Night is falling over Avonlea.
This tiny village in turn-of-the-century Prince Edward Island is peaceful and welcoming,
Home to some of the most beautiful landscapes in the world and some of the most interesting townsfolk.
Tonight,
We're going to spend some time with Anne Shirley and her bosom friend Diana Barry,
As they form a story club.
This selection is lightly abridged from Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery.
As you get comfortable in your bed,
Remember that you are safe.
It is time to relax into sleep.
Let's join Anne and her friends in Avonlea.
Let your mind meander down red roads.
Watch as the sea gently laps against the shore.
Take a moment to breathe in as the tide rolls softly in and out as the tide goes out.
Breathe in and out.
Breathe in and out.
Breathe in and out.
And let your breath settle into its normal rhythm as your body relaxes and the story begins.
The story club is formed.
It was an unusually mild winter with so little snow that Anne and Diana could go to school nearly every day by way of the birch path.
On Anne's birthday,
They were tripping lightly down it,
Keeping eyes and ears alert amid all their chatter.
For Miss Stacy had told them that they must soon write a composition on A Winter's Walk in the Woods,
And it behooved them to be observant.
Just think,
Diana,
I'm 13 years old today,
Remarked Anne in an awed voice.
I can scarcely realize that I'm in my teens.
When I woke this morning,
It seemed to me that everything must be different.
You've been 13 for a month,
So I suppose it doesn't seem such a novelty to you as it does to me.
It makes life seem so much more interesting.
In two more years,
I'll be really grown up.
It's a great comfort to think that I'll be able to use big words then without being laughed at.
Ruby Gillis says she means to have a bow as soon as she's 15,
Said Diana.
Ruby Gillis thinks of nothing but bows,
Said Anne disdainfully.
She's actually delighted when anyone writes her name up in a take notice for all she pretends to be so mad.
But I'm afraid that is an uncharitable speech.
Mrs.
Allen says we should never make uncharitable speeches,
But they do slip out so often before you think,
Don't they?
I simply can't talk about Josie Pie without making an uncharitable speech,
So I never mention her at all.
You may have noticed that.
I'm trying to be as much like Mrs.
Allen as I possibly can,
For I think she's perfect.
Mr.
Allen thinks so too.
Mrs.
Lind says he just worships the ground she treads on,
And she doesn't really think it right for a minister to set his affections so much on a mortal being.
But then,
Diana,
Even ministers are human and have their besetting sins just like everybody else.
I had such an interesting talk with Mrs.
Allen about besetting sins last Sunday afternoon.
There are just a few things it's proper to talk about on Sundays,
And that is one of them.
My besetting sin is imagining too much and forgetting my duties.
I'm striving very hard to overcome it,
And now that I'm really 13,
Perhaps I'll get on better.
In four more years,
We'll be able to put our hair up,
Said Diana.
Alice Bell is only 16,
And she is wearing hers up,
But I think that's ridiculous.
I shall wait until I'm 17.
If I had Alice Bell's crooked nose,
Said Anne decidedly,
I wouldn't,
But there,
I won't say what I was going to because it was extremely uncharitable.
Besides,
I was comparing it with my own nose,
And that's vanity.
I'm afraid I think too much about my nose,
Ever since I heard that compliment about it long ago.
It really is a great comfort to me.
Oh,
Diana,
Look,
There's a rabbit.
That's something to remember for our woods composition.
I really think the woods are just as lovely in winter as in summer.
They're so white and still,
As if they were asleep and dreaming pretty dreams.
I won't mind writing that composition when its time comes,
Sighed Diana.
I can manage to write about the woods,
But the one we're to hand in Monday is terrible.
The idea of Miss Stacy telling us to write a story out of our own heads.
Why,
It's as easy as a wink,
Said Anne.
It's easy for you because you have an imagination,
Retorted Diana.
But what would you do if you had been born without one?
I suppose you have your composition all done?
Anne nodded,
Trying hard not to look virtuously complacent and failing miserably.
I wrote it last Monday evening.
It's called The Jealous Rival,
Or In Death Not Divided.
I read it to Marilla,
And she said it was stuff and nonsense.
Then I read it to Matthew,
And he said it was fine.
That is the kind of critic I like.
It's a sad,
Sweet story.
I just cried like a child while I was writing it.
It's about two beautiful maidens called Cordelia Montmorency and Geraldine Seymour,
Who lived in the same village and were devotedly attached to each other.
Cordelia was a regal brunette with a coronet of midnight hair and duskly flashing eyes.
Geraldine was a queenly blonde with hair like spun gold and velvety purple eyes.
I never saw anybody with purple eyes,
Said Diana dubiously.
Neither did I.
I just imagined them.
I wanted something out of the common.
Geraldine had an alabaster brow,
Too.
I've found out what an alabaster brow is.
That is one of the advantages of being thirteen.
You know so much more than you did when you were only twelve.
Well,
What became of Cordelia and Geraldine?
Asked Diana,
Who was beginning to feel rather interested in their fate.
They grew in beauty side by side until they were sixteen.
Then Bertram De Vere came to their native village and fell in love with the fair Geraldine.
He saved her life when her horse ran away with her in a carriage,
And she fainted into his arms and he carried her home three miles.
Because,
You understand,
The carriage was all smashed up.
I found it rather hard to imagine the proposal because I had no experience to go by.
I asked Ruby Gillis if she knew anything about how men proposed because I thought she'd likely be an authority on the subject,
Having so many sisters married.
Ruby told me she was hid in the hall pantry when Malcolm Andrews proposed to her sister Susan.
