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BARNEY RETURNS TO LUTHA

GROWTH INVINCIBLE

Reading Tolkien can Broaden Your Command of English (even if you aren’t taking SATs) When I was in business school a few years ago, all the students were categorized (very informally) into “quants” or “poets” — based on whether you had an engineering/math background, or a liberal arts background. While I didn’t mind this categorization at all, I recall during my own middle and high school years that we geeks were stereotyped as not appreciating literature. Which is odd, because the one thing we geeks love to do is read. We may (or may not) have read Hemingway (except for in a class); but almost all geeks like to read SF&F (science fiction and fantasy). I first read t_he Hobbit_ ( a pretty easy read) and started reading the _Lord of the Rings (_not so easy read) when I was in the sixth grade. I’ve probably re-read them every few years since then (at least until the Peter Jackson movies came out) owning many different editions of the books. It wasn’t just Tolkien’s love for made-up languages that made it a tougher read (Tolkien after all was a professor of medieval languages at Oxford, and in fact, at one point he described the whole reason for the Middle Earth was that he wanted to complete the language of the Elves). For an impatient teenager like me who had grown up on Star Wars and Superman movies, it was also the “pacing” and what I thought of informally as the “boring parts”. I couldn’t really tell you the difference between dales and vales and glens and ferns and dells, I honestly could’ve cared less. I just wanted to get to the Elves and wizards and dwarves, and the incredible fantasy locales like Rivendell , the Mines of Moria, the Bridge of Khaza-dum or the magical Lothlorien. Tolkien liked to spend many paras describing the landscape that the hobbits were traveling through, including descriptions of flora and fauna and weather and the road on days where nothing of note happened. “It was the night of the fifth of October, and they were six days out from Bree. In the morning they found, for the first time since they had left the Chetwood, a track plain to see … It dived into dells, and hugged steep banks …” And then, every now and then there would be a passage like this one: “Great ilexes of huge girth stood dark and solemn in wide glades with here and there among them hoary ash-trees, and giant oaks …” I certainly know what an oak tree is. I am not ashamed to admit that I don’t know what an is (most likely a kind of tree!). I couldn’t tell you off hand what a glade is — something to do with trees (or lack thereof) . But what the hell are ? Again, I am not ashamed to admit, that as a fairly well educated geek — having read Tolkien dozens of times, and armed with degrees from MIT and Stanford — I have no idea what these are! ilex exactly hoary ash-trees Recently, I had a lot of time on my hands, and I re-read the full quadrilogy — rather than watching the Peter Jackson movies (which is what I had been doing in recent years when I was missing hanging out with some of my oldest friends — Bilbo, Frodo, Gandalf, not to mention Gimli, Legolas, Merry, Pippin and of course Strider). This time, I read the books on my kindle, which made it easier to look up the definitions of: a word that I had never heard of (happened now and then), a word that I only vaguely knew the meaning of (happened very often). Looking back, I wish I had this auto lookup ability when I was reading LOTR in high school - it just might have helped me with my verbal SAT scores! So, in honor of the many Geeks who love to read, and the many fans of Tolkien, here are 20 vocabulary words that I came across (and their corresponding definitions) in LOTR that you may not know: If you’ve read LOTR, how many of the words you already know ? Bonus if you can figure out where in LOTR the sample usage is located! : usage in LOTR : “‘No mail have we to fit you,’ said Eowyn, ‘nor any time for the forging of such a ; but here is also a stout of leather, a belt, and a knife.” def: a piece of armor originally covering only the neck and shoulders but later consisting of a full length coat of mail or military tunic. hauberk hauberk jerkin — def: a sleveless jacket. jerkin — def; “another term for HOLM OAK”, or “a tree or shrub of a genus that includes holly and its relatives”. ilex usage in LOTR given earlier. — usage in LOTR given earlier. def: this can mean “grayish-white” or “old and trite”. hoary —usage in LOTR: “Luminous these were too, beautiful and yet horrible of shape, like the demented forms in an