Anne of the Island quotes

And now it’s not only cleaned but stripped bare. George Whitefield and the Duke have been relegated to the upstairs hall. ‘So passes the glory of this world,’ ” concluded Anne, with a laugh in which there was a little note of regret.

It is never pleasant to have our old shrines desecrated, even when we have outgrown them.

“I’ll be so lonesome when you go,” moaned Diana for the hundredth time. “And to think you go next week!”

“I ain’t crying ’cause Dora fell down cellar,” said Davy, cutting short Anne’s well-meant preachment with increasing bitterness. “

I’m crying ’cause I wasn’t there to see her fall. I’m always missing some fun or other, seems to me.

”

“How kind of you to say so,” responded Anne, with dancing eyes.

Her sense of humour was developing, and the speeches that would have hurt her at fourteen were becoming merely food for amusement now.

Josie suspected that Anne was laughing at her behind those wicked eyes; but she contented herself with whispering to Gertie, as they went downstairs, that Anne Shirley would put on more airs than ever now that she was going to college—you’d see!

Gilbert again made the mistake of saying something sentimental to her as they ate their supper on the moonlit verandah; and Anne, to punish him, was gracious to Charlie Sloane and allowed the latter to walk home with her.

She found, however, that revenge hurts nobody quite so much as the one who tries to inflict it.

Gilbert walked airily off with Ruby Gillis, and Anne could hear them laughing and talking gaily as they loitered along in the still, crisp autumn air.

“Oh, I know. But feeling is so different from knowing. My common sense tells me all you can say, but there are times when common sense has no power over me.

Common nonsense takes possession of my soul.

Really, after Mrs. Elisha went away I hardly had the heart to finish packing.”

“Precious little,” sniffed Mrs. Rachel. “However, I think Anne will. She never was flirtatious. But she doesn’t appreciate Gilbert at his full value, that’s what. Oh, I know girls! Charlie Sloane is wild about her, too, but I’d never advise her to marry a Sloane.

The Sloanes are good, honest, respectable people, of course. But when all’s said and done, they’re Sloanes.

”

Marilla nodded. To an outsider, the statement that Sloanes were Sloanes might not be very illuminating, but she understood.

Every village has such a family; good, honest, respectable people they may be, but Sloanes they are and must ever remain, though they speak with the tongues of men and angels.

Gilbert and Anne, happily unconscious that their future was thus being settled by Mrs. Rachel, were sauntering through the shadows of the Haunted Wood. Beyond, the harvest hills were basking in an amber sunset radiance, under a pale, aerial sky of rose and blue.

And oh, if only that dismal rain would stop pouring down as if the whole world were weeping over summer vanished and joys departed! Even Gilbert’s presence brought her no comfort, for Charlie Sloane was there, too, and

Sloanishness could be tolerated only in fine weather. It was absolutely insufferable in rain.

But when the boat steamed out of Charlottetown harbour things took a turn for the better.

“Is that Gilbert Blythe over there, Anne? How he has grown up this past year! He was only a schoolboy when I taught in Carmody. And of course that’s Charlie Sloane. He hasn’t changed—couldn’t!

He looked just like that when he was born, and he’ll look like that when he’s eighty.

This way, dear. We’ll be home in twenty minutes.”

I’m thankful that neither Mrs. Lynde nor Mrs. Elisha Wright know, or ever will know, my state of mind at present. They would exult in saying ‘I told you so,’ and be convinced it was the beginning of the end.

Whereas it is just the end of the beginning.

”

She has started to come up the avenue exactly half a dozen times, and half a dozen times has she turned and gone back. Either she’s dreadfully shy or she has got something on her conscience. Let’s go and meet her.

It’s easier to get acquainted in a graveyard than at Redmond, I believe.

”

“No, it doesn’t,” retorted Anne. “

Wasn’t it Dan O’Connell who said that if a man was born in a stable it didn’t make him a horse? I’m Island to the core.

”

It’s bleak and lonesome, and my room looks out on such an unholy back yard. It’s the ugliest place in the world. As for cats—well, surely all the Kingsport cats can’t congregate there at night, but half of them must.

