same kind of scope."

She couldn't resist wrapping her arms around him.

"I miss you, Daddy."

"I miss you, too," he said. "But you're coming along fine, just fine. Please don't be too impatient. That's all I wrory about. You're too smart, Sibella. I think you made yourself too smart just to make me happy, so maybe it's my fault, but I'm very proud of you, very proud."

"Daddy, I needed to ask you about something," she said gently, solemnly. She leaned her head against his shoulder.

"From what I hear, you're going to ask me something about love."

"Right on the nose, Daddy. You taught me about atoms and condensers, foot candles and electrodes. I know Ohm's Law and horsepower and the corpuscular theory - but I don't know anything about love."

"Why don't you tell me about this boy? Your mother says he worked at some kind of midget racetrack. Tell me about him. Is he special?"

"Daddy, I feel like I'm going to die if I don't have him. I want to own him. I want to pick him up in my arms and go running down the street with him and tuck him into my tool kit," Sibella said desperately. "I love him so much I wish we could explode together. That our atoms and electrons could get inside each other. I'm so sad. I love him so much, I'm sad, that's how special he is."

"Did you tell him this?" her father asked very seriously.

"Yes."

"Well," her father said, "then you've given your heart away."

Sibella lifted her head from his shoulder. She looked into his eyes to find out whether that meant she had done right or wrong.

"I used to give my heart away," her father said. "Not to Pauline," he clarified, evoking in Sibella the memory of her dad's girl friend. "I gave it to your mother, and you know what she did with it. I think it's very good to give your heart away a few times at your age, just so you know what dazzling love can be like; but then you learn that there are laws of science. I can only really tell you what you will learn to do eventually, and this law I call the law of love's reciprocity. It means you don't give your heart to anyone unless you know he wants it, and wants to give you his."

"How can you know this?" Sibella asked, listening to every word as though he truly was a wizard.

"Well, you see there's a lot of pieces to the human body and soul besides the heart. When you learn to practice the law well, the next time you see a boy you think you could love very deeply, you first say Hello. You start very small and see if there is any response. If the boy says Hello back, then perhaps you offer him a piece of candy. If he takes the candy, then you wait, perhaps days, weeks. And if the boy is interested, if he's going to be the right boy for you, he's going to offer you something, perhaps a piece of cake. And then one day you might offer him your hand, or even a kiss, or say, 'I've got some tickets to a good horror flick' - and if he takes that hand or that kiss or that movie then you wait again. Give him a chance to measure out some act that will signal you that he values you in equal weight. No matter how short or how long it all takes, finally the day comes when you'll know it's time to give him your heart. And when you do, be absolutely certain you want him to give you his. You'll know when he's ready. And when you accept his full love, then there is just one final rule I have to give you. That rule is Don't then turn into the same kind of pain in the ass your mother did. This world is teeming with men and women who have won the hearts of their lovers and don't know what the hell to do with them."

"Dad," Sibella whispered, understanding every word he had told her, "I think I'll be able to do that next time, but what do I do now? I feel so crazy. Daddy, I want to do something crazy. I love this boy so much and he's very freaked out. He's lost. He couldn't offer me a stick of bubble gum, much less his hand. This boy is going down the tubes. There are so many heavy trips lying on his head, I feel as though the entire world has let him down. Daddy, I want to do something crazy to make it up to him. I want to do something so nuts that I think maybe he'll believe again. I want to give him a chance. Am I crazy to want to give him a chance?"

Her father looked at her thoughtfully, again smoothing her hair with his hand.

"This all comes under the category of desperate acts," her father said with a little laugh. "The only rules I would say you would follow now are two: One, don't hurt anybody; and two, don't get knocked up. Anything else I think most of the world would consider as just a part of growing up, and I don't want to interfere with any of that. I knew from the moment I held you in the nursery, all eight pounds, seven ounces of you - I said, 'This is a special girl. This is a sexy, little, brilliant girl, and she's going to have one of the most spectacular lives of any girl in the world.' You're always going to be original, Sibella. And some people will call that crazy. I find it daring, beautiful, and you are the most cherished invention I have ever made. Do your something crazy, Sibella. Shock a few people. I trust you, Sibella. I've always trusted you, and believed in you."

Sibella lifted her lips and gave her father a big, solid kiss. "Oh, God, you're a sweetheart. You're one big, one-hundred-percent-pure sweetheart." And then she laughed, singing, "Crazy, crazy, here I come! ..."

The Books: "The Undertaker's Gone Bananas" (Paul Zindel)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is The Undertaker's Gone Bananas by Paul Zindel.

All I remember about this book is that two kids - Bobby and Lauri - become convinced that a tenant in their building has murdered his wife. They begin to "investigate" the crime - and all kinds of crazy shit starts happening. It's very much like Woody Allen's awesome Manhattan Murder Mystery - but to be honest, I can't really remember much about this one. Not like Zindel's others. I do remember this: Bobby and Lauri are 16 years old and they are (naturally - since Zindel wrote it) kind of odd kids - they don't really fit in in high school - and the two of them are best friends. Best. Friends. Like John and Lorraine in Pigman are best friends. Lauri, however, is secretly WILDLY in love with Bobby -(the book kind of goes back and forth from his perspective to hers ... we get to see inside both their heads - Bobby appears to be oblivious to any romantic feelings, while that's all Lauri can think about). Anyway, Lauri is just convinced that the two of them are meant to be together and she just wants him to make the first move ... so whenever she's doing anything mundane, washing dishes, vacuuming, she's writing these WILDLY romantic letters to Bobby in her head, telling him how much she loves him, how she just wishes he would put his arm around her and kiss her, how they should be together ... Meanwhile, though, the two of them are creeping around the apartment building in the middle of the night, investigating their neighbor, Mr. Hulka. Who also happens to be an undertaker!

So that's what I remember. I also remember that - for some reason - Lauri is a nervous wreck. She has constant nightmares, and she has a morbid fear of death. She is pretty damaged - and her fears really impact her life. It's some kind of psychological issue. Bobby helps her with that. He doesn't judge her. But for Lauri - to suddenly be creeping around in an undertaker's apartment ... looking for the body of his dead missing wife ... it makes her come right up against all her fears, of course!

Here's an excerpt from the beginning of the book - when Bobby and Lauri sit out on the terrace of Bobby's family's apartment - and talk about Mr. Hulka, and other things. It's not a plot-heavy excerpt - I just love how Zindel writes. It's soooooo specific.

Excerpt from The Undertaker's Gone Bananas by Paul Zindel.

Then the rest of the afternoon they hardly spoke about Mr. Hulka at all. There were too many other important possibilities for the summer coming up. And before long they were into their favorite pastime - which was looking off the terrace and over the terrain of their past exploits. The things they had done on the Palisade Cliffs and the George Washington Bridge - and then across the way on the New York side of the river where The Cloisters was set on top of th ehills above the Henry Hudson Parkway. At least a couple of times a week they looked off the terrace and reminisced about the time they borrowed choir robes from Grace Methodist Church and got dressed as a monk and a nun. Lauri had spent three days making the hat which looked a little bit like a giant dove sitting on her head. And they had gone up to the grounds of The Cloisters which was a religious museum that housed the intricate Unicorn tapestries. Bobby h ad added a hood to his robe so he really looked monastic. And Lauri had also fashioned a stiff white bib, and they strolled The Cloisters grounds all day sipping Coca-Cola and speaking loudly so the tourists could hear them. They kept saying that they were appointed by the archdiocese to guard the Unicorn because of their chosen spiritual identification with all things mystical and magical. Another time, right on the edge of the Cliffs, they had held a marshmellow roast which the Fort Lee police had raided and made them extinguish. Bobby had told them he was the son of the Rockefellers who owned all the land but they had chased them away anyway. It seemed like Fort Lee had only about three or four policement who worked the Cliff areas and in less than a year Bobby and Lauri had gotten to know all of them through their high jinx. The one who usually caught them was Patrolman Petrie. Patrolman Petrie was also the one who came after them on the middle of the George Washington Bridge the day Lauri and Bobby decided to walk across wearing ape masks. Some of the cars did start to swerve and Lauri thought it might be a little bit dangerous but in the end she really did think the police made much too much fuss about the whole event. After all, there was no law against walking across a bridge with ape masks on.

"There's no such specific law on the books," Bobby had said. And the cops just sort of scratched their heads and drdove them off the bridge.

"You two just like to get everybody's goat, don't you?" Patrolman Petrie had observed.

Of course the worst thing Bobby and Lauri ever did they never really got caught at and that was throwing balloons filled with water off Bobby's terrace. They did that almost all of April and it was a lot of fun watching the big rubber balls tumble twenty-four floors and then splash near Rucci sitting at the garage cage. One exploded right in front, splashing the glass in front of him. One time they threw a water balloon too far to the right and ti landed right in the middle of some people who were on their way home from a wedding. That was the same evening Bobby and Lauri had their very profound discussion about how Lauri thought that Bobby was really a reincarnation of Jack in "Jack and the Beanstalk". And Bobby had decided after a lot of thought that he thought Lauri was the Sleeping Beauty. They both had no trouble finding out this information because all they had to do was ask each other what their favorite childhood story was. Bobby always thought of himself as Jack, the devilish kid who would trade the family cow any day for a pack of magical beans and when the vine grew he knew he'd be the first to climb it, especially knowing there was a giant waiting to do battle when he reached the top. The only thing was that Bobby didn't plan on beiong knocked off; he figured he would knock off the giant. Bobby could just see the headline in the Fort Lee newspaper if he ever did that. BOBBY PERKINS DEFEATS BIG GUY IN THE SKY. Lauri had literally fallen out of her terrace chair when Bobby had come up with that line. He always loved to think of headlines but when they got around to her as Sleeping Beauty she becamse more pensive. She knew, like Sleeping Beauty, she didn't really want to die at all. Inside her, part of her felt like a young princess, especially when she was with Bobby. Nevertheless, Lauri did feel an evil curse was put on her by a witch. The witch of Edison, New Jersey. And when she reached a certain age she would stick herself with some kind of needle and fall dead. There would be no commutation of her curse to sleep for a hundred years, though, she felt. Unless of course someone did come along and give her a last-minute gift of life. That was the way the story went. Sometimes in the middle of the night Lauri would actually wake up from a nightmare where she knew no one was going to save her. The real Sleeping Beauty had awoken only when a prince came along and gave her a kiss, and she just felt sure that Bobby was never really going to like her the way she wanted him to. She sort of accepted that and she'd make up these letters sometimes in daydreams. She'd say, Dear Bobby, I understand that we can only be buddies and I really feel terrible about that but I accept it all and so I'm going to die anyway but promise me, Bobby, that when I do die you won't let them cremate me, okay? Because I don't like fire.

The Books: "Pardon Me, You're Stepping On My Eyeball" (Paul Zindel)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is Pardon Me, You're Stepping On My Eyeball by Paul Zindel.

Of all of Zindel's books, this might be my favorite. Don't let the title throw you off. It's sort of a One flew over the cuckoo's nest for the adolescent set. It's about two MISERABLE teenage misfits: Marsh Mellow and Edna Shinglebox. I mean, with names like that .... Marsh is a troublemaker, a loner, he carries a pet raccoon with him in his pocket at all times, his mother is a raging drunk whom he calls Schizo Suzy - and his father has disappeared. Marsh's story is that his father has been institutionalized - and he's been put into an insane asylum because the government fears him so much, fears his insights, his truth ... Marsh is a FANATICAL conspiracy theorist. There are powerful forces at work ... there are powerful men behind the curtain controlling everything ... and his father is the latest victim. He only tells this whole story to Edna Shinglebox, though - once they become friends, in a weird kind of way. He wants Edna's help in breaking his father out of the asylum. He lets Edna read his father's letters to him - which are phenomenal. Phenomenal in terms of what Zindel has created - a frenzied stream of conscious voice - going on and on ... in a typical radical voice, he sounds like a member of the Weather Underground. Edna is horrified. She wants out. But somehow ... she can't abandon Marsh. She gets deeper and deeper involved with him ... and all KINDS of insane things happen. Edna, meanwhile, is a long-haired clumsy freak, whose parents are ashamed of her - or actually, it's more her mother who is ashamed of her. Her father is kind of weak and ineffectual, and her mother is basically in a PANIC because her daughter is not attractive and has never been on a date. She takes Edna to psychologists, and bitches to the psychologist about what a loser her daugher is. Edna just sits there, hiding behind her hair, waiting for it to be over.

Now all of this may sound, uhm, depressing?? And I guess it is - but Zindel's writing is such that this book makes me laugh out loud almost every other page. Every single person in this book is nuts. And yet ... you love them. You also see that ... we're ALL nuts. But does that mean we cannot connect? Marsh Mellow is locked up in his own private agony - he has a secret - he is too ashamed to tell anyone - it's much more romantic to believe that your father has been incarcerated by some frightening bureaucracy than to deal with the truth ... and yet ... Marsh is lovable. Marsh looks at Edna and realizes, in the first second, that this girl is so insane herself that she will not reject him out of hand. She's "the one" for him.

I ADORE this book.

The whole climax of the book takes place at a party - given by Jacqueline - a girl that Edna has kind of befriended. This is the beauty of the book, too: Jacqueline is gorgeous, rich, smart, and popular. She has everything. She is dating the quarterback (who, actually, is a horrible human being - but he's hot and perfect, etc.) But even with all the outer stuff, the material stuff - Jacqueline, too, is nuts. She's lonely. She's depressed. She knows people only like her because she's rich and has a swimming pool. Nobody goes through adolescence unscathed. Not even the ones who SEEM like they have it all. Zindel knows this.

Anyway - Jacqueline decides to have a small party at her house. And things get out of hand. HUNDREDS of people show up. Mayhem ensues. Nobody does teenage drunken mayhem like Zindel. An entire cult shows up - a bunch of Jesus Freaks who follow around a golden-haired teenager who calls himself God Boy ... etc.

I'll post an excerpt from the party. It's SO stressful to read because you can tell that things are very quickly spiralling out of control - and Jacqueline is only 16 and she's not supposed to have friends over while her parents are away - and now there are literally 300 kids running all over the house, and out on the lawn God Boy gives a sermon to 150 crying kids and everyone's drunk. Edna has decided that she needs to tell Marsh that she loves him so she has written him a letter. She's freaked OUT.

Also, notice Zindel's names. He's SO good at names. Member when Jay Gatsby has that big party, and Fitzgerald lists all the names of the people there? My teacher in high school, Mr. Crothers, spent an entire class with us analyzing all of those names - each of which had a double meaning ... Zindel's names are just as good. Every one is a joke.

Oh - and I won't get to that in the excerpt - but what ends up happening at the party? A fire starts and Jacqueline's entire house burns down. Burns to the ground. Everyone gets out in time except for ... Marsh Mellow's beloved raccoon.

Horror!!!

Excerpt from Pardon Me, You're Stepping On My Eyeball by Paul Zindel.

It didn't take Edna more than a minute to realize there was going to be a lot more than forty kids at the party; in fact there were already more than that and half the football team wasn't there yet. Butch was supposed to be leading the way for the kids from Marblehead, Massachusetts, and as it was, Edna knew only about half the kids there. Most of them weren't even on the football team. Some had been in one class with her or another; some she recognized only because some pictures had come into the Crow's Nest. Richard Kay, Vincent Rolio and Gilbert Barker came with Joan Canyon, Joan Hybred and Norlicka Tobinson; those three girls were known as the three easiest girls in the school, except for Norma Jean Stapleton. Then there was Ed Skahn who was the type any girl would love to run into, especially if she was driving and he was walking. He was with Greg Cutter, John Kenny and John Mell. Renee Rare arrived with Chris Phlegm whose father was an alcoholic district attorney. Chris Phlegm's brother, Nick, arrived with Bonnie Hilderstraw who always went to parties with her own record, and would dance "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue" at the drop of a hat. Betty Slagen and Tillie Roe came intogether, and they said they had been invited by Billy Selmond who was on the football team. Some very freaky kid by the name of Hansen came in with Maureen Clapper, and they were both sporting matching riveted jeans which looked ridiculous. Then there was Lucille Bore who was so cranky you had to say things to her like, "Tomorrow will be Monday, if it's all right with you." Marmaduke Jones came by himself, and as good as he was as a Junior Class politician, he was a complete bust trying to be the life of the party. Gert Ronkiwitz came in looking like she was still wearing her crown as last year's football queen. She had such an artificial laugh. Edna couldn't stand to be near her. Edna realized half of what she was thinking was only because she was so nervous keeping an eye on the front door for Marsh to come in. She wanted everything to go right. She'd have to decide just the exact moment to give him the letter she'd written. She'd wait until he'd had a glass of wine maybe, and then she'd just saunter over to him and press the letter in his hand. Maybe she'd whisper, "Please read this." Then she'd just turn quickly and go away. That would probably be the best approach. Maybe she'd go upstairs. She fantasized that Marsh would take the letter out by the pool wanting to be alone whil he read it. Maybe if she went to one of the decks on the second or the fourth floor, she could pper over and watch him reading it from above. She'd give him a few minutes and if he didn't come upstairs looking for her, she'd come down. Maybe she should wait longer upstairs to make sure he'd come up, then the could be alone and talk. On the other hand, if he didn't see her downstairs, maybe he'd think she just left the party. She'd have to make sure that didn't happen. Or maybe she should just tell him, "Here read this -- I'll be waiting upstairs."

By nine o'clock there was a nice buzz to the party. The sliding glass doors on the first floor had to all be opened, and a lot of kids were straying out near the kidney-shaped pool. Richard Kay and about a half dozen others had gone upstairs just to take a look. They'd asked permission from Jacqueline and Jacqueline said it was okay. Then a few others went up, and somebody turned the stereo system all the way up until the entire living room was beginning to vibrate.

"We're going to need more sauce," Jacqueline moaned.

"I'll do it," Edna offered. Several of the other girls were willing to help too, except for Joan Canyon, Joan Hybred and Norlicka Tobinson who were already practically throwing their bodies at every guy on the football team.

"Great grinders," a lot of kids commented, as they moved around the buffet table. Most of the boys were putting two or three veal cutlets on each grinder, and Maureen Clapper must have been drunk before she and Hansen arrived because it wasn't five minutes before she dropped her grinder in the swimming pool. That really burned Edna up. It just seemed a very revolting and careless thing to do. Edna used her annoyance at Maureen Clapper for energy to stir the big pot of sauce. Then she happened to glance out of the kitchen window, and there at last was Marsh. Edna felt her heart starting to dance on her diaphragm again. She was very excited, and she felt that tonight was going to be a wonderful evening. She could see Marsh was wearing the same outfit as the night he came to take her to the Magic Elephant. In fact, maybe that's why he's dressed that way, Edna thought. Just to remind me of that wonderful evening. Instinctively, Edna put her hand in her pocket to make sure her note was ready. At exactly that moment, Edna noticed that there was something attached to the end of Marsh's left hand, Edna almost passed out when she realized it was Norma Jean Stapleton. In fact, Edna was so startled, she froze, looking out the kitchen window.

"What's the matter?" Jacqueline asked, noticing Edna's stiff position.

"Nothing," Edna said.

Jacqueline leaned over to see what Edna was staring at. "Oh my God," Jacqueline said. "When Norma Jean Stapleton comes to your house, you've got to fumigate it in the morning because she leaves cooties all over."

Edna buried her head in the sauce pot and began stirring like a madwoman. She hoped Jacqueline wouldn't notice her reaction, but it was too late.

