The Rest of the Story

So here is that falling down journal I got at the PCC Flea Market. It's from one of my favorite vendors. A Latin teacher and tutor, if you can believe it. We always talk of how Latin is so useful for understanding the English language and that it should still be required in high school. Not much chance of that, I fear.

As a bookbinder, I was fascinated by the construction revealed under the binding. But the contents, of course, are most interesting. All that gorgeous Copperplate script; no ballpoint pens can do that!

But apparently the grocery store journal was abandoned very soon after it was started. Somewhere after the end of 1865, it became the property of "Miss Annie J. Leach" of Saledo, Texas. She used it as her scrapbook at least through 1869. Pages and pages of columns from the newspaper of the day. Poetry, obituaries, lynchings...and a copy of "A Christmas Carol".

More pleasant are some pictures and loose images.

Including one on the inside cover - "What I'd Do for Annie".

"I'd call your brow a lily;
Your cheeks twin roses rare;
Your lips - ah! lovely Annie,
What can to them compare?"

Unfortunately, most of the articles are reports of civil war battles, deaths of generals, stories of the ladies of Vicksburg struggling to find final resting places for 2,000 Confederates. And a heartbreaking story of Miss Nettie Embree, age 15, whose final desire was to "take another ride over the beautiful prairie, where she had so often gathered wildflowers." "Her last illness was long and painful, but she bore all with remarkable patience and fortitude."

But then, Christmas comes and later, her graduation. The final pages are handwritten poems and ditties from classmates bidding her farewell. Sigh. Such a glimpse into a life so different from my own and so much more tragic. Makes one count ones blessings, yes?