Make My Day

My grandmother, Dorothea Anna Ostwald, bequeathed me her Seven Hundred Album Verse poetry book, copyrighted in 1884. It is by J. S. Ogilvie Publications, who published many of the Horatio Alger books, and eventually became Avon Books (founded in 1941) that we know today.

The lovely poems inside my antiquated book were written for the purpose of filling the pages of a friend’s autograph album, which was very popular back in the late 1800’s to the mid 1900’s. Now our children and grand children take these books to Disney World to obtain Character signatures.

I have my grandmother’s album full of loving and funny poems written by her friends and by my grandfather as he began courting her in 1907. I find myself laughing at some of the verses and admiring the penmanship of long ago.

Come spend time with me as we tiptoe once a month through the pages of the Seven Hundred Album Verse book.


I dip my pen into the ink,
And grasp your album tight.
But for my life I cannot think,
One single word to write.