uneasy dream; and they forth a faint sickening charnel-smell;” def: “associated with death”. charnel — usage in LOTR: “Looking out from the covert he could see only a dun, shadowless world, fading slowly into a featureless, colourless gloom.” def: of a dull grayish-brown color. dun — usage in LOTR: “and there were acres populous with the leaves of woodland hyacinths; already their sleek bell-stems …”. def: a bulbous plant of the lily family, with starlike leaves and a compact spike of bell shaped fragrant flowers. hyacinth —usage in LOTR: “Here Spring was already busy about them: fronds pierced moss and mould, larches were green-fingered, small flowers were opening in the turf, birds were singing.” def: the leaf or leaflike part of a palm, fern or similar plant. frond — a yellow flowered shrub of the pea family, the leaves of which are modified to form spines. LOTR usage: “For the most part it was covered with a thick growth of gorse and whortleberry, and low tough thorns.” gorse — usage in LOTR : “The host was bivouacked in the pine-woods that clustered about Eilenach Beacon, a tall hill standing up from the long ridges of he Druaden Forest …” def: a temporary camp without tents of cover, use esp. by soldiers or mountaineers. bivouac — LOTR usage: “The townlands were rich, with wide tilth and many orchards and homesteads there were with oast and garner, fold and byre, and many rills rippling through the green…”. def: a kiln for drying hops. oast — a concrete, stone, or metal platform lying alongside projecting into water for loading and unloading ships. “There Anduin, going in a wide kneee about the hills of Emyn Arnen in South Ithilien, bent sharply west, and the out-wall rose upon its very brink; and beneath it lay the quays.” quay — LOTR usage: “far back into the vanished years before the failing of the kings, since Vorondil father of Mardil hunted the wild kine of Araw in the far fields of Rhun.” def: cows collectively. kine — LOTR usage: “He cut out some turves at the foot of the bank just outside the fern-brake, and made a shallow hole and laid his fuel in it.” def: plural form of turf. turves — LOTR usage: “.. and other kinds unknown in the Shire, with wide glades among them;” def: an open space in a forest. glade — LOTR usage: “They are like great carrion birds.” def: the decaying flesh of dead animals. carrion — LOTR usage : “They were very small to look at, yet he knew, somehow that they were huge, with a vast stretch of pinion, flying at a great height.” def: the outer part of the a bird’s wing including the flight feathers. pinion — LOTR usage: “It seemed as if whole armies were on the march, though fro the. most part they were hidden by the reeks and fumes drifting form the fens and wastes beyond.” def: a low and marshy or frequently flooded area of land. fen — LOTR usage: “Day came, and the fallow sun blinked over the lifeless ridges of Ered Lithui.” There are several definitions and I got the wrong one at first: plowed and harrowed but left unsown for a period. The right definition: a pale brown or reddish yellow color. fallow . LOTR usage: “Many great trees grew there, planted long ago, falling into untended age amid a riot of careless descendants; and groves and thickets there were of tamarisk …” def: An Old World shrub or small tree with tiny scalelike leaves borne on slender branches, giving it a feathery appearance. tamarisk Bonus words: The townlands were rich, with wide tilth and many orchards and homesteads there were with oast and garner, fold and byre, and many rills rippling through the green…” OK so what exactly are: tilth, garner, fold, byre, and rills?? And there you go — these 20 are by no means the only vocabulary words I found in LOTR that I didn’t know. You can just pick up the book and within a few pages I think most modern readers, esp. geeks like me, won’t know the exact definition of. Tolkien had quite the vocabulary. In some cases he used words that while apparent to him what they meant, were hard even for the Kindle to look up using the New Oxford dictionary. As you’ll see above, many of the words dealt with nature — these may have been common knowledge to educated Englishmen of Tolkien’s generation, but to today’s American city-dwelling geeks, they might as well be made up Elvish names from the Undying Lands! Still, this time when I read the whole books, by not skipping “the boring parts”, I actually enjoyed his descriptions of the countryside. It really enhanced my respect for Tolkien the writer but also my appreciation for the clarity of his vision of Middle Earth. So who says SF&F can’t be educational too?