"You do think he's groovy, don't you," Jacqueline said. Jacqueline winked, and then disappeared into the crowd with a fresh tray of sliced Italian bread. Out of the corner of her eye Edna saw Marsh and Norma Jean come into the kitchen and then stroll by hand in hand. They shot towards the buffet table like piranha going for a calf that had fallen into the Amazon River. They started fixing themselves grinders like there was no tomorrow. Edna knew very well Marsh had seen her, and she could hear him laughing extra-loud and artificially. Edna also noticed Raccoon's little head peeking in and out of Marsh's jacket pocket. She thought it was unforgivable that he had to drag that poor, cute, little innocent victim along. Edna also heard a lot of kids cracking their usual cracks about Norma Jean Stapleton. Like one kid said, "I didn't know this was going to be a pig party." That line always got a big laugh, because the worst thing that had ever happened to Norma Jean Stapleton was the time the tennis team decided to have a party where each guy had to bring the ugliest girl they could date. Nick Phlegm took Norma Jean, and his job was to arrive last and bring a live baby pig. He had told Norma Jean that the baby pig was a door prize and she didn't suspect anything until they arrived at the party. Norma was petting the baby pig, but after a minute all the girls took a look at each other and figured out what kind of party it was, especially when all the boys roared with laughter. Some of the girls broke down crying, included Norma Jean, who was supposed to have stood there with the baby pig in her arms until she was so pathetic, Nick Phlegm even felt sorry and took her home.

It seemed every time Edna looked up from the stove, Marsh was looking her way and slurping up his grinder. He'd also suddenly become animated and do something like stroke Norma Jean's hair, or pat her on the back, or let out another horselaugh as though Norma Jean was the most sensational date in the world. Finally it seemed Marsh was waiting only to get Edna's attention, and when she'd look at him, Marsh would spring into action with his arm around Norma Jean, and finally he took her strolling out to the pool. Raccoon's head was still popping in and out, looking very bewildered. Edna felt the sad, big black eyes of the cute little furry ball were pleading with her for help. She didn't know whether Raccoon would even remember her; she'd never read anything about whether raccoons had good memories or not. But Edna had grown very fond of the animal. Edna had told herself she shouldn't feel that way; it was probably just because the animal belonged to Marsh that she loved it.

At that moment a van and a bus pulled up outside the glass house and all hell broke loose. Kids were running around saying, "God Boy's here! God Boy's here!" Almost everybody ran out onto the front lawn like rats deserting a ship. The van had what looked like a hundred thousand dollars' worth of amplifiers and speakers, and the members of the band looked like they had the kind of mentality that would go to see toe dancers at a ballet and wonder why the management didn't hire taller girls. They all had long hair and hillbilly clothes, and they mvoed fast to get the equipment set up around the poola rea. Butch Ontock came running up to Jacqueline to explain that God Boy had brought a busload of kids from his commune up in Marblehead. And from what Edna could see, it looked like most of that crew had gone the way of all flesh.

"I don't have enough grub!" Jacqueline yelled.

"Who cares," Butch said. "This crew is already stoned out of their minds." Butch ran back towards God Boy's bus.

A minute later, almost everyone was off the bus and a group of kids from the commune began lighting candles and walking like paraplegic geese towards the house.

"Oh, my God." Edna heard Jacqueline groan as she ran back into the kitchen. "They've got a procession going on out there! A procession!"

Edna poured the batch of new sauce into what was left of the old batch on the buffet table, and went out on the lawn to watch God Boy make his entrance. The kids with the candles were parading in the front gate, and Butch Ontock and Greg Cutter were flanking a very tall boy who looked sort of plain and simple, but was wearing jeans and a phosphorescent, Renaissance-prince shirt. But as he got closer, Edna could see that this boy had the most beuatiful smile Edna had ever seen in her life. It's like you would hardly notice him unless he smiled, but the minute you saw his smile you couldn't take your eyes off him. He smiled at all the kids who were lined up staring at him on the lawn, and Edna could tell they were all fascinated by him. It was a very weird phenomenon. There was something tremendously magnetic about this boy in the phosphorescent shirt - the way he moved, the way he carried his head - and the sound of his voice was angelically sincere. "Hello Brothers, hello Sisters," the boy said. He reached out and touched some of the kids as he moved by them, and at one point he gave Butch Ontock a big hug. Then he singled out Bonnie Hilderstraw and put his arm around her. She kissed him even though she'd never met him before. God Boy was saying other things, most of which Edna couldn't hear because she was on the outside edge of the crowd, but as he came closer and more light hit his face, Edna was aware of an enormous tension lurking beneath the slow, steady motion of his movement. "Tonight will be your night," God Boy said at one point, and then turned his head and repeated it. "Tonight will be your night." Edna hadn't the faintest idea of what he was talking about, and she was sure no one else did either. But it was all very moving and spiritual, and there was no doubt that there was something very special about this boy. A few kids shook his hand and called him God Boy, but he corrected them and asked them to just call him Michael. "We're all children of God," he said.

Scurrying back to the house, Edna happened to glance up to the second floor and saw Marsh and Norma Jean Stapleton leaning over the second-floor railing on the deck. Marsh was staring down at Edna, but the moment Edna looked up, Marsh put his arm around Norma Jean quickly. Seeing that made Edna feel miserable. She actually even felt a pain near her heart. She hurried back into the house and the first thing she did was pull out the letter she had written to Marsh and rip it up. She threw the pieces of the letter into the garbage compactor and pressed a switch. There was the loud crashing of broken bottles and she was glad that the thoughts she had written down were now crushed into garbage. Within another couple of minutes the crew from Massachusetts had moved in and taken over the entire kitchen.

"What are they doing?" Jacqueline demanded to know.

Butch started feeling Jacqueline a big line and put his arm around her and led her off to quiet her down. But Jacqueline kept repeating it. "What are they doing? What do they think they're doing here?" Edna had to admit that the girls from the commune seemed to really know what they were doing, even if they were opening up all the kitchen closets. They looked like they were getting ready to eat Jacqueline's family out of house and home. In another minute, steaks were being cooked, roasts were being defrosted; they just laced into everything. Edna decided to get away from the whole matter, and besides, she was pretty exhausted from all the work she'd done. She decided to go upstairs to the living room, not beause Marsh was there, but because she felt like it. She even took a glass of wine with her. As she was going up the stairs, there was a deafening blast from the band which was all hooked up at the pool. Jo had to shut off the stereo system, although it didn't really matter because the amplifying system the band had brought with them was capable of drowning out everything. From the living-room windows Edna could see a lot of the kids had started dancing down by the pool and it was suddenly apparent that the kids from Massachusetts had everything under control. A huge, wrought-iron candleabra had been brought in from the van and ended up being the destination of all the lighted candles the kids had carried in the procession. One by one, each kid had put a lighted candle in the candleabra until there were more than thirty candles. They tried to keep it upstairs in the living room, but Jacqueline screamed because there was so much wax dripping. She made them take it and put it down in the kitchen. And the light from the candles was so bright that the electric lights in the kitchen were shut off. Edna noticed there seemed to be three main bodyguards that stayed close to God Boy. They looked like Little Caesar, Public Enemy Number One, and Scarface. She'd noticed them first sizing up the kitchen and outdoor area, and then deciding that it wasn't suitable for their leader. So now they were upstairs and taken over the living room.

"What about the wax," Jacqueline was running around complaining. "What about all the wax down there? It's getting all over the tiles."

"It comes right off with hot water." One of the girls fromt he commune was telling her not to worry.

God Boy was led to a place of honor on the living-room terrace. A sofa had been dragged out so he'd be comfortable, and kids began to sit at his feet, including a whole slew of girls who had brought him wine, food, and for some reason, three bags of Taco chips. Edna was afraid to go near God Boy, so she just stayed on the fringe, behind the glass doors.

The Books: "The Pigman's Legacy" (Paul Zindel)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is The Pigman's Legacy by Paul Zindel.

The sequel!! The sequel is nothing compared to The Pigman - and the plot is basically a repeat of what happened in the first book - BUT - I love The Pigman's Legacy anyway, because the book starts to focus in on the tormented awkward love affair blossoming between John and Lorraine. The first book only hinted at it here or there - like when the two of them dress up in old vintage clothes and make the spaghetti dinner - and pretend they are old-time movie stars. In that one episode they are approaching the issue ... uhm ... maybe ... we actually .... like each other???

The whole structure of this book is the same as The Pigman. They alternate writing chapters. The book takes place 4 months after The Pigman's death - and the two of them are still feeling very guilty about it, and they kind of cling to each other (emotionally) in the aftermath. Everyone in the town knows that the two of them were messed up in something that seems quite unsavory on the outside (they were ... scamming money from an old man? Who then died??) - so the two of them get even closer, and kind of set loose their other friends, and only hang out with each other.

They are haunted by The Pigman's old house. It has been vacant for the 4 months - and then one day, walking by there - they notice that someone has moved in. It is apparent that the house is now lived in. They are somehow inextricably drawn there ... they NEED to meet the new tenant ... even though they KNOW that they should just mind their own business, let the past stay in the past, blah blah.

So they go and yes, a little old man and his dog have moved into the house. He's not sweet and ethereal like Mr. Pignati - he seems tougher, more wizened - and he is obviously on the run from tax collectors. John and Lorraine make the crazy decision to befriend this lonely crotchety old man ... as a way of making up for what they did to Mr. Pignati. Maybe if they can help this little old guy then they will be cosmically forgiven for betraying the Pigman??

But for me - the "plot" is just a side issue. What REALLY hooks me in is John and Lorraine having this growing awareness of each other ... as ... girlfriend? Boyfriend? And because they are alternating writing chapters for the book - both of them begin to write "secret chapters" that they will not show the other person (although we, of course, get to read them) where they confess their inner feelings, their growing attraction and love for the other. These are two awkward damaged kids. They have horrible parents. They don't know how to be romantic or to even admit feelings like that. John writes at one point, "Our parents messed us both up so much about sex that we can't even dance without being so awkward we nearly fall over."

So I love their secret chapters, their confessionals. I find the book really moving and I've read it a bazillion times.

Zindel just GETS it. He understands the Eleanor Rigbys of the world. Those are the people he writes about, the people he loves. He loves all the lonely people. He knows how hard life is. He knows how hard it is to connect. He GETS the importance of such moments - especially to people who are lonely, damaged, and just trying to survive. I love him for that.

Okay - so here is one of Lorraine's "secret chapters". The two of them (John and Lorraine) are hanging out at the old man's house - and he makes them play a game. Where basically he walks them through a visualization exercise: "You're walking down a road - you see a tree - what does the tree look like?" They both answer. "You see a cup on the side of the road. You pick it up. What do you do with it?" They both answer. And then, afterwards, the old guy analyzes their answers. Lorraine then decides to write one of her "secret chapters" listening to the analysis of John's answers.

Excerpt from The Pigman's Legacy by Paul Zindel.

The old guy grunted and sucked in a big breath of air. "All right. Keep your eyes shut and keep walking down the road now until you come to a cup. Do you see a cup?"

"Got it," John finally said.

"What does it look like?"

"It's Styrofoam, the kind you get at a hot-dog stand and bite pieces off so you can spit them out - and there's a soggy cigarette butt in the bottom."

"What do you do with it?"

"I try to clean it out because I'm thirsty, and I want to drink out of it."

"Good," the old man approved, nodding as though at last something was acceptable. "The cup, you see, is the Cup of Love, and your cup is in pretty rough shape, but at least you want to clean it up and start drinking out of it. But your cup is the cup of someone who probably sees love as pretty shaky, something that will fall into pieces and disappear. Somebody who thinks maybe his own love isn't worthwhile, but there's a flicker of hope in it for you because you're willing to try to clean it out."

I tried to keep my eyes from showing that I was more than routinely interested in the subject at hand. Also, you might as well know that this paragraph that I'm typing now is not going to be seen by John until after this whole memorial epic is finished, or he would probably tear it up - or be very embarrassed that I'm going to start telling you my true feelings about him. Up until now I never said very much about what I really feel for John except that he really is very good-looking, and I like it when he holds my hand because of the electricity and strength he gives me. And it's true. John and I have had a lot of adventures and have gone a lot of places together. We've been alone in cemeteries. We've been chased by the police from time to time. We've even discussed all the great issues of life, like death, love, careers, war, heaven, God, and school. We've gotten dressed up in adult clothes, and had candelight dinner parties for just the two of us. We've had beer bashes for the neighborhood gang. We did a lot of silly things and a lot of dangerous things. I just know it's not going to come as a surprise when I tell you that I've been in love with John for quite a while now. In fact some kids at school can't believe John and I haven't been making out like bandits with each other for years. And I'm not naive. I know that a lot of surveys and statistics on teenage sex would probably think we were both a couple of freaks if they knew that John and I had not been sleeping together, or even frolicking around in the backseats of cars. Maybe all the kids who will read this will say, "Boy, that Lorraine jensen is a real waste," but I'm sorry, John Conlan and I have only been friends. Up to now all we've been is the two best friends in the world, and there are good reasons we nevere got more intimate than that. And anyone who says the way you were raised doesn't haunt you the rest of tyour life is nuts. There was one girl in school who used to act like a real loony tunes, and everybody hated her, but I knew there must have been a big problem in her past - and when I checked it out I found out that when she was eight years old her mother murdered her father. In my case you've got to understand that my mother hated my father for leaving her very shortly after I was born. And she spent a good deal of time teaching me that boys are dirty-minded and sneaks, and I'm not blaming her because if I had to live the life she did, trying to support myself and a kid without a husband, I would probably be a bit bitter and feel very cheated myself. And thank God she started to mellow out a bit this spring because of all the adult self-help books she's been reading, but she still hasn't gone to a psychologist. She still spends a great deal of time reinforcing in me the fear that all members of the male sex are out for one thing. Even though I know she's always been a bit crackers in the love department, it interfers with any romantic thoughts I have. Anytime I begin to have deep feelings for a boy, I can hear her voice in my mind saying things like "Don't let them touch you; boys are only out for one thing. Don't ever be left alone with a boy or he'll take advantage of you. Don't let a boy get you in his car or you'll end up pregnant. Don't kiss boys; you never know what germs they have on their lips. Sit with your knees together and ankles crossed or boys will think you're a slut." One thing I can tell you is if you go through your life hearing stuff like that, it can make you afraid of any man from Santa Claus to a priest. But if knowing our Pigman did anything for me, it at least taught me that kids are responsible for their own lives at a certain age. And that's exactly why I'm now able to admit to myself that I love John Conlan very, very much, and even though he doesn't know it, I'm going to do everything in my power to make him my own. I want to love him like I've always dreamed of loving a boy. I'm going to make John Conlan love me, even if it kills me. That's why I was particularly thrilled when the old man said there was still a flicker of hope for John when he didn't throw his Styrofoam Cup of Love away. (The end of my secret paragraph.)

The Books: "The Pigman" (Paul Zindel)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is The Pigman by Paul Zindel.

Okay, I always get a bit nervous when I pull a book off the shelf that not only do I love - but I feel has made some kind of huge impact on me. I felt it when I pulled out Ballet Shoes the other day, and when I pulled out Harriet the Spy I felt an almost hesitance, like: "Maybe I'll skip this one ..." Just because it means so much to me that I feel like it'll be hard to 'go there', in terms of describing it. It gets personal. A lot of these books, as much as I love them, aren't personal. But The Pigman certainly is.

All I can say is - I first read this book for school - in 8th grade - when I was in the middle of one of the worst times of my life. I was a social outcast, my clothes were wrong, I was teased within an inch of my life by a bunch of bitchy girls - to the point where they put signs on my back saying "I'M UGLY" and would crank-call my house, ask for me, and when I came on the phone say, "Hi ... REALLY loved your pants today." I'd hear shrieks of laughter in the background, and I'd hang up, trembling with shame. I didn't tell my parents about any of this - it seemed like it was just something that had to be endured. I had good friends but I didn't have classes with any of them (although I did end up becoming friends with Mere in 8th grade math - the teacher of which is an entire post in and of itself ... But onward!!). Life was a howling wilderness. Well, except for Ralph Macchio. I'm dead serious. I was 13 years old and I was really suffering. From such self-loathing that I still struggle with it today - and also a low-level constant fog of depression. I had been well liked in grade school. Adolescence hit me completely unprepared. I was like a foreign exchange student who hadn't learned the language yet. I was a mess. Instead of fighting back, or adjusting my behavior, I just sank into a passive "let me just get through this" mentality, which was horrible. I should have punched Phyllis. I won't say her last name, but I know who she is. I should have punched her in her fucking mouth. That would have shut her up. I took her abuse for 2 years in a row because our last names were close, alphabetically - and I never fought back. Ridiculous. Oh, and here's the ironic thing: EVERYONE has a horrible time in junior high. I only learned this much later, of course. I thought I was the only one who had a hard time getting thru the day. Everyone struggles - maybe some people have a better game-face, or maybe some people enjoy figuring out the rules of the game and then playing the game everyone else is playing - but that doesn't mean that there's no struggle. It was just me, in my isolation, at the time. I didn't understand this new society, I couldn't get the rules straight, I kept messing up, and I would not be forgiven for my clothes.

So, Hmmm. What does all this have to do with The Pigman? Everything. These are the kids that Paul Zindel writes for. He writes for the kids in those situations. He knows that teenagers feel isolated from not only each other, but the world itself. He knows that adolescence is (for some) a howling wilderness, especially if you have a horrible home life. NOBODY does horrible home life quite like Paul Zindel. (Uhm - Effect of Gamma Rays??)

I LOVE his writing and I have many of his books ... there are still some that I am missing, which I really should rectify. His themes are always similar - it's always teenagers - faced with some struggle - but then, through heartache, usually, having a deep revelation about themselves and the world. It's usually about teenagers being forced to come out of their self-absorption and care about another human being. Or see that they are not the only person in the world. But as anyone who, well, is DEEP understands: growth like that rarely happens in a neat tied-up-in-a-bow way. A lot of times we learn these lessons in life the hard way. We need to be bashed over the head. We need to be shamed. We need to lose something, and BIG, before we really 'get it'. Those are the moments that Paul Zindel writes about ... over and over and over. Some of these moments you can never take back, even though you want to so badly. Paul Zindel's characters really suffer.

And yet - on the flipside - these books are soooooooo funny. I remember when we were all in Ireland as a family - I was about 14 - and I think I was reading the book outloud to Jean. We were in a B&B, and the kids were in one room, my parents in another. I got to the part about The Marshmallow Kid - and I started laughing so hysterically, and so loudly that first of all - I could no longer keep on reading, and second of all - my mom had to come down the hall and tell us to be quiet. The same thing happened when I read a chapter of it outloud to my roommate Jen - on September 10, 2001. Weird. The things you remember. Or maybe it's not weird. We lay in her bed, in her breezy bedroom next to mine, and I started to read to her - and eventually began snorting and crying and guffawing - These books are FUNNY.

He's one of my favorite writers.

The Pigman is the story of John and Lorraine - and how they befriend (under false pretenses) a man in their neighborhood (which is on Staten Island, I believe) named Angelo Pignati. John and Lorraine are two mis-matched people to be friends - and they get into a lot of trouble together. John is as good-looking as a movie star. He has a horrible home life. Kind of like Ally Sheedy's in The Breakfast Club. "What do they do to you?" "They ignore me." John feels invisible. So he becomes this insane trouble-maker at school. The book opens with him telling us, the reader, about how he used to set off little bombs in the boy's bathroom at school. They called him "The Bathroom Bomber". Also how he would organize his entire math class to roll big apples down the aisles between their desk at a given signal. So the teacher would suddenly turn around and see apples careening towards him. Etc. John is cocky, smart, kind of a loner - he smokes, he drinks - he hangs out in the cemetary with his hoodlum friends - He wants to be an actor, but that's mainly because he knows he's gorgeous. But ... you just ACHE with love for this character, eventually. He's funny, he's insane, you never know what he's going to do ... so the ending of the book packs a huge punch. John has to become a man. Way too soon. He's not ready. But he has to. Lorraine needs him to. It hurts. He has lost a lot - and he will have to live for the rest of his life knowing that HE was partly the cause of that tragedy.

