 CHAPTER XIV of MY FRIEND, ANNABELLEE There are times in a number of days when my friend Annabelle Lee and I enjoy a cigarette together. My friend Annabelle Lee, with her cigarette, her petite, much-coloured form wrapped round in clouds of thin, exquisite grey is more than all suggestive and inscrutable. She leans her two elbows on something and looks out at me. I with my cigarette am nothing but I with my cigarette. I enjoy it, but I am not beautiful with it nor fascinating. But my friend Annabelle Lee is all that my imagination can take in. Under the influence of the thin, exquisite grey she grows fanciful and subtly and indefinitely she meets me somewhere and extends me her hand for a moment. Don't you know, said my friend Annabelle Lee with her cigarette, that old song that goes, Mary Seton and Mary Beaton and Mary Carmichael and me? I think it is Mary Stewart of Scotland who says that. And a fair good song it is. But just now for me, if I were Mary Stewart of Scotland, you poor miserable little rat, I should say, Mary McLean and Mary McLean, and Mary McLean and me. For aren't we two together here, calmly smoking, and doesn't the world spin round? I was enchanted. How few are the times when my friend Annabelle Lee is like this, warm and friendly and lightly contemptuous, and inclined to grotesquely. Tis so that she becomes human and some way near to me. Yes, I should say, Mary McLean and Mary McLean and Mary McLean and me. Said my friend Annabelle Lee from her gently puffed clouds. There are times when you are soft and satisfying as a grey pussycat. If I stroke you, you will purr. If I give you cream, you will lap it up. Then you will curl up warmly in my lap and sleep and purr and open and shut your little fur paws. I will sit by the fire and give her some food and pussy will love me because I am good. What literature is more literature than Mother Goose? Said my friend Annabelle Lee. And will you love me because I am good? Has it occurred to you that you must love what is good? And because it is good, you poor miserable little rat. And that you must hate what is evil. Look at me, look at me, am I good? I looked at her, certainly she was good. Just then she had a look of angels. Do you love me? Said my friend Annabelle Lee with her cigarette. Oh yes, said I. Look at me again, am I evil? Said my friend Annabelle Lee. I presume you are, I replied, for then she looked vindictive and vicious. And do you hate me? No, said I. Then you are very bad and wicked yourself, you poor miserable little rat. Said my friend Annabelle Lee with her cigarette. And the world and all good people will condemn you. I fear, said I, with my cigarette, that the world and all good people already do that. Ah, do they, said my friend Annabelle Lee. Never mind. I will take care of you, you poor miserable little rat. I will make all soft for you. I will keep out the cold. I will color the dullness. I will fight off the mob. And I, I replied, if for that reason you do so, will thank the world and all good people for condemning me. That was neatly said, said my friend Annabelle Lee. But let me tell you, when the world grows soft, I will grow hard. Hard as nails. Then let the world stay hard. I said, hard and bitter as wormwood, if it will, so that you come indeed, thus friendly to me, through these gray clouds. That, too, was very neat, said my friend Annabelle Lee. But mostly it goes to show that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. What literature is more literature than the proverbs? What is a bird in the hand worth? said my friend Annabelle Lee. Two in the bush, said I. Where does charity begin, said my friend Annabelle Lee. At home, said I. What does it cover? said my friend Annabelle Lee. A multitude of sins, said I. What's a miss as good as, said my friend Annabelle Lee? A mile, said I. What makes the mare go? said my friend Annabelle Lee. Money, said I. Whom does conscience make cowards of? said my friend Annabelle Lee. A soul, said I. What does a stitch in time save? said my friend Annabelle Lee. Nine, said I. When are a fool and his money parted? said my friend Annabelle Lee. Soon, said I. What do too many cooks spoil? said my friend Annabelle Lee. The broth, said I. What's an idle brain? said my friend Annabelle Lee. The devil's workshop, said I. What may a cat look at? said my friend Annabelle Lee. A king, said I. What's truth stranger then? said my friend Annabelle Lee. Fiction, said I. What's there many a slip betwixt? said my friend Annabelle Lee. The cup and the lip, said I. How do birds of a feather flock? said my friend Annabelle Lee. Together, said I. What do fools do where angels fear to tread? said my friend Annabelle Lee. Rush in, said I. What does many a mickle make? said my friend Annabelle Lee. A muckle, said I. And what will the pounds do if you take care of the pence? said my friend Annabelle Lee. Take care of themselves, said I. What do curses do like chickens? said my friend Annabelle Lee. Come home to roost, said I. What is it that has no turning? said my friend Annabelle Lee. A long lane, said I. What does an ill wind blow? said my friend Annabelle Lee. Nobody good, said I. What's a merciful man? Merciful too, said my friend Annabelle Lee. His breast, said I. What's better to do than to break? said my friend Annabelle Lee. Bend, said I. What's an out of prevention worth? said my friend Annabelle Lee. A pound of cure, said I. What's there nothing half so sweet in life as? said my friend Annabelle Lee. Love's young dream, said I. What does absence make? said my friend Annabelle Lee. The hot grow fonder, said I. How would a rose by any other name smell? said my friend Annabelle Lee. As sweet, said I. How did the Assyrian come down? said my friend Annabelle Lee. Like a wolf on the fold, said I. What were his cohorts gleaming with? said my friend Annabelle Lee. Purple and gold, said I. What was the sheen of their spears like? said my friend Annabelle Lee. Stars on the sea, said I. When? said my friend Annabelle Lee. When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep guddley, said I. All of which proves, said my friend Annabelle Lee, that I've but to fiddle and you will dance, you poor, miserable little rat. And my thought is, what is it better to be than second in Rome? First in the little Iberian village, said I. But I'm not sure whether it is or not, said my friend Annabelle Lee. Someday you and I will go out into the great broad world. Then we shall see who will be first and who will be second. The great broad world is the best place of all we're in to find ourselves. And no matter how we were situated before, we shall certainly be situated differently in the great broad world. In the great broad world there will be apples, enough for you and for me. But who knows? You poor, miserable little rat. It may be that your lot will be all the sweet, juicy apples, whilst I shall be given the cores. In the great broad world there will be ripe, red raspberry shortcake, enough for you and for me. But who knows? You poor, miserable little rat. It may be that your lot will be all the ripe, red raspberries, whilst I shall be given the crusts. In the great broad world there will be cigarettes, cigarettes enough for you and for me. But who knows? You poor, miserable little rat. It may be that your lot will be all the fine Egyptian tobacco and rice paper and clouds and clouds and clouds of pearl gray, soft pearl gray. To wrap you round whilst I shall go looking in empty boxes all day long and never a cigarette. In which case mine will be by far the better lot in the end, said my friend Annabelle Lee. According to the law of compensation. Oh, dear, said my friend Annabelle Lee petulately, why do you sit there stupidly staring? Talk and amuse me, why don't you? Make me feel sweet and content. If I were but that myself, Annabelle Lee, said I. I cannot talk interestingly, but if you like I will ask you the proverbs and you may answer them. That amused me much and it gave me a wonderful feeling of satisfaction, quite as if I were seven years old and knew my lesson perfectly. You ask and I answer, said my friend Annabelle Lee. Very good, but I don't know my lesson perfectly. Begin. What's a bird in the hand worth, said I. A pound of cure, said my friend Annabelle Lee. What does a stitch in time save, said I. Two in the bush, said my friend Annabelle Lee. Where does charity begin, said I. Betwixt the cup and the lip, said my friend Annabelle Lee. What may a cat look at, said I. The broth, said my friend Annabelle Lee. What does many a mickle make, said I. A multitude of sins, said my friend Annabelle Lee. What do too many cook spoil, said I. A soul, said my friend Annabelle Lee. Whom does conscience make cowards of, said I. Dead men and fools, said my friend Annabelle Lee. What is it that has no turning, said I. A full stomach, said my friend Annabelle Lee. What fortifies a stout hot, said I. A stitch in time, said my friend Annabelle Lee. What does money make, said I. An ill wind, said my friend Annabelle Lee. What will the pounds do if you take care of the pence, said I. Come home to roost, said my friend Annabelle Lee. Where is there many a slip, said I. Where angels fear to tread, said my friend Annabelle Lee. What sharper than a serpent's tooth, said I. The pen, said my friend Annabelle Lee. What's mightier than the sword, said I. A rich man, said my friend Annabelle Lee. What makes the mare go, said I. A fool in his money, said my friend Annabelle Lee. What should they do who live in glass houses, said I. Draw down the blinds, said my friend Annabelle Lee. What's a man's castle, said I. The devil's workshop, said my friend Annabelle Lee. What's better to do than to break, said I. Rob Peter, said my friend Annabelle Lee. What's the wind tempered to, said I. The camel's back, said my friend Annabelle Lee. What do many hands make, said I. A shorn lamb, said my friend Annabelle Lee. What can't you make out of a pig's ear, said I. A gift horse, said my friend Annabelle Lee. What should you never look in the mouth, said I. A silk purse, said my friend Annabelle Lee. What's half a loaf better than, said I. Chickens before they are hatched, said my friend Annabelle Lee. But let's not play this any more, said my friend Annabelle Lee. I'm languid and weary. Can't you talk to me and talk so that I may feel rested and comfortable, and don't stare. I fear I can't amuse you, I am sorry, said I. You may envy me, Annabelle Lee. You have not Annabelle Lee to look at. Would not life look rich and full to you, if you could see before you your own vague purple eyes, and your red red lips, and those hands of power and romance you, with your scarlet gown and the gold margarits coming near and fading away in mist. No, not particularly, said my friend Annabelle Lee. I rather like your looks, she added, and her purple eyes became less vague, sitting there in your small black frock, and you puff at that tobacco much like a toy engine. Come, you amuse me, you please me, come near me. She held out one of her hands, and the purple eyes changed suddenly into something that was rarely and indescribably friendly. I felt much from life. My friend Annabelle Lee rested the hand she had held out upon my shoulder. When we go into the great broad world, Mary MacLean, she said, and you have all the apples and all the ripe red raspberry shortcake and all the cigarettes, then perhaps will you share them with me? I said, I would. End of chapter 14. Chapter 15 of My Friend Annabelle Lee by Mary MacLean. