1

Homer

“She said and vanished… as Homer was so fond of remarking. I knew the whole thing was settled but Aunt Chatty said I must go up and see if I was suited with my room.

Unknown

…the very name, ‘tower room,’ thrilled me. I felt as if we were living in that old song we used to sing in Avonlea School about the maiden who ‘dwelt in a high tower beside a gray sea.’

Unknown

From my west window I can see all over the harbor to distant, misty shores, with the dear little sail-boats I love and the ships outward bound ‘for ports unknown’ … fascinating phrase! Such ’scope for imagination’ in it!

OEnone

You know I’ve always been a tree worshiper. When we studied Tennyson in our English course at Redmond I was always sorrowfully at one with poor Enone, mourning her ravished pines.

Psalm 148:8

The winds will be my friends. They’ll wail and sigh and croon around my tower… the white winds of winter… the green winds of spring… the blue winds of summer… the crimson winds of autumn… and the wild winds of all seasons… ’stormy wind fulfilling his word.’ How I’ve always thrilled to that Bible verse… as if each and every wind had a message for me.

At the Back of the North Wind

I’ve always envied the boy who flew with the north wind in that lovely old story of George MacDonald’s. Some night, Gilbert, I’ll open my tower casement and just step into the arms of the wind… and Rebecca Dew will never know why my bed wasn’t slept in that night.

Moonset

It has come to an end now, for far up the harbor the moon is ’sinking into shadow-land.’

2

Vanity Fair

The ring-leader of them seems to be Jen Pringle, a green-eyed bantling who looks as Becky Sharp must have looked at fourteen.

Champlain

Myra Pringle, Jen’s cousin, is the beauty of the school… and apparently stupid. She does perpetrate some amusing howlers… as, for instance, when she said today in history class that the Indians thought Champlain and his men were gods or ’something inhuman.’

Nero Borgia

Rebecca Dew is furious and I shudder to think what she would do to the Pringles if she had them in her power. Nero’s wish isn’t to be compared to it. I really don’t blame her, for there are times when I feel myself that I could cheerfully hand any and all of the Pringles a poisoned philter of Borgia brewing.

The Prince

I wish I could work it on the Pringles. But I really shouldn’t like to govern by fear as she does. I want my pupils to love me.

5

Mary, Queen of Scots

She rather thought that Sophy Sinclair, who was tall and had hazel eyes and rich chestnut hair, would make a far better Queen Mary than Jen.

31

And their works do follow them

“My Great-great-grandfather Courtaloe is buried here. He came out in 1760 and he made spinning-wheels for a living. I’ve heard he made fourteen hundred in the course of his life. When he died the minister preached from the text, ‘Their works do follow them,’ and old Myrom Pringle said in that case the road to heaven behind my great-great-grandfather would be choked with spinning-wheels. Do you think such a remark was in good taste, Miss Shirley?”

37

Judges 16

Why, it is in the Bible, Susan. Delilah is very proud of her Bible name.

38

The Daydream

They would sit by the fountain… there was a fountain by this time… and pledge their vows anew and she would follow him, “over the hills and faraway, beyond their utmost purple rim,” just as the Sleeping Princess did in the poem Mother read to her one night from the old volume of Tennyson Father had given her long, long ago. But the lover of the Mysterious Eyed gave her jewels beyond all compare.

41

Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle

Anne… who felt that she had, in Jane Welsh Carlyle’s splendid phrase, “spent the evening under a harrow.”

Proverbs 31:12

My dear, dear love! I didn’t think you needed words to know that. I couldn’t live without you. Always you give me strength. There’s a verse somewhere in the Bible that is meant for you… ‘She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life.

Psalm 4:8

There’s another verse in the Bible… queer how those old verses you learn in Sunday School come back to you through life!…. ‘I will lay me down in peace and sleep.’