Miss Cullingford is our English literature instructor, and we all simply adore her. She's the sweetest thing! She's little and slight, with fluffy light hair and dark blue eyes. And she's such an inspiration about literature and English composition! She makes it seem actually like a romance. They always seemed terribly dull, those subjects, when we had Miss Trotter last year. But now we're just crazy about them.
Well, one of the things she said yesterday in composition class was that every one of us ought to keep a journal, not the kind of diary affair that some people keep,—all about the weather and the number of jars of jam they put up, and how Cousin Hannah called that day!—but an occasional record, only written when we felt like it, of the things that happen around us and our ideas about people and so on. She said that the greatest minds of the ages had generally kept such a record, and that they had proved a big addition to history and literature, too.
Then, right there, I raised my hand and said that it was fine, of course, for the great minds to do it, especially when they lived in stirring times and had lots interesting to write about; but what was the use of just plain, ordinary people, as young as we were, doing it, especially when there wasn't anything going on that was interesting at all,—just the same old thing every day?
Miss Cullingford answered that I mustn't make the mistake of thinking any life uninteresting, no matter how quiet and ordinary it might appear to be. You can always find something interesting to write about any kind of life, if you try hard enough. And that was where the advantage of a journal came in,—it made you look around hard to find what was worth while, and you always found it. Also, it was a great help to your style in writing. Then she asked if any of the girls would promise to keep a journal faithfully for a year. Carol and I promised.
Well, now I'm going to see. No life could possibly be more uninteresting than mine, here in quiet little Stafford where nothing ever happens or ever has happened that I know of, and in a family that's awfully nice, of course, but as plain and uninteresting and ordinary as all the rest of the families around here.
Carol doesn't feel the same as I do about it. She's more hopeful. That's because she has lots of imagination and is always romancing about people and thinking there's some story back of their lives that we don't know. I suppose her journal will be awfully different from mine. Well, anyhow, we've both begun, and now we'll see what happens.
November 23. I had to stop short last night because I suddenly got so sleepy. Now I'll go on. I do wish we lived in Bridgeton, for things surely happen once in a while in a big town like that. Or even down in our own village of Stafford itself, and not way out, a mile off on the main road, on this silly little triangle called Paradise Green. Even the trolley doesn't run up this way; that would be something! But there's nothing in the world around here except this little triangle of a green, formed by the turning off of Cranberry Bog Road from the River Road, and the short road that connects the two at the head of the green. I'm sure I don't know why it was ever called Paradise Green. I suppose if I were Carol, I'd find out. She probably will. She's always hunting up historical facts.
Even the automobiles don't come along this way. Nearly all of them keep to the State road over on the other side of the river. There are just three houses around the Green, one on each side, and not another dwelling anywhere within half a mile. So we haven't many near neighbors.
Our house stands at the head of the Green. It's a big square house, with a cupola on top and a veranda around all four sides. Father's father built it when that style of house was just beginning to be popular, and everybody thought it very grand. I hate it myself, because it seems so old-fashioned and dreary compared to those pretty new bungalows they are putting up in Bridgeton. Mother and Father and the Imp and I live here. Father does intensive farming,—he is just crazy about it,—and every one comes to Birdsey's for ideas on the subject.
Dave is my brother. He's seventeen and a half, and a very quiet and thoughtful sort of person. All the same, he can do his own share of teasing in a quiet way. He left high school this year because his health wasn't very good, and is helping Father with the farming. Next year he's going to study scientific agriculture at one of the big colleges. I'm secretly awfully fond of Dave, but just at present he pretends to look down on girls as entirely unnecessary articles in the general scheme of things, so Carol and I are letting him severely alone.