 CHAPTER 1 OF MY FRIEND, ANNABEL LEA MY FRIEND, ANNABEL LEA, by Mary MacLean CHAPTER 1 THE COMING OF ANNABEL LEA But the only person in Boston Town who has given me of the treasure of her heart, and the treasure of her mind, and the touch of her fair hand in friendship is Annabel Lee. Since I looked for no friendship whatsoever in Boston Town, this friendship comes to me with the gentleness of the sun showers mingled with cherry blossoms, and there is a human quality in the air that rises from the bitter salt sea. Years ago there was one who wrote a poem about Annabel Lee, a different lady from this lady, it may be, or perhaps it is the same, and so now this poem and this lady are never far from me. If indeed Poe did not mean this Annabel Lee when he wrote so enchanting heart cry, I at any rate shall always mean this Annabel Lee when Poe's enchanting heart cry runs in my mind. Forsooth Poe's Annabel Lee was not so enchanting as this Annabel Lee. I think this, as I gaze up at her graceful little figure standing on my shelf, her wonderful expressive little face, her strange white hands, her hair bound and twisted into the glittering black ropes wound tightly around her head. Were you to see her, you would say that Annabel Lee is only a very pretty little black and terracotta and white statue of a Japanese woman, and forthwith you would be greatly mistaken. It is true that she has stood in extremely dusty torrents' file in a Japanese shop in Boyleson Street for months before I found her. It is also true that I fell instantly in love with her and that on payment of few strange dollars to the shopkeeper. I rescued her from her surroundings and bore her out to where I live by the sea, the sea where these wonderful, wide, green waves are rolling, rolling, rolling old waves. Annabel Lee hears these waves, and I hear them, times holding our breath and listening until our eyes are strained with listening and with some haunting terror, and the low rushing goes to our two pale souls. For though my friend Annabel Lee lived dumbly and dastily for months in the shop in Boyleson Street, as if she were indeed but a porcelain statue, and though she was purchased with a price, still my friend Annabel Lee is exquisitely human. There are days when she fills my life with herself. She gives rise to manifold emotions which do not bring rest. It was not I who named her Annabel Lee. That was always her name. That is who she is. It is not a Japanese name, to be sure. She is certainly a native of Japan. But among the myriad names that are, that alone is the one which suits her and she alone of the myriad matins in the world is the one to wear it. She wears matchlessly. I have the friendship of Annabel Lee but for her love that is different. Annabel Lee is like no one you have known. She is quite unlike them all. Times I almost can feel a subtle conscious love coming from her fingertips to my forehead. And I at one and twenty am thrilled with thrills. For sooth, at one and twenty, in spite of Boston and all, there are moments when one can yet thrill. But other times I look up at perchance, her eyes will meet mine with a look that is cold and penetrating and contemptuous and confounding. Other times I look up and see her eyes full of indifference, full of tranquility, full of dull, deadly quiet. Came Annabel Lee from out of Boylston Street in Boston and lo, she was so adorable, so fascinating, so lovable, that straight away I adored her. I was fascinated by her. I loved her. I loved her tenderly. For why? I know not. How can there be accounting for the places one's loves will rest? Sometimes my friend Annabel Lee is negative and sometimes she is positive. Sometimes when my mind seems to have wandered infinitely far from her I realize suddenly that it is she who holds it enthralled. Whatsoever I see in Boston or in the vision of the wide world my judgment of it is prejudiced in ways by the existence of my friend Annabel Lee the more so that it's mostly unconscious prejudice. Annabel Lee's is an intense personality. One meets with intense personalities now and again in children or in bulldogs or in persons like my friend Annabel Lee and I never tire of looking at Annabel Lee and I never tire of listening to her and I never tire of thinking about her and thinking of her my mind grows wistful. The Flat Surfaces of Things There are moments said my friend Annabel Lee when willy-nilly they must all come out upon the flat surfaces of things they look deep into the green water as the sun goes down and their mood is heavy their heart aches and they shed no tears they look out over the brilliant waves as the sun comes up and their mood is light-hearted and they enjoy the moment or else their heart aches at the rising and their mood is light-hearted at the setting but let it be one or the other there are bland moments when they see nothing but flat surfaces if they find all at once by a little accident that their best loved is a traitor friend but the sun's setting and gaze deep into the green water and all is dark and dead as only a traitor best beloved can make it and their mood is very heavy still there is a bland moment when their stomach tells them they are hungry and they listen to it it is the flat surface after weeks or it may be days according to who they are their mood will not be heavy yet still their stomach will tell them they are hungry and they will listen if their best loved cease to be suddenly that is bad for them ah, exceeding bad they suffer and it takes weeks for them to recover and the mark of the wound never wears away but with time's encouraging help they do recover but if, said my friend Annabelle their stomach should cease to be not only would they suffer they would die and wither away that is a flat surface and a very truth and when they consider it for one bland moment they laugh gently and cease to have a best loved entirely they cease to fill their veins with red red life they become unto mice with long slim tails for one bland moment and two the bland moment is long enough for them to feel restfully deliciously but unconsciously thankful that there are these flat surfaces to things and that they can thus roll at times out upon them they roll upon the flat surfaces much as a horse rolls upon the flat prairie where the wind is and when for the first time they fall in love if their belt is too tight there will come a bland moment when they will be aware that their belt is thus tight and they will not be aware of much else during that bland moment they will loosen their belt when they were eight or nine years old and found a fine, ripe, juicy plum patch and while they were picking plums they suddenly appeared over their heads their first delirious impulse was to leave all and follow the balloon over hill and dale to the very earth's end but even though a real life balloon went sailing over their heads they considered this that some of their kids would get our plums that we had found a balloon was glorious a balloon was divine but even so there was a bland moment in which the thought of some vicious sweet children from over the hill who would rush in on the plums came just in time to make the balloon pawl on them but said my friend Annabelle by the same token in talking over the balloon after it had vanished down the sky there would come another bland moment when the plums would pawl upon them pawl completely and would appear hateful in their eyes for having kept from them the joy of following the divine balloon that is another aspect of the flat surfaces of things and they must all come out upon the flat surfaces willy-nilly and said Annabelle glancing at me as my mind was dimly wistful not only must they come out upon the flat surfaces of things but also you and I must come willy-nilly and since we must come willy-nilly added the lady then why not stay out upon the flat surfaces certainly Twill saved the trouble of coming next time perhaps however it's all in the coming end of chapter 2 chapter 3 my friend Annabelle by Mary MacLean this LibriVox recording is in the public domain my friend Annabelle my friend Annabelle never fails to fascinate and confound me much as she gives there isn't her infinitely more to get my relation with her never goes on and it never goes back it leads nowhere she and I stop together in the midst of our situation and look about us and what we see in the looking about is all and enough to consider and consider I write of it end of chapter 3 chapter 4 my friend Annabelle Lee by Mary MacLean this LibriVox recording is in the public domain Boston yesterday the lady was in her most amiable mood and we talked together about Boston it so happened do you like Boston she asked me yes I replied I am fond of Boston it fascinates me but not fonder of it than of Butte in Montana oh no said I hastily Butte in Montana is my first love there are barren mountains there they are with me always Boston doesn't go to my heart in the least but I like it much I like to live here I am fond of Boston sometimes Annabelle Lee observed but by the sea it is not quite Boston it is everything the sea washes down by enchanted purple islands and touches at the coast of Spain but if one can but turn one's eyes from it for a moment Boston is a fine and good thing and interesting I think it is from several points of view I agreed tell me what you find that interests you in Boston said my friend Annabelle Lee there are many things I replied I have found a little corner down by the east Boston wharf where often I sit on cold days the sun shines bright and warm on a narrow wooden platform between two great