flowers--all blowing back and
forth. Sometimes it was a voice--a wonderful far-away voice. Sometimes it
was a lovely dress--oh a wonderful gauzy dress--or a hat that was like
the blowing field of flowers. Sometimes--this was the loveliest of
all--it was somebody who loved me. But whatever it was, it was something
I couldn't overtake.

"And you mustn't laugh, Katie, when I tell you that the thing that made
me think I could catch up with it was a moving-picture show!

"It came to Centralia--the first one that had ever been there. I heard
the people next door talking about it. They said there were pictures of
things that really happened in the great cities--oh of kings and queens
and the president and millionaires and automobile races and grand
weddings; that the pictures went on just like the happenings went on;
that it was just as if the pictures were alive; that it was just like
being there.

"Oh, I was so excited about it! I was so excited I could hardly
get ready.

"You see ever since Tono had died--two years before, I had kept that idea
that things were hard. That the thing to do was to be hard. I dreamed
about things that were lovely--the Something Somewhere things--but as far
as the real things went I never changed my mind about them. You mustn't
let them into your heart. They just wanted to get in there to hurt you.

"Now I forgot all about that. These pictures were dreams made real. They
had caught up with the Something Somewhere. And I was going to see them.

"But I didn't--not that day. I was so happy that my father suspected
something. And he got it out of me and said I couldn't go. He said that
the things that would be pictured would be the wickedness of the world.
That I was not to see it.

"But I made up my mind that I would see the wickedness of the world." Ann
paused, and then said in lower voice: "And I have--and not just in
pictures."

She seemed to be meeting something, and she answered it. "But just the
same," she made answer defiantly, "I'd rather see the wickedness of the
world than stay in the nothingness of the world!

"The pictures were to be there a week. I thought of nothing else but how
I could see them. The last day there was a thimble-bee. I went to the
thimble-bee--said I couldn't stay--and went to the pictures.

"Katie, that moving-picture show was proof. Proof of the Something
Somewhere. And in my heart I made a vow--it was a _solemn_ vow--that I
would find the things that mo