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. A story of spoon-bills. When the mood takes my friend Annabelle Lee, she will, if I beg her, tell me quaint and fantastic stories, such as are hidden away in the dusty crevices of this world. These tales have lain away there for centuries, and spiders have spun webs over and about them, so that when perchance they are brought out, bits of fine grey fibre are to be found among the lions. Yesterday a pretty plain story by my friend Annabelle Lee that runs through my mind. Long ago, said my friend Annabelle Lee, there lived in Egypt a family of well-born but poorly bred spoon-bills in a green marsh by the side of the great green river Nile. This family numbered five and they were united and dwelling in peace. There were the father and mother and two daughters and a son, and there had been another son, but he was dead. And their names were Marin Spoonbill, the mother, and Oliver W. Spoonbill, the father, and Lilith Spoonbill, the elder daughter, and Delilah Spoonbill, the younger daughter, and the son's name was LePage Spoonbill. The son who had died was named Roland Spoonbill. He was buried at the edge of the marsh, and his name and the date were carved upon a square black wooden tablet to his memory at the head of the grave. There was also this legend upon the tablet. Age 15, gone in the heyday of youth to his last rest, but his virtues are with us still. And little Delilah Spoonbill, who was an elementary, fanciful child of nine, used to stand staring at this legend and wondering about it. A weeping willow hung low over the grave, and Delilah would stand near it, picking gnats from its branches with her bill and speculating about the legend. She wondered for one thing what heyday meant. Was it anything like a birthday, or was it, on the contrary, a day when everything went wrong and ended by a person's being shut into a dark bedroom, or was it, perhaps, a picnic day with tarts made of red jam? In that case Delilah felt very sorry for her brother, that he should have died on such a day. For if there is an article of diet that Spoonbill's really like, it is tarts of red jam made the way Canadians make them. But she could never decide. And another thing about the epitaph that puzzled her was the concluding clause, but his virtues are with us still. What could virtues be, she asked herself. Were they anything like feathers, or were they good to eat, or were they something she had never seen and knew nothing about? But the letter said plainly, his virtues are with us still. Truly if they were among the family positions, why had she not seen them? For anything that belonged to any of the Spoonbill family that was at all out of the ordinary was always placed in an oak cabinet with glass doors that stood in a corner of the hall in their marsh home. Delilah had often looked in this cabinet to see if the virtues of her brother were not there. There were dried snake skins and curious white stones and Spanish moss and devil's snuff boxes, but no, there were no virtues. Of that she was convinced. She appeared to her older sister. Lilith, said Delilah, what are virtues and where do we keep Rollins? Don't you know on the tombstone it says, his virtues are with us still. Aren't you a silly, said Lilith, laughing in Spoonbillish derision. Lilith was 12 and one knows vastly more at 12 than at nine. Virtues aren't anything. And as for Rollins, that doesn't mean that he left them with us any more than he took them with him. Then what does it mean? Said Delilah, I've thought so much about it. You'll have to think some more, said Lilith. A good deal more, I should say, of your kind of thinking. Delilah did not often appeal to her sister in these matters. She did not enjoy Lilith's habit of laughing. In truth, she didn't enjoy being laughed at at all. Not the least in the world. She was like a great many other people. And so was Lilith. But oh, there were many things that Delilah wished to know. The Spoonbill family was, as I have said, well-born but poorly bred. Marin Spoonbill and Oliver W. Spoonbill both came of very good stock. But they had been the black sheep of their families and had forgotten the traditions and customs of their race. They had left no more pride, Marin Spoonbill's mother once said, than a sand hill crane, no, nor a duck. No, nor a duck echoed Marin Spoonbill and her husband and glurried in it. And the children ran wild. But the children, though they ran wild, were not without ambition. On summer evenings, when the family took tea on the back porch, and it was too warm for the children to run about much, they used to sit and tell their ambitions. I'm going to be an actress when I get big," declared Lilith. I'm going to have a splendid career on the stage and I shall earn heaps of money and I shall have magnificent clothes and everyone will look at me and say, isn't she in stunning form to-night? And the page and Delilah were so overcome by the vision thus presented of their sister that they could but stare odd and silent. And Delilah wondered how it must seem to be so clever. But the page, who was eleven years old himself, soon rallied. Well, then, said he, when I get big I'm going to be a pirate. I'll lay over all the pirates that ever were, a firing and a pillaging, and I'll wear magnificent clothes and everyone will look at me and say, isn't he in stunning form to-night? Delilah thought this latter sounded strangely like Lilith. But perhaps in some subtle way a pirate was like an actress and so must need to be described in the same terms. And Delilah, said her father, what shall you be? What kind of clothes are you going to wear? Delilah had before tried the experiment of relating her ambition to the assembled family and the result had been bad. The high laughter of Lilith and the page always rose on the still evening air and even her father, who was a kind person, would smile. Delilah's ambition was always the same, but she nearly always varied it a little at each telling and the amusement evinced by her sister and brother varied accordingly. Sometimes they even flapped their wings, which was too cruel, for sooth children are always cruel. But while Delilah's ambition was always the same, those of Lilith and the page covered an exceeding wide range. Some evenings Lilith would draw a glowing picture of herself as a lecturer of renown with a wonderful personal magnetism and a telling style. She would move the multitudes and draw tears from stony eyes by lifting up her voice, whereupon the page, when he had recovered his breath, would portray himself as a celebrated scientist delving into marvelous chemical mysteries and discovering things of untold benefit to the race. He also would move the multitudes and draw tears from stony eyes and Delilah would wonder what were lecturers and scientists and how they could do these things and when Lilith would announce her intention of becoming a famous sculptor whose work in the Passionate would be the delight of her day, then the page would turn his mind to the idea of becoming a noted explorer who would penetrate into darkest Africa and farthest north and whose work in the Passionate would be the delight of his day and Delilah would marvel still more. For sooth children are always like that and fascinating they are. And each summer evening after Lilith and the page had related their ambitions, their father would ask Delilah what was hers. Then always Delilah would whisper, I'm going to study Tombstone's papa and when I get big perhaps I shall know what every single tombstone in the world means and perhaps after I've studied a long time and hard I can read Rowland's right off and know what it means without thinking and perhaps I can explain them all to people who don't know about them. Which to Delilah was a daring ambition indeed, quite hitching her wagon to a star. Well then, said my friend Annabelle. This was when the Spoonbill family was in its youngness. The years followed one after another and the three children grew and it came about that Lilith was three and 20 and the page was two and 20 and Delilah was 20. There were much as they had been when they were children. Lilith I may say in passing was not an actress, nor a lecturer, nor yet a sculptor and the page was merely the page. Also Delilah was Delilah but had ceased to be elementary in some ways while in others she was still and so would be until the finish. It so happened that a young Spoonbill of masculine persuasion from the other side of the Great Green River Nile fell in love with Delilah. Likewise Delilah fell in love with the young Spoonbill but not that young Spoonbill. It happens frequently so and Delilah did not fancy the Spoonbill from the other side of the river and the Spoonbill with whom Delilah was in love did not fancy her in just that way which also happens frequently. On a day when the river Nile was very green and heavy sickening sweet flowers of dead white color hung from black trees on the banks and the sky was oh so blue and all was summer the young Spoonbill from over the river would come to see Delilah. He loved her so well so hopelessly that young Spoonbill but Delilah on such a day would walk where the green water was shallow and her thoughts would be with the young Spoonbill who had gone to her heart and the young Spoonbill from over the river would come and stand a little way from Delilah under a tree with broad thick leaves. How fine was he to look upon with his white feathers glistening like silver in his eyes of topaz and Delilah was most adorable with feathers of soft soft gray and so soft gray that one if one were human would wish to rest one's forehead upon the fluffy down of her breast. Then he from over the river his name was Gerald Spoonbill would say Delilah come with me over the river to the damp meadows where there is a pool with a thousand pond lilies and fair blooms the way we should be happy there you and I but Delilah would say oh go back over the river Gerald Spoonbill you and I never should be happy together why do you stand there by the rubber tree day after day and why do you waste your life nerves and your heart nerves why are you not giving your good heart to someone who can take it but you would be happy with me Delilah he under the dark leaves would answer her eagerly we will stand in the midst of a new day and watch the sun come up out of the sand we will stand in pale shallows at midday we will feel our hearts beat high when the lightning comes down through branches we will fly a little in high winds we will stand still and silent in the midst of golden solitudes when the sun is going off the sand and in all these things my heart will be yours go back over the river Gerald Spoonbill said Delilah but Gerald Spoonbill felt that he loved so well that he could not go back over the river it is not possible to go back over the river when one's best loved is standing by herself in green shallows then along the bank from the direction of the date palms came Auden Spoonbill he who had gone to Delilah's heart likewise he was good to see not from the handsomeness of his feathers or his eyes but from the strength of his physical being though too his eyes were of amethyst Auden Spoonbill went along parallel to the shore of the river until he saw Delilah standing in the pale green water then he crossed over and came toward her there are lotus flowers blooming down below where the steep cataract breaks over stones said he Delilah will you come with me to eat some oh yes I will come said Delilah eagerly for she still was elementary enough to say things eagerly so they went down to where the lotus flowers grew where the steep cataract broke over stones it so happened that it was almost the time when the great green river Nile flows out over its banks and makes all wet with water for miles around at such a time it was the custom of Spoonbills and cranes and adjuncted birds and others of their ilk and animals of diverse kinds to leave their homes and move away out of reach of the green and purple flood but no one had thought of moving yet for it was too early in the season Marin Spoonbill and Oliver W. Spoonbill had not even begun to gather up their household goods nor had they as their want was removed the black tablet from the head of Roland Spoonbill's grave which was on the very edge of the river the river god is a person of whims like the rest of us and so that year on the day that Delilah and Auden Spoonbill went down the river to eat lotus flowers he gave vent to one of them he thought to send a premonition of the yearly flood in the shape of one beautiful green and purple and white wave one which would not go so very far but which should be damaging in its effects Delilah said Auden Spoonbill since we are here eating lotus flowers life is very fine isn't it oh very fine yes very fine said Delilah and was thrilled you are a so dear friend said Auden Spoonbill yes said Delilah and was not thrilled life said Auden Spoonbill is pretty fine no matter how it is arranged but life is a very strange thing said Delilah I can't begin to tell you how strange I have found it for one thing I may have what is not my heart's desire and what is my heart's desire I may not have it is strange admitted Auden Spoonbill but why have any heart's desires aside from what is already yours in this fine fair world one cannot rule one's heart cried Delilah one's heart goes on before one's mind can stop to think one's heart rushes in before everything one's heart plays with brilliant colored things when all else is dead color one's heart loves but Delilah never finished before their eyes rose up a magnificent wall a wall of water that was fire and cloud and silver and in it were ineffable rainbows of the purple that gathers up the soul in its brilliance and shows its wondrous possibilities and in it were lines of the pale lavender that caresses the senses and one breathes from it almost a fragrance of heliotrope and in it were broad sheets of deep black and dazzling white that were of the seeming of life and death and in it, last of all, was a world of infinite green it had come from a place of great things it had come to a place where all went down before it where lives exalted but shrank from it because of its green an exquisite whim was that of the river god Delilah and Auden Spoonville gazed for a brief moment they saw the magnificent things they saw in the brilliancies but nevertheless their spirits rose high they saw also a wild flight of live things before the wave Delilah beheld her family, Lilith and the rest struggling and half covered with water and their home made of reeds was loosed from its foundations and borne down the river presently the flood overtook themselves and the life of Delilah was merged in water she was born high on a dark swell and at the turning was suddenly struck a stunning blow upon the gray of her breast by a square black wooden tablet before death came to her out of the brilliancies she was conscious of several things she saw before her for an instant with startling plainness the words on the tablet gone in the heyday of youth to his last rest but his virtues are with us still she even fancied for the first time that she knew what it meant the heyday of youth, she murmured to