barrels and I can't be hidden there but I can watch the matting crowd as it goes the crowd is very matting down east Boston and I do not lack company sometimes brave sharp-tooth rats venture out on the grounds below me they cannot see the matting crowd but they can enjoy the sunshine and hunt mice among the rubbish the dwellers in east Boston they are the poor we have always with us they are not the meek the worthy the deserving poor they are the devilish the ill conditioned one with the wharf rats that hunt for mice except the rats do occasionally try to clean their soft gray coats by licking them with their little red tongues whereas the poor but why should the poor wash? are they not the poor? as I rest me between my two great barrels and watch this gruesome pageant I think it seems quite a desperate thing to be poor in Boston for Boston is said to be of the best seasoned knowledge and to carry a lump of ice in its heart from between my two barrels in east Boston I have seen humanity oh so brutal oh so barbarous as ever it could have been in Mary England in the reign of good old Harry the eighth and so then that is very interesting in truth it is so said my friend Annabelle Boston is fair and very fair tell me more and times I said I said in one of the window seats in the stairway of the public library and I look at the walls a Frenchman with a marvellous fancy and a great skill in his finger ends has worked on those walls he painted there the emblems of all the world's great material things of all ages and over them he painted a thin gray veil of those things that are not material that comes from no age that are with us around us above us as they were with the children of Israel with the dwellers in Pompeii with the fairest cities of Greece and the inhabitants thereof I have looked at the paintings and I have been dazzled and transported what is there not upon those walls I have seen in truth the vision of the world and all the wonder that shall be I have seen the struggling of the chrysalis soul roasting into light I have seen the divinity that doth some time hedge the earth I have looked at a conception of poetry and I have heard the thin rhythmic sounds of shawms and stringid instruments and I have heard low voluptuous music from within the temple human voices like sweet jessamine I have seen the fascinating idolatry of pagans and I have seen a pale light of a star the wooden figure of the cross I have leaned over the edge of a chasm and beheld the things of old the army of Hannibal before Carthage the Norsemen going down to the sea in ships, the futile savage fighting of goths and vandals I have seen science and art within the walled cities and I have seen frail little lambs gambling by the side of the brook I have seen nightshades lowering over occult works and I have seen bees lying heavy laden to their hives out of fine summer's morning I have heard of a lute played where a tiny cataract leaps and the pipes of pan mingled with the bubbling notes of a robin in mint meadows I have seen pages and pages of printed lines that reach from world end to world end I have seen profound words written centuries ago in inks of many colors I have seen and been overwhelmed by the marvels of scientific things bristling with the accurate kind of knowledge that I shall never know with all I have seen the complete serenity of the world's face as shown by the brush of the Frenchman's chevons and overall the nebulous conception of the long ignorant silence what is there not upon those wonderful woes I sit in semi-consciousness in the little window seat and these things swim before my two gray eyes my mind is full of the vision of murmuring throbbing life but what a thing is life truly for marvels as are these pictures those that I have seen times down where the rats forage and the rubbish are more marvelous still truly said my friend Annabelle there is much much in Boston tell me more well and there is the south station I went on oh not until one has ambled and idled away a thousand hours in that place of trains and varied peoples can one know all of what is really found within its waiting rooms I have found Massachusetts there not any Massachusetts that I had ever read about but the Massachusetts that comes in from Braintree and Plymouth and Middleborough carrying a Boston shopping bag the Massachusetts that is intellectual and thrusts its forefinger through the handle of its teacup the Massachusetts that eats soup the Massachusetts that is good-hearted but walks funny the Massachusetts that takes all the children and goes down to Providence for a day each of the children with a thick yellow banana in its hand the Massachusetts that has its being because the world wears shoes for it is intellectual and can make shoes and in the south station furthermore there are people from the wide world around actors and authors and artists are to be seen coming in and going out and sitting waiting in the waiting rooms some mightily fine and curious persons have sat waiting in those waiting rooms as well as dingy Italians with strings of beads around their necks and in the south station there are so many many people that once in a long while one can meet with some of those tiny things that one has waited for for centuries in among a multitude of faces there may be a young face with lines of worn and vivid life in it and with alert and much used eyes and with soft dull hair above it and a flash one recognizes it and at a flash it is gone it is a face that needs beautiful things and one has known it and its diviness a long long time and here in the south station in Boston came the one gold glimpse of it and I have seen in the south station a strange scene that of a mildew man bearing the brunt of caring for his large family of small children while their child weary mother was allowed for once in her life to rest completely sitting with her eyes closed and her hands folded she might as well rest tranquil and thought that in giving birth to that small hebraic army she had done her share of this dubious world's penance and at the south station as much as anywhere one feels the air of Boston the air of Boston too is wonderful and is not free for all to breathe tis for the anointed the others must content them with the untinted unscented air that blows wild from mountaintops and northeast but for me I have eyes wherewith to see and since the air of Boston has color I can see it and I have ears wherewith to hear and since the air of Boston has musical vibrations I can hear it and I have sensibility wherefore all that is pungent in the air of Boston and all that is art and all that is beautiful and all that is true and all that is benign and particularly all that is very cool and all that is bitterly contemptuous are not wholly lost upon me if all the persons who go to and fro at the south station where heroes and breathe the air there and left their dim shadows behind them as they do assume the south station would be hallowed ground they all are not heroes but they breathe the air and leave their dim shadows whatever they may be and ever after the air of the south station is tintured and since more than a half of these people are of Boston the air is tintured therewith if you are civilized and conventional you may know and breathe this air if you are not, well at least you may stand and contemplate it and always one can bide one's time my contemplation of it has interested me the air of Boston is a mingling of very ancient and very modern things and ways of thinking that are picturesque that at times lead to something the ancient things date back to Confucius and others of his ilk and the modern ones are tinted with Lillian Whitting and the newspapers and the theatre one is have conscience of this as one contemplates and one's thought is woe is me that I have habitation among the tents of Kedar one exclaims there's not so much that one considers oneself benighted but that one is very sure that the air of Boston considers one so to be sure to know but somehow as yet one is content to bide one's time but yes there is a beautified quality in the air of Boston it is tinted with rose and blue it sounds remotely of chimes and flutes you feel it perchance when you sit within the subdued brilliant stillness of trinity church when you walk among green and gold fields about Brooklyn and Cambridge where orchards are lifting up that pale soft lips when you are in the museum of fine arts and see hanging on the wall a small dull-toned picture that is old so old music is in the air of Boston it pours into the heart like fire and flood it awakens the soul from its dreaming it sends the human being out into the many colored pathways to see to suffer it may be yes surely to suffer but to live oh to live one can see in the mists the slender gray figure of one's own soul rising and going to mingle with all these in spite of the clouds about it one knows it's going and that it is well long since said my beloved has gone down into her garden to the bed of spices to feed in the gardens and to gather mullies and now again is the beloved in the garden and in those moments oh, life is fair my friend Annabelle Leigh opened her lips her lips like damp red quince blooms and the springtime and told me that there were times when I interested her times when I amused her mildly and times when in me she made some rare discoveries but which of the three this time was she has not told end of chapter four chapter five of my friend Annabelle Leigh by Mary and McLean this LibriVox recording is the first one this LibriVox recording is in the public