Warning: If you have a visual impairment, use the manuscript transcript version including the Lucy Maud Montgomery’s foot notes and contextual annotation references.

Chapter 31

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warrant by consumption in it unless it was scrupulously obeyed. As a result, Anne had the golden summer of her life as far as freedom and frolic went. She walked, rowed, berried and dreamed to her heart’s content; and when September came she was bright eyed and alert, with a step that would have satisfied the Spencervale doctor and a heart full of ambition and zest once more.

“I feel just like studying with might and main,” she declared as she brought her books down from the attic. “Oh, you good old friends. I’m glad to see your honest faces once more (begin subscript)^(end subscript)(begin superscript)yes, even you, geometry(end superscript)[.] I’ve had a perfectly beautiful summer, Marilla, and now I’m rejoicing as a strong man to run a race, as Mr. Allan said last Sunday[.] (begin subscript)^(end subscript) (begin superscript)R17(end superscript)(begin superscript) P17(end superscript) If I was a man I think I’d be a minister. They can have such an influence for good if their theology is sound; and it must be

 

LMM Notes

LMM Note P17
Doesn’t Mr. Allan preach magnificent sermons? Mrs. Lynde says he is improving every day and the first thing we know some city church will gobble him up and then we’ll be left and have to turn and break in another green preacher. But I don’t see the use in meeting trouble half-way, do you, Marilla? I think it would be better just to enjoy Mr. Allan while we have him.

[Notes in chapter 31 range from P17-T17;Note pages 121-124.]


TEXT ANNOTATION

"consumption": Another name for tuberculosis. In Montgomery’s time, tuberculosis was common and little understood. Montgomery's mother died from it, as did Emily's father in the (intensely autobiographical) Emily series. It peaked on P.E.I. in the 1920s and '30s. See annotation in Chapter 12.

TEXT ANNOTATION

"the golden summer": The chorus and Avonlea schoolchildren in Anne of Green Gables—The Musical(begin superscript)TM(end superscript) sing a refrain, "there is a golden summer, waiting for you…" that captures some of the carefree summer days Anne spends.

TEXT ANNOTATION

"rejoicing as a strong man to run a race": The Bible, Psalms 19:5: "Which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race."

TEXT ANNOTATION

"If I was a man I think I'd be a minister.": Another one of those little references to ministers she is fond of making in this manuscript, possibly having fun with the fact that she is being courted by a minister.