Transcriber's Note: Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. Italic text is denoted by _underscores_. THE ANNALS OF ANN [Illustration: Ann] The Annals of Ann _By_ KATE TRIMBLE SHARBER WITH FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS BY PAUL J. MEYLAN A. L. BURT COMPANY PUBLISHERS NEW YORK COPYRIGHT 1910 THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY THE ANNALS OF ANN CHAPTER I My Cousin Eunice is a grown young lady and she keeps a diary, which put the notion into my head of keeping one too. There are two kinds of people that keep diaries, married ones and single ones. The single ones fill theirs full of poetry; the married ones tell how much it costs to keep house. Not being extra good in grammar and spelling, I thought I'd copy a few pages out of Cousin Eunice's diary this morning as a pattern to keep mine by, but I was disappointed. Nearly every page I turned to in hers was filled full of poetry, which stuff never did make good sense to me, besides the trouble it puts you to by having to start every line with a fresh capital. Cousin Eunice says nearly all famous people keep a diary for folks to read after they're dead. I always did admire famous people, especially Lord Byron and Columbus. And I've often thought I should like to be a famous person myself when I get grown. I don't care so much about graduating in white mull, trimmed in lace, as some girls do, for the really famous never graduate. They get expelled from college for writing little books saying there ain't any devil. But I should _love_ to be a beautiful opera singer, with a jasmine flower at my throat, and a fresh duke standing at the side door of the theater every night, begging me to marry him. Or I'd like to rescue a ship full of drowning people, then swim back to shore and calmly squeeze the salt water out of my bathing suit, so the papers would all be full of it the next morning. Things don't turn out the way you expect them to, though, and I needn't count too much on these things. I might catch cold in my voice, or cramps in the sea and never get famous; but I'm going to keep this diary anyhow, and just hand it down to my grandchildren, for nearly _every_ lady can count on _them_, whether she's famous or infamous.