A Trip Down Memory Lane

The last few days I have been fascinated by and interested in the old books that were in the one room school house library. All six of the sisters went to this one room school house. I am sure that we all read many of the same books. Most of them are no longer under copy write laws so you can read them on line. This week I read:

Old Rose and Silver by Myrtle Reed
Lavender and Old Lace by Myrtle Reed
Five Little Peppers and How They Grew by Margaret Sydney
Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch by Alice Caldwell Hegan.

I also remembered the following books and dipped into some of them.

Beautiful Joe
Black Beauty
At the Back of the North Wind
Little Women
Little Men
Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy
Pollyanna
Girl of the Limberlost
Silas Marner

These books are old fashioned, romantic and sweet. It isn’t that I don’t like modern books but I will admit that it is refreshing to read a book that isn’t full of vulgarity, explicit sex and obscenities. Some of these books have sadness and loss. What girl hasn’t cried over Beth in Little Women? Who didn’t feel sad over the brutality in Beautiful Joe and Black Beauty?

I am having a little stroll down memory lane by reading these books and soon I will go back to serious reading but I am enjoying this respite. I am so glad that I read these books as a young person. In most of them there is a challenge to work hard, to aspire to higher things and to appreciate and respect others.

In computerese there is a saying “Garbage in garbage out.” I think there is a corollary between what people look at and listen to today and what we hear coming out of their mouths, coming out of the movie screens and television screens. I must be longing for the sweetness and kindness of former times I read about in these books.

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