She said Malcolm told Susan that his dad had given him the farm in his own name and then said,
What do you say,
Darling pet,
If we get hitched this fall?
And Susan said,
Yes.
No.
I don't know.
Let me see.
And there they were,
Engaged as quick as that.
But I didn't think that sort of a proposal was a very romantic one,
So in the end I had to imagine it out as well as I could.
I made it very flowery and poetical and Bertram went on his knees,
Although Ruby Gillis says that isn't done nowadays.
Geraldine accepted him in a speech a page long.
I can tell you I took a lot of trouble with that speech.
I rewrote it five times and I look upon it as my masterpiece.
Bertram gave her a diamond ring and a ruby necklace and told her they would go to Europe for a wedding tour,
For he was immensely wealthy.
But then,
Alas,
Shadows began to darken over their path.
Cordelia was secretly in love with Bertram herself,
And when Geraldine told her about the engagement,
She was simply furious,
Especially when she saw the necklace and the diamond ring.
All her affection for Geraldine turned to bitter hate,
And she vowed that she would never marry Bertram.
But she pretended to be Geraldine's friend the same as ever.
One evening,
They were standing on the bridge over a rushing,
Turbulent stream,
And Cordelia,
Thinking they were alone,
Pushed Geraldine over the brink with a wild,
Mocking ha-ha-ha.
But Bertram saw it all,
And he at once plunged into the current,
Exclaiming,
I will save thee,
My peerless Geraldine.
But alas,
He had forgotten he couldn't swim.
It's so much more romantic to end a story with a funeral than a wedding.
As for Cordelia,
She went mad with remorse.
I thought that was a poetical retribution for her crime.
How perfectly lovely,
Sighed Diana,
Who belonged to Matthew's school of critics.
I don't see how you can make up such thrilling things out of your own head,
Anne.
I wish my imagination was as good as yours.
It would be if you'd only cultivate it,
Said Anne cheeringly.
I've just thought of a plan,
Diana.
Let you and I have a story club,
All our own,
And write stories for practice.
I'll help you along until you can do them by yourself.
You ought to cultivate your imagination,
You know.
Miss Stacy says so.
This was how the story club came into existence.
It was limited to Diana and Anne at first,
But soon it was extended to include Jane Andrews and Ruby Gillis,
And one or two others who felt that their imaginations needed cultivating.
No boys were allowed in it,
Although Ruby Gillis opined that their admission would make it more exciting.
And each member had to produce one story a week.
It's extremely interesting,
Anne told Marilla.
Each girl has to read her story out loud,
And then we talk it over.
We are going to keep them all sacredly and have them to read to our descendants.
We each write under a nom de plume.
Mine is Rosamond Montmorisy.
All the girls do pretty well.
Ruby Gillis is rather sentimental.
Jane's stories are extremely sensible.
Diana puts too many murders in hers.
I mostly always have to tell them what to write about,
But that isn't hard,
For I've millions of ideas.
I think this story-writing business is the foolishest yet,
Scoffed Marilla.
You'll get a pack of nonsense into your heads and waste time that should be put on your lessons.
Reading stories is bad enough,
But writing them is worse.
But we're so careful to put a moral into them all,
Marilla,
Explained Anne.
I insist upon that.
All the good people are rewarded,
And all the bad ones are suitably punished.
I'm sure that must have a wholesome effect.
The moral is the great thing.
Mr.
Allen says so.
I read one of my stories to him and Mrs.
Allen,
And they both agreed that the moral was excellent.
Only they laughed in the wrong places.
I like it better when people cry.
Jane and Ruby almost always cry when I come to the pathetic parts.
Diana wrote her Aunt Josephine about our club,
And her Aunt Josephine wrote back that we were to send her some of our stories.
So we copied out four of our very best and sent them.
Miss Josephine Barry wrote back that she had never read anything so amusing in her life.
That kind of puzzled us because the stories were all very tragic.
But I'm glad Miss Barry liked them.
It shows our club is doing some good in the world.
Mrs.
Allen says that ought to be our object in everything.
I do really try to make it my object,
But I forget so often when I'm having fun.
I hope I shall be a little like Mrs.
Allen when I grow up.
Do you think there is any prospect of it,
Marilla?
I shouldn't say there was a great deal,
Was Marilla's encouraging answer.
I'm sure Mrs.
Allen was never such a silly,
Forgetful little girl as you are.
No,
But she wasn't always so good as she is now either,
Said Anne seriously.
She told me so herself.
That is,
She said she was a dreadful mischief when she was a girl and was always getting into scrapes.
I felt so encouraged when I heard that.
Is it very wicked of me,
Marilla,
To feel encouraged when I hear that other people have been bad and mischievous?
Mrs.
Lynde says it is.
Mrs.
Lynde says she always feels shocked when she hears of anyone ever having been naughty,
No matter how small they were.
Mrs.
Lynde says she once heard a minister confess that when he was a boy,
He stole a strawberry tart out of his aunt's pantry and she never had any respect for that minister again.
Now,
I wouldn't have felt that way.
I'd have thought that it was real noble of him to confess it,
And I'd have thought what an encouraging thing it would be for small boys nowadays who do naughty things and are sorry for them to know that perhaps they may grow up to be ministers in spite of it.
That's how I'd feel,
Marilla.
The way I feel at present,
Anne,
Said Marilla,
Is that it's high time you had those dishes washed.
You've taken half an hour longer than you should with all your chattering.
Learn to work first,
And talk afterwards.
