Verso Pages
These back-of-page seemingly random, out-of-order scrap pieces are drafts of Montgomery’s early short stories and poems. Some were already published when she drafted Anne in 1905 and 1906, and others were probably typed up and kept elsewhere. Some verso scrap sheets show early experiments: “A Baking of Gingersnaps” (1895) was her first published short story; she tests the pen names Maud Cavendish and Maud Eglinton. After Chapter 15, she started writing Anne front-to-back. Why did she switch from scrap pages to fresh sheets?
View an index of the verso contents here, or explore the full collection of Verso pages below:
Chapter 32. The Pass List Is Out
With the end of June came the close of the term and the close of Miss Stacy’s rule in Avonlea School. Anne and Diana walked home that evening feeling very sober indeed. Red eyes and damp handkerchiefs bore convincing testimony to the fact that Miss Stacy’s farewell words must514 588
over.”
Two big tears rolled down Diana’s nose.
“If you would stop crying I could,” said Anne imploringly. “Just as soon as I put my hanky away I see you brimming up and that starts me off again. As Mrs. Lynde says, ‘If you can’t be cheerful be as cheerful as you can’. After all, it’s likely I dare say I’ll be back next year. This is one of the times I’m sure I know I’m not going to pass. They’re getting alarmingly frequent.”
“Why, you came out great splendidly in the exams Miss Stacy gave.”
“Yes, but those exams didn’t make me nervous. When I think of the real thing you can’t imagine what a an awful horrid, cold fluttery feeling comes round my heart.” V17
“I do wish I were going with you,”
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“I’ll write Tuesday night and tell you how the first day goes,” said promised Anne.
“I’ll be haunting the post office on Wednesday,” said vowed Diana.
Anne went to town the following Monday and on Wednesday Diana haunted the post office, as agreed, and got her letter.
“Dearest Diana (wrote Anne),
Here it is Tuesday night and I’m writing this ^in the library at Beechwood.. Last night I was horribly lonesome all alone in my room and wished so much you were with me. I couldn’t cram because I’d promised Miss Stacy not to, but it was ^as hard to keep from opening my history as it used to be to keep from reading a story before my lessons were learned.
This morning Miss Stacy came
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but the multiplication tables kept all his facts firmly in their proper places!
When we went were assigned to our rooms Miss Stacy had to leave us. Jane and I sat together and Jane was so composed I envied her. ^X17 I wondered if I looked as I felt. Then a man and if they could hear my heart thumping clear across the room. Then a man came in and began distributing the English examination sheets. My hands grew cold then and my head fairly whirled around as I picked it up. Just one awful moment – Diana, I felt exactly as I did ^4 years ago when I asked Marilla if I might stay at Green Gables – and then everything cleared up in my mind and my heart began to beat beating again – I
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was going home on the morning train; and it would be easier to be a carpenter than a minister anyhow. I cheered him up and persuaded him to stay to the end because it would be unfair to Miss Stacy if he didn’t. Sometimes I’ve wished I was born a boy but when I see Moody Spurgeon I’m always glad I’m a girl. and not his sister.
Ruby was in hysterics when I reached their boarding-house; she had just discovered a fearful mistake she had made in her English paper. When she recovered we went up-town and had an ice-cream. How we wished you had been with us.
Oh, Diana, if only the geometry examination were over! But then, ^as Mrs. Lynde would say, the sun will go in [sic] rising and setting whether I fail in geometry or not.
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I passed in it or not and I have a ^creepy, crawly presentiment that I didn’t. Oh, how good it is to be back! Green Gables is the dearest loveliest spot in the world.”
“How did the others do?”
“The girls say they know they didn’t pass but I think they did pretty well. ^Z17 Moody Spurgeon still thinks he failed in history and Charlie says he failed in algebra. But we don’t really know anything about it and won’t until the pass list is out. That won’t be for a fortnight. Fancy living a fortnight in such suspense! I wish I could go to sleep and never wake up until it is over.”
Diana knew it would be no use useless to ask how Gilbert Blythe had fared, so she merely said,
“Oh, you’ll pass all right. Don’t worry.”
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which would come out first; she even knew that Jimmy Glover and Ned Wright had a bet on the question and that Josie Pye had said there was no doubt in the world that Gilbert would be first; and she felt that her humiliation would be unbearable if she failed.
But she had another and nobler motive for wishing to do well. She wanted to “pass high” for the sake of Matthew and Marilla – especially Matthew. Matthew had declared to her his conviction that she would “beat the whole Island.” That, Anne felt, was something it would be foolish to hope for even in the wildest dreams. But she did hope fervently that she would be among the first ten at least, so that she might see
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When three weeks had gone by without the pass list appearing Anne began to feel that she really couldn’t stand the strain much longer. Her appetite failed and her interest in Avonlea doings vanished. ^A18 But one evening the news came. Anne was sitting at her open window, for the time forgetful of the woes of examinations and the cares of the world, as she drank in the beauty of the summer dusk, sweet-scented with flower-breaths from the garden below and sibilant ^and rustling from the stir of the poplars. The ^eastern sky above the firs was flushed faintly pink from the reflection of the west and Anne was wondering dreamily if the spirit of colour looked like that, when she saw Diana come flying down through the firs, over the
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shaking hands could accomplish the task. Then she snatched up the paper. Yes, she had passed—there was her name at the very top of a list of two hundred! That moment was worth living for.
“You did just splendidly, Anne,” puffed Diana, recovering sufficiently to sit up and speak, for Anne, starry-eyed and rapt, had not uttered a word. “Father brought the paper home from Bright River not ten minutes ago – it came out on the afternoon train, you know, and won’t be here till tomorrow by mail – and when I saw the pass list I just rushed over ^like a wild thing. You’ve all passed, every one of you, Moody Spurgeon and all, although he’s conditioned in history. Jane and Ruby did pretty well – they’re
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Excuse me a minute, Diana. I must run right out to the field to tell Matthew. Then we’ll go up the road and tell the good news to the others.”
They hurried to the hayfield below the barn where Matthew was coiling hay and, as luck would have it, Mrs. Lynde was talking to Marilla at the lane fence.
“Oh, Matthew,” exclaimed Anne, “I’ve passed and I’m first – or one of the first! I’m not vain but I’m thankful.”
“Well now, I always said it,” said Matthew, gazing at the pass list delightedly. “I knew you could beat them all easy.”
“You’ve done pretty well, I must say, Anne,” said Marilla, trying to hide her extreme pride in Anne from Mrs. Rachel’s critical eye.