domain a small house in the country but Boston or even Butte in Montana has not been compared to a lodging place far down in the country a tiny house by the side of a fishy malty pond in summertime the hot sun shining on the doorstep and a clump of willows and an oak tree growing near and on the side of the house where the sun is bright in the morning some small square beds of radishes and pale green heads of lettuce and straight neat rows of young onions with the moist earth showing black between the rows and a few green peas growing by a small fence and on the other side of the little house will grow tall rank grass and some hardy weeds and perhaps a taglery or two will come up unawares the fishy pond will not be too near the house nor too far away but near enough so that the singing of the frogs in the night will sound clear and loud rolling hills will be lying fair rain at a distance and cattle will wander and grays upon them in the shade of low-hanging branches on still afternoons a quail or a pheasant will be heard calling in the woods the air that will blow down the long gentle uplands will be very sweet the message that it brings as it touches my cheeks and my lips and my forehead is an exceeding deep peace I would live in the little house with a friend of my heart and a friend in the shadows and half-lights and the brilliances for if the hearts of two are tuned in accord the harmony may be of exquisite tenor in the very early morning I would sit on the doorstep where the sun shines and my eyes would look off at the prospect life would throb in my veins in the middle of the forenoon I would be kneeling in the beds of radishes and slim young onions and lettuce pulling the weeds from among them and staining my two hands with black roots in the middle of the day I would sit in the shade but where I could see the sunshine touching the brilliant greenness near the house and afar and I could see the pond glaring with beams and motes in the late afternoon I with the friend of my heart would walk down among the green valleys and wooded hills by fences and crumbling stone walls until we reached a point of vantage where we could see the sea in the night when the sun had gone and the earth had cooled and the dark, dark grey had fallen over all we would sit again on the doorstep it would be lonesome there with the sound of the frogs and of nightbirds and there would be a cricket chipping we would speak to each other with one or two words through lone stillnesses presently would come the dead midnight and we would be in heavy sleep beneath the low, hot roof of the little house mingled with the dead midnight would be memories of the day that had just gone in my sleep I would seem to walk again in the meadows and the green of the countless grass blades would affect me with a strange delirium as if now for the first time I saw them each little grass blade would have a voice and would shout Mary MacLean oh we are the grass blades and we are here we are the grass blades we are the grass blades we are here and yes that would be the marvelous thing that they were here and would not the leaves be upon the trees would not the tiny pale flowers be growing in the ground would not the sky be not the sky be over all oh the unspeakable sky in the dead midnight sleep would leave me and I would wake in a vision of beauty and of horror with fear at my heart with horrible fear at my heart then frantically I would think of the little radish beds outside the window how common and how satisfying they were thus thinking I would sleep again and wake to the sun shining you would not said my friend Annabelle Lee stay long in such a place I looked at her its simplicity and truth said my friend Annabelle Lee would deal you deep wounds and scorch you and drive you forth as if you were indeed a money-changer in the temple end of chapter 5 chapter 6 of my friend Annabelle Lee by Mary Maclean this LibriVox recording is in the public domain the half-conscious soul Annabelle Lee leaned her two elbows on the back of a tiny sandalwood chair and looked down at me we regarded each other coldly as friends do times you said Annabelle Lee have a half-conscious soul such a soul that when it hears a strain of music can hear away to the music's depths but can understand only one half of its meaning but because it is half-conscious it knows that it understands only the half and must need wheat for the other half such a soul that when it wanders into the deep green and meets they're a shadow woman with long dark hair and an enchanting voice it feels to its depths the spirit of the green and the voice of the shadow woman but can understand only one half of what they tell but because it is half-conscious that it understands only the half and must need wheat for the other half such a soul that when it is bound and fettered heavily it knows since it is half-conscious that it is bound and fettered but knows not why nor where for nor whether it is well which is the other half then it must need wheat for it such a soul that when it hears thunderings in the wild sky will awaken from sleep and listen listen but since it is half-conscious it can only hear not know and it sounds like an unknown voice in an unknown language telling the dying speech of its best loved it is frantic to know the translation which is the other half that when life gathers itself from around it and stands before it and says now contemplate life it contemplates since it is half-conscious but it for that same reason streams its eyes to look over life's shoulders into the dimness which is an impossible thing and the other half such a soul that when it finds itself mingling in love for its friend and all it enjoys vividly in all moments but the crucial moments when it eggs in torment and doubt for it is half-conscious and so knows its lacking desolate is the way of the half-conscious soul said Annabelle the holy conscious soul receives into itself things in their entirety without question or wonder the half-conscious soul receives the half of things and knowing that there is another half it wanders and questions to all's black the holy conscious soul is different from the holy unconscious soul in that the former is positive whilst the latter is negative and they both in their nature can find rest but the half-conscious soul knows that it is half-conscious still it knows not at what points it is conscious and at what points unconscious for when it thinks it's self-conscious low it is unconscious and when it thinks it's self-conscious it is heavily bitterly conscious can it find rest the holy conscious soul holds up before its eyes a mirror and gazes at itself its colour its texture its quality its desires and motives without flinching in the strong light of day the holy unconscious soul knows not that it is a soul and never uses a mirror it looks into its glass in the grey light of dusk it sees its colour its texture its quality its desires but its motives are hidden its eyes are wide in the grey light to learn what those its own motives are it cannot know but it can never rest for trying to know its sorrow its bitterness its remorse the half conscious soul knows its love and wonders why it loves and wonders if it really can love any but itself and wonders that it cares for love the half conscious soul knows its sorrow and marvels that it should have sorrow since it can grasp not truth the half conscious soul knows its bitterness and realises at once its right to and its reason for bitterness but thinking of it the arrow is turned in the wound the half conscious soul knows its remorse but it is convinced that it has no right to remorse since it does its unworthy acts with infinite forethought the holy conscious soul is a chasen spirit and so has its measure of happiness the holy unconscious soul is an unchasen spirit for it deserves no chastisement neither has it any happiness for it knows not whether it is happy or otherwise but the half conscious soul is chastised where it is not deserving of it and goes unchastised where it is richly deserving of it has no happiness but instead unhappiness whoa to the half conscious soul said Annabelle how brilliantly does the emerald sea flash in the sunshine before the eyes of the half conscious soul but burns it with mad fire how melting sweet is the perfume of the blue anemone to the sense of the half conscious soul burns it with mad fire how beautiful are the bronze lights in the eyes of its friend to the half conscious soul that burn it with mad fire how joyous is the half conscious soul at the sounds of singing voices on water that burn it with mad fire how surely come the wild sweet meanings of the outer air into the depths of the half conscious soul but burn it with mad fire how madly happy is the half conscious soul in still hours at sight of a solitary pine tree upon the mountaintop burns it with mad fire how tenderly comes truth to the half conscious soul in the dead watches of the night but burns it with mad fire life is vivid alert telling to the half conscious soul said Annabelle you said Annabelle with your half conscious soul when you sit where the grey waves wash the sea wall and I died when you sit listening with your head bent and your hands dead cold you think you realize your life you think you know its hardness you think you have measured the cruelty they will give you but you do not know you wait for the other half though it be horror still though you are but half conscious though you wait for the other half when you sit listening with your head bent and your hands dead cold where the grey waves wash the sea wall