I adore cats on hearth rugs, snoozing before nice, friendly fires, but cats in back yards at midnight are totally different animals.

The first night I was here I cried all night, and so did the cats. You should have seen my nose in the morning. How I wished I had never left home!”

As for cats—well, surely all the Kingsport cats can’t congregate there at night, but half of them must. I adore cats on hearth rugs, snoozing before nice, friendly fires, but cats in back yards at midnight are totally different animals.

The first night I was here I cried all night, and so did the cats.

You should have seen my nose in the morning. How I wished I had never left home!”

“

Honey, you couldn’t imagine me being a poor man’s wife, could you? I can’t do a single useful thing, and I am very extravagant.

Oh, no, my husband must have heaps of money. So that narrowed them down to two. But I couldn’t decide between two any easier than between two hundred.

“Goodness, no. I couldn’t love anybody. It isn’t in me. Besides I wouldn’t want to.

Being in love makes you a perfect slave, I think. And it would give a man such power to hurt you.

I’d be afraid. No, no, Alec and Alonzo are two dear boys, and I like them both so much that I really don’t know which I like the better. That is the trouble.

Even Alec and Alonzo—I’ll never be able to think of those two names separately after this—are to her just two playfellows who want her to play with them all their lives. I’m glad we met her, and I’m glad we went to Old St. John’s.

I believe I’ve put forth a tiny soul-root into Kingsport soil this afternoon. I hope so. I hate to feel transplanted.

”

“But there must—sometime,” mused Anne. “

Life seems like a cup of glory held to my lips just now.

But there must be some bitterness in it—there is in every cup. I shall taste mine some day. Well, I hope I shall be strong and brave to meet it. And I hope it won’t be through my own fault that it will come.

The whole place might have been transplanted from some remote country village; yet there was something about it that made its nearest neighbour, the big lawn-encircled palace of a tobacco king, look exceedingly crude and showy and ill-bred by contrast.

As Phil said, it was the difference between being born and being made.

“It’s the dearest place I ever saw,” said Anne delightedly. “It gives me one of my old, delightful, funny aches. It’s dearer and quainter than even Miss Lavendar’s stone house.”

“Patty Spofford is the name of the old lady who owns it, I’ve discovered. She lives there with her niece, and they’ve lived there for hundreds of years, more or less—maybe a little less, Anne.

Exaggeration is merely a flight of poetic fancy.

I understand that wealthy folk have tried to buy the lot time and again—it’s really worth a small fortune now, you know—but ‘Patty’ won’t sell upon any consideration.

And now, this thrilling experience had turned out to be merely grotesque. Billy Andrews had got his sister to propose for him because his father had given him the upper farm; and if Anne wouldn’t “have him” Nettie Blewett would.

There was romance for you, with a vengeance!

Anne laughed—and then sighed. The bloom had been brushed from one little maiden dream. Would the painful process go on until everything became prosaic and humdrum?

Billy Andrews had got his sister to propose for him because his father had given him the upper farm; and if Anne wouldn’t “have him” Nettie Blewett would. There was romance for you, with a vengeance! Anne laughed—and then sighed.

The bloom had been brushed from one little maiden dream.

Would the painful process go on until everything became prosaic and humdrum?

“Everything is new in the spring,” said Anne. “Springs themselves are always so new, too.

No spring is ever just like any other spring.

It always has something of its own to be its own peculiar sweetness. See how green the grass is around that little pond, and how the willow buds are bursting.”

“Does that mean that you really love it? Or that you merely like the looks of it? The girls nowadays indulge in such exaggerated statements that one never can tell what they do mean. It wasn’t so in my young days.

Then a girl did not say she loved turnips, in just the same tone as she might have said she loved her mother or her Saviour.

”

“

I feel like one of the morning stars that sang for joy,

” said Anne.

“Oh, what do I care for that?” demanded Phil tragically. “

Better a dinner of herbs where your chums are than a stalled ox in a lonely boardinghouse.

Don’t think I’m all stomach, girls. I’ll be willing to live on bread and water—with just a leetle jam—if you’ll let me come.”

“

People who don’t go visiting catch things, too. Sometimes they even die

,” said Diana solemnly.

But Anne had not thought about this at all.

