World Masterpiece Theater
Silver Zero Subs
Kikoeru kashira
Do you hear? Hooves beating
Original story by Lucy Maud Montgomery
AKAGE NO ANNE
Hizume no oto
A carriage goes through the gentle hills
Yuruyakana oka wo nutte
Kaketekuru basha
Someone comes to pick me up
Mukae ni kuru no mukae ni kuru no ne
And takes me
Dare ka ga
Watashi wo tsureteyuku no ne
Shiroi hana no michi he
To the avenue with white flowers
To the home of wind
Kaze no furusato he
He takes me
Tsureteyuku no ne
I'm sure
Tsureteyuku no ne
Anne's Story Club is Formed
After the Christmas concert was over,
the children of Avonlea school found it hard to settle down to humdrum existence again.
To Anne in particular things seemed fearfully flat, stale, and unprofitable
after the goblet of excitement she had been sipping for weeks.
I'm certain that life can never be the same again as it was in those olden days, Diana.
...Said Anne mournfully, as if referring to a period of at least fifty years back.
Perhaps after a while I'll get used to it,
but I'm afraid concerts spoil people for everyday life.
I suppose that is why Marilla disapproves of them.
Marilla is such a sensible woman.
It must be a great deal better to be sensible.
But still, I don't believe I'd really want to be a sensible person,
because they are so unromantic.
Mrs. Lynde says there is no danger of me ever being one.
But... you can never tell.
I feel just now that I may grow up to be sensible yet.
But perhaps that is only because I'm tired.
I simply couldn't sleep last night for ever so long.
I just lay awake and imagined the concert over and over again.
That's one splendid thing about such affairs.
It's so lovely to look back to them.
Could Anne go back to the former quiet pleasures
of those faraway days before the concert?
At first, as she told Diana, she did not really think she could.
Eventually, however, Avonlea school
slipped back into its old groove and took up its old interests.
To be sure, the concert left traces.
Because of a quarrel over a point of precedence in their platform seats,
Katie Andrews and Emma White no longer sat at the same desk,
and a promising friendship of three years was broken up.
Josie Pye and Julia Bell did not "speak" for three months,
because Josie Pye had told Bessie Wright
that Julia Bell's bow made her think of a chicken jerking its head,
and Bessie told Julia.
None of the Sloanes would have any dealings with the Bells,
because the Bells had declared that the Sloanes had too much to do in the program,
and the Sloanes had retorted that the Bells
were not capable of doing the little they had to do properly.
Finally, Charlie Sloane fought Moody Spurgeon MacPherson,
because Moody Spurgeon had said that Anne Shirley put on airs about her recitations.
Consequently Moody Spurgeon's sister, Ella May,
would not "speak" to Anne Shirley all the rest of the winter.
With the exception of these trifling frictions,
work in Miss Stacy's little kingdom went on with regularity and smoothness.
The winter weeks slipped by.
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.
Footprints!
What could it be?
It must be a rabbit.
Yes.
They're still fresh. It must be close.
Just think, Diana, I'm thirteen years old today.
Oh, I'm sorry! I completely forgot about it.
Don't worry, it's all right.
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.
But I can scarcely realize that I'm almost a grown up.
When I woke this morning it seemed to me that everything must be different
You've been thirteen for a month,
so I suppose it doesn't seem such a novelty to you as it does to me.
But It makes life seem so much more interesting.
Ruby Gillis says she means to have a beau as soon as she's fifteen.
Ruby Gillis thinks of nothing but beaus!
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. Allan 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 Pye without making an uncharitable speech,
so I never mention her at all.
You may have noticed that.
But you do mention her sometimes.
Oh!
I'm trying to be as much like Mrs. Allan as I possibly can,
for I think she's perfect.
Mr. Allan thinks so too.
Mrs. Lynde says he just worships the ground she treads on.
And that it's not 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.
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 thirteen perhaps I'll get on better.
In four more years we'll be able to put our hair up.
Alice Bell is only sixteen and she is wearing hers up.
But I think that's ridiculous. I shall wait until I'm seventeen.
If I had Alice Bell's crooked nose I wouldn't...