herself is the day I go to eat lotus flowers with my best beloved and the virtues are two eyes of amethyst that are with me still as I am drowning Odden Spoonville was drowning together with her that's all of the story, said my friend Annabelle Lee thank you, said I it is lovely in its quaitness what doesn't mean Annabelle Lee mean? said my friend Annabelle Lee I didn't say it meant anything but I suppose, said I everything that's true means something very likely, said my friend Annabelle Lee but this story isn't true, I made it up because it isn't true or for some other reason the story still runs in my head how like my friend Annabelle Lee it is end of chapter 15 CHAPTER XVI of my friend Annabelle Lee by Mary Maclean this LibriVox recording is in the public domain a measure of sorrow but though you are equally as beautiful as pose Annabelle Lee I said to my friend Annabelle Lee and half the time I think you are the same one still when I read over the poem in my mind I find differences you find differences said my friend Annabelle Lee I repeated it was many and many a year ago in a kingdom by the sea that a maiden lived whom you may know by the name of Annabelle Lee and this maiden she lived with no other thought than to love and be loved by me the first four lines, said I, do very well for it doesn't matter how long ago you lived and who can tell but a fancy you live with other thoughts than that mentioned a fancy I do said my friend Annabelle Lee I repeated I was a child and she was a child in this kingdom by the sea and we loved with a love that was more than love I and my Annabelle Lee a love that the winged serifs in heaven coveted her and me the first line might stand, said I for you are only fourteen and I but one and twenty which is quite young youth when compared to the age of the earth but the third and fourth lines are polling and alas you are not my Annabelle Lee always you make me feel indeed that nothing is mine and no surely the winged serifs in heaven do not envy you and me for anything if they do said my friend Annabelle Lee then heaven must needs be very poorly furnished I repeated and this was the reason that long ago in this kingdom by the sea a wind blew out of a cloud chilling my beautiful Annabelle Lee so that her high-born kinsman came and bore her away from me to shut her up in a sepulcher in this kingdom by the sea I imagine times, said I that a chill wind has some time come out of a cloud by night and gone over you no high-born kinsman comes to carry you away but I shiver at the possibility will a high-born kinsman come to carry you away shall you be shut into a grey stone sepulcher no kinsman high or low-born is coming to carry me away said my friend Annabelle Lee kinsman do not carry away things that have no intrinsic value no I believe they don't said I and felt relieved I repeated the angels not half so happy in heaven went envying her and me yes that was the reason as all men know in this kingdom by the sea that the wind came out of the cloud by night chilling and killing my Annabelle Lee but no said I the angels in heaven are surely more than half so happy as you and I more than half said my friend Annabelle Lee they need not send clouds from heaven on that count I repeated but our love it was stronger by far than the love of those who were older than we of many far wiser than we and neither the angels in heaven above nor the demons down under the sea can ever deceiver my soul from the soul of the beautiful Annabelle Lee if you loved anything said I it would be stronger by far than that of some who are older and of very many who may be wiser I don't think wisdom and age have to do with it said my friend Annabelle Lee and the angels in heaven would count for very little in it said I no certainly not the angels in heaven said my friend Annabelle Lee nor the demons down under the sea I asked I don't know about them said my friend Annabelle Lee I repeated for the moon never beams without bringing me dreams of the beautiful Annabelle Lee and the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes of the beautiful Annabelle Lee and so all the night tied I lie down by the side of my darling my darling my life and my bride in her sepulcher there by the sea in her tomb by the sounding sea the first lines said I are well-fitting for you are like to the moon and stars and they are like to you you are with them in the shadow way and if you are out by the sea in a grey stone sepulcher I should stay there near you in the night tide and the day tide you would be there and my heart would set in your direction still more than it had set before said my friend Annabelle Lee for everything is seats to the sea at last those persons said my friend Annabelle Lee who have measures of sorrow which can be joined with the sea are the most fortunate persons of all those measures of sorrow will serve them well and will stand them in good stead on days when all other things said my friend Annabelle Lee who have measures of sorrow which can be joined with the sea are the most fortunate persons of all those measures of sorrow will serve them well and will stand them in good stead on days when all other things desert them if a measure of sorrow is joined with the sea it belongs to the sea and the sea is always there the sea said my friend Annabelle Lee is like a letter from someone whom you have written to after a long silence who you thought might be dead the sea is the measure of sorrow and the measure of sorrow is the sea having once had a measure of sorrow joined with the sea your measure of sorrow will never be separated from the sea the measure of sorrow will sink all of its woe deep into the sea and the sea will be of the same color with it for a measure of sorrow is sufficient to color a great sea the sea will give to the measure of sorrow a bit of wild joy there is no joy in the world like that of the sea for there is enough in it to come out and touch all things in life and life itself and the wild joy will stop shortly only of a scene of death if a life is joined with the sea in spite of all the weariness all the anguish all the heavy days of unrest and all the futile struggling and wasting of nerves there will yet be a wild joy in it all and thrill after thrill of triumph in extreme moments those measures of sorrow that are not joined with the sea must do for themselves and for these reasons those persons who have measures of sorrow that can be joined with the sea are the most fortunate persons of all End of Chapter 16 Chapter 17 of My Friend Annabelle Lee by Mary MacLean this LibriVox recording is in the public domain A lute with no strings the most astonishing thing about my friend Annabelle Lee is that young as she is she seems except for some thing in the past to be absolutely in the present she does not build up for herself things in the future the future is a thing she looks upon with contempt she has not a use for it except perhaps to help form a bitter sentence of words the present she finds before her and she lifts it up and places it upon a table before her and opens it as if it were a book a book with but two pages she seems to find symbols and figures and faint suggestions upon these two pages from which she derives a multitude of ideas and fancies and material to make bitter sentences of words it seems to interest her and it interests me to rare degrees she dwells upon the present she talks of things in the present with inflections of voice that are in sharp contrast to the sentiments she utters the while the expression of her face is inscrutable taken by and large she is an inscrutable person I wonder while I listen does she herself believe these things or is it she is talking to amuse herself but Paphos I feel a vein of truth in each thing that she says I look hard at her to discover signs of irony or insincerity but I can but feel a vein of rancorous truth or a vein of friendly truth or a vein of ancient truth or curious then as she is talking and in the same moment I am wondering I consider what matters it whether or not any of it is true or whether or not she believes it or whether or not I can understand it since she is saying it is she not an exquisite person telling me things in her exquisite voice she carries all before her in the world for she and I make up a small world if she be not brilliant in her talking then that is because that set of sentences would be ruined by brilliancy if she be not profound in her discoursing then that is because her fancy at the time dwells in the light fantastic and would be ruined by profoundness if she be not logical that is because she is exquisite which is quite beyond logic nevertheless when she says what is simple and plain and stupid the look of her face is more than all the look of one saying brilliant things and when she touches lightly upon one thin fancy and another the look of her lily face is above all things profound and when her mood and its expression are most reckless of logic the look of her face is the model of one giving out platitudes in all open candor and reasonableness I have been led by these looks of her face to see some varying visions of my friend Annabelle Lee one is a vision of her as a capable elderly maiden art one who stands ready in sickness and in health to do for me and cooks little meat pies for me and tells me when I'm spending too much money and what to do for a cold one is a vision of her as a playful child companion who is with me in all my summer days and shares all her quaint thoughts with me and asks me countless questions and accepts my dictum as gospel one is a vision of her as a sister one of that kind who has the best of all things in life whilst I must take the poor things one of the kind that is to be married to account from over the seas and I must work and hurry to get her frocks ready for the wedding and then go back to live in a small dead village all the days of my life one is a vision of her as the quiet martyr sister who comes at my call and retires at my bidding and in this part my friend Annabelle Lee walks with exceeding beauty one is a vision of her as a strong elderly friend who stands between me and all icy blasts who lays out my daily life who quiets my foolish excitement with her calmness and wisdom one is a vision of her as one who knows no law who leads me in strange highways and byways and whose mind for me is a labyrinth wherein I walk in piteous confusion one is a vision of her as an extremely wicked person whom I regard with fear whom it behooves me to hate but whom I love one is a vision of her as a woman of any age who is above all uncompromising and unsympathetic if I am joyous she is blessed if I am heavy of art she is blessed if I am full of anticipation she is blessed if I am in despair she is blessed one is a vision of her as a shadow among shadows she is not real I say to myself one day I shall awake and find her vanished without pain and without sadness of farewell and as if she had not been one is a vision of her who is in the world and of the world and like the rest of the world and when I contemplate her thus my thought is the best of all is to be in the world and of the world and like the rest of the world to have the quality of humanness to know the world so well as to be able to select the best of its treasures and to make useful that in it which is useless but all these visions are vapory there is not one of them that is my friend Annabelle tis the expression of her lily face that give me these visions not that which she says not that which she does in truth she is in some way like all visions but each is mingled so much with herself that the type is lost and my friend Annabelle though she sits with the book of the two pages open before her and seems much interested in all that she finds in it has yet the look of one who if anyone asked to borrow the book from her would close it quickly and give it up readily with no regrets and after she had given away the book it seems as if she would pick up a flower from somewhere near and twirl the stem in her thumb and finger and glance out the window not that she had a contempt for the present as for the future but that it seems she is not dependent on the book of the two pages for her thought of it but also there is method in her contempt for the future for she deigns to consider that the future becomes the present as one day follows after another but she touches it not in good faith until it is indeed the present my friend Annabelle at times sits playing upon a little old lute the future, said my friend Annabelle is like a lute with no strings you cannot play upon such a lute and fill the long long corridors in your brain with the thin sweet meaningless music you can but sit stupidly staring into the cavity and thinking how joyous will be the music that shall come forth some day as from time to time your lute is strung with strings whereas you might better at that moment go out into your garden and fill the cavity with tomatoes and make haste with them to market and while you sit dreaming over your stringless lute in your impatience you press upon the stops and press too much and too often so that when at last your lute is strung the stops will not work right but will stick fast to one position and when your other hand touches the strings there will be horrible discord always horrible discord I have never, said my friend Annabelle