From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
I love spelling lessons because there are always new words in them. Today one of the new ones was “ancestors.” I was the only one in class who knew what it meant. That is not because I am smart but because I saw it in “Little Lord Fauntleroy.” Alma explained it to me then. When Cedric was in the art gallery of his grandfather’s castle, the Earl of Dorincourt showed him the pictures of his ancestors and Cedric thought they were his aunt’s sisters. Our ancestors are all our great, great grandparents, and all their great, great grandparents forever and ever back in time to Adam and Eve, I guess.
Today Hilda gives us an example of a “mondegreen.” Former San Francisco Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll wrote about them often and his columns always made me smile. One of my few claims to local fame was when he included in one of his columns a mondegreen I had sent him.