Page:Anne's house of dreams (1920 Canada).djvu/251

 Who says we haven’t any poetical talent on the Island! Have you ever noticed what heaps of good people die, Anne, dearie? It’s kind of pitiful. Here’s ten obituaries, and every one of them saints and models, even the men. Here’s old Peter Stimson, who has ‘left a large circle of friends to mourn his untimely loss.’ Lord, Anne, dearie, that man was eighty, and everybody who knew him had been wishing him dead these thirty years. Read obituaries when you’re blue, Anne, dearie—especially the ones of folks you know. If you’ve any sense of humor at all they’ll cheer you up, believe me. I just wish I had the writing of the obituaries of some people. Isn’t ‘obituary’ an awful ugly word? This very Peter I’ve been speaking of had a face exactly like one. I never saw it but I thought of the word obituary then and there. There’s only one uglier word that I know of, and that’s relict. Lord, Anne, dearie, I may be an old maid, but there’s this comfort in it—I’ll never be any man’s ‘relict.’”

“It is an ugly word,” said Anne, laughing. “Avonlea graveyard was full of old tombstones ‘sacred to the memory of So-and-So, relict of the late So-and-So.’ It always made me think of something worn out and moth eaten. Why is it that so many of the words connected with death are so disagreeable? I do wish that the custom of calling a dead body ‘the remains’ could be abolished. I positively shiver when I hear the undertaker say at a funeral, ‘All who wish