Obituary

Well, the obituary pages paid off again today.  We have a gentleman (no age given) who 
"joined his wife Evangeline amongst the stars from whose dust they were made.  Now reunited they explore the fields of Elysium. Together as they had almost always been they gaze down upon their children...grandchildren...and new baby Katherine with contentment, peace and love.  From the heavens they reach One final time To bless us all, ...

I think I'll just let you read the rest of that for yourselves, if that's okay.  Services, you won't be too surprised to note, at the 
Universalist Church...

The Lost Prince

My kids are all out of town and "Mother, it won't fit in the suitcase" -- so bit by bit I'm giving away stuff I'll never use again and furniture that gets in the way of the electric scooter. Books I'll never read again go in a separate bookcase.  When I wrote the sign                                                                       "FREE -- PLEASE TAKE", my son with the economics degree suggested I'd get better results with:  
                                                                                                   "Take a book -- $1
                                                                                                      2 books  --$.75
                                                                                                       3 books --$.50
                                                                                                       4 books -- $.25
                                                                                                       5 books -- FREE"
At any rate, even with my few visitors that bookcase has a nice turnover.  Someone even took, recently, the big two-volume textbook from the freshman Survey of English Literature, a work that that started with Beowulf and -- back in 1944 -- never even mentioned Jane Austen.
Every now and then, though, I find a book I'd like to re-read, and those go in a different bookcase.  Looking it over recently, I discovered that the titles I can't quite part with aren't all that impressive.  Not much there in the way of challenging classics.
But there was a copy of what I would have said was my favorite book (had anyone asked me) back when I was 11 or 12 -- The Lost Prince, by Frances Hodson Burnett.  I'd borrowed some of her other books from the library -- The Secret Garden, Little Lord Fauntleroy, but The Lost Prince I'd taken out over and over.  During the Depression I never dreamt of buying a book, but I set out, one day, to make my own copy.  I must have given up after just a page or two, because all I remember is a notebook page filled with not very impressive penmanship.
 
So when did I buy this battered and much-mended copy?  In college, when I finally discovered second-hand bookstores?  This copy does contain the bookplate I'd made as an assignment in journalism school's printing course -- as close to attempting Art as I ever got. The linoleum block is supposed to be a view down Lake Keuka from my folks' porch.
 But then I found, at the bottom of page 133, an imprint that said "Portland Psychology Assn". I must have already been teaching at a college in Maine when I found a second-hand bookshop with this copy.  And why do you suppose that Assn owned it?
Well, I had some trouble, yesterday, keeping it in order on my bathtub reading rack.  The pages kept falling out, and I can no longer read a book straight through.  It took two days, but I'm here to tell you, The Lost Prince, with its 1916 copyright and 12-year-old protagonist, is still delightful. I'm keeping it.
                                                       Highly recommended.