Anne Shirley’s Diary

Anne of Green GablesL. M. Montgomery

Dear Diary,

I absolutely love our new teacher! Miss Stacy must be a kindred spirit! She is so ladylike and has such a sweet voice. And when she pronounces my name, I feel instinctively that she’s spelling it with an ‘e’. I’m so glad to be back in school. We had recitations in the afternoon today and I wish that Marilla and Matthew could’ve been there in school with me so they could’ve heard me recite “Mary, Queen of Scots”. Also, we went on this glorious field afternoon! It was absolutely splendid! We wrote compositions on our field afternoons and I’m proud to say that I wrote the best ones. It’s so great to be back in school at last!

-Anne

Dear Diary,

Such good news today! Miss Stacy told us that we would be having a concert on Christmas Night to raise money for a schoolhouse flag. How exciting! I’m going to be in two dialogues – “The Society for the Suppression of Gossip” and “The Fairy Queen”. Also, we’re going to have a tableau at the end – “Faith, Hope, and Charity” and I’m going to be Hope! Diana and Ruby would be in it with me.

Josie Pye is sulky because she didn’t get the part she wanted. She wanted to be the fairy queen, but that’s ridiculous! Fairy queens are supposed to be slender, and I assure you that Josie is nowhere near the right standard. Jane Andrews is to be the queen instead, and I’m one of her maids of honor.

Josie Pye says that a red-haired fairy is even worse than a fat fairy queen but I won’t let Josie get to me. I’m to have a wreath of white roses on my hair and Ruby Gillis is going to lend me her slippers because I haven’t any of my own.

We will be decorating the hall with creeping spruce and fir mottoes with pink tissue-paper in them. And we are all to march in two by two after the audience is seated, while Emma White plays a march on the organ! I love having a concert!

-Anne

Dear Diary,

It’s Christmas Day and you won’t believe what Matthew got me! It’s a dress, with puffed sleeves! It’s perfectly exquisite. I keep on waiting to wake up and find out that I didn’t receive a dress so beautiful like this one is!

You also won’t believe what Diana’s Aunt Josephine gave me! It’s a pair of the daintiest little kid slippers, with beaded toes and satin bows and gleaming buckles! This is too much; I must be having a wonderful dream! But now I must go and practice for the big show.

-Anne

Dear Diary,

It was a spectacular evening and I’m sure that we must have made as much as ten dollars! Diana told me that Mr. Allan is going to send an account of it to the Charlottetown papers! I can’t wait to see my name in print, it makes me thrill to think of it. I was really nervous when Mr. Allan called me up to the stage, but then I thought of my puffed sleeves and took courage. I knew that I just had to live up to those sleeves. When I was done, I thought I saw old Mrs. Sloane wipe away a tear. I think it’s splendid that my recital touched someone’s heart like that!

-Anne

Dear Diary,

Today was dreadful, simply dreadful! There was a peddler at Green Gables this morning and he had a box of many interesting things. The peddler told me that he was a German Jew and that he wanted to make enough money to bring his wife and children here from out in Germany. That touched my heart and I knew right then that I had to buy something from him! Then all at once, I saw the bottle of hair dye. The peddler said that it was warranted to dye any hair a beautiful raven-black and wouldn’t wash off. I imagined myself with sleek black hair instead of red and the temptation was irresistible. The peddler sold it to me for 50 cents. I came up to my bedroom and applied it on with an old hairbrush as the directions said. I used up the whole bottle, and oh, when I saw the horrifying green color it turned my hair, I repented of being wicked. This is just horrifying! How can one surely go out in the world with green hair?

-Anne

Dear Diary,

Marilla has cut off my hair. I had been trying to wash the dye out for a full week but it just won’t go away! Now, I shall force myself to look in the mirror each and every day as a penance for being wicked that way.

Josie Pye teased me at school and called me a ‘perfect scarecrow’ but I didn’t say anything back to her because I thought it was part of my punishment and I ought to bear it patiently. I just swept her one scornful look and forgave her..

Diana says that when my hair begins to grow, to tie a black velvet ribbon around my head with a bow at one end. I told her that I will call that a snood – isn’t that a romantic name?

-Anne

Dear Diary,

Oh, I just can’t even believe it right now! Miss Stacy came by Green Gables today and told Marilla that she wants to organize a class for her advanced students who want to study for the entrance examination into Queen’s! It’s been the dream of my life ever since Ruby and Jane began to talk of studying for the entrance six months before! I’d love to be a teacher!

Sadly, Diana didn’t join the Queen’s class because her parents didn’t want to send her to Queen’s. This is a surely a calamity!

-Anne

Dear Diary,

These few weeks at Beechwood are so stressful! We took our examinations today. I was really nervous during my English examination and I dreadfully mixed up the dates in my History examination. Still, I think I did fairly well. Geometry was all right, I suppose, but I think I may’ve mixed some of them up! Oh, I wish Diana was here with me. If only her parents let her go to Queen’s!

-Anne

Dear Diary,

I passed! I passed the examination! Words cannot express my happiness! My name is first on the pass list that Diana brought over. I want to say a hundred things, and I can’t find words to say them in!

-Anne

Dear Diary,

Today I departed from Green Gables. I will miss Marilla and Matthew so much… If it weren’t for them, I would probably still be in the orphanage, but with no education, no family, and no friends. I also exchanged a very tearful goodbye with Diana. I do wish to see her soon!

-Anne

Dear Diary,

The months went by so quickly! I was extremely homesick during the winter holidays, this being the first one I’ve spent away from Green Gables. But, my new friends Stella Maynard and Priscilla Grant helped me through it. They are great, great friends. Thank Goodness that they also have an imagination like mine.

It’s getting quite stressful here at the Academy. Jane said yesterday that she lost seven pounds in the last two weeks due to worry. I’m not too worried myself. Even if I don’t win the Avery scholarship, I’ve done my best and I begin to understand what is meant by the “joy of the strife”.

-Anne

Dear Diary,

I won the Avery scholarship! I honestly can’t believe it! Me, Anne Shirley of Green Gables, won the Avery scholarship! Oh, won’t Matthew and Marilla be pleased! I shall be starting at Redmond in September!

I must go now and tell Diana the wonderful news!

-Anne

Dear Diary,

Matthew… he died from a heart attack. It was just so sudden… the doctor said that his death had been instantaneous and probably painless. Matthew was my dad, even if not my biological one, but he meant a great deal to me. If he had not chosen to bring me home all those years ago from the train station, I would’ve never had what I have now.

I miss him already.

-Anne