Vocabulary for Geeks and Hackers: Lord of the Rings Edition

THE GREAT EMPIRE OF JENGIS KHAN AND HIS SUCCESSORS

Moby-Dick; or The Whale, by Herman Melville is part of HackerNoon’s Book Blog Post series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . here CHAPTER 1. Loomings. Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me. There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs—commerce surrounds it with her surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme downtown is the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of land. Look at the crowds of water-gazers there. Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What do you see?—Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some looking over the bulwarks of ships from China; some high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep. But these are all landsmen; of week days pent up in lath and plaster—tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks. How then is this? Are the green fields gone? What do they here? But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and seemingly bound for a dive. Strange! Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the land; loitering under the shady lee of yonder warehouses will not suffice. No. They must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling in. And there they stand—miles of them—leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets and avenues—north, east, south, and west. Yet here they all unite. Tell me, does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the compasses of all those ships attract them thither? Once more. Say you are in the country; in some high land of lakes. Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries—stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever. But here is an artist. He desires to paint you the dreamiest, shadiest, quietest, most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all the valley of the Saco. What is the chief element he employs? There stand his trees, each with a hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a crucifix were within; and here sleeps his meadow, and there sleep his cattle; and up from yonder cottage goes a sleepy smoke. Deep into distant woodlands winds a mazy way, reaching to overlapping spurs of mountains bathed in their hill-side blue. But though the picture lies thus tranced, and though this pine-tree shakes down its sighs like leaves upon this shepherd’s head, yet all were vain, unless the shepherd’s eye were fixed upon the magic stream before him. Go visit the Prairies in June, when for scores on scores of miles you wade knee-deep among Tiger-lilies—what is the one charm wanting?—Water—there is not a drop of water there! Were Niagara but a cataract of sand, would you travel your thousand miles to see it? Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to buy him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach? Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all. Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I begin to grow hazy about the eyes, and begin to be over conscious of my lungs, I do not mean to have it inferred that I ever go to sea as a passenger. For to go as a passenger you must needs have a purse, and a purse is but a rag unless you have something in it. Besides, passengers get sea-sick—grow quarrelsome—don’t sleep of nights—do not enjoy themselves much, as a general thing;—no, I never go as a passenger; nor, though I am something of a salt, do I ever go to sea as a Commodore, or a Captain, or a Cook. I abandon the glory and distinction of such offices to those who like them. For my part, I abominate all honorable respectable toils, trials, and tribulations of every kind whatsoever. It is quite as much as I can do to take care of myself, without taking care of ships, barques, brigs, schooners, and what not. And as for going as cook,—though I confess there is considerable glory in that, a cook being a sort of officer on ship-board—yet, somehow, I never fancied broiling fowls;—though once broiled, judiciously buttered, and judgmatically salted and peppered, there is no one who will speak more respectfully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled fowl than I will. It is out of the idolatrous dotings of the old Egyptians upon broiled ibis and roasted river horse, that you see the mummies of those creatures in their huge bake-houses the pyramids. No, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast, plumb down into the forecastle, aloft there to the royal mast-head. True, they rather order me about some, and make me jump from spar to spar, like a grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first, this sort of thing is unpleasant enough. It touches one’s sense of honor, particularly if you come of an old established family in the land, the Van Rensselaers, or Randolphs, or Hardicanutes. And more than all, if just previous to putting your hand into the tar-pot, you have been lording it as a country schoolmaster, making the tallest boys stand in awe of you. The transition is a keen one, I assure you, from a schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it. But even this wears off in time. What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a broom and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to, weighed, I mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do you think the archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who ain’t a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old sea-captains may order me about—however they may thump and punch me about, I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is one way or other served in much the same way—either in a physical or metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other’s shoulder-blades, and be content. Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point of paying me for my trouble, whereas they never pay passengers a single penny that I ever heard of. On the contrary, passengers themselves must pay. And there is all the difference in the world between paying and being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But being paid,—what will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition! Finally, I always go to sea as a sailor, because of the wholesome exercise and pure air of the fore-castle deck. For as in this world, head winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if you never violate the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the Commodore on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second hand from the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first; but not so. In much the same way do the commonalty lead their leaders in many other things, at the same time that the leaders little suspect it. But wherefore it was that after having repeatedly smelt the sea as a merchant sailor, I should now take it into my head to go on a whaling voyage; this the invisible police officer of the Fates, who has the constant surveillance of me, and secretly dogs me, and influences me in some unaccountable way—he can better answer than any one else. And, doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances. I take it that this part of the bill must have run something like this: “Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States. “WHALING VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL." “BLOODY BATTLE IN AFFGHANISTAN.” Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers, the Fates, put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage, when others were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short and easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces—though I cannot tell why this was exactly; yet, now that I recall all the circumstances, I think I can see a little into the springs and motives which being cunningly presented to me under various disguises, induced me to set about performing the part I did, besides cajoling me into the delusion that it was a choice resulting from my own unbiased freewill and discriminating judgment. Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great whale himself. Such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all my curiosity. Then the wild and distant seas where he rolled his island bulk; the undeliverable, nameless perils of the whale; these, with all the attending marvels of a thousand Patagonian sights and sounds, helped to sway me to my wish. With other men, perhaps, such things would not have been inducements; but as for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts. Not ignoring what is good, I am quick to perceive a horror, and could still be social with it—would they let me—since it is but well to be on friendly terms with all the inmates of the place one lodges in. By reason of these things, then, the whaling voyage was welcome; the great flood-gates of the wonder-world swung open, and in the wild conceits that swayed me to my purpose, two and two there floated into my inmost soul, endless processions of the whale, and, mid most of them all, one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved April 2022 from Melville, Herman,2001. Moby-Dick: or The Whale. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2701/2701-h/2701-h.htm#link2HCH0001 This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

Moby-Dick; or The Whale: Chapter 1 - Loomings

Anne of Avonlea by L. M. Montgomery, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . A Golden Picnic Chapter XIII - A Golden Picnic Anne, on her way to Orchard Slope, met Diana, bound for Green Gables, just where the mossy old log bridge spanned the brook below the Haunted Wood, and they sat down by the margin of the Dryad’s Bubble, where tiny ferns were unrolling like curly-headed green pixy folk wakening up from a nap. “I was just on my way over to invite you to help me celebrate my birthday on Saturday,” said Anne. “Your birthday? But your birthday was in March!” “That wasn’t my fault,” laughed Anne. “If my parents had consulted me it would never have happened then. I should have chosen to be born in spring, of course. It must be delightful to come into the world with the mayflowers and violets. You would always feel that you were their foster sister. But since I didn’t, the next best thing is to celebrate my birthday in the spring. Priscilla is coming over Saturday and Jane will be home. We’ll all four start off to the woods and spend a golden day making the acquaintance of the spring. We none of us really know her yet, but we’ll meet her back there as we never can anywhere else. I want to explore all those fields and lonely places anyhow. I have a conviction that there are scores of beautiful nooks there that have never really been seen although they may have been looked at. We’ll make friends with wind and sky and sun, and bring home the spring in our hearts.” “It sounds awfully nice,” said Diana, with some inward distrust of Anne’s magic of words. “But won’t it be very damp in some places yet?” “Oh, we’ll wear rubbers,” was Anne’s concession to practicalities. “And I want you to come over early Saturday morning and help me prepare lunch. I’m going to have the daintiest things possible . . . things that will match the spring, you understand . . . little jelly tarts and lady fingers, and drop cookies