yet seen anyone dreaming over an unstrung lute who did not finger the stops having said this my friend Annabelle gazed out over my head at the flat green Atlantic Sea and with her hand went upon and about her lute strings and there came out music and the stops worked right like stops that had not been tampered with in the lute's unstrung days and the music that came out was like yellow wine to the head and went not only into the corridors but into the towers as well and low down by the moat and within and without the outer wall and into the dungeon where had not been the music before End of Chapter 17 Chapter 18 of My Friend Annabelle Lee by Mary MacLean this Libravox recording is in the public domain another vision of my friend Annabelle Lee and I have a vision of my friend Annabelle Lee as a princess in a tall, tall castle by the side of the sea a castle made of dull red granite that glows a gorgeous crimson in the light of the setting sun and all day long there is no sign of life about the dull red castle and also the winds are low and the blue water is very quiet far down the shore are only a few gulls flying and wild ducks riding on the waves there is nothing moving on the jagged rocks for miles about the red castle but there are growing in crevices some wild green weeds that are full of fair sweet life and all day the sky is pale blue the windows in the red castle are of a thick dark glass and are grated and mullioned and set about with iron the look of these windows is rigid and bitter and it shuts out everything that is without the battlements of the castle are high and narrow and fearsome looking and dark and very sullen where I upon the battlements I would gladly plunge off from them down upon the rocks some hundreds of feet and be dashed to pieces or into the deep sea but below there is a turret and a belfry but no bell and the turret is a sheltered and safe retreat looking out upon all one who had not been content before in the world might be at last content within the turret of this tall red castle by the side of the sea away at the meeting of the sea and the sky there is a narrow line that is not pale blue like the sky nor dark blue like the sea but is only pale thin air and I look at it expecting to see but in the bright daylight I never know what to expect to see in the line of thin air at the meeting of the pale and the dark and so then all day everything is dead quiet and my friend Annabelle is a princess inside the red castle how fair a princess is my friend Annabelle I fancy her in a beautiful white gown embroidered with gold threads the gown is long and narrow and fits closely about the waist and trails to the ground and upon the left forefinger of the princess a great old silver ring set with an unpolished turquoise the rooms inside the red castle are fit rooms for such a princess they are dark and high and narrow and are adorned with frescoes and wall paintings and the thick windows of dark glass shine with marvellous myriad coloring where the light shows through before some of the windows bits of cut glass are hung and these catch the sunbeams and straight way countless rainbows fall upon the gown and the hands and the hair of the princess when the sun sets a great bar of deep golden light falls from afar upon the red castle and it becomes magnificent with crimson the dark glass of the windows glows like old copper the battlements are tipped with gold and all is like a great flower that has but just bloomed after the sunset has set and the crimson has faded once more from the red castle and the copper from the windows and before the light of day has gone the sea and the sky take on different shades and different meanings and the gulls and the wild ducks come up from far down the shore and the rocks echo with their wild noises the sky is full of flying cloud racks and the water rises high and has crests of white foam but the line at the horizon looks still the same then the princess in her white gown opens a door high up in the tall castle and comes out under the turret she comes forward to the railing and leans upon it with her fair chin resting in her hand I see her there across a long stretch of dark water her white frock gleaming in the pale light so high up and all and a multitude of thoughts come upon me the princess looks at the thin line of sky opposite her and looks so steadfastly that I turn my eyes from her and look there also and now there are manifold scenes there there is a scene of a knight going forth to do battle with his black charger and his shining steel armor and he wears an orange plume in his helmet his going is a brave thing he is in the rising of his youth and strength and for this reason I and the princess on the turret can see him falling gloriously in a fierce battle with death in his veins and the charger wandering off with no rider into the night and the princess looks with envy upon one who can go forth and fall in battle there is a scene of a young woman in a small room working hard and persistently by a dim light at some exquisitely fine needlework upon an immense lilin oplong and her shoulders are bent and her eyes are strained and her hands are weary and her nerves shattered and crying out but she does not leave off her work she and her work are like an ant carrying away a desert grain by grain and like one miserable person building up a pyramid and like one counting all the stars one does not know who's is the linen or why she works or whether money will be given her for it but one may know that verily she will have her reward such people working like that in small rooms and all with weird nerves always have their reward and the princess on the turret looked out at the woman as if she and her linen and her needle with fortunate one there is a scene of French Canadians cutting hay and raking it early in the summer afternoon women and men the day is so beautifully hot and the perfume of the grass is so sweet that a tall red castle by the side of the sea is the durarious place of all the princess looks out from her turret with desolate purple eyes she looks at the ring upon her forefinger and together with her I wonder why all people were not made French Canadians making hay in the fields over their heads is the air of the green French Canadian country under their feet is the soft French Canadian hay and they have appetites for their food there is a scene of a child playing in the mud under a green willow she has a large pewter spoon to dip up great lumps of mud and she takes up the lumps in her two hands and pats them and shapes them and lays them down in rows on a shingle water runs down through the meadow nearby where she sits and she dips it up also in the spoon to thin out the mud the rows of mud cakes on the shingle are very neat and arranged with infinite care the princess forgets to envy the child and her mud cakes in the interest she takes in the making of them her face and her purple eyes even take on an indefinite look of contentment in that she is in the same world with so fit a thing having looked long at the visions the princess takes her eyes from the line of thin sky and looks down into the tumble dark water when all is seen says the princess there is nothing better than wild dark water that is too vast to be measured and that is good for a thousand years and that contains yet as good fish as ever came out of it it gives up pink shells upon the sand in the kindness of its heart and it sends wild whistling gales up to the pinnacles of my red castle to sing for me and to tell me many stories and it has wild winds wandering in and upon the high walls and caves along its rugged coast and if I knew not that they were winds I would surely think them the voices of sea-maid singing high thin piercing voices mingled with the sound of long washing waves and it gives out dreary lonesome cries a loon calling in the night mists a mile away and wild geese honking so that I know there are things in it and upon it a hundred times wilder and lonesomer than I and it sends good ships driving against these great rocks and dashes them to pieces and human beings go down with them to rest for a thousand years in the depths so that I know it loves human beings well and has need of them in the forenoon of a day in july it melts my heart with its glad worn sunshine and dazzles my eyes and fills me with comfort and I know that life is a safe thing when all is seen says the princess there is nothing better thus I have a vision of my friend Annabelle as a princess in a tall red castle by the side of the sea but neither is this my friend Annabelle for she is more fascinating still and her castle is even taller and a deeper red and more than all she is herself end of chapter 18 chapter 19 of my friend Annabelle Lee by mary mclean this LibriVox recording is in the public domain the art of contemplation yesterday my friend Annabelle Lee and I sat comfortably opposite each other at a small table eating our luncheon she was very fair and good-natured and we had tiny broiled fish and some tea with slices of lemon in it and bread and green lettuce sprinkled over with vinegar and oil and red pepper and two mugs of ale food is a lovely thing don't you think said I one of the best ever invented said my friend Annabelle Lee have you considered how much would be gone from life if there were no food and if we had not to eat three times every day yes I've considered it I replied and it's a pleasure that never pauls it is so much more than pleasure said my friend Annabelle Lee it is a necessity and an art and a relaxation and an unburdening and dear me it brings one up to the level of kings or of the beasts that perish I have fancied said my friend Annabelle Lee a deal table set three times every day under a beautiful you tree in a far country the you tree would be in a pasture where cattle are grazing and always when I sat eating at the deal table the cows would stand about watching me sometimes on the deal table there would be brown bread and honey sometimes there would be salt and cantaloupe sometimes there would be a lettuce with vinegar and pepper and oil sometimes there would be whole wheat bread and curds and cream and a brown earthen dish sometimes there would be walnuts and figs sometimes there would be two little broiled fish sometimes there would be peaches sometimes there would be flat white biscuits and squares of brown fudge Sometimes there would be bread and cheese. Sometimes there would be olives and scotch banucks. Sometimes there would be a blue delft pot of chocolate and an egg. Sometimes there would be tea and scones. Sometimes there would be plum cake. Sometimes there would be bread and radishes. Sometimes there would be wine and olives. Sometimes there would be a strawberry tart. I should live over the hill from the yew tree, and I should come there to eat at seven o'clock in the morning, and at one in the afternoon, and at seven in the evening. And meanwhile I should be busy at some work so that my eating would be as if I had earned it. What sort of work would you do?" I asked. I might wash fine bits of lace, said my friend Annabelle Lee, and lay them out upon a sunny grass-plot to bleach and dry, or I might pick berries and take them to market, or I might sit in a doorway making baskets. I should make beautiful little baskets, or I might care for a small garden, or a flock of geese to feed them with grains and keep them from straying away. So many hours must I tend my flock, so many hours must I sport myself, so many hours must I contemplate. I should do all these things while tending my flock, and I should tend my flock well. I should do all my work well so that the food on the deal table under the yew tree would taste as if it had been earned. But would it not be strange? said my friend Annabelle Lee, eating daintily of lettuce and fish. After I had had this way of living in a country of always summer for six months or seven months, oh I should grow vastly weary of it, and not only should I grow weary of the garden or the geese or the baskets and the deal table under the yew tree, but I should grow weary of everything the fair green world could anyway offer. In so many hours that I should contemplate I should arrive at this. There could be nothing better in the way of living than caring for a garden or a flock of geese, and going up a hill to a yew tree to eat three times every day nothing if I do my work faithfully. So then when the gray dawn should break some morning, and I should awaken and find an aching at my heart, I should know that the best has failed me, and I should see the vast weariness with me. Has thou found me out, oh, my enemy, would run over and over in my mind, and all that day the tending of the flocks would be a hard thing, and the apples on the deal table under the yew tree would turn to dust in my mouth. My friend Annabelle Lee laid down her small silver fork, and placed her hands one upon another on her knee, and sat silent. Oh, she was a beautiful, brilliant person sitting there. I wondered haisily, as I watched her, how much of the day's gold sunshine she made up for me, and how much would vanish were she to vanish. Presently she talked again. Much depends, said my friend Annabelle Lee, upon the amount of contemplation that one does in one's way of living, and upon how one's contemplation runs. Contemplation is a thing that does a great deal