Lucy Maud Montgomery
While reading the Books of Lucy Maud Montgomery there were some passages that I found very gripping. Feeling moved to do so, I’d saved them to look at later, and am able to now present them here.
Blue Panachio: why “I Love Lucy”.
Along the Shore, Tales by the Sea: Mackerling out in the Gulf
The Mackerel boats were all at anchor on the fishing grounds; the sea was glassy calm - a pallid blue, save for a chance streak of deeper azure where some stray sea breeze ruffled it.
It was about the middle of the afternoon, and intensely warm and breathless. The headlands and coves were blurred by a purple heat haze. The long sweep of the sand shore was so glaringly brilliant that the pained eye sought relief among the rough rocks, where shadows were cast by the big red sandstone boulders.
The little cluster of fishing houses nearby were bleached to a silvery grey by long exposure to wind and rain. Far off were several “Yankee” fishing schooners, their sails dimly visible against the white horizon.
The Green Gables Letters, from L.M. Montgomery to Ephraim Weber, 1905-1909. March 28, 1909.
You have my sympathy in regard to your father’s death. I have had a double experience of those brutal telegrams announcing the death of a dear one. They are like a blow in the face. A letter softens it a little but a telegram cannot. I think a sudden death is hard on the survivors; but I agree with you fully that is the most desirable of deaths for the one most vitally concerned. I pray I may die so.
I don’t want to know I’m going to die. And yet I have a horrible fear that I’ll die by inches, as you say. When I read of someone having died in his sleep I always envy him. What a strange thing this death is. We all know we are going to die sometime but the knowledge never worries us or clouds our happiness here, as a general thing.
Theologians have done much to surround death with horror and dread. If we listened to Nature’s teachings we should be happier, truly believing (I hold) that death is simply a falling asleep, probably with awakening to some happy and useful existence, at the worst an endless and dreamless repose.
Isn’t the Christian (?) doctrine of eternal torment as hellish as the idea it teaches? How could men ever have so libelled God? They must have judged Him from their own evil hearts. They would have tortured their enemies eternally if they could. God had power, therefore He would. Such seems to have been their argument. I admit that a consciousness of sin and remorse is a hell in itself. But I believe that “as long as a human soul lives it can turn to God and goodness if it so will.”
Nobody wilfully chooses evil. We choose it because we deceive ourselves into thinking it good and pleasant. When we find that it isn’t we turn from it. Sometimes, in the case of bad habits, we cannot turn from it. But I believe that only lasts while the physical body on which the habit is impressed lasts. When it is destroyed the habit will also be destroyed and the liberated soul will get “another chance,” with the warning of its bitter experiences.
Well, we believe and believe. Some day we’ll know - or else there will be no curiosity.
Emily Climbs — Early Winter.
And every night we have murky red sunsets flaming in smoky crimson across the harbour, with a star above them like a saved soul gazing with compassionate eyes into pits of torment where sinful spirits are being purged from the stains of earthly pilgrimage.