Anyway, so that's John.

Lorraine, when I first read this book in 8th grade, reminded me of me. She was goofy-looking - her clothes were never right - she was a new kid in school, and she had no friends. She just didn't fit in. She felt like a fat galumphing ugly beast ... and her mother reinforces this skewed self-image. Her mother is a single mom - I guess the dad walked out on them - and her mother works as a private nurse for dying people - and most of them are dirty old men who try to pinch her ass. Her mother HATES (and I mean HATES) men. She tries to pass along this "wisdom" to Lorraine. "Boys are only after one thing. Never forget that." She makes Lorraine dress a certain way, so as not to attract boys - who are only after one thing - and, in general, makes Lorraine into a paranoid nervous wreck. Lorraine truly believes that all men are sex maniacs who cannot control themselves ... so when she meets John - who may be like that with other girls, slutty girls - but isn't that way with her - she is suspicious of him. And she is sure that Mr. Pignati, the sweet little old man, is up to no good and is about to rape her at any moment.

Anyway, the form of the book is part of the fun. Here's the set-up: John and Lorraine have decided to write a book, telling "their side" of the story about what happened with Mr. Pignati - since everyone is running around thinking the worst of them. As you start the book, you have no idea what the ending is ... but John and Lorraine write their chapters in such a way that you are prepared. They say stuff like: "We honestly didn't mean it. We didn't mean for all of that to happen." You don't know what they're talking about - but you know that it's coming.

It's great, too, because their two narrative voices are completely different. John is kind of cocky, and bragging about stuff - while Lorraine frets and worries - and comments on the writing in John's chapter. "I knew I shouldn't have let John write the first chapter. He has a tendency to exaggerate." Actually, they both comment on each other's chapters. They correct each other, defend themselves against attack from the other, etc.

Lorraine, also, has obviously been OD-ing on the self-help books. You'll see what I mean in the excerpt below.

Through an afternoon of crank-calling - John and Lorraine end up talking to a lonely-sounding guy named Mr. Pignati who actually invites them, his crank callers, over after school the following day. Terrified, but thinking that maybe they can scam him (see? John and Lorraine are total trouble when they are together) - they go over there. Mr. Pignati lives in a dusty dark house - with the shades drawn. He is, to put it mildly, eccentric. He invites them in. He is lovely, doddering, imaginative - he makes them play little word games - because it's all just so delightful to meet new people and isn't it fun to play games? John and Lorraine feel awkward, and ... somehow they succumb to this man. They begin spending all of their time therer after school, hanging out with Mr. Pignati. They tell no one because they think that people might think it weird that they like hanging out with an 80 year old dude, who spends all his time at the zoo, bonding with one gorilla in particular. They go to the zoo with him, and are kind of embarrassed to watch how Mr. Pignati speaks, intimately, to the gorilla through the glass. They have BONDED. Mr. Pignati is kind of nuts.

But it turns out that Mr. Pignati has a secret. John and Lorraine discover it.

And they end up betraying Mr. Pignati. He learns of this betrayal - he looks them in the eyes - his new friends who have brightened up his lonely days - and realizes that they have lied to him. And the repercussions are devastating. Things happen that can never be undone.

It's a FANTASTIC book - and I can't recommend it highly enough. I will always love it because I remember my sensation when I first read it - in the horrible howling wilderness that was adolescence: Someone gets me. This writer gets me. He knows what it's like!

It was unbelievably comforting.

Here's an excerpt from one of Lorraine's chapters - in fact, it's an excerpt from the first chapter Lorraine writes, where she races in and tries to correct all of John's exaggerations and lies. Oh yeah - John is a brilliant and compulsive liar. Notice Lorraine's unremitting psychobabble. She's describing how they met and became friends - a CLASSIC scene.

Excerpt from The Pigman by Paul Zindel.

The one big difference between John and me, besides the fact that he's a boy and I'm a girl, is I have compassion. Not that he really doesn't have any compassion, but he'd be the last one on earth to show it. He pretends he doesn't care about anything in the world, and he's always ready with some outrageous remark, but if you ask me, any real hostility he has is directed against himself.

The fact that I'm his best friend shows he isn't as insensitive to Home sapiens as he makes believe he is, because you might as well know I'm not exactly the most beautiful girl in the world. I'm not Venus or Harlow. Just ask my mother.

"You're not a pretty girl, Lorraine," she has been nice enough to inform me on a few occasions (as if I didn't remember the first time she ever said it), "but you don't have to walk about stoop-shouldered and hunched." At least once a day she fills me in on one more aspect of my public image - like "your hair would be better cut short because it's too kinky," and "you're putting on too much weight," and "you wear your clothes funny." If I made a list of every comment she's made about me, you'd think I was a monstrosity. I may not be Miss America, but I am not the abominable snowwoman either.

But as I was saying, it is a facat that John has compassion deep insideo f him, which is the real reason we got involved with the Pigman. Maybe at first glance John thought of it all simply as a way of getting money for beer and cigarettes, but the second we met th eold man, John changed, even though he won't admit it. As a matter of fact, it was this very compassion that made John finally introduce himself to me and invite me for a beer in Moravian Cemetery. He always went to Moravian Cemetery to dirnk beer, which sounds a little crazy, but it isn't if you explore his source problem a bit. Although I didn't know John and his family until two years ago when I moved into the neighborhood, from what I've been able to gather I think his father was a compulsive alcoholic. I've spent hours trying to analyze the situation, and the closest I've been able to come to a theory is that his father set a bad example at an age when John was impressionable. I think his father made it seem as though drinking alcoholic beverages was a sign of maturity. This particular sign of maturity ended up giving his father sclerosis of the liver, so he doesn't drink anymore, but John does.

I had moved into John's nneighborhood at the start of my freshman year, and he and a bunch of other kids used to wait for the same bus I did on the corner of Victory Boulevard and Eddy Street. I was in a severe state of depression the first few weeks because no one spoke to me. It wasn't that I was expecting the boys to buzz around and ask m e out, but I was sort of hoping that at least one of the girls would be friendly enough to borrow a hairpin or something. I stood on that corner day after day with all the kids, and nobody talked to me. I made believe I was interested in looking at the trees and houses and clouds and stray dogs and whatever - anything not to let on how lonesome I felt inside. Many of the houses were interesting as far as middle-class neighborhoods go. In fact, I suppose you'd say it was a multi-class neighborhood because both the houses and the kids ranged from wrecks to rich. There'd be a lovely brick home with a lot of land, and right next to it there'd be a plain wooden house with a postage-stamp-sized lawn that needed cutting. The only thing that was completely high class was the trees. Large old trees lined most of the streets and had grown so tall and wide they almost touched. I loved looking at the trees more than anything at first, but after a while even those started to depress me.

Then there was John.

I noticed him the very first day mainly because of his eyes. As I told you, he has these fantastic eyes that take in everything that's going on, and whenever they came my way, I looked in the other direction. His eyes reminded me of a description of a gigantic Egyptian eye that was found in one of the pyramids I read about in a book on black magic. Somehow an archaeologist's wife ended up with this huge stone eye in her bedroom, and in the middle of the night it exploded and a big cat started biting the archaeologist's wife's neck. When she put the lights on, the cat was gone. Only the pieces of the eye were scattered all over the floor. That's what John's eyes reminded me of. I knew even from the first moment I saw him he had to be something special.

Then one day John had to sit next to me on the bus because all the other seats were taken. He wasn't sitting there for more than two minutes before he started laughing. Laughing right out loud, but not to anyone. I was so embarrassed. I wanted to cry because I thought for sure he was laughing at me, and I turned my head all the way so the only thing I could see out the window of the bus was telephone poles going by. They call that paranoia. I knew that because some magazine did a whole article on mental disturbances, and after I read the symptoms of each of them, I realized I had all of them - but most of all I had paranoia. That's when you think everybody's making fun of you when they're not. Some extremely advanced paranoiacs can't even watch television because they think the canned laughter is about them. Freud would probably say it started with my mother picking on how I look all the time. But no matter how it started, I've got to admit that when anyone looks at me I'm sure they're noticing how awful my hair is or I'm too fat or my dress is funny. But I did think John was laughing at me, and it made me feel terrible, until finally - and the psychiatrists would say this was healthy - I began to get mad!

"Would you mind not laughing," I said, "because people think I'm sitting with a lunatic." He jumped when I spoke to him, so I realized he wasn't lauhging at me. I don't think he even knew I was there.

"I'm sorry," he said. I just turned my head away and watched the telephone poles some more. Then I heard him whisper something under his breath, and it had just the tone of a first-class smart aleck.

"I am a lunatic."

I made believe I didn't hear it, but then he said it again a little louder.

"I am a lunatic."

"Well, I wouldn't go around bragging about it," I said, and I was so nervous I dropped one of my books on the floor. I was mortified picking it up because it fell between the seat and the window, and I was sure I'd look like an enormous cow bending over to get it. All I could think of at that moment was wishing one of his eyeballs would explode and a nice big cat would get at his neck, but I managed to get the book and sit straight up with this real annoyed look on my face.

Then he started that laughing thing again. Veru quietly at first, and boy, did it burn me! And then I decided I was going to let out a little laugh, so I did. Then he laughed a little louder, and I laughed a little louder, and before I knew what was happening I couldn't stand it, so I really started laughing, and he started laughing, and we laughed so much the whole bus thought we were out of our minds.

The Books: "Romance Is a Wonderful Thing" (Ellen Emerson White)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is Romance Is a Wonderful Thing by Ellen Emerson White

Don't let the HORRIBLE title fool you. This is another great Young Adult novel - (by the same Rhode Island author) - and when I first read it I think I was 16, 17 - and I just flipped OUT. I thought it was the most romantic book I had ever read. (Guess I hadn't read Jane Eyre yet, huh?) This book killed me. I wanted to crawl through the pages. Uhm ... it reminds me of my response when I first saw Moulin Rouge. Obviously, I haven't outgrown certain types of behavior. Moulin Rouge cut right through the crap that had been swirling around in my head, the well-meaning advice from worried friends, the crappy books I was reading, trying to get through the darkest time ... and I rented that movie, and it shot through all that crap like a laser. And for a while - that was the only movie I could watch. I wasn't really, how you say, a WELL person at that point ... but Moulin Rouge was the life force asserting itself in me again. Yup. It was that dramatic. And I knew it the SECOND I watched the film. I knew it was the "way out". If I could just keep my eye focused on the "way out" (by watching the movie every day) - then I would have a chance of making it out of that dark time. This book by Ellen Emerson White, with the horrible title, was the same kind of catalyst. I don't think I was overly depressed when I read it, or anything like that - but I do remember being lonely - I was lonely as a teenager. Not because I didn't have friends (right, Bets, Mere, Beth??) It was just this undefinable YEARNING for love, for a boyfriend, for ... THAT whole thing to start. I had never had it ... and I felt like I would die if I didn't experience it. I was lonely for someone I had never met. This book was like Moulin Rouge in that it filled me with hope. I felt like: Oh God, it hasn't happened yet ... but it WILL. I lived it vicariously. And you know what? I still re-read this book on occasion. It's still a good read.

Briefly, the story (and Beth: this might be a good one to read as well on your mandatory silent period):

The heroine of our story is Trish Masters. She's a high school senior - and she's one of those perfect girls. Not a popular girl, necessarily - but she's an honor student, she's a kick-ass tennis player, she's well-liked, she's got a couple really good friends - she's on the "success track". You know those girls.

Somehow, in the first or second chapter of the book - we are introduced to a guy in her class - Colin McNamara (first of all: the name?? Okay?? You see what I'm dealing with here?) Colin is kind of notorious. It is well known that he is illiterate, it's well known that he drinks, that he causes trouble, that he is always being sent to the principal's office for goofing off. He never takes anything seriously - and he has a terrible reputation. There's also a rumor that he got some girl pregnant the year before. Trish never gives him a second thought - but somehow (not remembering it now!!) the two of them have an interaction where suddenly she sees something different in him. Or - she notices how cute he is. And suddenly- without her even talking to him, or admitting she has a crush on him - she starts defending him when his name comes up in a derogatory manner. Her friends don't get it. "Why are you defending that loser?" Etc.

There are times in the book when we go into Colin's world as well - even though Trish is the "star". We see his life behind the scenes - and it is not at all what you would expect. We learn some things about him. For some reason, in my memory of the book - he has no mother - but apparently he does (I just double-checked.) Mainly it's because his father makes such an impression - he seems like the main parent. His dad is a cop. Great character. A father anyone would love to have. He knows his son has problems - but he knows that deep down, his son is a good person - and he just has to keep encouraging and nurturing that good side - as opposed to focusing only on how much the kid gets into trouble.

We also learn, surprisingly - that Colin is not only NOT illiterate - but he is secretly a huge reader. He can recite long passages from Macbeth. He has read all of Faulkner, even though he kind of disliked it. He loves Hemingway. Etc. He is pissed off that because he got a bad reputation early on everyone just assumes he's stupid - so he decides: "Fine. If they're gonna think I'm stupid, then I'm gonna act stupid." So he is flunking all of his classes - and then going home at night and reading Eugene O'Neill plays by himself.

Okay ... so he's a great character, basically. It doesn't take much to fall in love with him. Everyone loves an underdog.

Somehow - Trish offers to tutor him in the subjects he is failing (having no idea that the kid is actually really really smart - and is failing on purpose). She really thinks that he's mentally challenged as well, and needs her help. One night she's at the local library, doing research for a paper she's writing and she runs into Colin. Colin McNamara? At the library? WTF???? She looks at the books he has stacked up in his arms - The Old Man and the Sea and Richard II and she's like: okay. What the hell is going on here? Colin walks Trish home from the library and ends up asking her to go out on a date. She says yes. The two of them are INCREDIBLY AWKWARD with each other, and it is all deliciously rendered.

Trish, on some level, believes all the rumors about Colin. She thinks he does sleep around, and he did get some girl pregnant - Scandal swirls about his head, and she kind of believes it all - even though she is starting to like him. Trish has no experience with guys. She has never dated anyone. Colin, on the other hand, feels like Trish is crazy to be interested in him ... and so he acts all prickly at times, like: "You're not ashamed to be seen with me?" etc. which makes her mad.

Eventually ... their romance heats up - and the entire school starts to get involved. They seem mismatched. Trish, the virginal honors student, with Colin, the retarded sex-maniac jagoff? Trish endures a lot of grief. Everyone assumes that she is sleeping with him - because of course, Colin would NEVER go out with anyone without sleeping with them - and things get kind of rough for both of them. Lots of trouble-makers. Colin's tough friends making fun of him for dating this pure little girl - Trish's friends basically looking at Colin as though he's something from under a rock. Trish also feels kind of embarrassed at her lack of experience - she's never kissed anyone, never been on a date, blah blah (she so reminded me of me at that time) - and instead of keeping it all to herself, she would say to Colin, after he kissed her for the first time, 'Am I bad at this?" Etc. She's intimidated by what she sees as his VAST sexual experience. (Turns out that all of that is just a nasty rumor as well - but Colin is so pissed off that everyone is so eager to think the worst of him - that he lets the rumors fly.)

Again, like I said yesterday- Ellen Emerson White is so good at dialogue - and most of this book (like the one yesterday) is back and forth dialogue. Not too much editorial interjections - we just hear these people talking. I love it - because she's good at it. She has the different voices down, we always know who is speaking - and somehow, very early on in this book - we become so invested in BOTH of these people. We love Trish, and we love Colin. And whether or not they end up together - we want both of them to do well, to be well.

It's a scrumpdiddlyumptious book and I freaked out like a sexmad lunatic when I first read it. I wanted to be Trish! I wanted to date Colin! I wanted a guy to come into my life and completely MESS IT UP the way Colin messed up Trish's life. I was DYING for it!!

Ahem. Oh well. I'm not embarrassed.

Here's an excerpt. This is from their first date. Colin and Trish have gone to a movie and now they are out to eat. They don't know each other at all. It's really awkward.

Excerpt from Romance Is a Wonderful Thing by Ellen Emerson White

"So." Colin cleared his throat.

"I enjoyed the movie."

"Me too," he agreed. "Yeah, good movie." Nervously, he moved his hand forward to play with the salt shaker, but knocked it over. He winced, then picked it up and tossed some salt over his shoulder.

"Superstitious?" Trish asked.

"What? Oh, guess I'm in the habit. My mother - she's doing that stuff all the time. You know."

"Like knocking on wood?"

"Yeah. And if you drop a knife, a man's coming to visit."

"Really?" Trish looked down at her silverware. "What if I dropped my fork?"

"A woman."

"How about my spoon? There's nothing left."

"It means a kid's coming. Least, that's what my mother says. Like Dad dropped a spoon the other night and some friend of hers called after dinner and said she was pregnant. My mother got all excited - kept shouting, 'See? See?' all night."

"Do you have any brothers and sisters?"

"No, just me." He grinned wryly. "After I showed up, they were afraid to try again."

"The only child. You must be spoiled."

"They let me get away with murder," he agreed. "Oh, thanks," he said, as the waitress put down his sandwich.

"Thank you." Trish echoed him as she got her salad.

"Salad, huh?" He shook his head. "You should have gotten something decent."

"I like salad." She picked up the little cup of dressing. "Before I do this, do you like olives?"

"Yeah, sure."

"Here." She transferred them to his plate. "Tell me three other things about you."

"What?"

"I don't know, three things you like."

"You've been reading Seventeen, huh?" he asked.

She flushed. "So what if I have?"

"I knew it." He took a gulp of Coke.

"So tell me three things."

"I don't want to play."

"It's not a game," she said. "I'm serious."

"Okay. Big Macs. I like Big Macs. Can we quit now?"

"Boy, you're a lot of fun."

"Okay, I like running."

"I already know that." She tried to spear a cherry tomato and missed. "What's your favorite book?"

"I don't know how to read," he said stiffly.

"Then, how come you were in the library?"

"I look at the pictures."

"In Hemingway?"

He scowled, putting his sandwich down.

"Can we talk about something else?" he asked.

"No."

"Guess your friends thought it was pretty funny, you seeing me in the library," he scowled.

"I didn't mention it. I thought it might embarrass you."

"You thought right." He gulped down most of the Coke.

"Come on, Colin. I'm not going to make fun of you or anything."

"Okay. Farewell to Arms," he said, scowling harder. "Now, can we shut up about it?"

She nodded silently.

"Oh, terrific." He shoved his plate away. "Now you're mad."

"I'm not mad." She kept her eyes on her salad, playing with the lettuce. "You just sort of hurt my feelings."

"Oh, great - guilt. Now I'm supposed to apologize."

"Do what you want, Colin." Her voice was very quiet.

Neither spoke for a long minute.

" 'They have tied me to a stake,' " he said finally. " 'I cannot fly. But, bearlike, I must fight the course.' "

She looked up. "What?"

"Macbeth." He smiled slightly. "Act Five."

"And you're flunking out," she said.

"Yup." He picked up his sandwich.

"Is it none of my business?"

"I'm flunking out because I'm stupid."

"But you're not."

"Yeah, I am. Look at the classes I'm taking - shop, stupid Functional Math, Spanish One ..."

"What's wrong with that?"

"Hey, don't bother, okay?" His voice was irritated. "I know they're stupid classes. Hey, I'm not even in a real English class. I'm in Remedial Reading. My science class is horticulture- what are you in, chemistry? Something like that? What do you mean, I'm not stupid?" His voice was rising and he glanced around to see if anyone had noticed. "You know what happens if I give an answer in one of my classes?" He spoke more calmly. "The teacher nods and says, 'Very good, Colin. Good job.' They even speak slowly to make sure I understand! And you say I'm not stupid." He took a vicious bite of his sandwich.