of mischief, but I dare say that when it as an art is made perfect, it is a rare good thing, and a neat obedience servant, and knows exactly when to enter the mind and when to leave it. And whosoever may have it, thus brought to a state of perfection, is a most fortunate possessor, and must need go bravely down the world. Perhaps now, said my friend Annabelle Lee, when one is a goose girl and goes to eat at a deal table under a green yew tree, one should contemplate only kings in gilded palaces, one should begin at the beginning of a king's life, it may be, and follow it step by step through heaviness and strife until one sees, in one's vivid goose girl fancy, the king at last tottering and white haired and forsaken toward his lonely grave, or else one should contemplate the life of a labourer who must eat husks all his days, and is not worthy of his hire, and goes from bad to worse and becomes a beggar, or else one should contemplate the being of a sweet maid whose life is a fair round rose garden, and the thorns safely hidden and the stems pruned and all, and one should likewise follow her step by step to her grave, or, if one so fancies, to the culmination of all happiness and success. For the idea is that in all one's contemplation, when one is a goose girl, one should contemplate anything and everything except the being and condition of a goose girl, but a better idea still, said my friend Annabelle, would be to not contemplate at all, you know, but eat the radishes and other things under the yew tree, and rejoice at any rate, said my friend Annabelle, we need not contemplate now what with these two little fishes and these green crisp leaves, she picked up her small silver fork again, and went to eating lettuce, and presently we both lifted our mugs of good ale, and drank to that which would be a better idea still. End of chapter 19 Chapter 20 of my friend Annabelle Lee by Mary MacLean. This Lieberbox recording is in the public domain. Concerning little Willie Kattenstein. I had one day given my friend Annabelle Lee the bare outline of the facts in a case, and I asked her if she would kindly make a story from it and tell it to me. So my friend Annabelle Lee told me a little story that also runs in my mind some way in measure and rhythm. There lived in a town in Montana, said my friend Annabelle, not very long ago, in a quiet street, a family of that sort of persons, which is called Jewish, and it is so short a time ago that they are there yet. Their name was Kattenstein. There was Mrs. Kattenstein and Mr. Kattenstein, and the four young children Harry Kattenstein, Leah Kattenstein, and Jenny Kattenstein and little Willie Kattenstein. And there was the hired girl whose name was Emma. And there was Uncle Will, Mrs. Kattenstein's brother, who lived with them. Mrs. Kattenstein was short and dark, and sometimes quite cross, and she always put up fruit in its season with the help of the hired girl, and the kitchen was then very warm. And Mr. Kattenstein was also dark, but was a tall slim man, and was kind and fond of the children, especially the two little girls. Mrs. Kattenstein was fond of the children also, but mostly fond of the two boys. And Harry Kattenstein was much like his mother, only he was not so dark, and he was ten years old. And Leah Kattenstein was ten years old also. The two were twins, and she had an eye for strict economy and wore plain gingham frocks, and had a long dark braid of hair and played with very homely dolls. And Jenny Kattenstein was seven years old, and was most uncommonly fat, and was rarely seen without a bit of unleavened bread in her hand, for the children were allowed to have all that they wanted of unleavened bread. They did not want very much of it, except Jenny, and they all preferred to eat unleavened bread, spread with butter and sprinkled with sugar, but they couldn't have as much as they wanted of that. And little Willie Kattenstein was only four and pronounced all his words correctly, and seemed sometimes possessed of the wisdom of the serpent. He had very curly hair, and it seemed in unwritten law that whenever a grown-up lady passed by and saw the children playing on the walk in front of their house, she must stop and exclaim, What a pretty boy little Willie was and ask him for one of his curls, where at little Willie would stare up into the grown-up lady's face in a most disconcerting fashion, and perhaps ask her for one of her curls. Or if the grocery man or the butcher would stop on his way to the kitchen and ask little Willie what was his name and how old was he? Little Willie would answer with surprising promptness, and directly would ask the grocery man or the butcher what was his name and how old was he? And Emma, the hired girl, was raw-boned and big-fisted and frightfully cold-blooded and unsympathetic, and she had a sister who came to see her and sat in the hot kitchen talking while Emma paired potatoes or scrubbed the floor. The sister's name was Julie, and she sometimes brought strange green candy to the children, which their mother never allowed them to eat, and sometimes Julie brought them a chewing gum, which they were not allowed to chew. And Uncle Will was a short stout man with a face that was nearly always flushed. He seemed fond of beer. There were a great many cases of beer in the cellar, which belonged to Uncle Will. And there were cases full of beer bottles that had all been emptied, and the children would have liked to sell the bottles, but they were not allowed to sell the bottles. Uncle Will was also fond of Little Willie, and on summer evenings when he and Mr. Kattenstein were at home, and after they had eaten dinner, Uncle Will might have been heard inviting Little Willie in his hoarse, facetious voice to come and have a glass of beer with him. And when Little Willie, with his short curls and his small white suit, would come and just taste of the beer, and would make a rye mouth and shed a few abortive tears over its bitterness, Uncle Will would laugh very heartily and jovially indeed. Mrs. Kattenstein had a great many ducks and geese in the backyard, and spent much time among them, fattening them to eat and fussing over them in the Four Noons, so the children never played there in the Four Noon. There were a great number of things that the Kattenstein children were not allowed to do. The things they were allowed to do were as nothing by comparison, and the things they were allowed to do were, for the most part, things that they did not care about. They had each a square iron bank in which were ever so many silver quarters and dimes and half dollars and nickels and gold pieces too, for they were a Jewish family. Their father and their Uncle Will kept dropping coins into the little slits in the top of the bank from time to time, and friends of the family would also kindly contribute, and their uncles and aunts would send money for that purpose all the way from Cincinnati. So there was wealth in these banks, but the children were not allowed to have any of it, and they were never given any money to throw away buying things, as their mother said, except a nickel once in a long while, one nickel for the four of them. And there were toys that their father and mother and Uncle Will had bought for them, and others that were sent by the uncles and aunts in Cincinnati, but they were never allowed to play with them. The toys were kept in a large black walnut bureau in their mother's bedroom. There was a small tinkling piano that Leah Catenstein's Aunt Barbara had sent to her, or that had been sent to her parents in trust for her. And there was a little engine that would run on a track which had once been given to Harry Catenstein, and there was an immense wax doll which had fallen to Jenny Catenstein's lot. And little Willie Catenstein was the reputed owner of a small mechanical circus with tiny wooden acrobats and horses and a musical box beneath the platform, and there were other toys of all kinds, for the relatives in Cincinnati had been lavish, but the children were not allowed to make use of them, so they languished in the black walnut bureau. And Harry Catenstein had a fine gold watch that his mother had given him, but he was not allowed to wear it or even look at it, it was kept in a jewel case in her bedroom. And Leah Catenstein had a fine gold watch that her grandmother in Cincinnati had sent. But she was not allowed to wear it or even look at it, it was kept in her mother's jewel case. And Jenny Catenstein had a fine gold watch that her aunt Rebecca had sent, but she was not allowed to wear it or even look at it, it was kept in her mother's jewel case. And little Willie Catenstein had a fine gold watch that Uncle Will had bought for him, and Uncle Will, who was a privileged character in the house, would sometimes take Little Willie's watch for Mrs. Katenstein's jewel case and give it to Little Willie to wear in the evening when the family was gathered in the dining room. And Uncle Will would drink his beer and ask Little Willie what time was it? But before Mrs. Katenstein put Little Willie to bed, she replaced the watch carefully in the jewel case. The children had a great many such possessions, but what they really had to play with was a small, much battered wagon, which they put to many uses in the course of a day. Sometimes it was a fire engine, and sometimes a hose cart, and sometimes a motor car, and sometimes a carriage, and sometimes an ambulance, and sometimes a go-cart for Lea Katenstein's homely dolls, which by some strange chance were hers to do with as she would, they were not of excessive value. And sometimes for a patrol wagon, and sometimes for a water cart. They had also a little rocking chair with which they played house on the porch. Both the chair and the wagon were much overlooked and were most pathetic in appearance. The children often grew weary of playing always with these two things and languished for other amusement. Sometimes Lea Katenstein subsided into the rocking chair with her homely dolls in her lap and talked to them seriously, telling them many things which would be of use to them all their lives, and instilling into them strict rules of economy. And sometimes Harry Katenstein sat on the lowest step of the porch with the nozzle of the long rubber hose which was attached to the faucet at the side of the house, and with which Mr. Katenstein, or Uncle Will, watered the grass in the evening. The children were not allowed to water the grass, but there was usually water enough trickling from the hose for Harry Katenstein to make little whirlpools on the steps, which he did, causing loss of life among bugs of diverse kinds. And sometimes Jenny Katenstein, with her inevitable bit of unleavened bread, sat on the top step, moon-faced and pudgy, resting from her labours. And sometimes little Willie Katenstein climbed up and sat upon the post at the bottom of the stoop and kicked it viciously with his heels. He often sat there kicking, as could be plainly seen, by the dents in the post. One warm day the Katenstein children were thus languishing after having played hard with the wagon, and Emma was ironing in the kitchen. Their mother was away for the afternoon, and the children had a delightful sense of freedom, even with the grim, big-fisted Emma in charge. Only they wished they had a nickel. Harry Katenstein said that if they had a nickel, he should certainly go down to Groves a block and a half away and purchase some brown and white cookies, at which little Willie Katenstein and Jenny Katenstein, more especially Jenny Katenstein, smacked her lips, and Leah Katenstein sighed and remarked that Harry's extravagance was very discouraging. Presently wonderful to relate, Emma appeared around the corner from the kitchen with four thick slices of bread and butter, slightly sprinkled with sugar, and the children gazed very eagerly in her direction. Jenny Katenstein dropped her piece of unleavened bread and half started to meet Emma, but thought better of it, knowing Emma's ways. Emma distributed the slices of bread and fastened little Willie Katenstein's hat on more firmly with the elastic under his chin, and informed the children that if they knew what was good for themselves, they would not get into any mischief while she had charge of them. Then she went back to her ironing. The children were delighted with their bread and butter, and their imagination played lightly about it. My bread and butter's raspberry ice cream, said Harry Katenstein. My bread and butter's chocolate ice cream, said Leah Katenstein, waxing genial. My bread and butter's vanilla ice cream, said Jenny Katenstein. But little Willie Katenstein said never a word for his bread and butter seemed very good to him as bread and butter. Their bread and butter some way put new life into them, and made them more fully awake to the fact that their mother was away for the afternoon. After all, they were not afraid of anyone but their mother, and she being gone, should they not enjoy life for once? When they had finished eating, they had a brilliant idea. I'm going to shake a nickel out of my bank, said Harry Katenstein. I'm going to shake a nickel out of my bank, said Leah Katenstein, in surprising luxury of spirit. I'm going to shake a nickel out of my bank, said Jenny Katenstein. And little Willie Katenstein said never a word, but ran at the first inkling of the idea immediately