Counsel from Bygone Eras:
The Little Colonel

For several issues of the YLCF Journal and P31, we ran a column of “Counsel from Bygone Eras” with quotations from old books, compiled mostly by Maggie Starr.  I always looked forward to receiving the pages of notebook paper onto which Maggie had copied the paragraphs with her neat handwriting — they were my first introduction to the “Little Colonel.” 

Now, Maggie has an MFA in costume design and recently moved to Ohio with her husband of one year. She still enjoys collecting quotes from classic literature in her free time.  The “counsel” below is from the Winter 1999 issue of the YLCF Journal.  You can read more of the columns in the “Best of the YLCF Journal.”

“…She thought how differently Ida would have chosen [a husband] could she have known that this precious little soul was to be given into her keeping. If somebody had only gone to her with old Hildgardmar’s warning—‘Remember that in the right weaving of this web depends not only thy own happiness but the happiness of all those who come after thee,’ it might have made a world of difference. But nobody had opened her eyes to the enormity of the responsibility she was assuming…”

–Annie Fellows Johnston, The Little Colonel’s Knight Comes Riding

“…The Knights have come riding, lots of them, and maybe among them I might have found my prince in disguise, but the shadows of the world blurred everything. Out here in the country I’d grown up believing that it’s a kind, honest old world. I’d seen only its good side. I took my conception of married life from mother and papa, Doctor Shelby and Aunt Alicia, and your father and mother. They made me think that marriage is a great strong sanctuary, built on a rock that no storm can hurt and no trouble move. But this winter I found that that kind of marriage has grown out of fashion. It’s something to jest about, and it’s a matter of scandal and divorce and unhappiness. Sometimes it made me heart-sick. The tales I heard and the thing I saw. I came to little Mary Ware’s conclusion that it’s safer to be an old maid.”

“It’s dreadful to be disillusioned, that’s one reason why I keep so ‘far from the madding crowd.’”

–Lloyd and Rob from The Little Colonel’s Knight Comes Riding by Annie Fellows Johnston

“One of the girls laughed at me for taking it so seriously, and said that matches aren’t made in Heaven nowadays, and that I’d have to get over my old-fashioned Puritanical notions and ideals if I expected to keep up with the ‘smart set.’ I thought for awhile that maybe it was only the ‘smart set’ who are that way, but what you’ve just told me about Mrs. Caldwell, and what I’ve heard lately about several families right in our own little neighborhood, shows that it’s all a bad old world, and these years I’ve been thinking it so good, I’ve been blind and ignorant.”

“That’s the way it seems to you now—it’s the reaction. But you mustn’t let it make you pessimistic. When you get to feeling like that you’ll have to do like old Abraham did, quit looking at all the sinners in Sodom, and hunt around for the ten good men…or better still, turn your back on the entire Sodom, and look away to the plains where the faithful pitch their tents. The world is full of that kind of people today as it was then, the faithful who never join themselves to the idols of the heathen, but who tend their flocks and live good peaceful lives, and in all their journeyings, wherever they go, raise an altar to the Lord. It’s the marriages that are founded on that rock that never fall.”

–Mrs. Bisbee and Lloyd from The Little Colonel’s Knight Comes Riding by Annie Fellows Johnston

“There are only three notches on the yardstick which I am going to give you. The prince who comes asking for you must have, first, a clean life. There must be no wild oats sowed through his past for my little girl to help reap, for no man ever gathers such a harvest alone. Next, he must be honorable in every way, which that good old word implies. The man who is that will not ask anything clandestine, nor will he ask to take you from a comfortable home before he is able to provide one for you himself. Then, if he would measure up to the third notch, he must be strong. Strong in character, in purpose, and in endeavor. There are many things that I might ask for my only child, many things that I would gladly choose for her if the choice were left to me: family, position, wealth—but they are nothing when weighed in the balance with the love of an honest man. If his life be clean and honorable and strong, then choose as you will, my blessing shall go with you!”

-Mr. Sherman from The Little Colonel at Boarding School by Annie Fellows Johnston