"What are you getting in reading?"

"I don't know, a D? Something like that."

"Sort of fulfilling their expectations?"

"Yup." He gulped some Coke. "They want me to be dumb, I'll be dumb."

Trish moved her lettuce idly in her bowl.

"You know what you are?" she asked.

"Come on, Trish, I get this all the time."

"You're a closet intellectual, that's what you are."

He laughed, the irritation slipping away.

"Is that what you think?" he asked.

"That's exactly what I think."

"You're cute, you know that?" He grinned at her. "And even cuter when you blush." He reached over, touching her hand. "Trish --"

"Kids?" the waitress asked. "I hate to do this to you, but we're kind of closing up and --"

"Oh, sorry," Colin took one last bite of his sandwich, fishing for his wallet. By the time he'd paid and they were outside, he'd managed to change the subject to the movie, which they talked about until they got to her house.

He glanced at his watch. "Good, it's not too late." He gestured toward the lights coming from the living room. "Your parents still up?"

"Looks like it," Trish said nodding. "Thank you, I had a nice time."

"You don't have to be polite."

"I'm not. I had a good time."

"I'm sorry I lost my temper."

"It's okay."

"Not really," he said.

They were both silent.

"Well, it's -- it's getting kind of late." Trish backed up a step.

"Yeah, it is." He swallowed. "Guess I'd better get going."

"Yeah, me too."

"Yeah." He leaned forward and his lips brushed against hers. "Uh -- goodnight."

"Goodnight."

As he went briskly down the walk, she started up the front steps.

"Colin?" she asked, turning.

He pulled his hands out of his pockets. "What?"

"You said you wished you had a dog you could walk." She held on to the cast-iron railing, not sure if she was going too far. "If it's nice tomorrow, do you maybe feel like walking a lazy basset hound with a lot of sexual hangups?"

His grin came so fast that she could see the sudden white of his teeth in the darkness.

"Yeah," he said. "Sounds good."

The Books: "Life without friends" (Ellen Emerson White)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is Life Without Friends by Ellen Emerson White

Ellen Emerson White was pretty famous in Rhode Island - she was a young woman from Rhode Island and she published her first novel - called Friends for Life, I believe - and it was kind of a big hit, at the time. I was in high school when that book was published, and I think White was - 23? It was amazing to all of us that she was so close to us in age, and she had a book out!! Rhode Island treats its literary celebrities quite well. She did readings everywhere, book signings ... She grew up in the town right next to mine - and it just was odd to think that she had written a book! Oh, and it was a young adult novel - not strictly a romance, it had a thriller aspect to it as well. Kind of a I know what you did last summer thing. But it's a good book. She's not a flashy writer, but she is a good writer - and I still think, even years later, that she is TERRIFIC at dialogue. Sometimes entire pages go by with two people just talking to each other, back and forth, and sometimes you get the "he said" or "she said" - but she doesn't insert herself editorially into the conversations. The characters just talk. And you never lose track of who is talking, you know EXACTLY what is going on ... it's so so fun to read, especially if you like the characters. So Friends for Life was kind of a big hit - and we all read it - because she was a Rhode Islander and we wanted to participate, vicariously, in her success. After that, I kept up with her and kept reading her books. She ended up writing a really popular series called The President's Daughter - I LOVED them. They were about the trials and tribulations of being the teenage daughter of the President of the United States. I think there are 3 in the series. They are still in print and they're terrific. But to me - the book I'm excerpting today - Life without Friends - is her best book. I know, it's so silly to be talking about this stuff as though it's feckin' Jane Austen or something - but I love and respect all kinds of books - and if you can tell me a good story, I don't CARE. If you are able to tell a story without treating me like I'm a dimwit then I love you. (I picked up a book yesterday, read the first paragraph, and put it down again - because I had read all I needed to read. No surprises would be in the book. The author was phoning it in. IN THE FIRST PARAGRAPH. I hate obvious writing. And in my estimation, a book like Good Night Moon is better writing than that piece of crap book I browsed today. Even in Good Night Moon the language is soft, poetic - and still somewhat surprising. It's a world you can lose yourself in. Margaret Wise Brown respects her reader.) Ahem. I'll stop ranting now.

I'm just saying all of this because I love the "Young Adult" genre - especially when it respects the reader - which is usually (especially with books like this) a teenage girl. Ellen Emerson White is really good at it. And I can't understand why Life Without Friends (the book I'm excerpting today) has gone out of print. If you ever see it in a second-hand bookshop, and you're into this kind of literature - I highly recommend you pick it up. It'll make you feel really good when you read it. I'm such a fan of this book that I even considered adapting it for the screen - this totally should be a movie. It would be a ginormous hit.

So basically, here's the plot. It's kind of a sequel to Friends for Life - some of the same characters. In Friends for Life - a girl dies - she somehow gets mixed up with the wrong crowd at her chichi Boston prep school - and she dies. Her best friend Susan is haunted by her dead friend - and it's not that she investigates the crime - the crime is solved - But she goes about trying to deal with the loss, deal with her grief, and deal with her RAGE at the "wrong crowd of kids" who caused her friend's death. In Life without Friends - Susan is no longer the star, she's a peripheral character. The star of this book is Beverly - and she was one of the kids in that "wrong crowd" - and she is inadvertently responsible (because she said nothing, she didn't intervene) with the death of Colleen, I think her name was. Beverly is a privileged kid - with a father who teaches at, oh, Harvard - and she has everything - but she got mixed up in the wrong crowd, she dated a bad bad guy - who abused her, punched her in the face - but she loved him. She had sex with him. She was 16 and the whole thing was too much, too soon. She's a MESS. Life without Friends is Beverly's aftermath of that whole tragedy. She is racked with guilt, she has NO friends anymore, she is forced, as punishment, to see a psychiatrist every week - she has a raging ulcer - Her father is very strict, and is very unhappy with his daughter, and the trouble she has gotten into. Beverly is not a happy camper. She is 17 years old, and it is like she is just enduring her life. She has a bad attitude. Her stepmother, Maryann, (such a terrific character) keeps trying to befriend her stepdaughter - she is calm, open, and yet nobody's fool. Maryann is not an idiot, and she won't be treated like a doormat - and even though Beverly keeps rejecting her, she keeps reaching out. She just doesn't want Beverly to be lost to them again. If Beverly starts having problems, she wants to make sure that she knows. Beverly feels harassed by all this attention. She is treated like a pariah at her school. She hates her psychiatrist. She is prickly, angry, defensive. You kind of end up just loving her, even though she's totally not pleasant - You can feel how much she bottles everything up, you can feel her underlying sadness that she will not allow herself to experience - you just want her to let her guard down, and tell her everything will be okay.

Very early on in the book, she's taking her dog for a walk in Boston Common, and she sits to rest. She sees a gardening crew out working ... and becomes kind of ... taken (at least, visually) - with one of them. A big beefy guy, maybe 19 years old, wearing a Red Sox hat - and joking around with everyone. He ends up realizing that he is being watched and comes over to talk to her. His name is Derek. Guys: Derek is a KICK-ASS character. In my mind, he's just a great romantic hero. He's tough, funny, baffled by this girl who seems to have "chosen" him as her friend ... She is mean to him when he tries to be nice to her, she doesn't want romance - it freaks her out - and yet - somehow - they keep just hanging out. She tells him nothing about her past. He seems like such a good guy, an open-faced simple guy - and the fact that she was such a bad girl, and did nothing to stop Colleen's death - also, just the fact that she had had sex before and maybe he would think she was a slut - she fears that something like that would be unforgivable to him. She has a lot of secrets. Derek can feel the secrets, and sometimes he asks - but mainly he doesn't push. They "hang out". Derek has a mild air of confusion the entire time. Can a girl and a guy be "just friends"? If they go out to Brigham's for ice cream, is it a date? Beverly is firm that it is not. She can't handle it. Her experience of dating involved being punched in the face by a guy who sounds like the Preppy Murderer. You know, one of those cocky rich prep school boys. Derek is strong and tough, and even though Beverly thinks he is so cute - something about his strength makes her nervous. He is nothing other than gentle with her - but she wonders what would happen if he turned that strength against her? She knows she wouldn't stand a chance. Eventually all of this comes out, in the course of their friendship (which takes up the entire book - the whole book is just Beverly and Derek, walking around Boston, talking - I love it) - and Derek is kind of hurt that she would think he would ever do anything to hurt her. Etc. You get the idea.

Over the course of the story - romance, of course, keeps kind of bubbling up - but Derek and Beverly both don't know how to deal with it. Beverly's father is highly suspicious of his daughter's taste in men, for good reason, and he is kind of an asshole to Derek when he first meets him. Oh, and there are some really good observations in here - about class issues. Beverly is from the upper echelon of Boston society. It is a given that not only will she go to college, she'll go to Harvard or Yale. It's not even a question. Derek is "blue collar" (not wacky about that term) - which basically means - he was never a 'school person' - He grew up in a rough neighborhood, he works construction, and he thinks he's dumb. There's a great section where she asks him what his plans are and he says he's thinking about the Army. And this is so far outside Beverly's experience, that she realizes her own limitations. She asks herself - why am I so uncomfortable right now? Why can't I think of anything to say?? It's a good observation, I think. Derek doesn't know anyone who just assumes they'll go to Harvard, and Beverly doesn't know anyone in the Army. But for whatever reason - these two people are just able to relax with each other. You can see Beverly thawing over the course of the book. It's not all smooth - there are miscommunications - there's a moment when Beverly turns away from him, and he reaches out to grab her arm, stop her from turning - and instinctively, she slaps his hand away, and cowers away from him, thinking he's going to hurt her. Derek is stunned by this kind of crap. 'What the ... I was just taking your arm ...."

Anyway, as you can tell - I ADORE this book. It's incredibly romantic, in the end - and you really feel like - wow. These 2 people are gonna have a chance. Not only that - but whatever happens, the couple of months that they spent bumming around together has had a lasting impact on both of their lives. Lovely book.

Here's an excerpt where Beverly invites Derek over to have dinner with her family - always awkward - and then they go to a movie, where ... suddenly it is totally not clear that they are not on a date. At this point, Derek still doesn't know Beverly's back-story - and why she's so skittish and weird. He seems to just accept that that is who she is. Eventually she comes clean - but in this excerpt they're still strolling around, kind of lost in their own thoughts. I just love her dialogue. It's kind of a PG-13 excerpt, yeah!!

Excerpt from Life Without Friends by Ellen Emerson White

Dinner, to Beverly's surprise, was kind of happy and relaxed. Derek ate a lot, but he talked a lot, too. He and her father seemed to be getting along okay, and Oliver obviously thought that Derek had fallen off a Christmas tree or something. After, it even seemed natural for him to be helping with the dishes and saying things like that he was kind of a fan of Brillo pads. What about Silverstone? Maryanne asked. Me, I'm a cast-iron man.

"Mr. Johnson," Derek said, when the dishes were finished. "is it all right if Beverly and I head out for a while?"

Her father nodded. "Not too late."

Her father liked him. A friend she had chosen. Unreal. She started up to her room to get a sweater.

"Hey, don't worry about it," Derek said, handing her his jeans jacket. "You get cold, you can wear this."

Beverly flushed, but took the jacket, holding it awkwardly in one hand. "I will be home early," she said to her father, who nodded. A benign nod, not a stern one.

"So," Derek said when they got outside. "You feel like going to a movie or what?"

She shrugged, noticing that it was kind of cold, but too shy to put the jacket on. "Whatever."

"How about we go over to the Sack Cheri and just see whatever's playing when we get there?"

She nodded.

"You look cold," he said as they walked towards Boylston Street, and draped the jacket over her shoulders.

"No, I'm --"

"Wear it," he said. " 'F if you catch cold or something, your father'll be mad at me."

She slipped it on, noticing right away how nice it smelled, rolling the sleeves up to her wrists. Cigarettes, sawdust, grass cuttings. A little motor oil, maybe. Man smells.

"Look better in it than I do," he remarked, reaching into the front pocket of the jacket to get his cigarettes, lighting one for each of them.

Beverly smiled, and as they walked, automatically let her hands go into the side pockets. There was stuff in the pockets, and she lifted each object out an inch or two to look at it. A couple packs of matches. What was left of a roll of ButterRum LifeSaveres. A soft, neatly folded navy blue bandana. Some change. A Swiss Army knife.

The knife made her nervous, and she ran her thumb along the outside of the closed large blade. "Um, what do you use this for?"

"Weapon mostly," he said. "Corkscrew's pretty damn lethal."

She smiled uneasily.

He took the knife, pulling out various blades and tools. "Comes in pretty handy. Like, I'm always forgetting to buy beer with twist-off caps and stuff."

"You don't just do it with your teeth?"

He shook his head. " 'F I do, I just end up biting off the end of the bottle and then it's hard to drink."

Beverly laughed. One thing for sure, he was quick.

"See, like, it has all these screwdrivers and an awl and tweezers - all kinds of excellent stuff."

Beverly nodded.

"And sometimes, I don't know, when work is stupid, I make stuff, you know? There's all these sticks and stuff around, and - I mean, I make stupid stuff - throw it away mostly - but sometimes I make little - boats and things." He coughed. "Dumb-looking boats. I just -" He stopped. "Getting kind of verbal, hunh?" He closed the knife completely, putting it in his pocket.

"Like, what do you make?"

He shrugged, his shoulders hunching up.

"I'm interested," she said. "What do you make?"

"Stupid stuff. You know."

"Like what?"

He sighed and pulled a long, thin piece of wood out of one of the top pockets of the jacket, handing it to her. She frowned at it: about eight inches long, very smooth, with six sides, and a point at one end, the other end flat.

"I call it," he paused, " 'Ballpoint.'"

Beverly laughed, recognizing the object.

"Was trying to make a cap and all," he said, "but the wood kept splitting."

Beverly turned the wood over in her hands, amused. It did look like a Bic pen. "I like it."

"Oh yeah?" He put the wood back in the pocket, Beverly kind of surprised that his fooling with the jacket while she was wearing it didn't bother her. "Got one at home you'd really like then. Call it 'Door Key'."

Beverly laughed.

"If you're nice to me, I might make you a toothbrush or something."

"Never use them," she said.

Now he laughed, holding the door of the movie theatre for her. They were early for all three of the movies, but after wasting quarters on video games, ended up in the outer space action one. The theatre wasn't very crowded, and they sat in the middle, near the left. Derek, of course, had gotten popcorn and candy. Lots of candy.

"Want you eating some too," he said, opening the box of Jujy-fruits.

She leaned over, examined the array of candy, then leaned back, shaking her head. "I only like Raisenettes."

He started to stand up. "Hey, no problem, I can just --"

"Joke," she said.

He stopped halfway. "I knew that."

She nodded.

"I did."

She nodded.

"Just, you know, didn't want to burst your bubble." He looked at the candy, then slapped the box of Milk Duds into her hand. "Eat these."

"Chicks really go for that," she said and slapped them into his hand.

There were some previews - pretty dumb action movies, mostly - then, the lights went down.

"Arm's kind of stiff," Derek muttered.

"What?"

"Just have to stretch it out or something," he said, and slung it across the back of her seat.

Beverly grinned wryly. Cute.

"I mean, don't want to get in your way or anything," he said.

Beverly glanced around, afraid that other people were being bothered. "Just shut up and watch the movie."

"Oh." He settled himself more comfortably. "So, it's okay?" he said.

People turned around, frowning, and Beverly jabbed her elbow into his ribs.

"I want you to be happy," he said, with his little-boy expression.

"Then, shut up."

"Okay," he whispered, the same people turning to frown.

"Jerk," Beverly said.

"Yeah." He sat back, smiling up at the screen, and looking at him, Beverly smiled too, moving very slightly closer before looking up at the movie.

"This is such a nice blouse you're wearing," he whispered. Loudly.

Beverly pressed her teeth together. "Derek, it's a sweat shirt."

The people in front of them got up, moving across the theatre.

"It's lovely fabric," he said.

"Derek, if you don't shut up, we're going to get thrown out of here."

"Aw, hell," he said, looking unhappy. "And I'm supposed to be reviewing it for The Globe."

She was tempted to smack him, but he was looking at her with such a cute smile that she just shook her head and focused on the movie. It was a dumb movie - mostly asteroids and lasers - and she found herself watching him instead. His eyes and mouth looked all happy - he pretty much always looked happy - and suddenly, unexpectedly, she liked him so much that she leaned up to kiss his cheek.

"Hey, woah," he said.

He'd turned to look at her, so she kissed his mouth this time.

"You, uh," he shifted the popcorn to his other leg, "you don't like the movie?"

"What," she kissed him again, "you like it?"

"Well - " he cleared his throat. "Kind of. I mean, before. I mean -" he hesitated, not kissing back. "Do - friends - do this?"

"Yes."

His mouth relaxed into a grin. "They do?"

"All the time."

"Well, hell with the movie then." He dropped the popcorn, brining his left arm over to put it around her. "I'm kind of animal," he said against her mouth. "Just slap me if I bug you or anything."

She laughed. "Count on it."

Things got intense pretty fast, the arm of the chair between them very definitely in the way - Beverly not sure if she was disappointed or relieved.

"You are an animal," she said quietly.

"Yeah, I know." He withdrew his hand. "Been slapped so many times, I lost track."

"That many women?"

"No, just that many times." He rested his arms on her shouldres. "Guess I forgot myself or something. Especially, like, with you being so beautiful."

"I'm going to slap you," Beverly said.

"Yeah, I figured." he tried to move to a more comfortable position, the seat arm still in the way. "Can see why people buy those VCR things."

"Yeah." Beverly swallowed, noticing that the other two people near them had moved. She looked back at Derek, regretting having initiated the whole thing. Things would be different now, him pressuring her all the time, wanting -

"If you'd rather," he said, "we could just hold hands or something."

She nodded, relieved.

"And, you know, look at the movie."

She nodded.

"Like to get my money's worth," he said.

"A financial wizard."

"Yup, that's me."

So they held hands and looked at the movie. Whatever the hell it was.

The Books: "Betsy and Joe" (Maud Hart Lovelace)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is Betsy and Joe by Maud Hart Lovelace.

Senior year at Deep Valley High! Hmm, let's see. Betsy has had a kind of school rivalry as well as an unrequited crush type thing on Joe Willard - She and Joe are always neck and neck for the top grades, etc. And he's different than the rowdy group of guys she hangs out with. He's more serious. I think he's poor, if I recall correctly, so he has after-school jobs - and he really puts his nose to the grindstone with his studies. 2 books after this one, Betsy and Joe get married. So even though Joe has been peripheral in the other 3 books, now he starts to take center stage.

There's lots of drama going on. Tacy actually falls in love with someone - a guy she ends up marrying. Tib falls for the vain kind of dandyish quarterback - his name is Ralph Maddox. Tony, Betsy's long-time friend, falls in love with her, starts to pursue her. Betsy feels about Tony in a sisterly way. So there's a lot of drama there.

Here's an excerpt about some dance. Tony asks Betsy to go and she feels like she has to say Yes, because Joe hasn't asked her yet. This gives her much torment. Also, I think she and Joe had a fight of some kind ... she was hoping he would get over it and ask her to the dance, but he appears to be holding some kind of grudge. Then it turns out that Joe is there with someone else ... I think. Can't remember. Anyway - it's just one of those awkward situations which feels SO TRAGIC AND IMPORTANT when you are 17 years old.

Excerpt from Betsy and Joe by Maud Hart Lovelace.

At last the chime clock brought the New Year's Eve dance.

Tacy wasn't going. She had been given a second chance; Cab had asked her. But she had decided that she would prefer going to her uncle's with the family.