to the dining room where the four banks were standing on the mantle above the fireplace and pushed up a chair and took down his own green bank. And then he slid back the little piece of iron that was just under the slot in the top of the bank and shook, shook, shook with very little noise and low. Not a nickel, but a five dollar gold coin rolled out on the floor. And then Harry Katenstein and Leah Katenstein and Jenny Katenstein rushed in and seized their banks and began shaking, shaking with much clank clank of silver and gold against iron for was not their mother far from them whilst little Willie Katenstein stood by with his gold piece clasped tight in his hand. Even his young intelligence knew its marvelous value and he thought it was wise not to reveal his treasure to Leah Katenstein's horrified gaze. I'm going down to groves and buy gumdrops with my nickel, said Harry Katenstein, pounding and shaking, but never a nickel appeared for the reason that he had forgotten the little iron slide which only once in a while fell away from under the slot and never at the right time. I'm going down to groves and buy a long licorice pipe with my nickel, said Leah Katenstein. A long licorice pipe was the very most she could get for her money, also shaking and pounding fruitlessly, for she too had forgotten the little iron slide. I'm going down to groves and buy some cookies with my nickel, said Jenny Katenstein, likewise pounding and shaking and forgetting the little iron slide. And little Willie Katenstein said never a word. But when he had learned what to buy with his money, he ran out of the front door and down the street to groves on the corner. Now when Harry Katenstein and Leah Katenstein and Jenny Katenstein considered and rejoiced over the absence of their mother, they forgot at the same time to consider and fear the perilous nearness of Emma ironing in the kitchen, the kitchen being next to the dining room. Suddenly, while they were in the midst of their work and shaking and pounding away for dear life unconscious of all else, the door leading into the kitchen was pushed open with ominous quiet and the head of Emma appeared. It was an unprepossessing head at all times, and it was a dangerous looking head at that moment. Harry Katenstein and Leah Katenstein and Jenny Katenstein perceived this vision at once and an appalling silence like the tomb followed the clamor that had been. So this is what you're up to, you young limbs, said Emma and swooped down and pounced upon them before they could possibly escape, though they had made for the door with very creditable speed. Emma held them with one hand while she picked up the banks with the other. She remarked in unmeasured terms upon the condition of the waxed dining room floor, upon the vicious qualities of some children whom she mentioned by name, upon what would happen to them when their mother came home and upon what was going to happen to them right away. And she led them upstairs to their mother's bedroom and after shaking them well, locked them in and went downstairs, carrying the key with her. Meanwhile, little Willie Katenstein had gone upon his interesting errand at Groves on the corner. He went into the shop and stood before a glittering glass case of things. "'And what'll it be for Master Katenstein today?' said the man behind the glittering case. "'I want gumdrops and licorice pipes and cookies and some watermelons,' said little Willie Katenstein, and laid the shining gold coin before the grocer's astonished eyes for the grocer, had expected to see the Katenstein semi-occasional nickel, nothing more or less. "'Is this yours, Mr. Katenstein?' said the grocer, eyeing the coin with suspicion. "'Of course it's mine,' said little Willie Katenstein impatiently, and I want the things right away. "'Well, I suppose it's all right, my boy,' said the grocer. "'If it isn't, one of us will have to suffer, I guess.' "'Now, what did you say you wanted?' Little Willie Katenstein repeated his order and added other items. "'Now, Mr. Katenstein,' said the grocer, you never will be able to carry all that. "'That'll make a pile of stuff. "'Better run back and get your little wagon,' for he knew the Katenstein wagon, having often placed in it a paper of sugar or a sack of salt or three tins of something according to Mrs. Katenstein's order for the children to draw home. So little Willie Katenstein ran back and got the little wagon from the front yard and the man loaded the things into it. "'Must be going to have a picnic,' he observed. There was certainly a pile of stuff. There were long licorice pipes, enough in the wagon, to suffite the appetites of the four Katensteins for many a day, and the name of the gumdrops was Legion. And there were two watermelons, and cookies enough to satisfy even Jenny Katenstein's capacious desire. Also there were nuts and some despetic-looking pies, and the great many little dogs and cats and elephants made of a very tough kind of candy, which all the Katenstein children thought perfectly lovely. Also there were figs in boxes and chocolate drops, and red and white sticks of candy, flavored with peppermint, fit to make one's mouth water. And all these things were in surprising quantity, and made so heavy a load that Willie Katenstein was hard put to it to drag it up the street. But little Willie Katenstein had strong little arms, and he and the wagon made slow and sure progress back to the Katenstein's home. The grocer stood out in front of his shop, gazing after the boy, and the boy's wagon and the wagon's contents, with a puzzled and somewhat dubious smile. Little Willie Katenstein proceeded into his front yard with the wagon, and around to the back on the side of the house where the kitchen door was not. He dragged the wagon quietly on to the farthest end of the back yard, and opened the gate of the pen made of lads, where Mrs. Katenstein's ducks and geese were kept. He drew the wagon in and back behind the duck house and left it. Then little Willie Katenstein closed the lath gate, and ran to find Harry Katenstein and Leah Katenstein and Jenny Katenstein and invite them to the feast. But they were nowhere to be found. He hunted about in the house and out of doors, but there was no sign of them, and for some reason he thought he would not ask Emma questions touching on their whereabouts. So having hunted for his relatives all that he thought best, little Willie Katenstein could but go out on the highways and byways and call in the lame, the halt, and the blind. Accordingly he slipped through the fence and went back into the alleyway, to the house immediately behind his own, in search of Bill and Katie Kelly, two Irish friends of the Katenstein children with whom they were not allowed to play. Bill and Katie Kelly, to be sure, were neither lame nor halt nor blind, but were very sound in limb and constitution, and were extremely responsive to little Willie Katenstein's invitation to come to the feast. Feasts were things that Bill and Katie Kelly reveled in when they had the opportunity. So in company with little Willie Katenstein, he in his curls and his white suit, and the two in very dingy raiment, they hide them through the fence to the feast. They reached the duck yard without being seen by Emma, the arch enemy, and found the little wagon safe, and the ducks and geese staring and peering and stretching their necks at it, and its contents with much curiosity. This curiosity on the part of the fowls must have changed to amazement when they beheld the attack made on the wagon and the strange things in the way of eating that followed. How Bill and Katie Kelly did eat and how they reveled, and little Willie Katenstein literally waded in gumdrops and long licorice pipes. They began the feast with pie. From pie they went at figs. From figs they transferred to the trough little animals, and from that to cookies, and from cookies to long licorice pipes. Then they stopped eating consecutively and went at the entire feast haphazard. They ate fast and furiously for several minutes. Then the first ardor of the feast subsided, and little Willie Katenstein, for one, seemed to lose all interest not only in feasts, but in the world at large. He sat back upon a box which contained a duck sitting on 12 eggs and looked at the ground with the air of one who has some way lost his perspective. Bill and Katie Kelly still ate, but more it seemed from a sense of duty to themselves than from appetite, and presently, their eating became desultery and they began to throw remnants of the feast to the fowls. These at first gazed a scance at the extraordinary food thus lavished upon them, but finally went at it badly as if they too reveled in feasts. Mrs. Katenstein's face must need have been a study. Could she have seen her cherished ducks and geese stuffing their crops with licorice pipes and gumdrops? But Mrs. Katenstein was out for the afternoon. While these things were happening in her duck yard, no less interesting ones were taking place upstairs in her bedroom, where Harry Katenstein and Leah Katenstein and Jenny Katenstein were prisoners of Emma. At first they merely sat on the window seat and discussed the several untoward things they had wished would happen to Emma. Having hanged, drawn, and quartered that liberal proportioned lady until they could know more, they felt better. Then they looked over their mother's room in search of amusement, with the result that the black walnut bureau containing the toys with which they were not allowed to play was made to give forth the wealth of its treasures. The floor of Mrs. Katenstein's bedroom presented a motley appearance. Jenny Katenstein even forgot to miss her bit of unleavened bread in her excitement over the fact that she actually was holding her own huge wax doll in her lap. And the circus and the steam engine and the tinkling piano and the tea sets and the barking dogs and the picture books and the manifold other things were at last put to those uses for which they had been destined. And they even went to the jewel case and got out their watches. But Harry Katenstein and Leah Katenstein and Jenny Katenstein, though they were pleasantly excited, were yet highly uneasy in their minds. They knew they had yet to render up payment for the day's business. The rest of the tale is obvious enough, said my friend Annabelle Lee, laughing gently and changing her tone. But please tell it, said I, with much eagerness. Well then, said my friend Annabelle Lee. The afternoon waned and Mrs. Katenstein came home. She heard unusual noises in her beloved duck yard and fled thither as fast as her goodly proportions would allow. Her eyes met a sight which was maddening to them. They beheld little Willie Katenstein looking decidedly pale and puffy, sitting weakly on a box containing a setting duck and two objectionable Kelly children. Actually, at that moment, feeding her choicest goose with gumdrops. Scattered all about the once neat duck yard was rubbish in frightful variety and a half dozen of her tiny ducklings were busy at an atrocious watermelon. Certainly no one but those Irish young ones could have brought in so much litter. It did not take Bill and Katie Kelly long to gather that they were not wanted there. Mrs. Katenstein quite quenched for the time their fondness for feasts. As they went, she ordered them to take their vile belongings with them which they were willing enough to do as much of them as they could carry. They bestowed an apprehensive glance on little Willie Katenstein, but little Willie Katenstein's face was only pale, puffy, and very passive. Having dispersed the Kelly's, Mrs. Katenstein led her son into the house and stopped in the kitchen to demand of Emma why she allowed such things to happen and ordered her to go at once and clean out the duck yard. Emma obeyed, first giving up Mrs. Katenstein's bedroom key and explaining her own possession of it. Then Mrs. Katenstein, after doctoring little Willie Katenstein's poor little stomach and laying him neatly out on a sofa in a cool dark room, went on to her own room, once preceded unusual noises, unlocking and opening the door a sight the like of which she had not of late years down overwhelmed her spirit. The short dead silence that followed her appearance on the threshold was but emphasized by the merry tinkling of the gay little circus which had been wound up and would not stop, even under the dark influence of impending tragedy. Well, said my friend Adebelli, the case of Harry Katenstein and Leah Katenstein and Jetty Katenstein was attended to by their mother. She whipped them all soundly and sent them to bed. But as for little Willie Katenstein, not looking in the least pale or puffy, he sat that evening after dinner on Uncle Will's lap wearing his own fine gold watch out of the jewel case and being continually invited to have a glass of beer. But in the kitchen Emma was telling Julie that though she had once thought a great deal of little Willie Katenstein, she now honestly believed him to be the very worst one of the four. That story, said my friend Adebelli, was very tiresome. You shouldn't ask me to tell you stories. I am sorry if it tired you, said I, but the story was entirely fascinating. It was exactly like the Katensteins and you telling a story of the Katensteins are delicately, oh delicately incongruous. Were you ever at a feast in the Katenstein Duckyard? said my friend Adebelli. Yes indeed, said I, along with Bill and Katie Kelly at the age of 11 and I have seen every toy in the Black Walnut Bureau. And which would you, said my friend Adebelli, to be at a feast with the Katensteins at the age of 11 or here, now, with me? When all said, said I, here with you, now, by far. It is very good of you, said my friend Adebelli and looked at me with her purple eyes. End of chapter 20, chapter 21 of My Friend Adebelli by Mary MacLean. