THE DIARY OF A YOUNG GIRL : THE DEFINITIVE EDITION ... - Fidele

celebrate your birthday when you've got the sulks, how can you accept gifts from
people you won't even talk to?
Mr. Voskuijl is going downhill rapidly. For more than ten days he's had a
temperature of almost a hundred and four. The doctor said his condition is
hopeless; they think the cancer has spread to his lungs. The poor man, we'd so
like to help him, but only God can help him now!
I've written an amusing story called "Blurry the Explorer," which was a big hit
with my three listeners.
I still have a bad cold and have passed it on to Margot, as well as Mother and
Father. If only Peter doesn't get it. He insisted on a kiss, and called me his El
Dorado. You can't call a person that, silly boy! But he's sweet anyway!
Yours, Anne M. Frank
THURSDAY, APRIL 27, 1944
Dearest Kitty,
Mrs. van D. was in a bad mood this morning. All she did was complain, first about
her cold, not being able to get cough drops and the agony of having to blow her
nose all the time. Next she grumbled that the sun wasn't shining, the invasion
hadn't started, we weren't allowed to look out the windows, etc., etc. We couldn't
help but laugh at her, and it couldn't have been that bad, since she soon joined
in.
Our recipe for potato kugel, modified due to lack of onions:
Put peeled potatoes through a food mill and add a little dry government-issue
flour and salt. Grease a mold or ovenproof dish with paraffin or stearin and bake
for 21/2 hours. Serve with rotten strawberry compote. (Onions not available. Nor
oil for mold or dough!)
At the moment I'm reading Emperor Charles V, written by a professor at the
University of Gottingen; he's spent forty years working on this book. It took me
five days to read fifty pages. I can't do any more than that. Since the book has
598 pages, you can figure out just how long it's going to take me. And that's not
even counting the second volume. But. . . very interesting!
The things a schoolgirl has to do in the course of a single day! Take me, for
example. First, I translated a passage on Nelson's last battle from Dutch into
English. Then, I read more about the Northern War (1700-21) involving Peter the
Great, Charles XII, Augustus the Strong, Stanislaus Leczinsky, Mazeppa, von Gorz,
Bran- denburg, Western Pomerania, Eastern Pomerania and Denmark, plus the usual
dates. Next, I wound up in Brazil, where I read about Bahia tobacco, the abundance
of coffee, the one and a half million inhabitants of Rio de Janeiro, Pernambuco
and Sao Paulo and, last but not least, the Amazon River. Then about Negroes,
mulattoes, mestizos, whites, the illiteracy rate -- over 50 percent -- and
malaria. Since I had some time left, I glanced through a genealogical chart: John
the Old, William Louis, Ernest Casimir I, Henry Casimir I, right up to little
Margriet Franciska (born in 1943 in Ottawa).
Twelve o'clock: I resumed my studies in the attic, reading about deans, priests,
ministers, popes and . . . whew, it was one o'clock!
At two the poor child (ho hum) was back at work. Old World and New World monkeys