"Her uncle's!" said Tib, throwing complete incomprehension into her voice.

"I can't make her out," said Betsy.

"She's sure to be an old maid unless we take steps."

Tib had come as usual to dress for the party with Betsy - and to do Betsy's multiplicity of puffs. The pompadour was rolled over a big sausagelike mat and each puff was rolled over a small one.

"The rat and all the little mice, Tony calls them," said Betsy, acting lighthearted.

The new white wool dress was a dream. Below the tucked, form-fitting bodice, the skirt fell into pleats. It was tripped with gold and she wore a gold band, of course, around her hair.

Tib's self-made pink silk was a triumph. She wore pink shoes and stockings and a wide pink band around her head.

"You both look lovely," said Mrs. Ray, dashing in, in her taffeta petticoat. She, too, was dressing for the ball.

Margaret, who was going to stay up for the first time to see the old year out, with Anna, making fudge, leaned over the rail as Betsy and Tib went lightly, proudly down the stairs.

Ralph and Tony waited, pressed and immaculate. Tony held the pale blue opera cape.

"Pretty skippy!" he said admiringly, putting it around Betsy's shoulders.

Betsy didn't like the new opera cape. She felt as though it were a hoo-doo.

The boys had engaged a hack. This unheard-of gesture was a tribute to the elegance of the Melborn Hotel. Betsy felt unbelievably worldly as the hack, on its winter runners, slid along the snowy streets and halted at the illuminated entrance to the Melborn.

They went through the swinging door into the lobby. It smelled of cigars and the fat red leather chairs. They crossed the room and ascended the grand staircase which rose at the far end.

The ballroom was two stories high and overlooked the river. Here Deep Valley gave its most fashionable parties. Mamie Dodd didn't play for this dance. Lamm's Orchestra, behind a screen of potted palms, was tuning up provocatively. The ballroom was decorated with poinsettia and holly. There were red shades on the chandeliers.

"Supper is going to be served in the Ladies' Ordinary," Carney told Betsy and Tib. She looked very pretty in the store-bought party dress, and Tom looked distinguished in his uniform.

The high school crowd seemed stimulated by the entrance into the world of fashion. All the girls looked pretty and the boys were kindled to unusual politeness, gallantry, and wit.

Betsy was excited, almost joyful, in spite of that doom in her breast, but her spirits died like a quenched fire at the first glimpse of Joe. She and Tony were dancing the opening waltz, "I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now." She was happily floating in his arms - no one could waltz like Tony, no one! - when she saw a light pompadour and stalwart shoulders. Joe's lower lip was outthrust in a look Betsy knew. He was gazing at Irma, whose irresistible face, framed in natural (not Magically Waved) curls, was lifted to his.

"If he isn't crazy about her now, he soon will be," Betsy thought, and suddenly felt completely wretched. But she didn't show it. She smiled glowingly at Tony.

Joe didn't ask Betsy for a dance. The program ran on through "Howdy Cy" and "Ciri Biri Biri" and "Tonight Will Never Come Again." Betsy grew gayer and gayer, but none of her vivacity came from within. Inside, she ached. She ached all over, as you do when you have the grippe.

Laughing and flushed, she barn-danced, waltzed, and two-stepped. She chattered with the other girls about the marvelous party. She rushed up to her mother to exclaim. Tony went with her, to ask Mrs. Ray for a dance. He nodded his head negligently at Betsy.

"That daughter of yours! She's like a balloon on a string."

"Not a balloon! Oh, Tony! No! I only weigh a hundred pounds."

Mrs. Ray smiled at them. Loving parties, she was as happy as Betsy seemed to be. She whirled off with Tony, while Betsy, more sedately, circled with her father, who danced, as he did everything else, with benevolent dignity.

When the New Year came in, the orchestra played Auld Lang Syne. Everyone joined hands in a giant circle which revolved, singing:

Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind ...

Tony's dark eyes were bright with joy. He looked at Betsy as they swung hands and sang. Then the circle broke and people threw confetti and blew horns. Everyone called, "Happy New Year!" "Happy 1910!"

Nineteen-ten! That was the year they would graduate in, the year they had been looking forward to for so long. How could it possibly start off so badly, so horribly! In the crowded, clamorous room, filled with laughing voices and the bright rain of confetti, Betsy felt forlorn.

She looked around and found Joe across the room. He was looking at her. But as soon as their glances crossed, he looked away.

And presently she saw him dancing with Irma to "Yip-i-addy-i-ay!"

The Books: "Betsy Was a Junior" (Maud Hart Lovelace)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is Betsy Was a Junior by Maud Hart Lovelace.

If I had to choose - I might say that this is the best one of the series. I remember the sensation reading it the first time - and it made me feel uncomfortable, because I could see that she was making all these bad choices, and I didn't like her priorities, and I felt like reaching through the pages and telling her to stop being so SILLY. But because of all of that - the catharsis at the end of the book, the resolution - is really well-earned. I love that I'm talking like this about BETSY WAS A JUNIOR, for God's sake, as though it's Prometheus Bound or something. Oh well. My well-loved books are ALWAYS well-loved books and I guess I take them seriously. I don't blow stuff off as "Wow, that's just for kids." You know?

This is (duh) about Betsy's junior year. Betsy's older sister Julia goes off to college - and sends home stories of being courted by various sororities. It seems like the only way to really belong is to join a sorority - although Julia was never really a joiner. Betsy gets the idea to create sororities and fraternities in their high school - and the whole thing just takes off. People have to rush, and then there's a selection process - and naturally, although it's really fun for those who are "chosen" - a lot of resentment builds up about the whole thing from people who were either rejected or not interested in the first place. The social gatherings of the sororities and fraternities take over ... They are THE events to go to, blah blah, but you need to be invited ... Whatever. Reading the whole thing, and reading how Betsy kind of doesn't have time to be friends with a nice girl in her class named Hazel - who obviously is a sort of kindred spirit - but she's not in the sorority so that's THAT. Schoolwork gets put off, yadda yadda. Tacy is not really involved in all of this - she remains as steadfast as ever, never really a silly person - but Betsy starts dressing her hair in a huge pompadour, she starts to wear a fur muff and fur cloak thingie to school - Betsy becomes kind of obnoxious actually.

It's a good book.

Here's an excerpt, which kind of gives you an idea of why I found these books soooo fascinating. It just feels so REAL, first of all - and I felt like it could have been describing my own experience in high school - even though I lived in the 1980s, and Betsy was back in 1910 or whatever. It was all the same stuff. Friendships, and crushes, and schoolwork, and dances ... But there was an added layer of glamour in these books (at least I thought so) because it was back in "olden days" ... and the girls wore pompadours, and shirtwaists, and the boys had watchchains ... and it all just seemed hopelessly romantic and I wanted to step into the pages of the book.

Excerpt from Betsy Was a Junior by Maud Hart Lovelace.

January had been mild, but February came in cold and snowy. The air was filled continually with a white descending haze. Drifts climbed to the window ledges. The thermometer dropped to twenty, thirty, thirty-five below. Tacy and Tib, stopping to call for Betsy in the morning, wore scarves over their faces.

Tib came early so that she could do Betsy's hair. Mr. and Mrs. Ray both protested the practice.

"Betsy doesn't need puffs for school."

"But I'm coming right past the house, Mrs. Ray. I always stop anyway; and I love to do them."

She continued to come, and although Betsy felt a little silly she delighted in the puffs. Sustained by them she joined Tacy in singing the "Cat Duet" at Zetamathian Rhetoricals. It was definitely childish but it had to be sung; it had become a tradition in the Deep Valley High. Betsy read an original poem for rhetoricals. It was named "Those Eyes" and sounded a little like Poe. She wrote more poems than stories on Uncle Keith's trunk this year - when she found time to write at all. This was usually late at night, when she had finished her homework or come in from a party. The house would be quiet; cold, too, sometimes, but she put on a warm bathrobe. She curled up beside the trunk and read poetry and wrote it, and she had an uncanny feeling then, too. This wasn't Betsy Ray, the "popular" girl. This wasn't Betsy Ray, the Okto Delta.

The Sistren still met regularly, sometimes with boys, sometimes alone. The girls brought their sewing to the afternoon parties, and Betsy always brought the jabot. She offered to read aloud if someone would work on it for her and the famous piece of neckwear passed from hand to hand.

"What a souvenir for college!" Carney said. "Samples of everybody's sewing, as well as all these choice knots and spots."

"Those spots you refer to so lightly," said Betsy, "are where I was pricked by a needle. You're taking my heart's blood to Vassar."

Carney was looking ahead to the Vassar entrance exams and worked harder all the time. Tacy was sobered by a growing interest in music, but Betsy and Tib continued irrepressible.

Madame DuBarry and Madame Pompadour revived their soirees. These were hilarious affairs, for Cab and Dennis were irrepressible, too. Fast friends, the same age and about the same height, they were a carefree pair. They were, Betsy admitted, more fun than Dave.

But he was fun, too, on outdoor excursions. Groups of four, six, eight Okto and Omega Deltas often braved the cold for moonlight strolls. One night for a lark boys and girls exchanged wraps. Dave was as comical as Dennis, parading in Betsy's furs. He was always the first to sight a pan of fudge set to cool on a doorstep - lawful booty, whether the doorstep belonged to a friend or a stranger.

In recompense for stolen fudge, perhaps, the groups went serenading. They sang in parts underneath lighted windows, their breath congealing into silver notes.

"Old, old is honeymoon trail ..."
"You are my rose of Mexico ..."
"My wild Irish rose ..."

The Crowd, Julia often said, sang like a trained chorus. But the Okto and Omega Deltas were not quite the Crowd. They missed Tony's rolling bass.

As Betsy had feared, they saw Tony less and less. He still came to the Rays' now and then but he had dropped the Crowd and what he had put in its place was not good. He skipped school, hung around a pool hall which had a bad reputation in Deep Valley. He went with that fast clicque of older boys he had been drifting toward early in the winter. Tony had always had a zest for new experiences whether good or bad. But he had been restrained before by his scornful, indulgent, deeply loyal fondness for the Crowd.

Betsy felt pricked all the time by worry about Tony. She wouldn't give in to it; she was having too much fun. But she looked for a chance to say a restraining word and one Sunday night she thought she saw it.

Sometime before she had revived her last year's successful experiment in "reforming". Phil's pipe still hung beside her dressing table. She discovered that Dave had a pipe and secured it to hang beside Phil's. Dennis gave her a sack of tobacco and some cigarette papers. Cab contributed a cigar.

Betsy had protested that. "You don't smoke! You're giving me one of your father's cigars."

"Well, gosh Betsy," Cab grinned. "If everyone else is going to be reformed, I want to be reformed too."

Her father teased her about this enterprise and he brought up the subject as Tony and Betsy stood out in the kitchen watching him make his inimitable sandwiches. He always sat down to make them for he was growing heavier and his feet tired easily. There was often an admiring circle around his chair.

"Have you heard about Betsy turning Carrie Nation?" he asked, spreading slices of bread with butter which he had set out to soften earlier. A cold loin of pork and a jar of mustard stood alongside. "I can't make out why she doesn't object to my cigars."

"You're too old to reform," said Betsy, smoothing his silky dark hair.

Tony searched through his pockets and found a piece of billiar chalk.

"Here," he said. "Add this to your collection. You ought to try to keep boys away from the pool hall, Betsy. It's a den of iniquity, Miss Bangeter says."

Betsy said she would tie the chalk on a ribbon and hang it over her mirror. She laughed into Tony's black eyes which looked hurt, although he was smiling. A new group of guests came to watch Mr. Ray and Betsy went back to the fire. Tony followed with his lazy saunter.

They sat down and looked into the flames, and Betsy said, imitating a grave tone of Julia's, "There was truth in what Miss Bangeter said about that pool hall, Tony. I wish you'd spend less time there and more time - well, at the Rays', or out serenading with the Crowd."

"What Crowd?" asked Tony. His face looked a little bitter. "There isn't any Crowd any more, just a couple of frats. I'm a barb. You don't want me around."

"Tony!" said Betsy. "Don't be ridiculous!"

"Ridiculous, am I?"

"Everybody misses you. The Crowd, Pap, Mamma, Margaret."

"You said one true thing. Margaret does." Tony called out to Margaret, who was reading the funny papers in her father's big chair. "Margaret, I'll beat you a game of parchesi."

Margaret's face lighted and she ran to get the board. Betsy felt snubbed.

Dave came in just then, followed shortly by Squirrelly, and Tib, and Winona. Winona went to the piano and when the parchesi game ended Tony lifted his voice in song. But after the sandwiches were eaten he quickly said good-bye.

He shrugged into his overcoat, set his cap at a rakish angle on his bushy curly hair.

"I'll see you when I need some more reforming," he said to Betsy and went out.

The Books: "Betsy in Spite of Herself" (Maud Hart Lovelace)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is Betsy in Spite of Herself by Maud Hart Lovelace.

So this is about Betsy's sophomore year in high school! More wonderful-ness. More trials and tribulations. Betsy decides to basically create another personality - more mysterious and glamourous and sophisticated - in order to capture the attention of the new kid in school - I think his name is Phil - and he drives a red jalopy (and cars are a huge novelty - so he is basically the coolest guys ever) - so Betsy tries to be different. Of course - by the end of the book - she realizes that she just has be herself ... The. End. But still: wonderful book, just as good as Heaven to Betsy. It's great because you follow the same cast of characters all the way through high school - you get to know them. I just loved these books.

Okay, so this excerpt. Summer vacation is coming to an end. Sophomore year is about to start. Everyone had a summer reading list - and everyone was supposed to have read Ivanhoe. Betsy already had read it - but everybody else was basically cramming. Staying up all night, trying to download Ivanhoe into their heads. And Betsy's good friend Cab (a great character) keeps saying, "I'll start tomorrow ... I'll get up at 6 and read the whole day ..." but then something keeps happening, and he puts it off again. Betsy starts to get worried for him. There are end-of-summer picnics and gatherings - and every time Cab shows up at one Betsy is like, "Cab ... you really need to start reading Ivanhoe ..."

Anyhoo, on the first day of school - Tony and Cab (2 of Betsy's friends) show up at her house early, before school starts - and say, "Look. We can't read it. Why don't you just tell us the story?"

So Betsy becomes Cliff Notes.

I love how this excerpt ends.

Excerpt from Betsy in Spite of Herself by Maud Hart Lovelace.

Betsy gulped her cocoa and put the cup aside. She folded her hands on the table then, and Cab and Tony took chairs opposite and stared hard, as though by looking at that curly beribboned head they could absorb its precious knowledge of Scott's masterpiece.

"Well," began Betsy, and paused. She thought of Joe Willard and took a deep breath and started again. "I have to say something that will shock you. It's a perfectly grand book."

"What?" Cab and Tony cried together.

"Perfectly grand. If you don't say so, Gaston will know you haven't read it, because you couldn't read it without liking it."

Tony looked at her sharply. "You're not fooling?"

Cab wrote down on his pad of paper, "Perfectly grand."

Betsy decided to begin where Scott had.

"It begins," she said, "in that pleasant district of merry England which is watered by the River Don."

Tony put down his pencil. "You are fooling!"

"No really. That's the first sentence. It opens in a forest with a swineherd named Gurth, and Wamba, son of Witless ..."

"See here, Betsy! In ten minutes we can only hit the high spots."

"All right," said Betsy, yielding. It saddened her that Cab and Tony should not know about Gurth and Wamba, and the meeting with the Pryor. She felt she was cheating them, but it couldn't be helped.

"The important characters," she said, "are Wilfred of Ivanhoe, a knight, returned from the Crusades; Rowena, the girl he's in love with; Cedric, her guardian, who disapproves; Rebecca, a girl who's in love with Ivanhoe; and some assorted villains."

"Fine!" said Tony. "Now we're getting somewhere."

"King Richard's in it, too. He went to the Crusades, and left England in charge of his brother Prince John, who's a crook. Richard comes back to see what's going on, disguised as the Black Knight. He comes to the tournament and on the second day when Ivanhoe is fighting three men at once ..."

"A good fight?" asked Cab, leaning forward.

"Just the best one ever written, that's all." Betsy's cheeks flamed. She told the story of the tournament and told it so well that Anna leaned across the table, breathing hard, Tacy's eyes sparkled and the boys forgot to scribble notes.

"Betsy," said her mother. "You'll be late for school."

They went out to an almost empty High Street with Betsy still talking, Tacy, Cab, and Tony now hanging on every word.

"Does Prince John give in, and admit that Ivanhoe won?"

"Yes, and Ivanhoe chooses Rowena to be Queen of Beauty."

"Do they live happily every after?"

"Heavens, no! She's kidnapped, and so is Rebecca. They're held captive in a castle, with Ivanhoe, and the Black Knight storms it."

They dropped down on the school steps, and Betsy kept on talking. The first gong rang and they moved slowly toward the upper hall where Betsy continued to talk until the second gong clanged.

"Anything else?"

"Remember the bad feeling between the Normans and Saxons."

"What happens to Rebecca?"

"She goes into a convent."

"Sounds like quite a tale," drawled Tony, returning his notes to his pocket.

"Wilfred of Ivanhoe, Rowena, Cedric, Rebecca ..." muttered Cab.

Tacy took Betsy's arm. "It was wonderful the way you told it, Betsy." And then Tacy too started muttering, "Wilfred of Ivanhoe, Rowena, Cedric, Rebecca ..."

All through the morning, whenever Betsy looked toward Tacy, Tony or Cab she saw them muttering.

Mr. Gaston greeted the rhetoric class with a glance derisively bland. He gave the next day's assignment, ignored the frantic whispering going on all over the room, and said casually, "Now I want each one of you to write me an essay on Ivanhoe."

He leaned back in his chair and unfolded a scientific journal.

Betsy swept a glance around the room. Tony, Cab and Tacy were all muttering. Joe Willard looked as he had looked before he set to work on the Essay Contest last year. His paper, ink, and pen were ready and he was brushing his fingers thoughtfully over his yellow hair.

Betsy smiled at her paper. What a delightful assignment! What fun to write an essay on her beloved Ivanhoe! She dipped her pen in ink.

She began where she had tried to begin before, and now there were no Tony or Cab to cry, "Just give us the high spots, Betsy!" She told all about Gurth and Wamba and described the Lady Rowena's beauty and Ivanhoe's mysterious coming and the arrival of Rebecca and her father.

The clock said that half the allotted time was gone, so she hurried on to the tournament. She tried to make spears ring in her prose as they rang in Sir Walter's. Now and then she almost thought she succeeded.

Looking up dreamily, she saw that Tony and Cab had already finished. Joe Willard still had his pen in his hand, but he was reading what he had written. Mr. Gaston had closed his magazine. He was tapping the desk and looking at the clock, obviously impatient.

Betsy rushed for the finish, scattering blots. But Rowena and Rebecca were still captive, the story hung in the air like a bright banner, when the gong sounded and Mr. Gaston said:

"You may leave your papers on my desk as you go out."

Betsy was sorry she had not finished, but after all, she reflected, panting and warm from her attempt, Mr. Gaston would certainly see that she knew her Ivanhoe. It was nice what she had said about those silvery spears: and the part about Rowena's hair. Even Sir Walter hadn't thought to compare it to maple syrup.

"How did you get along?" she asked Cab anxiously.

"I think I did the noble work justice."

"Mine was a masterpiece," said Tony.

"Mine was all right, too," said Tacy.

Betsy sighed in proud relief.

It was two days before Mr. Gaston returned the papers. And during those two days Ivanhoe continued to possess the Ray household.

"If Washington should have kittens ... but he won't, because he's a boy ... I'd name one Ivanhoe and one Rowena," Margaret said.

Mr. Ray heard about Betsy's fifteen-minute condensation of the masterpiece with a chuckle.

