Anagnos made very full reports of the work under his charge. After the death of my sister it fell to my lot to go through these in order to make sure that the English idioms, so difficult for a foreigner to catch, were all correct. Thus for some twenty years it was my annual task to criticize “Michael’s” reports.
The great, square, brown paper envelopes in which these were contained, directed in my brother-in-law’s beautiful copper-plate hand, were sometimes greeted with groans on their arrival. For they were due at a season of the year when I was very busy.
Yet the work was very helpful to me, because it called for careful consideration of the reasons for or against certain forms of speech. With the prepositions we had special difficulty. Anagnos, too, as a true Oriental, possessed a very flowery style which it was necessary to prune and restrain in order to adapt it to our cold New England climate. At first he would pile metaphor upon metaphor and add simile to simile until his sober Puritan sister-in-law stood aghast. We had special difficulties with the obituaries of deceased benefactors of the Institution, whose virtues his gratitude painted in the most glowing colors. To have excellent but matter-of-fact Boston citizens compared to spreading oak-trees of benevolence seemed to me a trifle incongruous. I also demurred to “the Ark of the Institution keeping step in the march of progress.”
Looking back on the matter now, I am inclined to think my brother-in-law knew human nature better than I did. My work in cutting down the adjectives of encomium was perhaps supererogatory.
Anagnos found it on the whole very satisfactory. My use of English was the best in the family, he averred—but then he was a foreigner!
To his countrymen he was always ready to lend a helping hand. On the wall of his sitting-room hung an immense piece of canvas showing a ruined Greek temple, done in cross-stitch—“All there is to show, my dear, for two thousand dollars!”
He had lent this sum to a compatriot desiring to engage in the confectionery business. It is not probable that he often lost money in this way, for the Greeks are a thrifty race.
He was deeply interested in the war between Turkey and Greece. I could appreciate the eloquence of his address to his fellow-countrymen, even though no word was intelligible to me. When he seized their national flag and waved it they burst into applause.