frosted with pink and yellow icing, and buttercup cake. And we must have sandwiches too, though they’re not very poetical.” Saturday proved an ideal day for a picnic . . . a day of breeze and blue, warm, sunny, with a little rollicking wind blowing across meadow and orchard. Over every sunlit upland and field was a delicate, flower-starred green. Mr. Harrison, harrowing at the back of his farm and feeling some of the spring witch-work even in his sober, middle-aged blood, saw four girls, basket laden, tripping across the end of his field where it joined a fringing woodland of birch and fir. Their blithe voices and laughter echoed down to him. “It’s so easy to be happy on a day like this, isn’t it?” Anne was saying, with true Anneish philosophy. “Let’s try to make this a really golden day, girls, a day to which we can always look back with delight. We’re to seek for beauty and refuse to see anything else. ‘Begone, dull care!’ Jane, you are thinking of something that went wrong in school yesterday.” “How do you know?” gasped Jane, amazed. “Oh, I know the expression . . . I’ve felt it often enough on my own face. But put it out of your mind, there’s a dear. It will keep till Monday . . . or if it doesn’t so much the better. Oh, girls, girls, see that patch of violets! There’s something for memory’s picture gallery. When I’m eighty years old . . . if I ever am . . . I shall shut my eyes and see those violets just as I see them now. That’s the first good gift our day has given us.” “If a kiss could be seen I think it would look like a violet,” said Priscilla. Anne glowed. “I’m so glad you spoke that thought, Priscilla, instead of just thinking it and keeping it to yourself. This world would be a much more interesting place . . . although it is very interesting anyhow . . . if people spoke out their real thoughts.” “It would be too hot to hold some folks,” quoted Jane sagely. “I suppose it might be, but that would be their own faults for thinking nasty things. Anyhow, we can tell all our thoughts today because we are going to have nothing but beautiful thoughts. Everybody can say just what comes into her head. That is conversation. Here’s a little path I never saw before. Let’s explore it.” The path was a winding one, so narrow that the girls walked in single file and even then the fir boughs brushed their faces. Under the firs were velvety cushions of moss, and further on, where the trees were smaller and fewer, the ground was rich in a variety of green growing things. “What a lot of elephant’s ears,” exclaimed Diana. “I’m going to pick a big bunch, they’re so pretty.” “How did such graceful feathery things ever come to have such a dreadful name?” asked Priscilla. “Because the person who first named them either had no imagination at all or else far too much,” said Anne, “Oh, girls, look at that!” “That” was a shallow woodland pool in the center of a little open glade where the path ended. Later on in the season it would be dried up and its place filled with a rank growth of ferns; but now it was a glimmering placid sheet, round as a saucer and clear as crystal. A ring of slender young birches encircled it and little ferns fringed its margin. “How sweet!” said Jane. “Let us dance around it like wood-nymphs,” cried Anne, dropping her basket and extending her hands. But the dance was not a success for the ground was boggy and Jane’s rubbers came off. “You can’t be a wood-nymph if you have to wear rubbers,” was her decision. “Well, we must name this place before we leave it,” said Anne, yielding to the indisputable logic of facts. “Everybody suggest a name and we’ll draw lots. Diana?” “Birch Pool,” suggested Diana promptly. “Crystal Lake,” said Jane. Anne, standing behind them, implored Priscilla with her eyes not to perpetrate another such name and Priscilla rose to the occasion with “Glimmer-glass.” Anne’s selection was “The Fairies’ Mirror.” The names were written on strips of birch bark with a pencil Schoolma’am Jane produced from her pocket, and placed in Anne’s hat. Then Priscilla shut her eyes and drew one. “Crystal Lake,” read Jane triumphantly. Crystal Lake it was, and if Anne thought that chance had played the pool a shabby trick she did not say so. Pushing through the undergrowth beyond, the girls came out to the young green seclusion of Mr. Silas Sloane’s back pasture. Across it they found the entrance to a lane striking up through the woods and voted to explore it also. It rewarded their quest with a succession of pretty surprises. First, skirting Mr. Sloane’s pasture, came an archway of wild cherry trees all in bloom. The girls swung their hats on their arms and wreathed their hair with the creamy, fluffy blossoms. Then the lane turned at right angles and plunged into a spruce wood so thick and dark that they walked in a gloom as of twilight, with not a glimpse of sky or sunlight to be seen. “This is where the bad wood elves dwell,” whispered Anne. “They are impish and malicious but they can’t harm us, because they are not allowed to do evil in the spring. There was one peeping at us around that old twisted fir; and didn’t you see a group of them on that big freckly toadstool we just passed? The good fairies always dwell in the sunshiny places.” “I wish there really were fairies,” said Jane. “Wouldn’t it be nice to have three wishes granted you . . . or even only one? What would you wish for, girls, if you could have a wish granted? I’d wish to be rich and beautiful and clever.” “I’d wish to be tall and slender,” said Diana. “I would wish to be famous,” said Priscilla. Anne thought of her hair and then dismissed the thought as unworthy. “I’d wish it might be spring all the time and in