"I wonder how Cab and Tony will come out?"

"I think they will get Fair at least," Betsy said. Mr. Gaston marked his papers Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor.

When the class filed in on the third morning the papers were piled on his desk. After roll call he tapped them condescendingly.

"These essays on Ivanhoe weren't bad," he said. "Really, they weren't bad at all. Three of them are marked 'Excellent', and from a class of the mentality of this one, that's pretty good." Mr. Gaston liked to make that sort of joke.

Three 'Excellents'! Betsy, without thinking, flashed Joe Willard a glance. She intercepted one from him, and they both smiled. Both felt sure where two Excellents had gone, but what about the third one?

"None of you," Mr. Gaston continued, "will be surprised to hear that one 'Excellent' went to Joe. But the other two may startle you. They did me."

He smiled mockingly.

"Tony and Cab," he said, "drew 'Excellents' too."

To say that the class was startled was putting it mildly. Tony and Cab grinned from ear to ear. Tacy threw up her hands in pantomime to Betsy.

"Tony and Cab," Mr. Gaston continued, "turned in essays that showed they had read the book. I must admit, Cab, when you told me you had finished it, I had my doubts. But you and Tony obviously had not only read Ivanhoe. You had digested it. Therefore, your papers are brief, concise. You just ..." Mr. Gaston's smile for once was genuinely approving, "you just hit the high spots."

Tony slipped down until the desk almost hid his face. Cab's ears were red.

"Your admirably organized papers," Mr. Gaston went on, "were in contrast to some I received. Some writers who, perhaps, had not even finished the book tried to show off their so-called literary skill at Scott's expense."

At that Betsy turned crimson. Mr. Gaston had spoken in the plural, but no one in the class would doubt that he meant her alone. For just a moment she was appalled. Then the joke in the situation struck her, and she smiled around at Cab, Tony and Tacy. Joe Willard was looking at her with a puzzled expression.

Tony and Cab after football practise, headed for the Ray house. They paused on the hill to pick a bouquet of sumac, goldenrod, asters and prickly thistles, and presented it to Betsy with sweeping bows. There was much joking and when Mr. Ray heard the story, he laughed until he shook.

But saying good-by to Betsy, Cab turned serious. He was, after all, Welsh Calvinistic Methodist.

"Betsy!" he said. He looked around to make sure that no one was listening. "Betsy, I just want you to know ... I'm going to read the noble work. The whole five hundred and thirty-four pages. Darned if I don't!"

And he did.

The Books: "Heaven to Betsy" (Maud Hart Lovelace)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is Heaven to Betsy by Maud Hart Lovelace.

So, uhm, yeah. My family is totally going to remember me reading these Betsy books as a teenager. I had an almost unhealthy obsession with them. I loved them. I pored over them. I read them repeatedly. I was OBSESSED. I still think it's a pretty great series for young girls to read. The whole series started off as the Betsy-Tacy series - a story about 2 young girls in the early 1900s. They live in Deep Valley, a small town in Minnesota. They're best friends - and there are 3 or 4 "Betsy-Tacy" books that chronicle their adventures as little pipsqueaks. There's a third girl who joins their friendship in one of the books - her name is "Tib". Tib? Well, yes! So then the books become the "Betsy-Tacy-Tib" series. They're lovely but I wasn't NEARLY as into those early books as I was to these later books. Woah, boy. Major obsession. There are 4 books in the later series - one for each year of high school - and Heaven to Betsy is the first in the series.

Maud Hart Lovelace wanted to write down all of the stories told to her by either her mother or her grandmother, about life at the turn of the century, what high school was like, being a teenager - the trends, the music, the boys - just what it all was like - and these 4 Betsy books are all about that. I just LOVED them.

Heaven to Betsy chronicles the freshman year in high school. Betsy, who has an older sister, Julia - and a younger sister Margaret, is very excited to start high school. She is eager to grow up. To be treated like Julia is. Betsy and Tacy love high school - The books are not just about the boys they have crushes on, but also about their academics, their struggles - religious issues come up (Julia decides she wants to be an Episcopalian) - There are parties, new friends to be made, boys to dance with ... etc. I could go on. I just wanted to LIVE in this book and wear a furry muff and go to an ice skating party, and then have hot chocolate at a neighbor's house before going home to bed.

Betsy's the main character in all of these books - and it's about her journey becoming a young woman. She's flawed, she makes mistakes - you can see that the boy she chooses to have a crush on is a total playah - she needs to learn how to be more discerning - She also has a tendency to leave studying til the last minute and then have to CRAM - etc. etc. These books are great to read while you're in high school, because it makes you realize that it's all the same stuff - even though it takes place in 1906, and the boys wear suits and the girls wear middy blouses.

So here's an excerpt. Betsy meets a bunch of people who will become her new friends in high school.

From Heaven to Betsy by Maud Hart Lovelace.

It was to develop later that the younger high school crowd had the most indoor funn at the Ray house and the most outdoor fun at the Sibleys ... on the wide, trampled side lawn, and the porch running across the front and around the side of the house. The porch was unscreened and shaded by vines, now turning red. It was broad enough to hold a hammock and some chairs and a table, but nothing too good, nothing rain would hurt.

The porch was deserted today. A bonfire smouldered in the driveway; rakes lay beside it, and a crowd composed of Caroline Sibley's brothers, Herbert Humphreys and his older brother Lawrence, Caroline and Bonnie, were seated on the leaf-strewn lawn. Cab and Betsy dropped down beside them and no one seemed to think it strange that Betsy had come. Caroline said, "Hello," showing a surprising solitary dimple, and introduced Bonnie.

Caroline Sibley was the only girl Betsy had ever seen who had only one dimple. She was also the only girl Betsy had ever seen who looked prettier in glasses than she could possibly have looked without them. They were eye glasses and suited her demure, piquant face. She had slightly irregular teeth which folded over in front, twinkling eyes, and a skin like apple blossoms. Her straight brown hair was parted and combed smoothly back to an always crisp hair ribbon. Her shirt waist was unbelievably white, the slender waistband neat. Caroline's people came from New England, and she had a prim New Englandish air that contrasted with the dimple in a fascinating way.

Bonnie's blonde hair was as smooth as Caroline's and her shirt waist as snowy and fresh. Betsy's hair was forever coming loose, and her waists had a way of pulling out from her skirts just as soon as she forgot them and began to have a good time. She immediately admired Caroline's and Bonnie's trimness.

"Of course they're sophomores," she told herself consolingly. "Probably by the time I'm a sophomore I cn keep my waist tucked in, too."

Bonnie had calm blue eyes. She was short, but her figure was more mature than Caroline's and her skirts were sedately long. She had small, plump, very soft hands, and a soft, chuckling laugh that flowed continuously through the conversation. In spite of the laugh, however, she seemed womanly and serious, as befitted a minister's daughter.

Lawrence Humphreys was as dark as Herbert was light, as big or bigger, and equally handsome. But he was quiet. He lacked Herbert's wild high spirits. Not that these were apparent, today. Herbert seemed glum, subdued, and most of the time gazed moodily at Bonnie.

"He has a crush on Bonnie," Betsy thought, proud of her acumen.

Lawrence, whom they all called Larry, played football on the first team. After Saturday, he said, he'd be in training and he told the girls to spoil him while they could.

Caroline was making a wreath of red ivy leaves from the porch. She was going to crown him, she explained, as the Romans crowned guests at their banquets. She and Bonnie and Larry were all studying Caesar or Cicero and were full of Latin quotations.

"O di immortales!" was Caroline's favorite exclamation. It made Betsy's Latin come considerably alive.

While waiting for his crown, Lawrence was being fed peanuts by Bonnie to the accompaniment of her soft giggle.

"Heck! I'm going out for football, too. What about me?" Herbert protested.

"And what about me?" asked Cab, flexing his muscles. "Boy, what football material!"

Caroline's brothers, all still in grade school, laughed appreciateively.

The Humphreys were Philos, Betsy discovered, and Caroline and Bonnie were Zets.

"What do Philomathian and Zetamathian mean, I wonder?" asked Betsy.

Bonnie knew. Philomathian meant Lover of Learning and Zetamathian, Investigator.

"My father told me," she explained, tossing off her knowledge.

Betsy liked her. She liked Carney, too. Already she was calling Caroline Carney, Lawrence Larry, and exclaiming O di immortales! with the rest of the crowd. At last Carney's brothers went back to their raking which reminded Larry and Herbert that they too had a lawn.

"And, gosh, I've got a paper route!" Cab said. "But if you'll go home now, Betsy, I'll escort you. Always the perfect gentleman, by gum!"

"I can find my way," said Betsy. "Me and my trained bloodhound!"

"Betsy isn't going to hurry," said Carney. She smiled up at Larry. "I think you're mean to go. You haven't worn your wreath."

"You wear it. You'll look nice in it."

"All right. And I'll make one for Bonnie and one for Betsy!"

"Hey! You'll be a Triumvirate!" What, Betsy wondered, was a Triumvirate?

"Girls! We're a Triumvirate!" cried Carney, flashing her dimple. "I want to be Caesar. He's so cute in the pictures. You can be Crassus, Bonnie, and Betsy, you can be Pompey."

"A Triumvirate of Lady Bugs!" jeered Larry.

"There are three of you boys, too," cried Bonnie, soft giggles bubbling. "You're a Triumvirate your own selves. What's the name of yours? Make one up, somebody."

"They're a Triumvirate of Potato Bugs," said Betsy.

This was a triumph. The boys, departing, yelped, and Carney and Bonnie doubled up with appreciative mirth. Their laughter continued while they robbed the porch of ivy leaves and Carney made wreaths. Carney and Bonnie laughed at everything Betsy said.

"Betsy, you're so funny!" Bonnie kept gasping. And Betsy, delighted, laughed so hard at her own wit that she could hardly keep on being witty.

When the wreaths were finished she put hers on askew over the left eye. Carney put hers on over the right eye. Bonnie hung hers on one ear. They leered drunkenly, imitating Romans. Exhausted, at last, they rolled in the grass.

Carney sat up suddenly and said, "I hereby invite the Triumvirate to go riding tomorrow after school."

"Will we wear crowns?" asked Betsy.

"We ought to wrap up in bedsheets like those old Romans."

"O di immortales!" cried Carney, rocking back and forth. "We'd scare Dandy."

"Who's Dandy?"

"He's our horse. All our horses are named Dandy."

"All our horses are named Old Mag," said Betsy, "whether they're girls or boys."

This struck Carney and Bonnie as so supremely comical that they were obliged to fall shrieking into the grass again. But the Big Mill whistle, blowing for six o'clock, brought them all to their feet.

"Gee, I didn't know it was that late," Betsy said.

"I ought to be in helping my mother," cried Carney.

"Walk home with me, Bonnie," Betsy urged. "I hate to think of that long walk all alone."

"But I'd have to walk back all alone."

"No you wouldn't. I'd walk halfway back with you. That would make everything fair."

So Bonnie walked home with Betsy, and having gained the new green house on High Street, they turned around and Betsy walked halfway back with Bonnie. From the time they said goodbye to Carney until they said goodbye to each other, they didn't laugh at all. In a sudden shift of mood, Betsy asked Bonnie about Paris, and Bonnie told her a little about it, but she failed to create any picture of Paris in Betsy's mind.

"There are lots of hacks," she said. "They drive like mad. And there was a merry-go-round -- carousels, they call them - in the park where I played after school."

"Do you speak French?"

"Of course. Father was in the pastorate there for four years."

"Say some for me," said Betsy.

Bonnie looked embarrassed but obediently murmured something.

"What does that mean?"

"It means I like Deep Valley better than Paris."

Betsy remembered that many years ago Tib had said she liked Deep Valley better than Milwaukee. Deep Valley, Betsy thought, looking up at the hills and down at the town, must be a pretty nice place.

She told Bonnie about Tib ... how pretty she was, small and dainty with yellow curls. She told her that Tib was going to be a dancer.

"She and Tacy are my two best friends," Betsy explained.

"Carney's my best friend," said Bonnie. "It's wonderful having a chum. We're having our Sunday dresses made just alike."

"Exactly alike?"

"Exactly. Miss Mix is making them."

"How marvelous!" cried Betsy. She wished that she and Tacy had thought of doing that.

"Carney's going with Lawrence. Did you know it?"

"I guessed it," said Betsy.

"Do you go with anyone?" asked Bonnie.

With a feeling of unutterable thankfulness Betsy answered carelessly, "Only Cab. He's just a neighbor, of course."

"I'll tell you something, Betsy," said Bonnie. "Promise not to tell a soul. Herbert has a crush on me."

"I noticed it," said Betsy. "I think it's thrilling. Herbert was just the idol of all the girls in grade school. We trembled when we saw him, practically."

"But he's such a child," cried Bonnie. "He's such an infant. Why, he's only a freshman, and I'm a sophomore. I wish I could hand him over to you."

"And I wish I could find a nice sophomore boy for you," said Betsy. "Not that you need anybody found for you," she added, and repeated what Cab had said about Bonnie having greatly increased attendance at Christian Endeavor.

"How silly!" said Bonnie. "I try not to think about boys at Christian Endeavor." She looked so sincerely devout that Betsy was impressed.

They parted at a point on Plum Street which was exactly half way between High Street and Broad.

Betsy instead of Julia was late for supper that night. Her father gave her a reproving glance when she entered the dining room, but he relented quickly; she looked so radiantly happy. She was full of talk all through supper. Anna, clearing the plates, paused to listen.

"But who is this Bonnie?" Mr. Ray asked.

"Bonnie Andrews. Her father is the new Presbyterian minister."

"And Carney?"

"Caroline Sibley. Don't be surprised, though, if I call her Julius Caesar. We've formed a Triumvirate."

"What's a Triumvirate?" asked Margaret, looking up from her plate.

"She doesn't even know what a Triumvirate is! O di immortales!" Betsy cried.

The Books: "A Separate Peace" (John Knowles)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is A Separate Peace by John Knowles.

This book always makes me think of my sister Jean - I know how much she loves it. The character Phineas is one that most teenagers can really look up to - and admire. He's mysterious, he's interesting, he's - in the end, he's tragic. I haven't read this book in years - but I have fond memories of it. It takes place at a boarding school for boys during WWII. The narrator goes back and forth between the past (his boyhood at the school) and the present (his visit to the school as an adult - and you can tell that something BAD is coming from how the present-day voice speaks). Gene is the narrator. As a boy, he's lonely, smart - not really meant to be a popular kid. Phineas, on the other hand, is a true loner - but not in the same way. He's a loner in that he has an aura of greatness, of individuality - that the other kids sense and respect. I knew guys like that in my school. They could get away with ANYthing because they seemed so confident, so devil-may-care. Josh Lott was a guy who was a couple years ahead of me - and he was like that. He was insanely good-looking (as a matter of fact, we all called him "hot" - "Hotness" is very different from "cute". "Hot" implies sex appeal - which he had!), he was very smart, and he just did not care what people thought about him. He was popular - but he didn't care about that. He was friends with everyone. He would wear clothes from thrift stores - he dressed like Herb Brooks in the 1970s. I'm not kidding - you know the clothes Brooks wore during the 1980 Olympics on the sidelines? Josh Lott dressed like that. Our high school was very clothes-conscious, very label-conscious ... Things were brutal if you did not have the right clothes. Josh Lott would stroll through school wearing PLAID PANTS and get away with it. Phineas is kind of like that.

The two boys become friends, kind of ... but there is tension. WWII hangs over the book. The spectre of war, and what will be waiting for them when they graduate. Phineas is on a different plane than the other kids. He seems purely good. He's a daredevil - he's an incredible (and naturally gifted) athlete - but he's not competitive, or not in the way it is expected - he doesn't seem to hold any malice or hatred or resentment in his soul. Gene doesn't understand this. Finny doesn't have to work at being good at things. Things just come easily to him. And yet somehow he is not resented for this. Josh Lott again!

I don't remember the ins and outs of the plot - but I do know that it's a tragic ending - the ending of the book has a betrayal in it so huge it took my breath away when I was a kid. And two lives are forever changed.

In its own quiet way, this book has become a classic for adolescents.

Here was one of my favorite parts of the book when I was a kid. I remember reading it and feeling, like Gene, frustrated and baffled by Finny. Like: you have to TELL someone what you just did!!! But the fact that Finny DOESN'T tell, and that he doesn't CARE to tell - is the key to his character.

From A Separate Peace by John Knowles.

One day he broke the school swimming record. He and I were fooling around in the pool, near a big bronze plaque marked with events for which the school kept records - 50 yards, 100 yards, 220 yards. Under each was a slot with a marker fitted into it, showing the name of the record-holder, his year, and his time. Under "100 Yards Free Style" there was "A. Hopkins Parker -- 1940 -- 53.0 seconds."

"A. Hopkins Parker?" Finny squinted up at the name. "I don't remember any A. Hopkins Parker."

"He graduated before we got here."

"You mean that record has been up there the whole time we've been at Devon and nobody's busted it yet?" It was an insult to the class, and Finny had tremendous loyalty to the class, as he did to any group he belonged to, beginning with him and me and radiating outward past the limits of humanity toward spirits and clouds and stars.

No one else happened to be in the pool. Around us gleamed white tile and glass brick; the green, artificial-looking water rocked gently in its shining basin, releasing vague chemical smells and a sense of many pipes and filters; even Finny's voice, trapped in this closed, high-ceilinged room, lost its special resonance and blurred into a general well of noise gathered up toward the ceiling. He said blurringly, "I have a feeling I can swim faster than A. Hopkins Parker."

We found a stop watch in the office. He mounted a starting box, leaned forward from the waist as he had seen racing swimmers do but never had occasion to do himself - I noticed a preparatory looseness coming into his shoulders and arms, a controlled ease about his stance which was unexpectedc in anyone trying to break a record. I said, "On your mark -- Go!" There was a complex moment when his body uncoiled and shot forward with sudden metallic tension. He planed up the pool, his shoulders dominating the water while his legs and feet rode so low that I couldn't distinguish them; a wake rippled hurriedly by him and then at the end of the pool his position broke, he relaxed, dived, an instant's confusion and then his suddenly and metallically tense body shot back toward the other end of the pool. Another turn and up the pool again - I noticed no particular slackening of his pace - another turn, down the pool again, his hand touched the end, and he looked up at me with a composed, interested expression. "Well, how did I do?" I looked at the watch; he had broken A. Hopkins Parker's record by .7 seconds.

"My God! So I really did it. You know what? I thought I was going to do it. It felt as though I had that stop watch in my head and I could hear myself going just a little bit faster than A. Hopkins Parker."

"The worst thing is there weren't any witnesses. And I'm no official timekeeper. I don't think it will count."

"Well of course it won't count."

"You can try it again and break it again. Tomorrow. We'll get the coach in here, and all the official timekeepers and I'll call up The Devonian to send a reporter and a photographer --"

He climbed out of the pool. "I'm not going to do it again," he said quietly.

"Of course you are!"

"No, I just wanted to see if I could do it. Now I know. But I don't want to do it in public." Some other swimmers drifted in through the door. Finny glanced sharply at them. "By the way," he said in an even more subdued voice, "we aren't going to talk about this. It's just between you and me. Don't say anything about it, to ... anyone."

"Not say anything about it! When you broke the school record!"

"Sh-h-h-h-h!" He shot a blazing, agitated glance at me.

I stopped and looked at him up and down. He didn't look directly back at me. "You're too good to be true," I said after a while.

He glanced at me, and then said, "Thanks a lot," in a somewhat expressionless voice.