She was in pursuit of fame, not filthy lucre, and her literary dreams were as yet untainted by mercenary considerations.

“You’ll let me read it, won’t you?” pleaded Diana.

“Then I think God is a mean old scamp,” retorted Davy. “

Doesn’t He know a fellow must have some way of ’spressing his feelings?

”

But Davy’s cup of iniquity was not yet full.

He was to discover that one sin demands another to cover it.

They had dinner with Mrs. Lynde that day, and the first thing she asked Davy was,

“

Most of the trouble in life comes from misunderstanding, I think,

” said Anne. “I must go now, Ruby. It’s getting late—and you shouldn’t be out in the damp.”

“

What’ll you feel like if the germs kill me then?

” demanded Davy.

Half a dozen ruthless Sophs, who were among his fellow-boarders, swooped down upon him one night and shaved half of his head. In this guise the luckless Moody Spurgeon had to go about until his hair grew again.

He told Anne bitterly that there were times when he had his doubts as to whether he was really called to be a minister.

Aunt Jamesina did not come until the girls had Patty’s Place ready for her.

How those girls enjoyed putting their nest in order! As Phil said, it was almost as good as getting married.

You had the fun of homemaking without the bother of a husband.

All brought something with them to adorn or make comfortable the little house. Pris and Phil and Stella had knickknacks and pictures galore, which latter they proceeded to hang according to taste, in reckless disregard of Miss Patty’s new paper.

But, when the box was lifted in the morning, Rusty bounded at one gay leap to Anne’s shoulder where he began to lick her face affectionately.

Never was there a cat more decidedly alive.

“Here’s a knot hole in the box,” groaned Phil. “I never saw it. That’s why he didn’t die. Now, we’ve got to do it all over again.”

“But I am old-fashioned. My clothes are, and it stands to reason my opinions are, too. I don’t say they’re any the better of that, mind you. In fact, I daresay they’re a good deal the worse. But they’ve worn nice and easy.

New shoes are smarter than old ones, but the old ones are more comfortable.

I’m old enough to indulge myself in the matter of shoes and opinions. I mean to take it real easy here. I know you expect me to look after you and keep you proper, but I’m not going to do it.

I don’t say they’re any the better of that, mind you. In fact, I daresay they’re a good deal the worse. But they’ve worn nice and easy. New shoes are smarter than old ones, but the old ones are more comfortable.

I’m old enough to indulge myself in the matter of shoes and opinions.

I mean to take it real easy here. I know you expect me to look after you and keep you proper, but I’m not going to do it. You’re old enough to know how to behave if you’re ever going to be.

One ear was black and one yellow. A black patch over one eye gave him a fearfully rakish look. In reality he was meek and inoffensive, of a sociable disposition. In one respect, if in no other, Joseph was like a lily of the field.

He toiled not neither did he spin or catch mice.

Yet Solomon in all his glory slept not on softer cushions, or feasted more fully on fat things.

“I don’t believe Old Nick can be so very ugly,” said Aunt Jamesina reflectively. “He wouldn’t do so much harm if he was.

I always think of him as a rather handsome gentleman.

”

“Mine’s cracked in a hundred places. Your Miss Stacy likely meant that when you were twenty your character would have got its permanent bent in one direction or ’tother, and would go on developing in that line. Don’t worry over it, Anne.

Do your duty by God and your neighbour and yourself, and have a good time.

That’s my philosophy and it’s always worked pretty well. Where’s Phil off to tonight?”

“So’s everybody’s,” said Aunt Jamesina cheerfully. “

Mine’s cracked in a hundred places.

Your Miss Stacy likely meant that when you were twenty your character would have got its permanent bent in one direction or ’tother, and would go on developing in that line. Don’t worry over it, Anne.

“The very sound of them makes me feel like skipping off to a dance. And yellow silk. It makes one think of a dress of sunshine. I always wanted a yellow silk dress, but first my mother and then my husband wouldn’t hear of it.

The very first thing I’m going to do when I get to heaven is to get a yellow silk dress.

”

“Of course I do.

What are looking-glasses and men for?

