The Annals of Ann

by Kate Trimble Sharber

I don't blame the men for being proud. They have something to be proud of, for they can do exactly as they please, from wearing out the seats of their trousers when they're little to being president when they're big. When I was right little I used to think that the heathen over the sea that threw the girl babies to the crocodiles were doing it in hopes of killing out the girl breed, so the little new babies would have to be boys. A heathen is anybody that lives on the other side of the map from us.

Another good thing about a man is he can say, "Damn that telephone!" Rufe says it whenever he's busy and it bothers him, but Cousin Eunice can't. All she can do is to have sick headache when she gets worn out.

I know one tired lady whose husband is a busy doctor and whose baby is a busy baby, and lots of times the lady has to stop up her ears to say her prayers. And she hardly ever has time to powder her face unless company is coming, but, sick or well, she has to answer that telephone! She says it is a disheartening thing to have to take her hands out of the biscuit dough when the cook's brother has died and go to the telephone in a big hurry where folks tell her every symptom of everything they have, from abscess on the brain to ingrowing toe-nails. And she never gets the baby well lathered in his bath of a morning but what some of her lady friends call her up and she has to sit and talk for politeness' sake till the baby almost drowns and gets soap in his eyes.

She tries to believe in New Thought though, and some days she "goes into the silence." This means wrapping the telephone up in a counterpane and stuffing up the door-bell until it can make only a hoarse, choking noise. Then she spanks the baby and puts him to bed, and that house is like the palace of the Sleeping Beauty.

Yes, women certainly seem to have a hard time in this life. Even when they marry rich and live in a hotel and never have any babies they seem to be worse tired than the ones that warm bottles of milk and peel potatoes. Some of them that Cousin Eunice knows are called "bridge maniacs," and they shrug their shoulders and say "What's the use?" if you suggest anything to them.

I have been home from Cousin Eunice's now for two weeks, for the stylish, private school I went to up there lets out soon. Mammy Lou says I'm the worst person to break out in spots she ever saw, and one of my "spots" last summer was keeping this diary, which I did for a while very hard and fast. Now a whole year has passed and it is summer again and I am so lonesome that I believe I'll write a little every day and tell some of the things we did at Rufe's last winter. If any of you grandchildren who read are afflicted with that trouble of doing things by fits and starts you may know who you inherited it from. I'm not really to blame so much for neglecting you, my diary, for all the time I needed you most last winter you were lost. This is a terrible habit that all my things have—getting lost. My garters do it especially and I have to tear great holes in my stockings by pinning them up and then forgetting to stand stiff-kneed.

Rufe told mother last fall that I was so precocious, which I looked up in the dictionary and admired him very much for, that I ought to be where I could have good teachers. So after he and Cousin Eunice had been married long enough to be able to bear the sight of a third party at the breakfast table they wrote for me to come and I went.

I was kinder disappointed to see them looking like every-day folks again, for the last time I had seen them they were looking as they had never looked before and never will look again, for Rufe says he'll be hanged if anybody can get him to appear in that wedding suit any more.

But oh, that wedding! And oh, that wedding march played on a thundering pipe-organ that makes cold chills run up and down your back thinking what if it was happening to you! When the time comes for "I will" you nearly smother, you're so afraid they might change their minds at the last minute and embarrass you half to death right there before all those people.

They didn't change their minds then, though, nor since then either, I honestly believe. They married safe and sound, and Cousin Eunice's favorite book now is 1,001 Tried Recipes. And Keats is lots of times covered with dust.