‘Don ’t cry, my dear, my tiny Bess, One kitten ’s enough to keep.

So run to nurse, for it’s growing late, And it’s time you were asleep ’.

The morrow dawned, and rosy and sweet Came little Bess from her nap.

The nurse said, ‘Go into Mama’s room, And look on Grandma’s lap. ’

‘Come here’, says Grandma, with a smile, From the rocking chair where she sat, ‘God has sent you two little sisters —

Now what do you think of that?’

Bess looked at the babes a moment,

With their wee heads of yellow and brown. Then said to Grandma soberly,

‘Which one are you going to drown?’

This recitation was found in the newspaper The Examiner and was learned by Cassie when she was about eight years old; she recited it for the first time at a school Christmas concert in Stanhope. Other poems in Cassie’s repertoire were learned from her father, Who recited them at community concerts in the district. The “Kittens” was recited by Cassie once more for Shirley Lawson on November 15, 1982.

MARION MARSHALL

‘By their fruits ye shall know them ’ (Matthew 7:20)

As a little girl of nine, Marion could be found standing on a chair by the kitchen stove, cooking for her four younger brothers and a sister, while her mother was hospitalised for three months. This set the tone for a life-time of service to others.

Marion, born in 1907 to Norman and Lillian (Quigley) Brown, was brought up on a farm and went to school in Covehead Road. At twelve years of age she received six organ lessons, and, with hours and hours of dedicated practice, she subsequently played for school concerts, and Sunday School and Church services. At seventeen. she worked in the local store, and later lived for a short time in the United States before returning to P.E.I. on the death of her father. In December, 1935 she married Warren Marshall, and came to live, again on a farm, in Stanhope, where she has continued her service to home and community.

As well as working for twenty years at Stanhope Beach Inn, and later for fourteen years at the Covehead Telephone Exchange in

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