Throwback Thursday

Jolly Book

In Pollyanna Grows Up, by Eleanor H. Porter, Pollyanna goes to Boston and meets a boy named Jamie. Jamie is in a wheelchair, and has a book he calls his "Jolly Book".
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"But you haven't told me yet about-the Jolly Book," prompted Pollyanna, after a minute.
The boy stirred and laughed shamefacedly.
" Well, you see, it ain't much, after all, except to me. You wouldn't see much in it. I started it a year ago. I was feelin' 'specially bad that day. Nothin' was right. For a while I grumped it out, just thinkin'; and then I picked tip one of father's books and tried to read. And the first thing I see was this: I learned it afterwards, so I can say it now.

   'Pleasures lie thickest where no pleasures seem;
    There's not a leaf that falls upon the ground
    But holds some joy, of silence or of sound."

"Well, I was mad. I wished I could put the guy that wrote that in my place, and see what kind of joy
he'd find in my 'leaves.' I was so mad I made up my mind I'd prove he didn't know what he was talkin' about, so I begun to hunt for 'em-the joys in my 'leaves,' you know. I took a little old empty notebook that Jerry had given me, and I said to myself that I'd write 'em down. Everythin' that had anythin' about it that I liked I'd put down in the book. Then I'd just show how many ' joys' I had."
" Yes, yes! " cried Pollyanna, absorbedly, as the boy paused for breath.
" Well, I didn't expect to get many, but-do you know?-I got a lot. There was somethin' about 'most everythin' that I liked a little, so in it had to go. The very first one was the book itself-that I'd got it, you know, to write in. Then somebody give me a flower in a pot, and Jerry found a dandy book in the subway. After that it was really fun to hunt 'em out-I'd find 'em in such queer places, sometimes. Then one day Jerry got hold of the little notebook, and found out what 'twas. Then he give it its name-the Jolly Book. And-and that's all."
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Pollyanna, of course, is delighted.
I've been thinking about getting a blank journal and keeping a book like that; writing
down all the good things that happen, all the little and not-so-little blessings, and
then sharing at least some of them in this blog.
One more thing: Thank God for books in the public domain that I can quote from at length
without having to be concerned about copyright infringements!

Originally posted on October 1st, 2010