Was he trying to impress me or something? Not tell anybody? When he had broken a school record without a day of practice? I knew he was serious about it, so I didn't tell anybody. Perhaps for that reason his accomplishment took root in my mind and grew rapidly in the darkness where I was forced to hide it. The Devon School record books contained a mistake, a lie, and nobody knew it but Finny and me. A. Hopkins Parker was living in a fool's paradise, wherever he was. His defeated name remained in bronze on the school record plaque, while Finny deliberately evaded an athletic honor. It was true that he had many already - the Winslow Galbraith Memorial Football Trophy for having brought the most Christian sportsmanship to the game during the 1941-1942 season, the Margaret Duke Bonaventura ribbon and prize for the student who conducted himself at hocky most like the way her son had done, the Devon School Contact Sport Award, Presented Each Year to That Student Who in the Opinion of the Athletic Advisors Excels His Fellows in the Sportsmanlike Performance of Any Game Involving Bodily Contact. But these were in the past, and they were prizes, not school records. The sports Finny played officially - football, hockey, baseball, lacrosse - didn't have school records. To switch to a new sport suddenly, just for a day, and immediately break a record in it -- that was about as neat a trick, as dazzling a reversal as I could, to be perfectly honest, possibly imagine. There was something inebriating in the suppleness of this feat. When I thought about it my head felt a little dizzy and my stomach began to tingle. It had, in one word, glamour, absolute schoolboy glamour. When I looked down at that stop watch and realized a split second before I permitted my face to show it or my voice to announce it that Finny had broken a school record, I had experienced a feeling that also can be described in one word - shock.

To keep silent about this amazing happening deepened the shock for me. It made Finny seem too unusual for -- not friendship, but too unusual for rivalry. And there were few relationships among us at Devon not based on rivalry.

"Swimming in pools is screwy anyway," he said after a long, unusual silence as we walked toward the dormitory. "The only real swimming is in the ocean."

The Books: "Myself and I" (Norma Johnston)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is Myself and I by Norma Johnston. Sixth and last book in the Keeping Days series.

Saranne's story continues - Paul Hodge (the bad boy) had moved away at the end of the last book - but in this one he returns. Saranne is obviously in love with him ... but by this point she's also dating someone else (in a very 1917 way) named Tim Molloy. So she's still struggling with her good-girl/bad-girl image. Tish, her aunt, who is now a widow - meanwhile is kind of reconnecting with Ken, her old beau from the whole Keeping Days series - so there's a lot of drama going on, family drama. Some of it is melodramatic, but in my mind - it's always good writing, and very true - because sometimes life (especially in a big messy family) is melodramatic.

Paul is now on a personal quest to discover the truth about his mysterious childhood. Saranne takes on the quest as well - she realizes that the older generation (of which her aunt Tish is a part) KNEW the truth, they KNEW what happened ... but they all closed ranks, and decided to lie - not just to themselves, but to the younger generation. Paul is determined to find out who his father was, and what happened back there.

Here's an excerpt - of a scene between Saranne and her aunt Tish. Saranne is going through a box of Tish's old things in the attic, I think. Yearbooks, notebooks, etc. She's looking for clues to Paul's past.

From Myself and I by Norma Johnston.

Here were not only albums and school yearbooks, but all the Browning Quarterlies from Letitia's school years - she must have gotten those from the little house - and boxes of letters, souvenirs, a group of dog-eared composition books.

I resisted the temptation to browse at random and sorted Quarterlies, snapshots, labeled souvenirs into careful piles: 1902 - the year of the Quarterly story Mary had written, that had led me to guess she was Paul's mother; 1901 - the year Paul was born; 1900 - the year Mary had "gotten into trouble...."

Snapshots, unlabeled except for year. Mother, looking beautiful. Letitia, with my aunts and uncles. Letitia with school friends - Mary in curls and sweetness, both of which looked artificial. Mary with a blond boy. Letitia with a blond boy. A little headache was gathering in the back of my skull.

I picked up one of the composition books.

I begin this new Journal, otherwise known as The Tears and Trials of Letitia Chambers Sterling ... One of Letitia's old diaries. I put it aside and turned to the Quarterlies.

Poetry, some bad, some good. Articles on burning issues. An exciting story by Kenneth Latham about a train wreck. ("Thought we were done with you after the train wreck," Aunt Sadie'd said.) A story by Letitia on prejudice. A story by Letitia about a fire.

I let the Quarterly fall aside. The ache in my head was pounding steadily now. Or maybe it was in my leg. Or in my conscience. I closed my eyes, and inside my brain, superimposed on images Letitia's story had conjured up, was the image of the Halloween bonfire ... Mr. Hodge and Mary Hayes in silhouette ... a stream of obscenities spewing out, and a name, a name I hadn't told a soul.

I opened my eyes, and there were Letitia's journals, looking so like school notebooks and so innocent, pulling at me with such hypnotic fascination.

Invading another person's privacy was wrong. I was doing so many wrong things these days - prying, evading issues, permitting intimacies, telling lies - all for Paul.

Letitia was part of the conspiracy of silence that was putting Paul through hell, and that was wrong too.

I picked up the Tears and Trials of Letitia Sterling 1901.

Last night my sister Katherine Allison was born, and I'm never going to be afraid of birth again ... How do I learn to forgive - not those who've hurt me, but what is seventy times harder, the ones who hurt the people that I love? ... Oh, Letitia was so much like me. The pages burned my fingers as I skimmed at random. Much about Kenneth, little about Mary Lou except scathing comments about her appearance, her vulgarity, her way of "throwing herself at men". But no names mentioned, all references were cryptic; Letitia had been living in a big, curious household, and she took no chances.

Letitia and Kenneth were in Romeo and Juliet together. Letitita afraid of her own responses when he touched her. Letitia accused by others of not caring or thinking about anything in the world but Ken - I felt as if I were reading my own unwritten journal - Ken who was in anguish because of some unspecified but profound trouble. I read feverishly, trying not to see what wasn't relevant and to seize what was.

May, 1901. Mary Lou tried to kill herself last night.

For a moment, everything was a haze, and my heart was pounding. I forced myself to go on reading ... Letitia's handwriting frantic, illegible, as though she was racing because a dam had broken. But no names, no specifics -- daren't write it, I mustn't ever writer or tell ... I should have known, I should have guessed. I'm so afraid for him. He feels so guilty, feels so dirty. And I'm not old or wise enough to help. I would do anything for him, but I'm so afraid ... All I could do was lie with him, and hold him, hold him, while he tried to lose himself in me, but we can never go back to innocence again --

This time I didn't even hear a creaking on the stairs.

Letitia in the doorway, white-faced and blazing, a Letitia who was a stranger to me. "What do you think gives you the right to invade another person's secret self?"

My whole body flamed, and the book dropped from my fingers like a live coal. "I'm sorry! I know I shouldn't have, but there's a good reason --"

"How many other things have you done we don't know about, for that same good reason?" Letitia swept the journals up, her voice shaking. "Let me tell you something I learned the hard way, Sarane. When love starts to corrupt you - makes you go against your own moral code, or lose perspective, for that love's sake - whatevere sins you commit for it end up doing more harm than good. Not just to the two of you, but to everybody else your two lives touch. I hope to God you realize that before it's too late."

The Books: "Nice Girl Like You" (Norma Johnston)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is Nice Girl Like You by Norma Johnston. Fifth book in the Keeping Days series.

Sometimes I feel like a crazy person during my early morning excerpt ritual.

Oh well!

So to anyone out there who is reading this:

This book, the 5th in the series, was actually my favorite one of all - and for some reason, I never owned this book - so years went by until this past February when I suddenly thought about it and tracked it down again. I haven't re-read it just yet but I'm a strange little collector like that - I just like to HAVE it ... so that if I ever DO feel like re-reading it, I will be able to IMMEDIATELY. (To the gentleman who hates my capitalization habit and was so rude about it - your head is probably popping off RIGHT NOW, isn't it??)

So what I remember about this book is: We skip forward in years. The 4th book in the series (Mustard Seed of Magic) takes place in 1902. Tish, the heroine, the whiny heroine, is 15. Now, in this book, we are in 1917. WWI is going on. We're focusing in on the same Sterline family, only on the younger generation. The new "star" of the series is Saranne - who is Bron's daughter. Tish, now a grown woman, and a war widow with a son, does come back into the story. She has been living in England and she returns to America, after her husband is killed. Tish is a writer, I believe (what a surprise) - and she's now all sad and serious and widow-y.

Meanwhile: the main thrust of the book is how Saranne (the "nice girl" of the title) befriends Paul Hodge - widely known to be the "bad boy" in town.

But there's a secret about Paul Hodge. He has been raised unaware that his big sister (in her 20s - and now a silent film star - the Mary Lou Hodge of the earlier part of the series) is actually his MOTHER. So the kid was shot in the foot before leaving the gate. But he has a bad reputation - because "he's a Hodge, and they're all bad" ... but Saranne ends up seeing another side of him ... and befriends him ... and it's a huge scandal ... and they end up kissing under a willow tree (a la East of Eden) and she wears middy blouses and there's red white and blue bunting on the city hall and it's all very evocative and I just ate that shit UP when I was a teenager. I was DYING to wear a middy blouse and be innocently patriotic and have long hair in a braid. I wanted to LIVE in Meet Me in St. Louis.

Anyhoo. Here's an excerpt.

From Nice Girl Like You by Norma Johnston.

Paul kissed me. No, I'll be honest: we kissed each other. I started to ry some more. He took me in his arms and we clung together, and then wordlessly, awkwardly, we went back to the house. Gram and Gramp were home, and dinner odors were coming from the kitchen stove.

"You'd better both stay for dinner," Aunt Tish said. She was still wraithlike, but more serene. "You still haven't had a chance to work on Shylock's lines."

Paul telephoned home; he was terse, and spoke in tones we could not hear. I telephoned, and when I got finished telling Dad about the fracas with the reporter, he had Aunt Tish get on the line and give particulars so he could call the paper as her lawyer.

"Just to forestall further attempts or charges," she said, hanging up.

Katie came home from the library, looked at Paul and me oddly, but didn't pry. Nichola came downstairs, cuddling the puppy. "He's called Paul Anthony."

Gram darted a sharp look at Aunt Tish, whose face went still with pain. Paul saw it. "That's quite a mouthful. Why don't you call him Antonio, like the character in our play?"

Nichola shook her head. "He's Captain Paul Anthony, of the Royal Air Force. I'll make him a jacket with an insignia like Papa's on it, and then nobody will dare to call him German." She hugged him tightly.

She followed Paul around like a shadow, and Paul was very kind to her. He was good with children. "You should have had younger brothers and sisters," I said, striving to sound natural.

"I guess I was enough of a shock to my parents. Sixteen years after my sister Mary. Ma's always saying she hadn't bargained on raising a second family."

We had felt so -- right, together, without pretenses or defenses, in the little private world beneath the porch. Here among the others, everything was different, strained.

We ate, with Gramp and Uncle Peter providing casual conversation, and Aunt Melissa bustling in at last, her head spinning. Leslie had been accepted for Officers' Training Camp, and they were making plans for a military wedding. "In June, Mama. Leslie doesn't want to wait until his training's over, because he could be shipped out right away." That sent Gram into the expected tizzy, but amid all the excitement four were silent. Me. Paul. Tish and Katie, watching us.

Paul and I went into Gramp's study to work on his lines, but that only made things worse. Paul was forgetting what he'd known before and cussing beneath his breath, then turning red, and I could not sound natural to save my soul.

Paul saw me home in silence, acting as if he half hated me. When we reached our house I stopped at the foot of the path, well out of the pool of light coming from the door. "We didn't get much work done on your lines."

"I'm sorry I wasted your time."

"You didn't! It's my job to help, and besides, you were a lifesaver, and you know it. I don't know what Letitia would have done --" I stopped. "Honestly, I feel like a Gramophone record that's gotten stuck! Paul Hodge, how long is it going to take you to believe you're good to have around?"

"Probably never. And it's not part of your job to convince me, so don't think you have to."

"Hasn't it registered on you that I want to? That it's right?"

I meant his being in the play, helping Aunt Tish and Nichola and me, but all of a sudden the words referred to a whole lot more. We stood, staring at each other. It was Paul who spoke, and his voice was ragged.

"A whole lot more's happening than we bargained for, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is." Another stillness. I groped for words. "I'm sorry. It was awful tonight, and I didn't help."

"Don't worry," Paul said brusquely. "I won't embarrass you. You can just go back to where it hadn't happened."

"We can't go back. And I don't want to."

"You do have guts, dont you?" Paul said huskily. He took my hands in his and bent towards me. I thought he was going to kiss my mouth again, but he just pressed his lips against my forehead gently. And went, in silence.

The Books: "Mustard Seed of Magic" (Norma Johnston)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is Mustard Seed of Magic by Norma Johnston. Fourth book in the Keeping Days series. It's now 1902. I gotta be insane to remember these books so clearly - it's been kind of fun, though, to pick them up again and flip through the pages. Memories coming back. I loved this series as a teenager. Not as much as any of the LM Montgomery series, or any Madeleine L'Engle series - but almost as much. I'm really glad I still HAVE these books ... I bet they were sitting in a box in my parents attic for years until I was settled enough to go and get them.

So what happens in this book? Tish asks for her beloved writing teacher, Mrs. Owens, to give her private tutoring sessions. She wants to grow as a writer. Huge melodrama ensues. Turns out, Tish only wanted praise, not criticism!! Also going on: Mary Lou Hodge, the girl who got pregnant earlier in the series, is now back in school - after her "vacation" (nobody mentions where she's gone) - and scandal and gossip still follow her around - and yet now it seems undeserved. The baby she had is .... I can't remember - I think her parents are raising it to believe that THEY are her parents and Mary Lou is its sister. I think that's the plan. Let's see what else. Oh - more drama between the Tish and Ken, her sweetheart - sort of. His family has moved away - but they come back once or twice a year - and Tish and Ken write these long tortured letters to each other. Blah blah. They're 16. They'll get over it.

Here's an excerpt involving the poor outcast floozy, Mary Lou Hodge.

From Mustard Seed of Magic by Norma Johnston.

The Living Pictures were an artistic success, and, having been carefully chosen, were innocuous enough for the whole neighborhood to approve. But the biggest show of the evening, and decided controversial, was Mary Lou Hodge, who showed up to usher wearing an overelaborate pompadour and her sister Viney's notorious peek-a-boo blouse.

Mrs. Owens was backstage, engrossed in a multitude of details, when Mary Lou unveiled this tawdry splendor, which probably explains why the situation wasn't dealt with tactfully thre and then. The first I heard of it was when Stella seized me in the wings, a few seconds before the lights went down.

"Did you see her? She looks like something off a burlesque poster. I just caught a glimpse through the curtain crack, and what's more Miss Albright and your aunt are staring at her with judgment in their eyes."

"Wouldn't you think she'd have had more sense? And why didn't the president make her go home and change? He's right out there taking tickets at the door."

"He's male," Stella said scathingly. "He either didn't notice her clothes, or he noticed too much and didn't use his head. But Miss Sadie's head's working, I'll bet you anything."

The house lights went out, to the accompaniment of applause and stamping feet. There were the usual catcalls and silly giggles; then the footlights went up and Stella stepped out, flushed and self-possessed, to welcome the audience and introduce the program.

I read my narration, and it and I were well received. So was the program; there was so much applause we were obliged to reopen the curtain to encore several popular scenes. Mrs. Owens was pleased, congratulating everone on the hard work done, announcing we'd taken in enough money to guarantee Literary Magazine printing bills for the balance of the year. I gathered from her manner that nobody'd gossiped to her yet about Mary Lou's attire; I hoped the necessity would not arise.

It was an empty hope. We all went back to Bron's for hot chocolate and dessert, and Miss Sadie and Aunt Kate raced each other to see who'd be the first to explode with righteous wrath.

"Girl obviously hasn't learned a thing ..."

"... knew there would be trouble if the hussy were allowed ..."

"... undesireable influence ..."

"... moral leaders; have a Christian duty to reprimand ..." And on, and on.

I was sick to death of the whole subject of Mary Lou Hodge.

The Books: "The Sanctuary Tree" (Norma Johnston)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is The Sanctuary Tree by Norma Johnston. Third book in the Keeping Days series.

Uhm, let's see. More Sterling family drama. More of Tish Sterling's over-dramatization of things. I related to it and admired it as a teenager myself - now I find it annoying. Tish's beloved Grandfather dies. Tish, who is only 15, is so devastated she won't go to the funeral. She grieves "in her own way". Her family won't forgive her for this. In my mind, a 15 year old doesn't get to grieve "in her own way". You go to the funeral with your family!! Then the Sterlings decide to sell the Grandfather's farm in Pennsylvania - where they had spend every summer. Again, Tish throws a fit. They auction off Gramps' furniture. Another fit from poor Tish, who thinks she loved Gramps more than anyone else. Tish: get a grip or I might have to bitch-slap you! Meanwhile, Tish's sweetheart Ken is having major issues. His older brother Doug got a girl in trouble (Tish's classmate) and the family is so disgraced that they are going to move. This means Tish and Ken will have to say goodbye. Let's see what else. Oh yeah, another school play. This time it's Doll's House with Tish's good friend Stella as Nora. Sanctuary Tree takes place in 1901, 1902 - and Stella is all fired up with suffragette fever ... but of course the play will not let her get on a soapbox - and so she has a hard time playing the part. Uhm ... there's more, but I can't remember. Oh yeah - Bron (Tish's older sister) is married now, and pregnant with her first child.

Here's an excerpt from after the auction of Gramps' furniture. Tish had been fighting it every step of the way, flinging herself in front of various pieces of furniture, shouting, "No! You can't sell this!" Finally, she was sent away for the day because she couldn't behave herself. She returns home.

From The Sanctuary Tree by Norma Johnston.

Presently people started drifting off, murmuring things about having to be out in the fields early in the morning. Ben and Marnie and Peter and the twins went to see if they could strip another barrel of apples off the trees. Mama and Aunt Annie settled on the side lawn with Mr. and Mrs. Beeson, who were talking about the modernizations they had in mind. Indoor plumbing and hot water would be a definite improvement, but something very special and unique would be gone.

No, was already gone. Something that had made the farm a sanctuary to me had long since vanished. I would have that, from now on, only in my heart. It had been folly for me to think a geographical entity had anything to do with it. Oh, Mama had known that, hadn't she, all along? That was why she had been able to look with stony equanimity on those wagons driving off with all the bits and pieces of what once had been a home. What had been stripped in the auction today was nothing but the shell.

And it came to me that, drat it all, maybe Mr. Stanyon had been right, that to hold onto a husk, to delude oneself that the breath of life could still be in it, was a blasphemy and an idolatry. The only constant in life was change. No, there was more. There were also memories. And love.

I had not found sanctuary here, because sanctuary was not a geographical location. I had to find it - and wasn't that what Gramps had always been trying to teach me - in myself. And in kindred people, like Gramps himself. And Ken.

How odd, that Ken and I had both thought we had to get away from a neighborhood, get to a place. We should have remembered that when we just knocked down the walls of our own self-consciousness, we were always able to be wells to one another.

It was easy to say, I thought wryly, once it had been faced. But I was all too human, as I well knew. I didn't have Gramps's seventy-odd years of experience to fall back on for reassurance. I needed tangible talismans, whatever folly it might be to believe that they could give me strength or comfort.

The sky was darkening. From the orchard came the sound of laughter and gay voices, and Aunt Annie strode over there purposefully to propel her two to bed. The Beesons left. I went down to the river and sat on a tree branch extending out over the quiet water. I had not been there long before a weird figure came toward me from the house. It was Mama, carrying Gramps's old rocker. She plunked it down on the ground, near to me but not intruding on my private space.

"Might as well have it. Nobody'd like to've bought it anyhow, seeing's the paint's most gone from his hanging wet dishcloths across the back to dry." She turned and stomped back to the house. My mother, whom Gramps had once likened to a prickly pear, the harsh exterior only a defense for the softness hidden deep inside.