and I died yet you know some of each one of the things that are around you wonderful in conception is the half conscious soul half conscious soul said Annabelle I looked hard at my friend Annabelle was she teasing me was she laughing at me was she laughing at me for she does tease me and she does laugh at me and was she at either of these pastimes with all this about the half conscious soul but here again she left me ignorant of her thought and there is no way of knowing end of chapter 6 chapter 7 of my friend Annabelle by Mara McLean this LibriVox recording is in the public domain the young books of Trowbridge there are two writers among them all to whom I owe thanks for countless hours of complete pleasure not the pleasure that Sturz and Flyers want but the pleasure which enters into the entire personality and rests and satisfies a common unrestrained mind it is the same pleasure that comes with eating all by myself eating peaches and a fine tiny lamb chop in the middle of the day one of these two writers is J.T. Trowbridge who has written young books often I have thought life would be different and duller coloured unless thickly sprinkled with marigolds and cream had I never known my Trowbridge often I have thanked the happy fate that put into my hands my first young book of Trowbridge towards when I was 14 in October when I lived in a flat windy town that was named Great Falls in Montana since that time I have never been without the young books of J.T. Trowbridge there have but seven years passed since then but when seven years more than seven years again up to three score have gone I will spend one half my rest hours my pleasure hours my loosely comfortable unrestrained hours with the young books of Trowbridge when I go to a theatre I enjoy it thoroughly a theatre is a good thing and the actor is a stunning person but how eagerly and gladly I come back into my own room a faithful little hand-deer standing waiting also pathetic and sweet upon the desk when I go out into two crowded rooms among some fascinating persons that I have heard of before women with fine rot gowns I like that too and I wouldn't have missed it but how utterly restful and adorable I come back to my own room where there is my comfortable quiet friend an rusty black flannel frock sitting waiting and her hands go soft and good to feel when I read gold treasures of literature Virgil it may be or a browning or Kipling I am enchanted and enthralled I marvel at these people and how they can write I think how marvellous is writing at last but how gladly and thankfully after two hours or three I return back to these my young books of Trowbridge they are about people living on farms and they are written so that you know that red root grows among wheat spears and must be weeded out and that the farmers boys have to milk the cows mornings before breakfast and evenings after supper for they have supper in the Trowbridge books and it is even attractive and tastes good when the lads go to gather kelp to spread on the land that are gone for the day by the seashore they eat roasted ears of corn and cold boiled eggs and bread and butter and three bottles of spruce beer and if you really know the Trowbridge books you can eat of these with them and with wonderful appetite when a slim boy of 16 goes to hunt for his uncle's horse that had been stolen in the night because the boy left the stable door unlocked along pleasant country roads and smiling farms in Massachusetts Trowbridge books the slim boy of 16 is not more anxious to find the horse than you are when the boy and the reader first start after the horse they are far too wretched and anxious to eat for the crabbed uncle told them they needn't come back to the farm without that horse but long before noon they are glad enough that they have a few doubled slices of bread to eat as they go but at last they come upon the horse calmly feeding under a cattle shed at a country fair 20 miles away they are quite hungry and in their joy they purchase a wedge of pie and some oyster crackers so that they needn't be out of sight of the horse while they eat and the reader if he really knows the Trowbridge books would faint stop here for there is trouble ahead of him he would faint but he cannot he must go on he must even come in crucial contact with Ali Badger's hickory club he must go with the boy until he sees him and the horse at last safely back at uncle Grey's farm the horse placidly nudging oats in his own stall and the boy eating supper once more with appetite unimpaired and the crabbed uncle once more serene and if you know Trowbridge's books you can eat too tranquilly when a boy is left alone in the world by the death of his aunt and starts out to find his uncle in Cincinnati if you know Trowbridge's books you prepare for hardship and weariness but still occasional sandwiches and donuts greasy kind and always you know there must be a haven in the house of the uncle in Cincinnati only if you know Trowbridge's books you are fearful when you get to the uncle's door and you would a little rather the boy went in to meet him while you waited outside Trowbridge's uncles are apt to be so sour as to heart and so bitter as to tongue and so sarcastic in the remarks relating to boys will come in from the country to the city in order that they the uncles may have the privilege of supporting them though you know if you know the Trowbridge books that Trowbridge's boys never come into the city for that purpose the heavy tempered uncles too are made aware of this before long they change the tenor of their remarks courtingly and after some just pride on the part of the nephews all goes well what upon your feeling of satisfaction is more than that of the boy of the uncle of Trowbridge himself but these roasted ears of corn and cold boiled eggs are among the lesser delights of the young books of Trowbridge the most fascinating things are the conversations they are so real that you hear the voices and see the expressions of the faces Trowbridge is one of the kind that listens twice and thrice to persons talking so that he hears the keynote and the detail and his pen is of the kind that can write what he hears it is never too much never too little it is not noticeable at all because it is all harmony it is entirely and utterly common and it is real in the young books of Trowbridge and nowhere else I have heard boys talking together so that I knew how their faces looked and how carelessly and loosely their various collars were worn and their dubious hats I have heard a grasping grouty old man pound on the kicking floor with his horn-headed cane he had come over while the family were at breakfast to inform them that their dog had killed five of his sheep and to demand the dog's life I have heard the lessons on other things they said in a country school room 60 years ago where boys were sometimes obliged for punishment or I have heard the extreme discontent in the voice of another grouty grasping farmer when it became evident to him that he would be obliged to give up a horse that had been stolen before he bought him but here I must quote as nearly corrupt as I can without the book and sold him to this Mr. Badger who was 70 gim cracks exclaimed Uncle Gray aghast I should think any fool might know he's worth more than that he was thinking of Brunlow but Ellie applied the remark to himself I did know it he growled that's why I bought him and mighty glad I am now I didn't pay more Satan but didn't it occur to you to know honest man would want to sell an honest horse like that for any such sum I didn't know it said Ellie groutly he told a pootie straight story I got took in that's all took in repeated Uncle Gray I should say took in I know the rogue that's the only man with common sense and eyes in his head shouldn't have seen through him at once maybe I ain't got common sense and maybe I ain't got eyes in my head said Ellie with a dull fire in the place where I should have been if he had any but I didn't expect this kid hastened to interpose between the two men always I have been sorry that the boy interposed just there I have read the book surely seven and seventy times each time this talk over the horse comes exceeding pungent to my ears how impossible it is to weary of Trowbridge because there is no effort in the writing and no effort in the reading and because of deep reaching never failing sense of humor how flat seems these words the young books of Trowbridge cannot be set down in words what with the simplicity what with quality of naturalness what with a delicate tenderness for all human things what with the rare rarer quality of commonness that is satisfying and quieting as the vision of little green radish bed what with an inner sympathy between Trowbridge and his characters and above all an inner sympathy with his readers what with truth itself and the sweet gift of portraying the sun's shiny days as they are I talk of Trowbridge is it not all there written can one not read and rest in it end of chapter seven chapter eight of my friend Annabelle by Mary MacLean the box recording is in the public domain it give me three grains of corn mother no said my friend Annabelle I can't really say that I care for Trowbridge all that you have said is true enough but he fails to interest me what do you like in literature I asked regarding her with interest for I'd never heard her say it must need be something characteristic of herself I like strength and I like simplicity and I like emotion and I like vital things always and I like poetry rather than prose just now said Annabelle I'm thinking of an old