Helpful as the unpublished comic diary with Nora is for identifying some of the early scrapbook items, there are many souvenirs and comments--and equally many gaps--that may now be inexplicable. For example, what were all the good times, the "rackets" she marks on the calendar Willie Pritchard gave her? Who was the "chief of sinners" noted on the card holding a scrap of black material underneath the Park Corner pantry photograph? Was the "Trial by Fire" Maud referred to on August 12, 1903 something special to do with guest preacher Edwin Simpson (to whom Maud had been engaged in 1897-98, when she broke it off) and his visit to Cavendish? The items in the Ontario scrapbooks are easier to identify, but there are still puzzles. What is the significance of this heart and signatures--is this from Maud's wedding? If it is, why do the names not match exactly the list of wedding guests she gives in her journal (SJ,II,67)?

The gaps are as puzzling as the codes and jokes. Why is there nothing in the personal scrapbooks about the publication of Anne of Green Gables? Did all of the items simply go into the scrapbook of reviews? Why is there nowhere to be found (in any of the collections of Montgomery materials shared with the public) a wedding photograph of Maud and Ewan? Is it likely that she who loved clothes so much and recorded events so faithfully with her camera would fail to have wedding photographs? Of course, these puzzling gaps and the out-of-order arrangement of items are perhaps perfectly in keeping with Maud Montgomery's selective disclosures in her letters and journals and with her apparent indifference to dates or the arrangement of items in the scrapbooks themselves. Why is the June 1890 invitation to the one hundredth anniversary of the settlement in Cavendish of the Macneills, Simpsons, and Clarks pasted in among items from the 1920's?