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. A Bond of Sympathy. Having told me stories, my friend Adebelli demanded that I should write a bit of verse to read to her. My verse is rather rotten verse and I told her so. She replied that the fact of its being rotten had but little to do with the matter. That most verse was rotten anyway and usually the more rotten, the better it suited the reader. She was in that mood. So I wrote some lines and read them to her. There was nothing else to do. She had been kind in telling me stories, though probably she told them because it amused her. When I finished reading, she said that the verse was not rotten at all. She, for her part, would call it not yet quite ripe. That's the verse, said my friend Adebelli. As for the meaning of the words in it, that betrays many things. The most vivid thing it betrays is your age. It shows that you have passed over the period of 19 and have arrived at exactly one in 20 and therefore it is a triumphant bit of verse. Don't you know, said my friend Adebelli. How much verse there is thrown upon the world that means nothing whatsoever. And so when one does happen upon a bit of it that tells even the smallest thing, like the height of the writer or the color of his hair, then one feels repaid. And your verse tells still other things, said my friend Adebelli. One is that you still think, as we've agreed once before, of that which will one day open wondrously for you. I did not agree to that, you know, said I. Well, then I agreed to it for both of us, said my friend Adebelli. And your verse betrays that so plainly that one has led to feel that there are persons who grow more hopeful with each bit of darkness that comes to them. If your life were all fire and sunshine, you would write very different verse and if it told anything at all, it would tell that while you looked forward to still more fire and sunshine, you would somehow know you are not really to have anymore, but that it would grow less and less in the years. And by the time you were an old lady and still not nearly ready to die, it would give out entirely. That would be by the law of compensation, said I, and it would require a great deal of fire and sunshine in her early life to compensate anyone who had grown into an old lady and had run out of it. So it would, said my friend Adebelli. Now when you grow old, though you will never be that which is called an old lady, you will be quite mellow and probably the less you have to be mellow over, the mellower you will be. I don't wish to be that way, said I. I think that kind of person is pitiful, living year after year. You'll not be pitiful, said my friend Adebelli. You cannot be mellow and pitiful at the same time. It may be that to be mellow is the best thing and the most comfortable. It may be that people struggle through a long life with but one object in their minds. To be mellow in their old age, this verse certainly sounds as if you were looking forward to it. I can't see that it sounds that way at all, said I. Of course you can't, said my friend Adebelli. You wrote the verse and you are but you. And what are some of the other things that it betrays? I inquired. It betrays, said my friend Adebelli, that you are better in detail than you are in the entire. And if that is true of you, in one thing it is true of you in everything. I daresay your friends find things in you that they like extremely, but you in the entire that they look upon as something that has much to acquire. Not my friends, said I. Yes, your friends, said my friend Adebelli, that is the bitter thing for a verse to show. I made my answer. And a bitter thing to have in my mind. Well, and aren't you wise enough to prefer the bitter things to the sweet things? Said my friend Adebelli. For every sweet thing that you have in your mind, it is yours to pay a mighty bitter price, whereas the bitter things are valuable possessions. And if it is true about your friends, of course, you wish to know it. No, said I, I don't wish to know it. But at least, said my friend Adebelli, with a wonderful softening of her voice into something that was sincere and enchanting. Believe what I told you about it, for in that case, you and I have that good gift, a bond of sympathy. For if I had friends of that kind, they would look upon me as something with much to acquire, very sure. But don't, said my friend Adebelli hastily. Consider the bond of sympathy a sweet thing. Remember the mighty bitter price. I will believe what you said about the friends, said I, and it is bitter enough to purge my soul for a time. The bond of sympathy is not a sweet thing anyway. I don't expect to have to pay for it, and it brings a feeling of restfulness. A bond of sympathy, said my friend Adebelli, comes already paid for. It does very well. It is not sweet. It tastes more like a cigarette or an olive. About the verse, said my friend Adebelli. Please, let's not talk about that anymore, said I. Whatever you like, said my friend Adebelli, and we talked of George Sand and her books. But anyway, this was my bit of unripe verse. Yesterday my star went down in the deep shadows. It went lightly, like the rippling of water, and many tiny, dear things went with it, and I watched them. I knew that my star would never rise again. Yesterday my star went down in the deep shadows. It went softly, like the half-lights of evening, and as it went my frantic thoughts, pursued it without hoping. I knew that my star would never rise again. Yesterday my star went down in the deep shadows. It went tenderly, like my friend who loves me. But since it's gone the way shows dark, my two eyes are tired watching. I know that my star will never rise again. End of chapter 21. Chapter 22 of My Friend, Annabelle Lee by Mary MacLean. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Message of a Tender Soul. The Message of a Tender Soul, said my friend Annabelle Lee, is a thing that will go far, oh so far, and lose nothing of itself. When all things in the world are counted, the beautiful things are in the greatest numbers. And when all the things in the world are counted, the Message of a Tender Soul counts greatly more than many. A tender soul receives back no gratitude for its message, and looks for no gratitude, and does not know what gratitude means. And the tenderness of the Message is all unmade and all unknown, but is felt for long, long years. The Message of a Tender Soul goes over the sea into the lonesomeness of the night, and nothing stops it on the way, for all know what it is and bid at God's speed. And it goes down and around a mountain to a house where there is woe, and if before it came that house had turned away charity, and love, and friendship, and goodwill, and peace, and had sent a curse after them all, still it opens wide its doors for the Message of a Tender Soul. For its coming is not heralded, and the soul that sends it does not even know its tenderness, and the hearts of all in that house where there is woe, they are deeply unknowingly comforted. And it goes upon the barrenness of a countryside where there is not one green thing growing, and the barrenness is then more than paradise, had paradise no such message. And it goes where lovely flowers grow in thousands, where sparkling waters mingles with sparkling water and quenches thirst, where the long gray moss hangs from birch trees, where pale clouds float, and itself is more beautiful than all these. Have you felt all those tender things that go down into the depths? They bring comfort, but also they bring tears into the eyes and pain into the heart. The Message of a Tender Soul, what does it bring but ineffable comfort to the heart? You do not feel that it is a message. You do not feel it to be a divinely beautiful thing. There are no sudden salt tears. Only the Message is there. Only it does that for which it is sent. Have you gone out and done all the work that you could do, and done it faithfully and asked no reward? And have you come back and cried out in bitterness of spirit? Then it may be came wondrously beautiful things from over the way to tell you. Take heart, but there was no take heart for you. That it may be there came from that way, which you were not looking. The Message of a Tender Soul. Then there was comfort and with no tears of pain and no bitter, bitter tears of joy. There was deep comfort so that you could go out and work again and for no reward. There is work that has no reward. For those that work for no reward, there can be no comfort in all the vastness, except the Message of a Tender Soul. Have you gone out and done all the evil you could do in cruel ways and taken away faith in someone from someone? And have come back and suffered more than any of them? Then it may be there came the Message of a Tender Soul and many, many other things faded from your heart. And still there were no tears, yet there is too much for you in living. And if the countless things near and far in the world crowd over you and fill you with horrible fear, then if the Message of a Tender Soul comes, one by one, they step backward and in your heart is comfort for the long, long years. There have been those that have had happiness that was more than the world, but in the end there was no comfort for their happiness brought with it tears of joy and emotion that had limitless source. If you have wanted happiness and have hungered and thirsted after there came the Message of a Tender Soul you were content with a branch from a green pine tree. If you have felt a thousand tender things and have drunk from a thousand cups and then have been about to write it in black lettering that all, all have failed you. If then there came the Message of a Tender Soul you have written instead that nothing has failed you and you have turned back your footsteps and have tried it all again. If for you and me today there should come over frozen hills and green meadows from a far country the Message of a Tender Soul. Should we shiver when it is dark and should we dread the coming of the years and should we consider what would bring weariness and what would bring rest and should we measure and contemplate? But no, for the Message of a Tender Soul is a Message from one that has found the quiet and is absolutely at peace and has gone so far toward the stars and so far and wide over the green earth that she has indeed reached the truth and her soul gives its tenderness without thinking and without knowing and all in the dark and when we should feel the Message all without knowing there would come again that long since faith and that fullness of life and that sense of realness and the shining of the sun would be of new meaning. It may be, said my friend Annabelle that we will have to go still farther into the wilderness before the Message comes and it may be also that it will not come for many years but it is in all ways comforting to know there is such a thing. More than I considered the Message that might come I considered the voice with no hardness but with softness and the lily face of my friend Annabelle Lee. End of chapter 22. Chapter 23 of My Friend Annabelle Lee by Mary McClain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Me, to my friend Annabelle Lee. I wrote the day before yesterday this letter to my friend Annabelle Lee, Montreal. My dear fair lady, since I have come to stay in Montreal for a time and you still in Boston I have seen you times even more vividly than when I was there. You come into my dreams at dead of night. Can you imagine what you are in my dreams? I look forward impatiently to the end of my time here so that I may go to find you again but my impatience grows some way less when I think that if I am with you this vision may vanish from my dreams. I will write to you some of the things I have found here. There is much in Montreal that takes me back into the dim mists, the wonderful days when I had lived only three years. It was not here but farther west. Still what is in Canada is Canadian and does not change nor vary. This Canadian land and water and air awakens shadow things in my memory and visions and voices of the world as it was when I was three. It is all exceeding fair to look upon about here. The fields are green, not as they are in Massachusetts but as they might be in the south of France. There is beautiful broad blue river that can be seen from far off and it sends out a haze and then all is gray French country and gray French villages. When you come near you see the French peasants working in the fields, old men in maidens and very old, strange-looking women all with no English words in their mouths and no English thing in their lives if they can avoid it. They wear brass rings on their hands and in their ears and the women wear gay-colored fish-wife petticoats and in all their faces and eyes is that look that comes from working always among vegetables in the sun. The look of a piteous