The Annals of Ann

by Kate Trimble Sharber

It wouldn't hardly be worth while for me to change my name now, because I change my mind so often. I'm a great hand to start a thing and then branch off and start something entirely different, such as learning how to make the table walk, and pyrography. Cousin Eunice said one day when she looked around at the things I had in my room that it reminded her of Pompeii when they dug it up—so many things started that never would be finished.

One of the things we enjoyed most at Cousin Eunice's was walking out to a lovely old cemetery not very far from her house. It is so old and so beautiful that you're sure all the people in the graves must have gone to Heaven long ago. Along in April, when the iris and lilies-of-the-valley are in bloom and the birds and trees and sky all seem to be so happy, you look around at those peaceful graves and you don't believe in hell one bit. You think God is a heap better than folks give Him credit for being. But I hope this will never come to Brother Sheffield's ears, for he thinks you're certainly going there if you don't believe in a hell worse than the Standard Oil Company on fire.

While I'm on this kind of subject I want to tell something that Rufe said last winter, but I'm afraid to, for if mother ever saw it she would get Brother Sheffield to hold a special meeting for Rufe. I might risk it and then lock my diary up tight. Rufe said one time when I remarked that I liked St. John better than St. Paul: "No wonder! St. John's liver was in good working order!"

Cousin Eunice and Rufe are still very earnest and study deep things, even if they don't read Keats so much. They know a jolly crowd of people that call themselves "Bohemians." Lots of nights some of them would come to Cousin Eunice's and we would cook things in the chafing-dish and "discuss the deeper problems of life." They are not real Bohemians though, for, from what they said, I learned that a real Bohemian is a person that is very clever, but nobody knows it. He "follows his career," eating out of paper sacks and tin cans and sleeping on an article that is an oriental couch in the daytime. Then finally some rich person finds him and invites him to dinner, and this is called "discovering a genius."

When our friends would come we would talk about the "Brotherhood of Man" and the North Pole and such things as that. I listen to everything I can hear about the North Pole for I never have got over the idea that Santa Claus lives there. And the "Brotherhood of Man" means we're all as much alike as biscuits in a pan, the only difference being in the place where we're put; and we ought to act accordingly.

Some of the young ones talk a great deal about how the children of the nation ought to be brought up, and they tell about what their family life is going to be like, though Rufe says most of them haven't got salary enough to support a cockroach.

I think the "Brotherhood of Man" business is a good thing to teach children, for I wasn't taught it and I shall never forget my feelings when I first learned that Christ was a Jew! I thought it couldn't be so, and if it was so I could never be happy again. So the Bohemians are going to teach their children that the Jew is our brother and that he hath eyes and if you prick him he will bleed. These are their own words. I'm sure the Jews are lovely people since I've seen Ben-Hur on the stage and the picture of Dis—Disraeli. That's all I know about him and I'm not sure how to spell that. I'll skin my children if I ever catch them saying "Sheenie" in my presence.

And we make limericks! We don't make them in the chafing-dish though, as I thought when I first went there. A limerick is a very different thing from what you'd think if you didn't know. It's a verse of poetry that's very clever in every line.

Among the Bohemians I liked best were a married couple and Ann Lisbeth. Besides having the same name as mine, Ann Lisbeth is a beautiful foreign girl who was living across the ocean when she was born. Her last name is something that Disraeli is not a circumstance to, and I'd never spell it, so I won't waste time trying. She's going to get rid of that name pretty soon and I don't blame her, although Cousin Eunice says it is a noble one across the ocean. Still I don't blame her, for the man is a young doctor, Doctor Gordon that I've already mentioned, and perfectly precious. Next to a prince I believe a young doctor is the most thrilling thing in the world!

Ann Lisbeth lived near Cousin Eunice and they were great friends. She and her mother were very poor because they got exiled from their home for trying to get Ann Lisbeth's father out of prison where the king had put him. Oh, the people across the ocean are so much more romantic than we are in this country! Now, father wouldn't ever get put in prison in a lifetime!