The stars came out, and a breeze blew from the river, and all alone I sat down in the old chair and cried.

The Books: "Glory in the Flower" (Norma Johnston)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is Glory in the Flower by Norma Johnston. Second book in the Keeping Days series.

It is now 1901! Tish is 14, going on 15! Still sensitive and annoying!!

40 year old Mama has a new baby girl on the night of a raging blizzard! Tish gets cast as Juliet in the school play of Romeo and Juliet! And her friend Ken, the boy she has a huuuuuge crush on, gets cast as Romeo! Much drama ensues. Celinda, Tish's best friend, has problems at home. Her mother is a wacko fundamentalist nutjob (kinda like Carrie's mother "cover your dirty pillows") and basically stands on street corners haranguing townspeople about how they're all going to hell, etc. It gets so bad at home that Celinda comes and stays with Tish for a while. Uhm, let's see what else - oh yeah. Tish writes a poem, gives it to her father - and then later, she hears him chuckling with his wife about it, as though she's cute for even trying to be a good poet. Tish, being Tish, is literally sent into a tailspin of betrayal and sadness. (Actually, I'm making fun of Tish - but it really is a very moving section of the book ... the description of that kind of pain). And of course - she hears her father chuckling on Opening Night of Romeo and Juliet so then she has to go off and do the play. The title of the book refers to the Wordsworth verse:

There's nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind.

Ouch. So this book is basically the story of Tish's leaving the world of "splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower" - it's the story of her losing some of her illusions about life ... and yet finding "strength in what remains behind".

Oh yeah, and here's another thing: Mary Lou Hodge is a big character in these books. She's the wild girl in Tish's class. She wears rouge! She curls her hair! She is only 14, but she is just one of "those" girls. She has a bad reputation - not really for any REASON, but just because she likes to hang out with crowds of boys, etc. She starts to date Ken's older brother Doug - who is 16? It's a huge scandal. Mary Lou Hodge is too young to date anyone! Ken and Tish, who obviously like each other, and he carries her books when they walk, etc., sometimes have awkward shy conversations about the Doug/Mary Lou situation - and how his parents are NOT happy about the situation. Mary Lou and Tish used to be friends when they were little girls - but it's one of those things where adolescence just rips people apart. I had a couple of friends like that. It was weird. Junior high came, and BOOM, they were gone. For good!!

So Tish has very little sympathy for Mary Lou's various scandals - Mary Lou is kind of a lost little girl (and it's interesting - in the later books in the series - the 5th and 6th books - which leap forward in time to the early 1920s - we learn that Mary Lou Hodge has become a silent film actress - which makes total sense.) Even though Mary Lou Hodge seems like a classic "mean girl", she's actually NOT - and one of the strengths of these books is how nobody is pigeon-holed like that. Everyone has more to them than just the surface, and Norma Johnston has a really nice way of showing that.

So but here's an excerpt from near the end of the book - where we get to see beneath Mary Lou Hodge's wild and kind of bitchy arrogant exterior. She and Tish had a big blow-up. Here's the aftermath.

From Glory in the Flower by Norma Johnston.

I turned towards the cloakroom door and there, effectively cutting off my exit, was Mary Lou Hodge.

"I've been waiting for you. I want to talk to you."

"What about?"

I realized with a sinking sensation that I shouldn't have given her an opening, for she closed in firmly, "About the things you said about me that day - the stories you've been spreading around the school." With no audience around, Mary Lou wasn't bothering about what impression she was making. Her cheeks were an unhealthy red and her eyes looked driven. She must have been hanging around waiting to waylay me ever since school got out. "There's only one person you could have gotten that stuff from, and that's Doug. He won't tell me what he's been saying, so you've got to."

"My mother's waiting for me." I tried to duck past her out the door, wishing fervently that Mrs. Owens hadn't left. Mary Lou grabbed my arm so hard that her fingernails bit my wrist.

"Oh no, you don't. I've been trying to talk to you for over a week, but your sweet little pals wouldn't let me near you. You're not getting away from me this time. Not till you tell me exactly how you knew. Did Doug tell your brother? Is that it?"

"I don't know what you're talking about!"

"Oh, yes, you do. Those things you shouted at me in the hall. That's what this all started from, or are you too dumb to know. And I've got to find out exactly what you heard."

I was beginning to feel thoroughly frightened. "I didn't hear anything. I don't even know what I said - things I'd read in books. I was so mad. I was just yelling. Nobody'd believe me."

"Oh yes, they would. They do. They think," she mimicked savagely, " 'The Sterlings are such nice people. That sweet little Sterling girl couldn't say a thing like that if it wasn't true.' You and your saintly goody-good pillar-of-church-and-community family! You make me sick!"

I remembered some things I hadn't thought about for years - Mr. Hodge carrying home a pail of beer from the saloon on Saturday nights, Mrs. Hodge trailing blowzily around in a wrapper at mid-day, the fact that Mary Lou and Viney always seemed to hang around other kids' houses instead of vice versa. I felt kind of sick myself.

"Mary Lou - honest - I don't remember what I said."

"You called me a whore," Mary Lou said bluntly. She released my wrist and pushed her hair back from her face. "Tish, can't you try to understand why I've got to know? I -- love Doug," she said painfully. "I've trusted him. If he's saying -- things like that about me, can't you see I've got to know? You couldn't have gotten it out of thin air, not you with your pure little mind. What did he say? Was it to Ben? Or Ken?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," I said. And then I stopped, staring at her, sick. Because all at once I did know. The pieces added up. One of the arrows I had flung blindly into the air had landed dead on target. A whore, I'd said. Well, maybe not a whore, in the technical financial definition of the term, but close enough. And everybody'd believed me, not because I'd known, not because it was true, but what was far worse - because it was what they wanted to believe. Mary Lou was right, we did have dirty minds. And for far too long I'd had my own head buried in the sand.

"You have to have heard something. You couldn't have made it up. And it couldn't have come from anyone but Doug." Mary Lou broke off, staring at me oddly. "You really didn't know, did you?" she whispered. "Not till I just told you. Here I've been imagining - worrying - and you didn't even ... Ha ha! It's funny, really. Oh, God, I'm going to be sick." She stumbled into the girls' lavatory, and I followed.

The last thing in the world I ever expected to be doing, on that or any other day, was kneeling on the dingy tiles of a lavatory cubicle holding Mary Lou's heaving shoulders while she was very sick indeed. I held her till it was over and she was leaning, limp and trembling, against the wall; then I went and got her a glass of cold water and bathed her face. I sat down on the floor across from her and neither of us knew where to look.

"Tish," Mary Lou's voice was low. "I'm not used to begging, least of all from you. Please don't tell anybody. It's bad enough now."

I forced a glance on her. Both her masks were gone now, the tough one and the too-cute flirt. For the first time, I thought, I'm really seeing Mary Lou. She looked bedraggled and unlovely and very human. And afraid.

I had precipitated this mess - through ignorance, through hurt feelings, through not putting myself in someone else's place. Strangely enough, I could believe her when she said she loved Doug Latham. And remembering a lot of things I didn't want to face, I could understand exactly what she was feeling. Couldn't I? And in that moment I knew exactly what I had to do.

I told her the story of Herbie Willis and the pantry closet. All of it. "It may not sound like much," I finished. "All I can tell you is if the story got out, I'd feel exactly the way you do right now. I've trusted you with it, so you know you can trust me. Because if I tattle, you can too."

I went and got her gaudy coat and got her into it. That coat was like the Sterling chin-thrust, I thought: a bright banner of pride against unfriendly winds. We went outside into the misty rain and walked in silence towards Vyse Avenue and home.

Mary Lou thrust her hands deep into her pockets, and she didn't look at me. She didn't look at anything, but her head was high. I walked her to her house, and when we reached it she went inside without a word. I knew what she was feeling. I knew because it was happening inside me, too, as if she were an extension of myself.

I never knew I could ache so much with someone that I couldn't even like.

The Books: "The Keeping Days" (Norma Johnston)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is The Keeping Days by Norma Johnston. This is kind of a forgotten series - and it's a shame, because I think they're really good books. They are the epitome of teenage-girl books - but I've since read them as an adult, and very much enjoyed them. Norma Johnston has actually written many books - but the "Keeping Days" series was her biggest success, I believe. There are 6 books in the series.

The series starts in 1900 - and the last book in the series takes place in the early 1920s. It's the story of a sprawling argumentative funny family who live in Everytown, America. Or whatever. The Sterling family. The heroine of the book is a sensitive girl who wants to be a writer (yawn) and her name is Tish Sterling. Tish can be kind of a drip - HOWEVER, all of the characters around her (her parents, her best friend, the boy at school she likes, her siblings) are all fascinating - It's the kind of thing where the narrator of the book is not halfway as interesting as the supporting cast - but that's kind of cool, because Tish is a limited person, she's "sensitive", she holds grudges, she's over-dramatic about things ... but you somehow don't get TOO annoyed because it's so fun hanging out with all the OTHER people in her life.

This is the first book in the series. Tish has just turned 14. She has an older sister Bronwyn - who is beautiful, and trying to decide who to marry. They used to be close, as sisters - but now Bronwyn seems to be moving into another world. Tish wants to be considered a grown-up, or at least MORE grown-up. (Seeing as she acts like a bratty little poet half the time, I think she has a ways to go - but that's beside the point). Tish's mother is a great character - she has 5 kids - and in the beginning of the book, the parents announce to the family that they are going to have another baby. It is CLEAR (from this adult woman's eyes) that this pregnancy was not planned - Mrs. Sterling is obviously in her early 40s. So it's kind of a stressful situation - and in the middle of that, the father loses his job. Tish and her mother have a very prickly relationship - the mother is very HARD, shall we say. She has no patience with Tish's sensitivity, and has a way of trampling all over any poetic moments. Some of the best moments in the book, though, come when you see beneath that hard surface. Terrific characte.r You love her.

I can't remember exactly what happens - but somehow, the parents have a huge blow-up - which terrifies all the kids in the family -Mrs. Sterling is kind of a nag, truth be told, and the father finally has had it. He goes to his sister's house next door, and stays there. This sends the family into a complete tizzy. Divorce is not really even thinkable ... but still, it's very scary for everyone. And Mrs. Sterling is hard as nails, pregnant at 40, and she won't give in.

The following excerpt is from a family meeting in the middle of this crisis. Tish goes next door late at night, and summons her father to come back - and make up with his wife.

I think Norma Johnston is really good at dialogue - especially big huge group discussions. Every character has their own distinctive voice, and it really feels real to me. I love this series. Anyone out there who has a tween daughter, or a teen daughter - this series would be great to introduce her to!!

If you read this as an adult - you might scoff at some of the sentiment. You're missing the point if you do. Look at how Norma Johnston, at the end of the excerpt, brings in the complexity. It doesn't end on a happily ever after note - because life is more complex than that. Growing up is hard. It's a mixed bag. These books are all about that. They're gems.

From The Keeping Days by Norma Johnston.

In Aunt Kate's yard I paused to reconnoiter. All was dark and silent except where one light burned. I climbed precariously up the trellis and succeeded in throwing a handful of pebbles through the open window. After the second handful, Pa's startled face appeared beside me.

"Tish! What are you ..."

"Hush, Pa! Pa, come outside, please! I've got to talk to you."

Pa looked at me. "I'll be out directly. Now get off that trellis before you break your neck."

I waited under the rose arbor, hands clenched tightly, until Pa stepped cautiously out on the back stoop. LIke me, he had pulled clothes hastily over his nightgown. "Tish, is anyone sick?"

"No, I just had to talk."

Pa tucked my hand through his arm and we walked into Vyse Avenue, spectral in the moonlight.

"How are things going?" Pa asked presently.

"Not good." Unaccountably my teeth started chattering and then the dam burst. "Oh, Pa, we've tried to fill your place, but all of us put together can't do it. The - center's gone out of things. I never appreciated before how much you give us."

Pa gave a short laugh. "I'm afraid your mother doesn't think so."

"She will. Maybe she does already. If you'll just come home with me now and talk to her."

"It's not that simple, Tish." Pa sounded infinitely old. "A man needs to feel he's respected as a human being, that his wife sees him, all of him, not just the weaknesses he knows about already."

"Since when did you ever teach us anything had to be simple or easy!" The words burst out before I knew they were coming, and they hit Pa, I could see they did. I might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, I thought. "You always told us it took the really big person to make the first move. Can't you do that now, even if it does mean eating the Sterling pride?"

Pa looked at me, and I was afraid I'd gone too far. Then his shoulders sagged. "Out of the mouths of babes," he said. "All right, Tish. You win. Let's go home."

I didn't like the price of victory if it made Pa look like that. But I didn't dare think about that now. There were bigger obstacles ahead. My heart pounded harder than ever as we went up the kitchen steps.

Mama was in the kitchen, obviously in the middle of a row with Bron. When she saw Pa, she flushed and jerked her head away, pulling her wrapper tight together at the throat. Pa closed the door and leaned against it, waiting. Bron and Ben and I lookeda t each other and wondered where to start. It wasn't as exciting as we once had thought, having the leadership depend on us.

Finally Ben cleared his throat. "Let's -- go into the dining room," he said. That was where we always sat for formal conferences. Pa led the way, but instead of going to the head he drew a side chair out, looked pointedly at Mama, and waited. Mama sniffed and flounced into it with poor grace. Pa, deliberately, sat down across from her. Ben looked at Bron and me, then stepped to Pa's usual place at the table's head.

"All right," Mama said ominously. "We're waiting."

"That's what we're doing," Ben said quietly. "Waiting for you two to act like grown-ups instead of what you're always calling us - spoiled kids."

I would have applauded if I hadn't been so scared.

"We're not a family any more," Bron said. "We need you back."

"Glad you recognize that," Mama retorted. But the wind had been taken out of her sails, as all could see.

"We're to blame, too." I looked at my mother's rigid face, then down at my hands. "We've taken for granted that you'd always be around for us. We've never thought of you as having needs."

There was silence, and I knew Mama was caught in the crossfire of her two favorite speeches, the one about Families Should Always Be There For Each Other, and the one on Children Should Consider Parents' Feelings. Part of me enjoyed the paradox, but the rest of me had a very empty feeling.

Pa coughed. "I appreciate your perception, Tish. But it's natural for children to take parents for granted. They need the security of being able to."

"Maybe that's true at Missy's age, or Peter's," Bron said earnestly. Peter looked aggrieved at being lumped with Missy, but Marnie nodded.

"Where do parents get the idea we've got to see them as gods? We ought to -- to be able to respect each other as human beings. Definitely," she added darkly, "what we need around here is more respect. For all of us."

"Even when we're being pains. Like not doing things that embarrass each other - or not picking on things we're ashamed about already. And trust in each other's good intentions, even when they don't work out." I remembered my orgy of self-pity the night of my birthday party. "More concern for others, and less over whether they hurt us."

"Glad you're finally realizing it," Mama spoke in a raspy echo of her usual tartness.

"We're talking to you, too, Mama," Bron retorted.

Before Mama could answer, Ben's voice sliced in, clean and sharp. "I guess what we're saying is we don't need little tin gods. Or caretakers. But is it too much to ask for human beings who practice what they preach about understanding and respect, instead of getting wrapped up in their own stubborn pride? Because how in tarnation can you two expect us to act like adults when you don't yourselves?"

His words fell like a weighted rock, and in the little hush of shock that followed, he thrust his legs out and his chin forward in a replica of Pa's own gesture. Mama's breath came back to her in a rush, and for the first time she looked straight at Pa. "See what happens when a father lets his children run wild. Outrageous for them to talk that way to their parents."

"Shut up, Evie," Pa ordered, not taking his eyes from Ben.

Mama gasped. "How dare you -- tarnation, look at me!"

"Why?" Pa asked. "How long has it been since you've looked at us, Evie, or listened to us either? If you had, you might have noticed it's your own highhandedness pushed me out of taking a hand with the children."

"If you'd been here more, instead of traipsing around from court to court ..."

"That traipsing around, Evie," Pa said evenly, "was in the interest of keeping a roof over your head. Or haven't you noticed that the city's administration's changed? I guess you've forgotten my job's a political appointment. And maybe it hasn't occurred to you that it's hard for a man in his mid-forties to find another job. Tish is right, you are insensitive."

I wanted to sink through the floor. But Mama was too shocked and angry to notice me. "How's a woman to know a man has worries if he shuts her out like she's just a hired housekeeper? And makes her feel she's not a very good one at that? How can she feel like standing behind him when he doesn't stand behind her? If every time she needs a word of tenderness what she hears instead is, 'Tarnation, woman, why can't you iron my shirts as well as Kate?' I'm tired of ironing!" Mama's eyes were very black. "I'm tired of trying to keep my house as neat as a single woman's who's got no children muddying it up as soon as she's got something done. I'm tired of trying to keep your son from burning the house down around our ears, and one of your daughters from running wild. I'm just plain tired! And as for my dragging around the house like a sick cat, Mr. Sterling --" She took a deep breath and her chin jerked a mile high. "I wouldn't be that way if I wasn't, at my age, carrying another child of yours when I don't know how to cope with the ones I have already!"

In the hush Pa's voice went on like a low scratched gramophone record. "And another thing. After twenty years a man gets tired of hearing his wife call him 'Mr. Sterling' as if they'd only just been introduced."

"Oh, Edward," Mama whispered, staring at him, and started to cry. I saw Pa move toward her. Bron rose quickly.

"We'll make coffee." She steered us firmyl toward the kitchen, all but Missy who had fallen asleep with her head on the table. The door swung shut behind us. I felt queer and shaky, as if I were starting to get better from a long siege of the grippe. Mama was going to have a baby, and Pa might lose his job, but the important thing was that we were back to being a family again.

Only it wasn't quite the same way it had been before. I could feel this in my marrow much later, when we had finally taken the coffee tray, with the brew long since boiled thick and bitter, into the dining room and were sitting a whole family once again, in our accustomed places. We had never felt so awkward with each other, and yet so close.

We talked for a long while, quite quietly and calmly - about Pa's job, and money, and the new baby, and being a family. For the first time, I realized, Pa and Mama were really talking to us as if we were grown-up. I'd wanted that for a long while, and it was queer that I should find myself almost envying Missy, who huddled sleepily in Mama's lap and didn't understand a word of what was going on.

The Books: "I Am the Cheese" (Robert Cormier)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is I Am the Cheese by Robert Cormier.

Okay. I remember reading THIS book, again, in 8th grade - it was again on the curriculum - I think I read it a couple times after that, because I liked it. It's another terrifying and dark book - and there's a revelation at the very very end which is truly upsetting. Although, to be honest, I can't remember what that revelation is. Does anyone remember? It's been so long since I read this one.

Here's what I remember:

-- There's a kid. He's bicycling. The bicycle is a big deal.
-- The kid has "blanks" in his memory. He also "blanks" out in his present - kind of like Sybil describes in the movie when she says, "One time, I woke up and I was two years older." The kid's mind is protecting him from something. But what??
-- Interspersed through the narrative are these odd "interview" sequences ... a Q&A ... or it feels sometimes like an interrogation ... Who is interrogating who? Why?
-- Uhm ... help ... no more memory of PLOT
-- I think the Witness Protection Program has something to do with the plot ... the boy's family was in the program?
-- But for some reason he either has amnesia, or ... something ... he's blocking out something HORRIBLE and the interrogation (which sometimes is gentle, sometimes more aggressive) is designed to "help" him remember ... But ... who is the interrogator? You kind of get the sense of a government agency there ... A cold bureaucratic faceless person ...
-- And the ending is quite horrible. Although I can't remember the ending. It's something like: The boy realizes that the entire thing has been in his mind??