The Annals of Ann

MP3 Audio CD. The Annals of Ann

CHAPTER I


My Cousin Eunice is a grown young lady and she keeps a diary, which
put the notion into my head of keeping one too.

There are two kinds of people that keep diaries, married ones and
single ones. The single ones fill theirs full of poetry; the married
ones tell how much it costs to keep house.

Not being extra good in grammar and spelling, I thought I'd copy a few
pages out of Cousin Eunice's diary this morning as a pattern to keep
mine by, but I was disappointed. Nearly every page I turned to in hers
was filled full of poetry, which stuff never did make good sense to
me, besides the trouble it puts you to by having to start every line
with a fresh capital.

Cousin Eunice says nearly all famous people keep a diary for folks to
read after they're dead. I always did admire famous people, especially
Lord Byron and Columbus. And I've often thought I should like to be a
famous person myself when I get grown. I don't care so much about
graduating in white mull, trimmed in lace, as some girls do, for the
really famous never graduate. They get expelled from college for
writing little books saying there ain't any devil. But I should love
to be a beautiful opera singer, with a jasmine flower at my throat,
and a fresh duke standing at the side door of the theater every night,
begging me to marry him. Or I'd like to rescue a ship full of drowning
people, then swim back to shore and calmly squeeze the salt water out
of my bathing suit, so the papers would all be full of it the next
morning.