fashioned bit of verse that to me is all that a poem need be to have written it is to have done enough in the way of writing because it's real like your Trowbridge oh will you repeat it for me I said it is called give me three grains of corn mother it is of a famine in Ireland a great many years ago a lad and his mother starving and then she went on give me three grains of corn mother give me three grains of corn to keep the little life I have till the coming of the morn I am dying of hunger and cold mother dying of hunger and cold and half the agony of such a death my lips have never told it is not like a wolf at my heart mother a wolf that is fierce for blood all the live long day and the night beside for lack of food I dreamed of bread in my sleep mother and the sight was heaven to see I awoke with an eager famishing lip but you had no bread for me how could I look to you mother how could I look to you for bread to give to your starving boy when you were starving too for I read the famine in your cheek and in your eyes so wild and I felt in your bony hand as you laid it on your child the queen has lands and gold mother the queen has lands and gold while you are forced to your empty breast a skeleton babe to hold a babe that is dying of want mother as I am dying now with a ghastly look in its sunken eye and the famine upon its brow what has poor Ireland done mother what has poor Ireland done that the world looks on and sees us die perishing one by one do the men of England care not mother the great men and the high for the suffering of sons of Ireland's isle whether they live or die there's many a brave heart here mother dying of wanton cold while only across the channel mother are many that roll in gold there are many and proud men there mother with wondrous wealth to view and the bread they flinged their dogs tonight would bring life to me and you come nearer to my side mother come nearer to my side and hold me fondly as you held my father when he died quick for I cannot see you mother for breath is almost gone mother dear mother either I die give me three greens of corn what do you think said my friend Annabelle is it not full of power and poetry and pathos yes it could not in itself be better I replied and it has the simplicity and pretends nothing said Annabelle and who wrote it I asked oh some foreign English woman said Annabelle I believe her name was Edwards she perhaps wrote a poem now and then and died and are the poems forgotten also I inquired yes forgotten except by a few but when they remember them long then which is better to be remembered and remembered shortly by the multitudes or to be forgot by the multitudes and remembered long by the one or two it is comparably better to be remembered long by the one or two said Annabelle to be forgotten by anyone or anything that once remembered you is sorely bitter to the heart chapter 8 chapter 9 of my friend Annabelle by Mary McLean this LibriVox recording is in the public domain relative do you think Annabelle I said to her on the day that I felt depressed that all things must really be relative and that those which are not now properly relative will eventually become so though it gives them acute anguish the face of Annabelle was placid and also the sea the one glanced down upon me from the shelf and the other spread away into the distance were that face and that sea relative surely they cannot be since those two things and their very nature might go ungoverned do not universal laws in extreme moments give way relative said Annabelle nothing is relative I tell you nothing is relative I have come out of Japan in Japan when I was very new to everything there was an ugly frog-eyed woman washed me and anointed me and dressed me in silk the while she pinched my little white arms cruelly so that my little red mouth surprised with the pain also the frog-eyed woman looked into my suffering young eyes with her ugly frog eyes so that my tiny young soul was prodded as with brad nails the frog-eyed woman did these things to hurt me she hated me for being one of the very lovely creatures in Japan she was a vile ugly wretch that was not relative I tell you that was not relative said Annabelle if I had been an awkward overgrown bloodless animal and that frog-eyed woman had pinched my little white arms still she would have been a vile ugly wretch if I had been a vicious spirit and that frog-eyed woman had looked into my vicious eyes with her ugly frog eyes still she would have been a vile ugly wretch if I had been a hateful little thing instead of a gently bred gently living pitiful to the poor maiden and that frog-eyed woman had hated me with all her frog heart still she would have been a vile ugly wretch if that frog-eyed woman had stood alone in Japan with no human being to compare her to still the frog-eyed woman would have been a vile ugly wretch if that frog-eyed woman had stood alone in Japan with no human being to compare her to still the frog-eyed woman would have been a vile ugly wretch she has left her horrid frog mark on my fair soul not anything beneath the worship sun can ever blot out the horrid frog mark from my fair soul a thousand curses on the ugly frog-eyed woman said Annabelle tranquilly then that for one thing is not relative I said but perhaps that is because the power and the depth of your eyes and your fair soul where there are no eyes and no fair souls at least where the eyes and the fair souls cannot be considered as themselves but only as things without feeling for life then are not things relative nothing is relative said Annabelle if your dog's splendid fur coat is full of fleas and caress your dog with your hands then presently you may acquire numbers of fleas you love the dog but you do not love the fleas you forgive the fleas for the love of the dog though you hate them no less so then that is not relative if that were relative you would love the fleas a little for the same reason forgive them for the love of your dog forgiveness is a negative quality and can have no bearing on your attitude toward the fleas having said this Annabelle gazed placently over my head at the sea when her mood is thus tranquil she talks graciously and evenly and positively and its beautiful to look at my mind was now in much confusion upon the subject in question but I felt that I must know all that Annabelle thought about it what would you say Annabelle said I to a case like this the soul wrought variance with everything that touches it everything that makes life so that it must struggle through the long nights and long days with bitterness is not that because the soul has no sense of proportion and has not made itself rich in everything that is relative so that when one hard thing touches it simultaneously one soft thing will touch it or when it mourns for dead days simultaneously it rejoices for live ones or when its best loved gives it deep wound simultaneously its best enemy gives it vivid pleasure nothing is relative again said Annabelle nothing can be relative nothing need be relative if a soul is wearing itself to small shreds by struggling days and nights that is a matter relating peculiarly to the soul and to nothing else nothing else if a soul is wearing itself to small shreds by struggling the more full it it is struggling because of things that would never never struggle because of it in truth not one of them would move itself one millionth of an inch because of so paltry a thing as a soul I looked at Annabelle her hair, her hands and her eyes as I looked I was reminded of the word eternity a human being is quite a wonderful thing truly and great there's none greater Annabelle is a person who always says truth for for her there's nothing else to say she has stretched that marvellous point where a human being expects nothing if the days of a life Annabelle I said are made bright because of two other lives that are dear to it and if the life happens upon a day when the thought of the two whom it loves is called like lead then what can there be to smooth away its weariness in heaven above in the earth beneath or in the waters under the earth foolish life said my friend Annabelle there is no pain in Japan like what comes of loving someone or something and if someone or something is the only thing the life can call its own things it needs are there a lodging place in heaven above a bit of hardness in the earth beneath a last resort in the waters under the earth these three but no life has ever had them in the end I said when all wide roadways come together and all heavy hearts are alert to know what will happen then will there not indeed be one grand adjustment and life and all become at once magnificently relative never it can't be so nothing is relative said Annabelle on a day that I felt depressed end of chapter 9 chapter 10 of my friend Annabelle by Mary MacLean sleepervox recording is in the public domain mini matern fisk today my friend Annabelle and I went to the theta and we saw a wonderful and fascinating woman with long dark red hair upon the stage she is attractive though to that haired woman adorably attractive and she reminds one of many things Annabelle was greatly interested in her acting and was charmed with herself and so was I do you suppose she finds life very delightful I said to my friend I don't suppose my friend replied she is of this sort that considers whether or not life is delightful probably her work is hard enough to keep her out of mischief of any kind whereupon we both felt thinking how fortunate are those whose work is hard enough to keep them out of mischief of any kind there must be some