That wasn’t what I meant. Are all my ends tucked in? Is my skirt straight? And would this rose look better lower down? I’m afraid it’s too high—it will make me look lopsided. But I hate things tickling my ears.”

“Why should she be envious?” demanded Aunt Jamesina. “

She’s not quite as good-looking as you, maybe, but she’s got a far handsomer nose.

”

“

I was born a seesaw, Aunty, and nothing can ever prevent me from teetering.

”

“Why should I?

There are enough folks who do. The world needs people like me, Anne, just to amuse it.

It would be a terrible place if everybody were intellectual and serious and in deep, deadly earnest. My mission is, as Josiah Allen says, ‘to charm and allure.’ Confess now.

“

You don’t know love when you see it. You’ve tricked something out with your imagination that you think love, and you expect the real thing to look like that.

There, that’s the first sensible thing I’ve ever said in my life. I wonder how I managed it?”

“This has been the most beautiful day of my life,” Anne said to Phil that night. “I’ve found my father and mother. Those letters have made them real to me.

I’m not an orphan any longer. I feel as if I had opened a book and found roses of yesterday, sweet and beloved, between its leaves.

”

And the coming of Anne—the vivid, imaginative, impetuous child with her heart of love, and her world of fancy, bringing with her colour and warmth and radiance, until the wilderness of existence had blossomed like the rose.

Marilla felt that out of her sixty years she had lived only the nine that had followed the advent of Anne.

And Anne would be home tomorrow night.

“No.” Something in Anne’s tone made Marilla glance at her sharply, but Anne was apparently absorbed in arranging her violets in a bowl. “See, aren’t they sweet?” she went on hurriedly. “

The year is a book, isn’t it, Marilla? Spring’s pages are written in Mayflowers and violets, summer’s in roses, autumn’s in red maple leaves, and winter in holly and evergreen.

”

“

Yes; but say, Marilla, I’m tired of being good.

”

“

You’d get tired of being bad much sooner, Davy-boy

,” said Anne.

I am afraid the Twin Sailors will never again come to you in the pearly, enchanted boat with the sail of moonshine; and the Golden Lady will play no more for you on her golden harp. Even Nora will not meet you much longer.

You must pay the penalty of growing-up, Paul. You must leave fairyland behind you.

”

“Oh, no, we don’t,” said Anne, shaking her head gravely. “We are getting very, very wise, and it is such a pity.

We are never half so interesting when we have learned that language is given us to enable us to conceal our thoughts.

”

“The fifth old lady is Mrs. Grant.

She is a sweet old thing; but she never says anything but good of anybody and so she is a very uninteresting conversationalist.

“And now for Jonas, Anne.

“Anybody is liable to rheumatism in her legs, Anne. It’s only old people who should have rheumatism in their souls, though. Thank goodness, I never have.

When you get rheumatism in your soul you might as well go and pick out your coffin.

”

She had really been afraid, that April evening in the orchard, that she had hurt him terribly and that the wound would be long in healing. Now she saw that she need not have worried.

Men have died and the worms have eaten them but not for love.

Gilbert evidently was in no danger of immediate dissolution. He was enjoying life, and he was full of ambition and zest. For him there was to be no wasting in despair because a woman was fair and cold.

“

It is when my umbrella turns inside out that I am convinced of the total depravity of inanimate things

,” she said gaily.

They felt so badly I just cried over both of them—howled. But I knew there was only one man in the world I could ever marry. I had made up my own mind for once and it was real easy, too.

It’s very delightful to feel so sure, and know it’s your own sureness and not somebody else’s.

”

Lynde. “She was his fourth wife. He’d sort of got into the habit of marrying. He only lived a few years after he married her. The doctor said he died of dyspepsia, but I shall always maintain that he died of Atossa’s tongue, that’s what.

Poor soul, she always knew everything about her neighbours, but she never was very well acquainted with herself.

Well, she’s gone anyhow; and I suppose the next excitement will be Diana’s wedding.”

“Oh, no.

I wouldn’t want to marry anybody who was wicked, but I think I’d like it if he could be wicked and wouldn’t.

Now, Fred is hopelessly good.”

Mrs. Rachel sighed.

She was afraid Providence wouldn’t interfere; and she didn’t dare to.

