The Annals of Ann

by Kate Trimble Sharber

It seems to me that the writing habit is kinder like poison oak; it's sure to break out on you in the spring, and you can never get it entirely out of your system.

I've tried my best to keep from writing, and when you have done your best and failed, why I don't believe even Robert Bruce's spider could have done any more.

I promised mother I would stop writing in my diary and I have—for such a long time that every one of the hems in my dresses has had to be let out since I wrote last. But now I just must break my promise, and I reckon if you are going to break a promise at all you might as well break it all to pieces. So I'll just dive in and tell all that happened since I wrote last.

You remember that fluffy-skirted widow that I told you about being down here, my diary, and I sharpened seventeen pencils for—a long time ago? Well, she said that she believed every minute of this life was made for enjoyment. She told it to a young man that told it to father that told it to mother and I happened to hear. She said you ought to do the things you enjoy most, as long as they didn't bother anybody else, and if you did things you had to repent of afterward, why, even then, you ought to cut out your sackcloth by a becoming pattern!

Everybody in town heard that she said it, and Brother Sheffield said it was a heathenish thing to say! He preached his Jezebel sermon the very next Sunday, although it wasn't due until nearer Easter bonnet time. Maybe he wasn't to blame so much, though, for the presiding elder was due that Sunday and found out at the last minute he couldn't get there in time for the morning service; so Brother Sheffield had to preach the first sermon he could get his hands on, I reckon. The presiding elder (I wonder if you ought to begin him with a capital letter? I never wrote "presiding elder" before in my life and maybe never will again, so it's no use getting up to go and look for it in the dictionary) well, he got in late that afternoon and spent the night at our house where he kept the supper table in a roar telling funny tales about the ignorance and tacky ways of the country brethren he had stayed with the night before. He was an awfully popular presiding elder with his members.

But what I started out to say when I commenced writing to-night was that surely mother wouldn't be so cruel as not to want my grandchildren to know a few little last things about all the friends I've written of in here, and also a few little last things about me. I always like to read a book that winds up that way. For instance, you will enjoy hearing that Miss Irene is spending every minute of her time just about now running baby blue ribbon in her underclothes. And Miss Merle has long ago quit running it in hers!

Miss Irene has stopped being a "pseudo-Poe in petticoats," as father one time called her, but not to her face. Doctor Bynum told her that he thought one bright magazine story that would make a "T.B." patient sit up in bed and laugh was worth all the graveyard gloom that Poe ever wrote.

And before I get clear away from the subject of Miss Merle I must tell you that Mr. St. John is still the most bashful, though married, man I ever heard of. I never shall forget the time he wouldn't let us see his undershirt—when it was hanging in an up-stairs window, too. But Jean wrote me not long ago that when the census man came around to see how many folks lived there and how many times each one had been married and if they kept a cow, etc., Mr. St. John happened to be the one to go to the door and answer the man's questions. Now, it does seem that if he and Miss Merle have been married long enough for her to leave off the ribbon he might leave off the blushes; but they were all standing around looking at him, which of course made it worse. So when the census man said, "How many children is your wife the mother of?" instead of speaking out boldly, "None!" Jean said his face turned every color in the curriculum and he stammered, "Not any—that I know of!" And then he looked around at them as if to see whether or not they knew of any lying around loose about the house.

I haven't seen Jean since she was down here, but we write eighteen pages a week. I didn't get to go on my visit to her house as I expected, for we went to Florida instead. We all went, that is, us three, and Waterloo and his family besides Ann Lisbeth and Doctor Gordon.