months perhaps in the summer when she doesn't work I have heard that some actors take houses among the mountains and do their own housework for recreation I said Annabelle cannot quite imagine this woman with red hair making bread and scouring pans and kettles for pleasure but very likely she sometimes goes into the country for vacations and I can fancy her doing the various small enjoyable things that celebrities can afford to do like waiting barefooted in a narrow brooklet or swinging high and recklessly in a barrel stave hammock and since she is so adorable on the stage I exclaimed how altogether enchanting she would be waiting in the brooklet or swinging in the barrel stave hammock she with the long red hair perhaps it would even be braided down her back in two long tails it is a picture that haunts me Mrs. Fisk in midst of her vacation doing the small enjoyable things of course said my friend Annabelle we don't know that she doesn't spend her vacations in a fine conventional stupid yacht or at some magnificent insipid American or English country house we can only give her the benefit of the doubt yes the benefit of the doubt I replied how fascinating she was to be sure with her personality merged in that of Mary Magdalene the Magdalene is no longer a shadowy ideal with a somewhat buxom body scantily draped with indefinite hair and with the lifeless beauty that the old masters paint nor is she quite the woman of the scriptures to one's mind without that quality which is called local coloring and with too much of the quality that is ever present with the woman in the scriptures a something between uncleanness and final complete redemption no Mary Magdalene is Mrs. Fisk a slight a woman still in the last throes of youth with two shoulders which move impatiently expressing indescribable emotions of aliveness and two lips which perform their office that coloring bewitching torturing perfuming anointing the words that come out of them apart from these lips Mary Magdalene's face has a wonderful round and childish look and her two round eyes at first sight give one an idea of positive innocence in the Magdalene's face and in that of an actor of Mrs. Fisk's range these are a beautifully delicate incongruity and my friend Anna Belly has told me that the strongest things are the delicate incongruities the strongest in all this wide world because they make you consider and considering you wait with such a pair of round innocent eyes of some grayish color who can blame Mary Magdalene in the latter arcs of the play these eyes go one step further than innocence they do hunger and thirst after righteousness and ah dear heaven you thought to yourself how well they did it to hunger and thirst after righteousness not herself but her eyes that was this Mary Magdalene's art this Mary Magdalene though she is indeed in the last throes of youth without reference to the years she may know has yet beneath her chin a very charming roundness of flesh which one day obviously will become a double chin just now it is enchanting there are feminine children of seven and eight with round faces who have just that fullness beneath the chin of Mary Magdalene and added to her eyes it carries on the idea of innocence and inexperience at a rare good degree any other woman actor would have long since massaged this fullness away for sooth perhaps this is the one woman actor who could wear such a thing with beauty Mary Magdalene's hair in its deep redness is scornful and aggressive and the first acts of the play in the latter acts it assumes a marvellous patheticness and if you like there is a rule of patheticness in red hair if Mary Magdalene's hair were of a different color if the bronze shadows were yellow or gray or black or brown shadows her lips and her shoulders were in vain on the stage Mary Magdalene stands with her back to her audience she stands calm and placid for three or four minutes before the rising and falling curtain graciously permitting all to admire and feast their eyes on the red of her hair she knows said my friend Annabelle that she can make her face bewitching and she knows also that her hair is bewitching without being so made the world at large shall know it too she has will power as Mary Magdalene it is her will, her strength her concentration of all her power to herself that makes her thus bewitching and that seduces the brains of those who sit watching her as she moves upon the stage she controls all her mental and physical features with metallic precision except her hair and that she leaves uncontrolled into its own work it does its work well she has cultivated that mobleness of her lips probably with hard work and infinite patience and she makes them damp and brilliant with rouge she rubs the soft thick skin of her face with layers of grease she loads her two white arms with limitless powder and the two childish eyes are exceeding heavy laden as to lid and lash with black crayon one experiences a revolution as one contemplates them through a glass her voice in the days of her youth had drilled into it the power to thrill and vibrate and to become exquisitely tender upon occasion now it does the bidding of its owner with docility and skill since its owner has forcefulness and a power of selfish concentration the voice is almost magnetic and cold and strong it is magnetic and cold and strong and contemptuous when its owner says my curse upon you when its owner's eyes do hunger and thirst after righteousness the voice brings a miserable anguished feeling to the throats of those who sit listening every emotion that the voice betrays is transmitted to the seduced brains of those who sit listening the red-haired woman works her audience up to some torturing images the while herself blandly and cold bloodedly earning an honest livelihood but the sweat of her brow foresooth it's always so if all the red-haired woman scorn and anguish were real the audience would sit unmoved if the red-haired woman scorn and anguish were real it would not seem real and would be very uninteresting and that very likely is the reason why the scorn and anguish of other red-haired women end of black-haired and brown-haired and yellow-haired and grey-haired and pale-haired women who are not working on the stage it is so uninteresting and unmoving and unmoving it is so uninteresting and ineffectual it is real and they cannot act it out and so it doesn't seem real and you don't have to pay money to see it done to make it seem real they must need go at it cold bloodedly and work it up and charge you a round price for it Mary Magdalene isn't here to do this but Mrs. Fisk takes her place and doesn't for her she does it exquisitely well could Mary Magdalene herself she of the Bible be among those who sit watching she would surely marvel and admire meanwhile for myself I have two visions of this Mary Magdalene one in one of the acts where in her eyes do hunger and thirst after righteousness when she sits before a small table and lifts her pathetic sweet voice her words when the dawn breaks and the darkness shall flee away and then she stands and the red hair is equally pathetic and twofold bewitching and she says again when the dawn breaks and the darkness shall flee away and the other vision is of her in the country in the midst of a summer day under a summer sky like a well-staved hammock end of chapter 10 chapter 11 of my friend Annabelle this Libra Vox recording is in the public domain like a stone wall my friend Annabelle has told me there are bitterer things in store for me than I have known yet times I have wondered what they could be when you have come to them said my friend Annabelle there will be so bitter and will fit so well into your life that you will wonder that you did not always know about them and you will wonder why you did not always have them the bitterest things I have known yet I said have had to do with the varying friendship of one or another whom I have loved varying friendship said Annabelle but friendship does not vary no that is true I rejoined I mean the varying deception I have had from some whom I have loved in time said my friend Annabelle you will love more and your deceiving will be all at once and bitterer it will be a rich experience why rich I inquired because from it said my friend Annabelle you will learn to not see too much to not start out with faith in fact to take the goods that the gods provide and endeavor to be thankful for them your other experiences have been poverty stricken in that respect they leave you with rays of hope without which you would be better off they are poor and bitterer what is to come will be rich and bitterer their bitterness will prevent you from appreciating the richness of them until perhaps years have come and taken them from immediately before your eyes as soon as they are where you cannot see them you can consider them and appreciate their richness whatever that may be I may answer I do not think I shall ever be able to appreciate their richness then you will be very ungrateful said my friend Annabelle I looked hard at her then she looked at me there are times when my friend Annabelle is much like a stone wall yes said my friend Annabelle if you ever feel to express proper gratitude for the good things of this life be sure that you express your gratitude for the right thing very likely you will not have a great deal of gratitude and you must not waste any of it but what you do have be of the most excellent quality for it will acclimate and the acclimation will all go to quality and things for which you are to be grateful are the bitternesses you have