I wanted to draw pictures of people and animals and I had a sketchbook that had not a square inch left without a picture in it. I had a city bonnet in my parcels, but for now I was wearing what suited me, a new Stetson hat and a split riding skirt.Īs Esther read aloud until she fell asleep with the book on her chest, I would lie in bed and wish my life could amount to more than just a romance. Mosquitoes tried to make breakfast of my neck, so I pulled up my kerchief. Inventing and discovering, that’s what interested me.Įven in the early morning, I could smell rain in the air. I mostly liked real stories about people who did things that mattered. They never did anything actually worthwhile except get dressed up in fancy clothes and go to dances, but it gave us something to do on a summer night when the sun didn’t set until nearly ten. Just like so many other things I had read, the people were more tangled up about getting hitched and swooning over some lover or other than they were about the lack of rain or the cost of a new saddle. Thing was, I didn’t really like the characters or the stories. Most of the two-legged rascals we weren’t related to were cowpokes and drifters, so I never looked at any of them to make my life any different than it was. Jane Austen’s books sure made us dream of finding a handsome man to make our lives good and rich, but this was the Arizona Territory. My sister Esther and I used to read these novels to each other as whispers late into the night. The titles, Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, sounded like essays on principles of virtue and meritorious living.
One day last fall, after having read almost every book there, I was looking for something new and discovered a nearly hidden section of novels on a high shelf.
My aunt Sarah Elliot had a large collection of books that lined every last wall, floor to ceiling, in her ranch house. I’d been admitted to Wheaton College without setting foot in a schoolhouse. Neither one of them had ever read the likes of Austen before. Pa was raised on the back of a horse and thought of reading as something only girls did. From where I was sitting on the back of my horse that morning, the only place where I could see anything clear, everything had changed once my Quaker ma found Pride and Prejudice under my pillow. I blame the beginning of the whole thing on Jane Austen.
0 kommentar(er)