everybody’s heart and all our lives,” she said. “But that,” said Priscilla, “would be just wishing this world were like heaven.” “Only like a part of heaven. In the other parts there would be summer and autumn . . . yes, and a bit of winter, too. I think I want glittering snowy fields and white frosts in heaven sometimes. Don’t you, Jane?” “I . . . I don’t know,” said Jane uncomfortably. Jane was a good girl, a member of the church, who tried conscientiously to live up to her profession and believed everything she had been taught. But she never thought about heaven any more than she could help, for all that. “Minnie May asked me the other day if we would wear our best dresses every day in heaven,” laughed Diana. “And didn’t you tell her we would?” asked Anne. “Mercy, no! I told her we wouldn’t be thinking of dresses at all there.” “Oh, I think we will . . . a little,” said Anne earnestly. “There’ll be plenty of time in all eternity for it without neglecting more important things. I believe we’ll all wear beautiful dresses . . . or I suppose raiment would be a more suitable way of speaking. I shall want to wear pink for a few centuries at first . . . it would take me that long to get tired of it, I feel sure. I do love pink so and I can never wear it in this world.” Past the spruces the lane dipped down into a sunny little open where a log bridge spanned a brook; and then came the glory of a sunlit beechwood where the air was like transparent golden wine, and the leaves fresh and green, and the wood floor a mosaic of tremulous sunshine. Then more wild cherries, and a little valley of lissome firs, and then a hill so steep that the girls lost their breath climbing it; but when they reached the top and came out into the open the prettiest surprise of all awaited them. Beyond were the “back fields” of the farms that ran out to the upper Carmody road. Just before them, hemmed in by beeches and firs but open to the south, was a little corner and in it a garden . . . or what had once been a garden. A tumbledown stone dyke, overgrown with mosses and grass, surrounded it. Along the eastern side ran a row of garden cherry trees, white as a snowdrift. There were traces of old paths still and a double line of rosebushes through the middle; but all the rest of the space was a sheet of yellow and white narcissi, in their airiest, most lavish, wind-swayed bloom above the lush green grasses. “Oh, how perfectly lovely!” three of the girls cried. Anne only gazed in eloquent silence. “How in the world does it happen that there ever was a garden back here?” said Priscilla in amazement. “It must be Hester Gray’s garden,” said Diana. “I’ve heard mother speak of it but I never saw it before, and I wouldn’t have supposed that it could be in existence still. You’ve heard the story, Anne?” “No, but the name seems familiar to me.” “Oh, you’ve seen it in the graveyard. She is buried down there in the poplar corner. You know the little brown stone with the opening gates carved on it and ‘Sacred to the memory of Hester Gray, aged twenty-two.’ Jordan Gray is buried right beside her but there’s no stone to him. It’s a wonder Marilla never told you about it, Anne. To be sure, it happened thirty years ago and everybody has forgotten.” “Well, if there’s a story we must have it,” said Anne. “Let’s sit right down here among the narcissi and Diana will tell it. Why, girls, there are hundreds of them . . . they’ve spread over everything. It looks as if the garden were carpeted with moonshine and sunshine combined. This is a discovery worth making. To think that I’ve lived within a mile of this place for six years and have never seen it before! Now, Diana.” “Long ago,” began Diana, “this farm belonged to old Mr. David Gray. He didn’t live on it . . . he lived where Silas Sloane lives now. He had one son, Jordan, and he went up to Boston one winter to work and while he was there he fell in love with a girl named Hester Murray. She was working in a store and she hated it. She’d been brought up in the country and she always wanted to get back. When Jordan asked her to marry him she said she would if he’d take her away to some quiet spot where she’d see nothing but fields and trees. So he brought her to Avonlea. Mrs. Lynde said he was taking a fearful risk in marrying a Yankee, and it’s certain that Hester was very delicate and a very poor housekeeper; but mother says she was very pretty and sweet and Jordan just worshipped the ground she walked on. Well, Mr. Gray gave Jordan this farm and he built a little house back here and Jordan and Hester lived in it for four years. She never went out much and hardly anybody went to see her except mother and Mrs. Lynde. Jordan made her this garden and she was crazy about it and spent most of her time in it. She wasn’t much of a housekeeper but she had a knack with flowers. And then she got sick. Mother says she thinks she was in consumption before she ever came here. She never really laid up but just grew weaker and weaker all the time. Jordan wouldn’t have anybody to wait on her. He did it all himself and mother says he was as tender and gentle as a woman. Every day he’d wrap her in a shawl and carry her out to the garden and she’d lie there on a bench quite happy. They say she used to make Jordan kneel down by her every night and morning and pray with her that she might die out in the garden when the time came. And her prayer was answered. One day Jordan carried her out to the bench and then he picked all the roses that were out and heaped them over her; and she just smiled up at him . . . and closed her eyes . . . and that,” concluded Diana softly, “was the end.” “Oh, what a dear story,” sighed Anne, wiping