useless brain and there is the strange, long, tree-covered hill that they call Mount Royal. I have in my mind a picture of it in a bygone century when an adventurous, brave Frenchman and a few Indians of the wild stood high at its summit. He was with the French flag unfurled in the wind and the Indians shading their eyes and looking off and down into the valley and there was not one sign of human life in the valley and all was wild growth and tangled under brush and death-like silence except maybe for the far-off sound of flying wild hooves in the forest and now this hill is the lodging place of many things hidden among the trees. Convents set about with tall, thick, solid stone walls and inside the walls are heavy, swathed, nuns who have said their farewell to all things without and there are hospitals founded and endowed in the name of the Virgin and Jesuit colleges and the lodges of priests and brotherhoods and in the midst of the St. Louis Valley where the Indians looked down in this old, grey stone city and in the placed arms square is a fine triumphant statue of Marseneuve with his French flag. This grey stone city is builded thick with grey stone cathedrals and some of them are very fine and some of them are party-coloured as rainbows inside and all of them are Roman Catholic and French. The Protestant churches are about churches and the Notre Dame Cathedral when the setting sun touches its grey tall, grey twin towers with red is even more than French and Roman Catholic. The white-faced women in the nunnery at the side of it must need have a likeness of those eternal towers graven on their narrow devout hearts. Within the Notre Dame is most gorgeous with brilliant coloured saints and virgins and a passion of wealth and Romanism and is it not wonderful to think that many of these grey stone buildings and dwellings were here in the 1600s and that grey nuns walked in these same green gardens two centuries ago and the same country was about here and the same blue water. And when all is said, the country and the blue water have been here always and are the most wonderful things of all. If the grey stone buildings were of yellow, gold and of emeralds and brilliance, the green country would be no fair and no less exquisitely fair and the blue of the water would go no deeper into the hot and no less deep and the pale clouds would float high and gently with the same old-time mystery and the centuries they know are countless. The natural things are the same in Massachusetts but here they seem some way even older. You feel the breath of the very long ago among the wildness of green as if only human beings had come and gone but it had never changed its smallest twig or grass blade. It seems but waiting and its patience in the waiting is without end. Away on the other side of the tree-covered mountain I have seen a flat, gently curved country road with the sunshine upon it and a few little English sparrows alighting and flying along it and picking at grains and the grass of the roadside was tall and rank and sweet to the senses and the road led to farms and the river and the wild wood. Cows were feeding by a shallow brook and there were sumac bushes thick and dark nearby. For several minutes when my eyes rested upon this I felt absolutely content with all of life. While I'm telling you this Annabelle I am not quite sure you're listening and for myself I see you much more than anything I have talked about. I am wondering how it is possible that you have lived only 14 years even the 14 years of a Japanese woman and I see again in my mind your red lips and your dead black hair and your purple eyes and your wonderful hands and your forehead with the widow's peak and the two short side locks that curve around and your slimness in the scarlet and golden-breaded gown and most of all I see your eyes when they are full of soft purple shadows and your lips when they are tender and your heart as I have seen it before and its depths which are of the white purity. Last night there was the vision of you with your purple eyes wide and gazing down at me with the white lids still and I was horror struck at the look of world weariness in them. How that is terrible. How that it follows one into the darkness in light. How that it is grief and rage and madness. How that it makes the heart ache until all the life nerves ache with it and there is no end. How that it is life and death and one cannot escape. A world of tears and entreating and vows but no there is no escape. And then again I looked up at your purple eyes gazing down at me full of strong high scorn and triumph. Do you think we have not conquered life they said? Do you think we cannot crush out all the little demons that presume to torture? Do you think we cannot conquer everything? Who is there that we have not known? Where is there that we have not been? Are there any still, still shadows that we have cringed before? Are there any brilliant lights upon the sky that we have not faced boldly and put aside? And the stones and the stars and the myths on the sea are less, less than we. We are the greatest things of all. Thus your two eyes when I slept and when I woke I saw you again as you have looked so many times. The expression of your red lips and your voice with vague bitterness and your lily face inscrutable. I shall see you so again many times, my friend Annabelle. The fact remains that I am in Montreal and Canada and as the days run along I am reminded that I have in me the old Canadian instincts. The word Canadian has always called up in my mind a confused throng of things like porridge for tea and Sir Hugh MacDonald and Dominion Day and my aunt Elizabeth MacLean and old fashioned pictures of Her Majesty the Queen and Orange Men's Day and Good Night for Good Evening and Reel of Cotton for Spool of Thread and Tin instead of Can and Canadian Cheese and Rosberries in a Patent Pale and the Queen's Own in Toronto and Soldiers in Red Coats and Children in Scotch Kilts and Jamtarts and Barley Sugar and Whitefish from Lake Winnipeg and the CPR and the Parliament at Ottawa and Coasting and Toboggan's and Lord Aberdeen and everything coming over from England so much better and cheaper than American wear and all that sort of thing and my mind has always had a colour for Canada a shade of mingled deep green and golden brown even in Montreal where so much is French there is enough to stamp it as beyond question Canadian. One still sees marks of Her Majesty the Queen but shopkeepers assert confidently that Edward is going to make a good King and Canadian men are made up as nearly as possible after his pattern, stout and with that short pointed beard. In the greenness of Dominion Square is the most beautiful piece of sculpture I have seen. All the statues that stand about it in Montreal are finer than most of their kind and there are no such hideous creations as are set up in Boston and New York. The Dominion Square statue is a bronze figure of Sir John A. MacDonald. The face of the figure is all that is serene and benign and the lines of the body and of the hands are made with strength and beauty. Whether it is like Sir John A. MacDonald one does not know. It is enough that it's an exquisite piece of workmanship with which to adorn a city and the Moussineuve statue is a fine, handsome thing and is altogether alive. The bronze is no bronze but has 17th century red blood in its veins and the arm that is held high and the hand with the flag mean conquest and victory. I shall see Quebec and the length of the Blue River before I see you again and they, like Montreal, will be mingled with a many tinted looking forward to being with you again. High upon the tower of a gray stone building that I see from my window is a carved gorgon's head, a likeness of Medusa with sneaky locks. She is hundreds of feet above me as I sit here but I see the expression of her face plainly. It is desolate and discouraging. It says, do you think you will see that fair lily Annabelle again? Well then, how foolish are you in your day and generation. I in my years have seen the passing of many fair lilies, always they pass. Tell me, Annabelle, always do they pass. But no, I shall find you again. You will make all things many tinted for a thousand thousands of gold days. And are we not good friends in a way and manner? And do we not go the footpath way together? But I wonder always why the gorgon seems so fearfully knowing. Always my love to you, Mary MacLean. End of chapter 23. Chapter 24 of My Friend Annabelle by Mary MacLean. This LibreVox recording is in the public domain. My friend Annabelle, to me. And after some days my friend Annabelle wrote me this upon a square of rice paper. Boston Monday. Dear Mary MacLean, don't you know a gorgon is the knowingest thing in the land. You may believe what your friend says of fair lilies but have I ever said that I am a fair lily? As for my eyes, they are good chiefly to see with and they are bad for many things. Yes, get the home soon, child. I miss you when I come to deck me mornings with my lavender slip and my scarlet frock. And the gold margarites have not been brushed since you went away. Not have I to bear me company except Ellen, the faithful little tan deer. And she cannot wait upon me and she cannot worship me. What has done with Martha Gonarelle, the cat? I would feign you had left her here. But Mary MacLean, you, do you know about it? Your friend Annabelle Lee. End of chapter 24. Chapter 25 of My Friend Annabelle Lee by Mary MacLean. This LibreVox recording is in the public domain. The golden ripple. My friend Annabelle Lee and I are similar to each other in a few, few ways. Daily we contemplate together a great blank wall built up of dull blue stones. It stands before us and we cannot get over it, for it is too high. Neither can we walk around it, for it is too long. And we cannot go through it, for it is solid and very thick. It is directly across the road. We have both come but a short way on the road. So short that we can easily look back over our course to point where we started. We did not walk together from there, but we have met each other now before the great blank wall of blue stones. We have stopped here, for we cannot go on. I wonder and conjecture much about the wall. And my friend Annabelle Lee regards it sometimes with interest and sometimes with none. And at times we forget all about the wall and merely sit and rest in the shade it casts or walk back on the road or in the grass about it or pluck a few wild sweetberries from the stunted wayside briars. And two, when a thunderstorm comes up and the air is full of wind and rain slanting and whistling about us, we crouch close against the base of the wall and we do not become so wet as we should where there no wall. But that is only when the wind is from beyond it. When the wind with its flood of rain comes toward us as we crouch by the wall we are beaten and drenched and buffered and driven hard against that cold blue surface and the ragged edges of the rocks make bruises on our foreheads. Some days we become exceeding weary with looking at the great blank wall and with having looked at it already for many a day and many a day. It is so high and so thick, I say. It is so long, says my friend Annabelle Lee. To all appearances we have gone as far upon the road as we ever can go. We cannot get over the wall of blue stones and we cannot walk around and we cannot go through. There is nothing to indicate that it will ever be removed. The field for conjecture as to what lies on the other side of the road is so vast that we do not venture to conjecture. But we have talked often and madly of the wall itself. Perhaps, I say, it is that the wall is placed here before our eyes to hide from us our limitations. Perhaps, says my friend Annabelle Lee, it is that the wall itself is our limitations, which, if it is true, is very damnable. For though human beings have done some divine things, they have never gone beyond their limitations. The blue of the stones in the wall is not a dark blue, but it is very cold. It is the color that is called stone blue. It never changes. The sun and the shade look alike upon it and the wet rain does not brighten it. Neither do thick clouds of dust make it dull. It is stone blue, except for this. Once in a number of days, in fair weather or foul, there will come upon the wide blankness of rippling like gold. It lingers a second and vanishes and appears again and that it's gone until another time. How tender, how lovely, how bright is the golden ripple against the cold, cold blue. It has come and gone in a minute. We do not know it's coming or it's going, but while we see it, our hearts beat high and fast. It may be, I say, when it is gone, that this golden ripple will show us some way to get beyond the wall where things are divine. It may be, says my friend Annabelle, that the golden ripple will show us something divine among these few things on this side of the wall. My friend Annabelle, with your strong brave little heart and your two strong little hands, you were with me in my weary bitter day. You were brave enough for two. It is to you, from me, that a message will go from out of silences and over frozen hills in the years that are coming. The end. End of chapter 25 and end of my friend Annabelle by Mary MacLean. Recording by Daryl War. Weblog, the pit of ultimate darkshadows.wordpress.com.