A Christmas Gift for you!

One hundred years ago, in 1907, the bestselling book of the year was The Lady of the Decoration by Frances Little. Books this old are now in the public domain and can be read on the internet. Here is a link to your Christmas gift:

http://arthursclassicnovels.com/arthurs/little/7lddc10.html

It is a charming story (and a very short novel) consisting of letters to home from a young woman who has decided to abandon everything she holds dear to become a missionary kindergarten teacher in Heroshima Japan.  I just hope that the orphans she is charged with don’t end up getting nuked in thirty years!

Here is a brief excerpt from her time on the boat going to Japan:

I put on my prettiest cap and my long coat and went up on deck. Oh, my dear, if you could only have seen the sight that greeted me! It was the limpest, sickest crowd I ever encountered! They were pea-green with a dash of yellow, and a streak of black under their eyes, pale around the lips and weak in their knees. There was only one other woman besides myself who was not sick, and she was a missionary with short hair, and a big nose. She was going around with some tracts asking everybody if they were Christians. Just as I came up she tackled a big, dejected looking foreigner who was huddled in a corner.

“Brother, are you a Christian?”

“No, no,” he muttered impatiently. “I’m a Norwegian.”

Now what that man needed was a cocktail, but it was not for me to suggest it.

Here is a review of your Christmas present in the New York Times:

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9F04E1D61F30E233A25750C2A9679D946697D6CF&oref=slogin

which calls it “the peppermint of literature” and a good for you easy read that has become very popular.

For a list of other bestsellers of the twentieth century check out:

http://www.caderbooks.com/best00.html

and Merry Christmas and a wonderful 2008!!!

 with much love on this Christmas day of 2007 -

Mark “To The Moon”