known if you have had it in mind ever to give way to bursts of gratitude for this air that comes from off the salt sea for that line of pearls and violets that you see just above the horizon for the health of your body for the sleep that comes to you at the close of the day for any of those things then get rid of the idea at once those things are quite well but they are not really given to you they are merely placed where anyone can reach them with little effort the kind fates don't care whether you get them or not their responsibility ends when they leave them here but the bitternesses they give to each person separately they give you yours Mary MacLeod for your very own don't say they never think of you of no intention of saving it said I you will find said my friend Adam Ali without noticing my interruption and with curious expression in her voice and upon her two red lips you will find that these bitternesses come from time to time in your life like so many milestones they are useful as such for of course you like to take measurements along the road now and again to see what progress you have made along some parts of the road that's wonderful if you are appreciative and grateful at the last milestone you have come to thus far you will express your measure of gratitude to the kind fates that is no said my friend Adam Ali you will not do this at the milestone but after you have passed it and have turned a corner and so cannot see it even when you look back but why shall I express gratitude there I inquired at a tone that must have been rather lifeless why? repeated my friend Adam Ali because you have grown in strength on account of these milestones because you have learned to take all things tranquilly why? after the very last milestone I dare say you would be able to sit with folded hands if a house were burning up about your ears which must indeed be a triumph said I a triumph! a victory! said my friend Adam Ali with still more curious expressions and the victories are not what this world sees which reminded me of things I used to hear in Sunday school ever so many years ago you remember the story of the ten virgins taking the story literally said my friend Adam Ali the lot of the five foolish virgins is much the more fortunate there was a rare measure of bitterness for them when they found themselves without oil for their lamps at a time when oil was needed they gained infinitely more than they lost as for the five wise virgins well I wouldn't have been one of them under any circumstances said my friend Adam Ali fancy the miserable mean mindless imaginationless selfish natures that could remain unmoved by the simplicity of the appeal give us your oil for our lamps are gone out it must now said my friend Adam Ali be a hundred times bitterer for them to think of being handed down an endless history as demons of selfishness and they are now where they cannot presumably measure their bitterness by milestones of progress so then yes said my friend Adam Ali whatever else you may do as you go through life remember to save up your gratitude for the bitterness you have known and remember that for you the bitterest is yet to come Adam Ali I asked already known the bitterest that can come and can you sit with your hands folded in the midst of a burning house not I said my friend Adam Ali laughing gaily again I looked hard at her and she looked back at me certainly there are times when my friend Adam Ali is like a stone wall wall end of chapter 11 chapter 12 of my friend Adam Ali by Mary MacLean this leper fox recording is in the public domain to fall in love I loved madly said my friend Adam Ali there came one down out of the north country that was dark and strong and brave and full of life's fire all my short life had been bathed in summer I had dreamed my 13 years beneath cherry blossoms upon a high hill but at the coming of this man from the north country I opened my two slow eyes and the world turned white exquisite raptuous divine white and afterward all was heavy gray away from the high hill of the cherry blossoms there lay a stretch of red barren wastes with towering rocks and beyond that a quiet, quiet sea that was only blue at the left of the high hill of the cherry blossoms there was a mountain covered with green ivy dark green ivy that defined its own green shape against the brilliant yellow sky behind it green and yellow green and yellow said the sky and the mountain covered with ivy the high hill of the cherry blossoms was colored with all the colors of Japan I lived there with people my mother and my father and some others all with pale faces and slow eyes but some of them were very ugly then came one down out of the north country that was dark and strong and brave and full of life's fire but his face was perfect straight way I fell in love with this one of all things in Japan what a thing it is to fall in love where the red barren waist lays spread below me I saw manifold softnesses like a dove's breast like a fawn's eyes like melted lilies and the towering gloomy rocks were the home of violet dreams the deep green of the ivy mountain my soul found rest at nightfall among mystery and shadow it wandered there in marvelous peace and the coolness and damp and the low muttering of the wind and the night birds went into it with a stirring powerful influence also the voices out of the very long ago came from among the green dark ivy and from the crevices of gray stones beneath it and they told me I was in the stillness from the deepness of the brilliant yellow sky the yellow of burnished brass there came legion earth old contradictions and wondrous paradox and parallel that had not been among the cherry blossoms appeared to me as my mind contemplated these I said am I thus in love because that I am weak or that I am strong for I see here that it is both weakness strength and I said am I myself when I do this thing or was that I who lived among the cherry blossoms I said who am I what am I blow all there was the blue broad sea this sea gave out a white mist that rose and spread over the earth I knew that I was in love once and for all the world was white the world was beautiful and divine life shown out of the mist unspeakable in its countless possibilities voices spoke near me and infinite voices called to me from afar they sounded clear and faint and maddening soft and tender and the souls be answered them with deafening joyous silent music he from the north country that was dark and strong and brave and full of life's fire came some days to the high hill of the cherry blossoms he spoke often and of many things he spoke to people to my mother and to my father and to others and rarely he spoke to me rarely he looked at me he had been in the great world he knew wonderful women and wonderful men he had been touched with all things what a human being was he and of all things in Japan what a thing it is to fall in love when three days had gone my heart knew rapture beyond any that it had dreamed it knew the mysteries and the fullness's after three days the world turned to that divine white and was white for seven days and afterward all was heavy grey the one from the north country returned back to the north country of all things in Japan what a thing it is to fall in love I was not in love with this one because he was a man or because he was strange and fascinating but because he was a glorious human being my heart was not turned to this one to marry him marrying and giving in marriage are for such as are in love unconsciously to see this one from the north country to hear his voice that was life and all for me life and all but he was gone he left a silence and a weariness these came and crowded out the white from my heart found lodgment there and all was heavy grey the picture of life and the mystery and shadow that was revealed to me when the world was white has never gone it has filled me in the days of my youth with an old terror of all things in Japan what a thing it is to fall in love to fall in love said my friend Annabelle the wild her two eyes under two white hounds with their expression their position told of a thing that is heart breaking to see end of chapter 12 chapter 13 of my friend Annabelle by Mary MacLean this leper fox recording is in the public domain chapter 13 when I went to the butte high school there was a time when I went to my friend Annabelle when I went to the butte high school I think of it now with mingled feelings you were younger then said my friend Annabelle I was younger in those days I still looked upon life as something which would one day open wide and display wondrous and beautiful things for me and meanwhile I went every day to the butte high school I found it a very interesting place much more interesting than I have since found the broad world I was 16 and 17 and 18 and things were not brilliantly colored and so I made much with the vivid fancy of all that came by power and what do you do now that you are one in 20 said my friend Annabelle I sit quietly I replied and wish not and wait not and look back upon the days in butte high school with mingled feelings also unawares said my friend Annabelle you still think things relating to that which is one day to open wondrously for you but never mind she said hastily as I was about to say something tell me about the butte high school to us a place said I where were gathered together manifold interesting, phenomenal and where I studied Virgil and grew fond of it and was good in it and where I studied geometry and was fond of it and knew less about it each day that I studied it and always I studied closely