Anne of Green Gables, Chapter Six to Eight

In which Marilla saves Anne from a fate worse than death, metaphorically, and discovers that Anne is little better than a heathen, and in which our narrator is briefly distracted by the mention of an Old Friend.



Marilla mentions borrowing the Peep of Day series to begin Anne's religious instruction. The Peep of Day ("or, a series of the Earliest Religious Instruction the Infant Mind is capable of receiving, with verses illustrative of the subjects") by Favell Lee Mortimer was published in 1845 and, wow, looks like someone's kept it in print as of at least 2000. A quick look through it shows that it's just buckets of fun:

God has covered your bones with flesh. Your flesh is soft and warm. In your flesh there is blood. God has put skin outside, and it covers your flesh and blood like a coat. Now all these things, the bones, and flesh, and blood, and skin, are called your body. How kind of God it was to give you a body. I hope that your body will not get hurt. [page 17 at that link up there]

"Yeah, sure would be a shame if somethin' were to happen to that nice, warm body that God made for ya, wouldn't it? You just keep that in mind, an' I'll see ya at church on Sunday, yeah?"

Also, I am tickled that the second time I get to use the "tedious moralizing" tag directly references the scene I created it for. I wish I'd planned it that way. Based on the fact that most of our books will be coming from the nineteenth century, I've a feeling we'll be seeing a lot more of this tag.

Less entertainingly, the "chromo" that Anne is enraptured by is a chromolithograph, was basically just a multicolored printed image.

And finally, this installment's cover is that of the specific edition I'm reading from is a 1987 Bantam Classic paperback with a cover photo by Rob McEwan, which appears to be a tie-in edition for the 1985 CBC miniseries starring Megan Follows. I got it, along with the rest of the series, from a used book store for about $2.50 each, so there's more where this came from!

This is the one, if you remember from the first installment, that says up there at the top "The most beloved, beguiling, and timeless heroine in all of fiction," which, way to oversell it for me, guys, thanks.


If you would like to read along, the text can be found at Project Gutenberg. No reading ahead, though!