Country life -- Juvenile fiction; Orphans -- Juvenile fiction; Self-perception -- Juvenile fiction; Vermont -- Juvenile fiction
As Elizabeth Ann continued sitting perfectly still, frozen with alarm,
Cousin Ann jumped up briskly, got the little coat and cap, helped her
up, and began inserting the child’s arms into the sleeves. She pulled
the cap well down over Elizabeth Ann’s ears, felt in the pocket and
pulled out the mittens. “There,” she said, holding them out, “you’d
better put them on before you go out, for it’s a real cold day.” As she
led the stupefied little girl along toward the door Aunt Abigail came
after them and put a big sugar-cookie into the child’s hand. “Maybe
you’ll like to eat that for your recess time,” she said. “I always did
when I went to school.”
Elizabeth Ann’s hand closed automatically about the cookie, but she
scarcely heard what was said. She felt herself to be in a bad dream.
Aunt Frances had never, no NEVER, let her go to school alone, and on the
first day of the year always took her to the new teacher and introduced
her and told the teacher how sensitive she was and how hard to
understand; and then she stayed there for an hour or two till Elizabeth
Ann got used to things! She could not face a whole new school all
alone—oh, she couldn’t, she wouldn’t! She couldn’t! Horrors! Here she
was in the front hall—she was on the porch! Cousin Ann was saying: “Now
run along, child. Straight down the road till the first turn to the
left, and there in the cross-roads, there you are.” And now the front
door closed behind her, the path stretched before her to the road, and
the road led down the hill the way Cousin Ann had pointed. Elizabeth
Ann’s feet began to move forward and carried her down the path, although
she was still crying out to herself, “I can’t! I won’t! I can’t!”
Are you wondering why Elizabeth Ann didn’t turn right around, open the
front door, walk in, and say, “I can’t! I won’t! I can’t!” to Cousin
Ann?
The answer to that question is that she didn’t do it because Cousin Ann
was Cousin Ann. And there’s more in that than you think! In fact, there
is a mystery in it that nobody has ever solved, not even the greatest
scientists and philosophers, although, like all scientists and
philosophers, they think they have gone a long way toward explaining
something they don’t understand by calling it a long name. The long name
is “personality,” and what it means nobody knows, but it is perhaps the
very most important thing in the world for all that. And yet we know
only one or two things about it. We know that anybody’s personality is
made up of the sum total of all the actions and thoughts and desires of
his life. And we know that though there aren’t any words or any figures
in any language to set down that sum total accurately, still it is one
of the first things that everybody knows about anybody else. And that is
really all we know!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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