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.
Oh, Anne!
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.
But your nose is really beautiful.
look, there's a rabbit!
I wonder if the footprints from before belongs to it?
It can't be.
That's something to remember for our woods composition.
Indeed.
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.
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 wink.
It's easy for you because you have an imagination.
But what would you do if you had been born without one?
I suppose you have your composition all done?
I wrote it last Monday evening.
It's called 'The Jealous Rival; or In Death Not Divided.'
Oh, a romantic novel, isn't it?
But 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.
But it's a sad, sweet story.
I...
...just cried like a child while I was writing it.
It's about...
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.
Neither did I.
I just imagined them.
I wanted something out of the common.
Geraldine had an alabaster brow too.
Well, what became of Cordelia and Geraldine?
Anne! Anne!
How long do you intend to stand there? You'll catch a cold!
Oh no!
I'll tell you next time. See you tomorrow.
Goodbye.
Goodbye!
Cordelia and Geraldine...
Diana was beginning to feel rather interested in their fate.
And then Geraldine and Cordelia grew in beauty side by side until they were sixteen.
Then Bertram DeVere came to their native village
and fell in love with the fair Geraldine.
When her horse ran away with her...
...he saved her life.
Geraldine fainted in his arms and he carried her home three miles
because, 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.
I thought she'd likely be an authority on the subject, having so many sisters married.
Ruby told me that when Malcolm Andres proposed to her sister Susan
she was hidden in the hall pantry.
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 it isn't done nowadays.
Geraldine accepted him in a speech a page long.
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.
So 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 should 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...
...with a wild, mocking
pushed Geraldine over the brink.
But Bertram saw it all and exclaimed:
'I will save thee, my peerless Geraldine.'
And then he plunged into the current.
But alas, he had forgotten he couldn't swim,
and they were both drowned, clasped in each other's arms.
Their bodies were washed ashore soon afterwards.
They were buried in the one grave and their funeral was most imposing.
Diana, it's so much more romantic to end a story up with a funeral than a wedding.
Cordelia, overcome with remorse, leapt down the same river they drowned in.
I thought that was a poetical retribution for her crime.
How perfectly lovely!
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.
I know!
I've just thought of a plan, Diana.
Let you and me 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, 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 Montmorency.
Aren't you Cordelia Fitzgerald?
No. I'm Rosamond Montmorency.
All the girls do pretty well.
Ruby Gillis is rather sentimental.
She puts too much lovemaking into her stories.
Jane never puts any because she feels silly when she has to read it out loud.
Jane's stories are extremely sensible.
Then Diana puts too many murders into hers.
Most of the time she doesn't know what to do with the people
so she kills them off to get rid of them.
I mostly always have to tell them what to write about.
I think this story-writing business is the foolishest yet.
You'll get a pack of nonsense into your heads
and waste time that should be put on your lessons.
But we're so careful to put a moral into them all, Marilla.
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. Allan says so.
I read one of my stories to him and Mrs. Allan.
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 she 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 pathetic and almost everybody died.
But I'm glad Miss Barry liked them.
It shows our club is doing some good in the world.
Mrs. Allan says that ought to be our object in everything.
I hope I shall be a little like Mrs. Allan when I grow up.
Do you think there is any prospect of it, Marilla?
I shouldn't say there was a great deal.
I'm sure Mrs. Allan was never such a silly, forgetful little girl as you are.
That's true.
But she wasn't always so good as she is now either.
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.
But Marilla,
is it very wicked of me to feel encouraged when I hear
that other people have been bad and mischievous?
Mrs. Lynde says it is.
She always feels shocked when she hears of anyone ever having been naughty,
no matter how small they were.
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.
But I thought that it was real noble of him to confess it.
Because it's encouraging 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,
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.
A strange salesperson sells Anne hair dye that she uses
and despairs over her ugly hair!
Next episode of Anne of Green Gables:
Vanity and Vexation of Spirit
Please watch!
Hashittemo hashittemo
Owaranai hana no nami
Mizuumi ha tooku
Moeru kumo ha motto tooku
Hana no naka de ichinichiha owaru
Samenai yume mitai ni