Anne had wandered down to the Dryad’s Bubble and was curled up among the ferns at the root of the big white birch where she and Gilbert had so often sat in summers gone by.

“If you do I’ll drag you down to the rainwater hogshead and drop you in,” said Anne unsympathetically. “Cheer up, dearest.

Getting married can’t be so very terrible when so many people survive the ceremony.

See how cool and composed I am, and take courage.”

“This is my first trip on the mail rowte. Thomas wanted to hoe his turnips today so he asked me to come. So I jest sot down and took a standing-up snack and started. I sorter like it. O’ course it’s rather tejus.

Part of the time I sits and thinks and the rest I jest sits.

Jog along, black mare. I want to git home airly. Thomas is terrible lonesome when I’m away. You see, we haven’t been married very long.”

But, y’see, I loved Thomas, and I didn’t care one red cent for W. O. So I argued it out with myself. ‘Sarah Crowe,’ say I—my first was a Crowe—‘you can marry your rich man if you like but you won’t be happy.

Folks can’t get along together in this world without a little bit of love.

You’d just better tie up to Thomas, for he loves you and you love him and nothing else ain’t going to do you.’ Jog along, black mare. So I told Thomas I’d take him.

“Time!” said Janet with indescribable scorn. “

He has had twenty years. How much time does he want?

”

“

But yeh’d git acquainted with me after we was married

,” said Sam.

“

I like cats as is cats. I don’t like cats as is women,

” was Alec’s cryptic reply.

“You’ll feel differently about a good many things when you get to be my age,” said Janet tolerantly. “That’s one of the things we learn as we grow older—how to forgive.

It comes easier at forty than it did at twenty.

”

“We’ve learned the truth of what Professor Woodleigh told us last Philomathic,” said Phil. “He said, ‘

Humour is the spiciest condiment in the feast of existence. Laugh at your mistakes but learn from them, joke over your troubles but gather strength from them, make a jest of your difficulties but overcome them.

’ Isn’t that worth learning, Aunt Jimsie?”

“I think,” said Anne slowly, “that

I really have learned to look upon each little hindrance as a jest and each great one as the foreshadowing of victory.

Summing up, I think that is what Redmond has given me.”

“No, I won’t, young woman.

Anyone who has gumption knows what it is, and anyone who hasn’t can never know what it is.

So there is no need of defining it.”

“No, no, I haven’t,” gasped poor Anne. Oh, how could she explain? She couldn’t explain.

There are some things that cannot be explained.

“I did think I cared—truly I did—but I know now I don’t.”

“I do know my own mind,” protested Anne. “

The trouble is, my mind changes and then I have to get acquainted with it all over again.

”

“You poor darling,” said Phil, melting. “Just come here and let me comfort you. I’ve no right to scold you. I’d have married Alec or Alonzo if I hadn’t met Jo.

Oh, Anne, things are so mixed up in real life. They aren’t clear-cut and trimmed off, as they are in novels.

”

She missed the merry comradeship of Patty’s Place. She had dreamed some brilliant dreams during the past winter and now they lay in the dust around her. In her present mood of self-disgust, she could not immediately begin dreaming again.

And she discovered that, while solitude with dreams is glorious, solitude without them has few charms.

She had not seen Roy again after their painful parting in the park pavilion; but Dorothy came to see her before she left Kingsport.

Anne decided not to continue her duel with Mrs. Harmon.

You could not fence with an antagonist who met rapier thrust with blow of battle axe.

“Since Jane is away,” she said, rising haughtily, “I don’t think I can stay longer this morning. I’ll come down when she comes home.”

“

It will take all his gold to gild a pill like him, that’s what

,” said Mrs. Rachel solemnly.

Mother thinks it is terrible—she thinks Jo might at least take a church in a decent place. But the wilderness of the Patterson slums will blossom like the rose for me if Jo is there. Oh, Anne, I’m so happy my heart aches with it.”

Anne was always glad in the happiness of her friends; but it is sometimes a little lonely to be surrounded everywhere by a happiness that is not your own.

And it was just the same when she went back to Avonlea. This time it was Diana who was bathed in the wonderful glory that comes to a woman when her firstborn is laid beside her.