Priscilla is going to write a paper for our next Improvement meeting , and I expect it will be good , for her aunt is such a clever writer and no doubt it runs in the family . I shall never forget the thrill it gave me when I found out that Mrs. Charlotte E. Morgan was Priscilla 's aunt . It seemed so wonderful that I was a friend of the girl whose aunt wrote ` Edgewood Days ' and ` The Rosebud Garden . ' '' `` Where does Mrs. Morgan live ? '' `` In Toronto . And Priscilla says she is coming to the Island for a visit next summer , and if it is possible Priscilla is going to arrange to have us meet her . That seems almost too good to be true -- but it 's something pleasant to imagine after you go to bed . '' The Avonlea Village Improvement Society was an organized fact . Gilbert Blythe was president , Fred Wright vice-president , Anne Shirley secretary , and Diana Barry treasurer . The `` Improvers , '' as they were promptly christened , were to meet once a fortnight at the homes of the members . It was admitted that they could not expect to affect many improvements so late in the season ; but they meant to plan the next summer 's campaign , collect and discuss ideas , write and read papers , and , as Anne said , educate the public sentiment generally . There was some disapproval , of course , and ... which the Improvers felt much more keenly ... a good deal of ridicule . Mr. Elisha Wright was reported to have said that a more appropriate name for the organization would be Courting Club . Mrs. Hiram Sloane declared she had heard the Improvers meant to plough up all the roadsides and set them out with geraniums . Mr. Levi Boulter warned his neighbors that the Improvers would insist that everybody pull down his house and rebuild it after plans approved by the society . Mr. James Spencer sent them word that he wished they would kindly shovel down the church hill . Eben Wright told Anne that he wished the Improvers could induce old Josiah Sloane to keep his whiskers trimmed . Mr. Lawrence Bell said he would whitewash his barns if nothing else would please them but he would NOT hang lace curtains in the cowstable windows . Mr. Major Spencer asked Clifton Sloane , an Improver who drove the milk to the Carmody cheese factory , if it was true that everybody would have to have his milk-stand hand-painted next summer and keep an embroidered centerpiece on it . In spite of ... or perhaps , human nature being what it is , because of ... this , the Society went gamely to work at the only improvement they could hope to bring about that fall .
At the second meeting , in the Barry parlor , Oliver Sloane moved XXXXX they start a subscription to re-shingle and paint the hall ; Julia Bell seconded it , with an uneasy feeling that she was doing something not exactly ladylike .
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