Anne of Windy Poplars

by L.M. Montgomery

“So I put on my pretty cream challis dress with the purple violets in it and did my hair the new way with the dip in the forehead. It’s very becoming.

“It feels like snow tonight. I like an evening when it feels like snow. The wind is blowing ‘in turret and tree’ and making my cozy room seem even cozier. The last golden leaf will be blown from the aspens tonight.

“I think you’re very, very tired, after all these weeks of preparation and strain, and that things which were always hard have become too hard all at once.”

Two months of Green Gables and dew-wet, spicy ferns ankle-deep along the brook and lazy, dappling shadows in Lover’s Lane and wild strawberries in Mr. Bell’s pasture and the dark loveliness of firs in the Haunted Wood! My very soul has wings.

“I think the course of study this year will be much more interesting than last year. Canadian History has been added to the curriculum. I have to give a little ‘lecturette’ tomorrow on the War of 1812. It seems so strange to read over the stories of those old wars . . . things that can never happen again. I don’t suppose any of us will ever have more than an academic interest in ‘battles long ago.’ It’s impossible to think of Canada ever being at war again. I am so thankful that phase of history is over.

The poignancy of L. M. Montgomery writing this in the mid-1930s, knowing WWI is yet before Anne, and NOT knowing WWII is on the horizon for herself.

But I do say I pity you if you take that iceberg and nutmeg grater combined home with you for Christmas.”

At Green Gables every tree in the yard seemed to welcome her back . . . every lighted window was beckoning. And how good Marilla’s kitchen smelled as they opened the door. There were hugs and exclamations and laughter. Even Katherine seemed somehow no outsider, but one of them. Mrs. Rachel Lynde had set her cherished parlor lamp on the supper table and lighted it. It was really a hideous thing with a hideous red globe, but what a warm rosy becoming light it cast over everything! How warm and friendly were the shadows!

But last night it was as if she had set lighted candles in all the windows of her house of life.