the persons whom I met daily in the butte high school I recall very clearly each member of the class of 99 my memory conjures up for me some quaint and fantastic visions picturesque backgrounds that appeal to my sense of delicate incongruity especially so since viewed in this light and from this distance what are some of them said my friend Annabelle there is one said I of a girl whom always in my mind I called the shad for that she was so blind and so flat and so silent the habit of asking me to write her Latin exercises which perhaps was not so much like a shad as like a person and there is one of a girl who spent the long hours of the day in writing long, long letters to her love but she knew painfully little about the lessons in the classrooms and there is one of a girl who brought to school every day a small flask whiskey to cheer her productive hours she was daily called back and down by the French teacher on account of her excessively bad French and life had dulled for her were it not for the flasks pungent contents there is one of a strange looking tawny headed girl who sat across the narrow aisle from me in the assembly room during my last year in school who kept her desk neatly piled with the works she called the works Albert Ross and after she had read them very kindly she would lean over and repeat the stories and quotations verbatim for my benefit her standing in her classes was not brilliant but in Albert Ross she was thorough there is one of a clever pretty girl who was malicious exquisitely malicious in all her ways and deeds and seemingly no thought entered her head that was not fraught with it she was malicious in algebra malicious in literature malicious in ancient history malicious in physical culture malicious in the writing of short themes and when it so chance that I made a failure in a recitation or was stupid she would look up to me and smile very sweetly and maliciously and there is one of a girl whose quaint and voluble profanity haunts me still and especially there is my memory a picture of all these on our graduating day receiving each a fine white diploma rolled up and neatly tied with the class colours a picture of these and the others we were 59 in all and the diploma stated tacitly in heavily engrossed letters that we had all been good for four years and we fulfilled every requirement of the Butte High School so we had doubtless but how much some of us had done for which in our diplomas we were not given credit in truth nothing was stated in them in engrossed lettering about courses in love letters or profanity or malice and Elbert Ross was not in the curriculum and the president of the school board doled out those diplomas with a short set speech for each one wet June day but he was not aware how insignificant they were and my mind likewise conjures up a vision of two with whom I used to take what we called tramps during our last year in the high school far down and out of Butte on Saturdays and other days when school was not I remember those two and those traps exceeding well nor can I think with but four years gone that the two themselves have forgotten one of these was an individual who's like I have not since known she reminded me sometimes of Cleopatra and sometimes of Peg of Limibati she was of Irish ancestry and had a long black mane of hair bred down behind her unconscious and lurid eyes of the kind that is known as Irish blue she had brains enough within her head but did not study over much her ways of going through life were often very dubious she weighed a great many pounds her experience of the world was large and to me she was fascinating for herself she was always rather afraid of me so much afraid in truth that if I had said a funny thing she must laugh with a forced and fictitious merriment if I told her she had no soul she must need agree with me abjectly though she was a good Catholic if I frowned upon her she shivered and was silent fanciful names and frocks though this lady's frocks were always fanciful in ways were selected for these this one's fanciful name was called muddle-mod for no particular reason I believe but she wore it well the other member of our trio was of a less extraordinary type she was stout as to figure and she knew a great deal about some things she was very good in history and at home she could make pie and cake and bread it is true that her cake sometimes stuck some sank in the middle and when she carved a fowl she could not always hit joints and she was one of a kind that always pronounces picture picture she was also known as a very sensible girl I can see her now with a purple ribbon around her neck and a brown raincoat on coming into the high school on a wet morning when we went tromping she usually wore an immense grey white belted in at the waist and a wide flat hat which made her look rather like a toadstool her fanciful name was emancipated Eva emancipated in truth she was in the high school she was dignified and sedate but on our trumps she would frequently skip like a young lamb and frisk and gamble down there in the country she who was called muddled-mod likewise frisked and gambled and always she personified my idea of the French noun abandon also I frisked and gambled in those days far down in the country the fanciful name selected for me was refreshment Rosanna and I cannot tell why but it was thought a good name for a lady tramp we started on these trumps at six in the morning we would rise from our beds at five and at ten minutes before six we would muddle-mod at the corner of Washington and Court streets below her house together we would go down East Park Street to the home of emancipated Eva then we walked seven miles or eight away into the open and the world we took things along to eat sometimes great many things and sometimes a few times muddled-mod would have but a curious looking jelly roll and emancipated Eva would come laden with hard bits of beef and I could show but a plate of fudge but other times there were tots and meat pies and turnovers and deviled ham and deviled chicken and deviled veal and deviled tongue and deviled fish of diverse kinds and some bottles of nut-brown October ale and sardines and the hula and green green olives only the more there was the harder to carry but times muddled-mod would carry much with little effort she would adorn herself with the luncheon a long bit of sausage-link about her neck like a chain and upon her hat held securely with bonnet pins fat yellow lemons and two bananas crossed in front like the tiny guns on a soldier's hat and budges of catabois grapes scattered here and there and pears hanging by their little stems behind the two early morning prevented all from being seen by the inhabitants of Butte and we did not venture home again until came the friendly darkness those were fascinating expeditions and whose was the glory mine was the glory it was I who invented them it was I who knew there was none so fitted for so delicate absurdity the cold muddled-mod and after her none so fitted as the fair, the good-natured the emancipated and together with them both I and as I let them forth and as I let them back and as I let them should be thus and so and straightway there were thus and so and we enjoyed it and clear air was in our lungs and life was in our veins for we had each but 18 years and were full of youth but most of all it was fascinating because we were three of three widely differing manners of living and methods of reasoning for I was not like emancipated ever nor yet like muddled-mod and emancipated ever was not like me nor yet like muddled-mod and muddled-mod was not like emancipated ever nor yet like me to be sure there were some things in my ordering which neither the one nor the other found enchanting why should the McLean do all the ordering they murmured between themselves but they did not open revolt so all went well but now these are gone the three of us were graduated from the Butte High School with the 59 others of 99 and had each a fine white diploma and went our ways she who was like Cleopatra and Peg of Lema Vati is teaching a school according to the last that I heard in the north of Montana and she that was emancipated ever has long since gone to California and is married and keeps a house and for me I am here far off from Butte with you Annabelle Leigh some things having been done meanwhile but though the two are gone I want they have not forgotten they have not forgotten the Butte High School nor the class of 99 nor the traps we went nor their tyrant me and I does say they all remember their Butte High School she of the love letters she of the whiskey flask she the student of Albert Ross she of the profanity she of the malice the shard and all the 9 and 50 the young feminine persons and the young masculine persons some are married and some are flown and some of them are grown up and different and some of them in the churchyard lie and some are gone to see but whenever I have a fancy to shut my eyes and look back I can see them all a quaint company also whenever I have a fancy to shut my eyes and look back to life when it was unspeakably brilliant in possibilities to look forward to and was marked in party-coloured checks and rings it fetches me to the days when I went to the Butte High School and studied geometry and virtual only I'm glad I'm not there now what for? said my friend Annabelle it is rather pitiful and dreadful to think of having been 17 and to have gone every day to the Butte High School and imagined how wonderful beautiful life would be someday said I at all once I felt very leery End of Chapter 13