In seriously troubling times, we can put on either of two fronts. One is the false front, one the brave front, with between them all the difference in affecting the world, wrote Anne Shannon Monroe:
I have never been much cheered by the “stenciled smile,” the false front, the pretending that there was no trouble when trouble stalked, that there was no death when Death laid his cold hand upon one dearer to us than life: but I have been tremendously cheered by the brave front; the imagination that could travel past the trouble and see that there were still joys in the world. . . . (From Singing in the Rain, by Anne Shannon Monroe, Doubleday, Page & Co., 1926.)
A publication of The Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission notes that Singing in the Rain is “one of twelve books, mostly novels, this Lake Grove resident wrote between 1900 and 1941.”
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