away her tears. “What became of Jordan?” asked Priscilla. “He sold the farm after Hester died and went back to Boston. Mr. Jabez Sloane bought the farm and hauled the little house out to the road. Jordan died about ten years after and he was brought home and buried beside Hester.” “I can’t understand how she could have wanted to live back here, away from everything,” said Jane. “Oh, I can easily understand that,” said Anne thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t want it myself for a steady thing, because, although I love the fields and woods, I love people too. But I can understand it in Hester. She was tired to death of the noise of the big city and the crowds of people always coming and going and caring nothing for her. She just wanted to escape from it all to some still, green, friendly place where she could rest. And she got just what she wanted, which is something very few people do, I believe. She had four beautiful years before she died. . . four years of perfect happiness, so I think she was to be envied more than pitied. And then to shut your eyes and fall asleep among roses, with the one you loved best on earth smiling down at you . . . oh, I think it was beautiful!” “She set out those cherry trees over there,” said Diana. “She told mother she’d never live to eat their fruit, but she wanted to think that something she had planted would go on living and helping to make the world beautiful after she was dead.” “I’m so glad we came this way,” said Anne, the shining-eyed. “This is my adopted birthday, you know, and this garden and its story is the birthday gift it has given me. Did your mother ever tell you what Hester Gray looked like, Diana?” “No . . . only just that she was pretty.” “I’m rather glad of that, because I can imagine what she looked like, without being hampered by facts. I think she was very slight and small, with softly curling dark hair and big, sweet, timid brown eyes, and a little wistful, pale face.” The girls left their baskets in Hester’s garden and spent the rest of the afternoon rambling in the woods and fields surrounding it, discovering many pretty nooks and lanes. When they got hungry they had lunch in the prettiest spot of all . . . on the steep bank of a gurgling brook where white birches shot up out of long feathery grasses. The girls sat down by the roots and did full justice to Anne’s dainties, even the unpoetical sandwiches being greatly appreciated by hearty, unspoiled appetites sharpened by all the fresh air and exercise they had enjoyed. Anne had brought glasses and lemonade for her guests, but for her own part drank cold brook water from a cup fashioned out of birch bark. The cup leaked, and the water tasted of earth, as brook water is apt to do in spring; but Anne thought it more appropriate to the occasion than lemonade. “Look do you see that poem?” she said suddenly, pointing. “Where?” Jane and Diana stared, as if expecting to see Runic rhymes on the birch trees. “There . . . down in the brook . . . that old green, mossy log with the water flowing over it in those smooth ripples that look as if they’d been combed, and that single shaft of sunshine falling right athwart it, far down into the pool. Oh, it’s the most beautiful poem I ever saw.” “I should rather call it a picture,” said Jane. “A poem is lines and verses.” “Oh dear me, no.” Anne shook her head with its fluffy wild cherry coronal positively. “The lines and verses are only the outward garments of the poem and are no more really it than your ruffles and flounces are you, Jane. The real poem is the soul within them . . . and that beautiful bit is the soul of an unwritten poem. It is not every day one sees a soul . . . even of a poem.” “I wonder what a soul . . . a person’s soul . . . would look like,” said Priscilla dreamily. “Like that, I should think,” answered Anne, pointing to a radiance of sifted sunlight streaming through a birch tree. “Only with shape and features of course. I like to fancy souls as being made of light. And some are all shot through with rosy stains and quivers . . . and some have a soft glitter like moonlight on the sea . . . and some are pale and transparent like mist at dawn.” “I read somewhere once that souls were like flowers,” said Priscilla. “Then your soul is a golden narcissus,” said Anne, “and Diana’s is like a red, red rose. Jane’s is an apple blossom, pink and wholesome and sweet.” “And your own is a white violet, with purple streaks in its heart,” finished Priscilla. Jane whispered to Diana that she really could not understand what they were talking about. Could she? The girls went home by the light of a calm golden sunset, their baskets filled with narcissus blossoms from Hester’s garden, some of which Anne carried to the cemetery next day and laid upon Hester’s grave. Minstrel robins were whistling in the firs and the frogs were singing in the marshes. All the basins among the hills were brimmed with topaz and emerald light. “Well, we have had a lovely time after all,” said Diana, as if she had hardly expected to have it when she set out. “It has been a truly golden day,” said Priscilla. “I’m really awfully fond of the woods myself,” said Jane. Anne said nothing. She was looking afar into the western sky and thinking of little Hester Gray. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. L. M. Montgomery (2022). Anne of Avonlea. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/47/pg47-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html. The lead image was generated using HackerNoon's Stable Disffusion Al Image Generator feature, via the prompt "Anne of Avonlea".

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