[Footnote 29: These translations are included in "Miscellanea," vol. xvii.]

The last contribution, in 1876, which remains to be mentioned is "Dandelion Clocks," a short tale; but it will need rather a long introduction, as it opens out into a fresh trait of my sister's character, namely, her love for flowers.

It need scarcely be said that she wrote as accurately about them as about everything else; and, in addition to this, she enveloped them in such an atmosphere of sentiment as served to give life and individuality to their inanimate forms. The habit of weaving stories round them began in girlhood, when she was devoted to reading Mr. J.G. Wood's graceful translation of Alphonse Karr's Voyage autour de mon Jardin. The book was given to her in 1856 by her father, and it exercised a strong influence upon her mind. What else made the ungraceful Buddlaea lovely in her eyes? I confess that when she pointed out the shrub to me, for the first time, in Mr. Ellacombe's garden, it looked so like the "Plum-pudding tree" in the "Willow pattern," and fell so far short of my expectation of the plant over which the two florists had squabbled, that I almost wished that I had not seen it! Still I did not share their discomfiture so fully as to think "it no longer good for anything but firewood!"

Karr's fifty-eighth "Letter" nearly sufficed to enclose a declaration of love in every bunch of "yellow roses" which Julie tied together; and to plant an "Incognito" for discovery in every bed of tulips she looked at; whilst her favourite Letter XL., on the result produced by inhaling the odour of bean flowers, embodies the spirit of the ideal existence which she passed, as she walked through the fields of our work-a-day world:

The beans were in full blossom. But a truce to this cold-hearted pleasantry. No, it is not a folly to be under the empire of the most beautiful—the most noble feelings; it is no folly to feel oneself great, strong, invincible; it is not a folly to have a good, honest, and generous heart; it is no folly to be filled with good faith; it is not a folly to devote oneself for the good of others; it is not a folly to live thus out of real life.

No, no; that cold wisdom which pronounces so severe a judgment upon all it cannot do; that wisdom which owes its birth to the death of so many great, noble, and sweet things; that wisdom which only comes with infirmities, and which decorates them with such fine names—which calls decay of the powers of the stomach and loss of appetite sobriety; the cooling of the heart and the stagnation of the blood a return to reason; envious impotence a disdain for futile things;—this wisdom would be the greatest, the most melancholy of follies, if it were not the commencement of the death of the heart and the senses.

"Dandelion Clocks" resembles one of Karr's "Letters" in containing the germs of a three volumed romance, but they are the germs only—and the "proportions" of the picture are consequently well preserved. Indeed, the tale always reminds me of a series of peaceful scenes by Cuyp, with low horizons, sleek cattle, and a glow in the sky betokening the approach of sunset. First we have "Peter Paul and his two sisters playing in the pastures" at blowing dandelion clocks:

Rich, green, Dutch pastures, unbroken by hedge or wall, which stretched—like an emerald ocean—to the horizon and met the sky. The cows stood ankle-deep in it and chewed the cud, the clouds sailed slowly over it to the sea, and on a dry hillock sat Mother, in her broad sun-hat, with one eye to the cows, and one to the linen she was bleaching, thinking of her farm.

The actual outlines of this scene may be traced in the German woodcut to which the tale was written, but the colouring is Julie's! The only disturbing element in this quiet picture is Peter Paul's restless, inquiring heart. What wonder that when his bulb-growing uncle fails to solve the riddle of life, Peter Paul should go out into the wider world and try to find a solution for himself? But the answers to our life problems full often are to be found within, for those who will look, and so Peter Paul comes back after some years to find that:

The elder sister was married and had two children. She had grown up very pretty—a fair woman, with liquid misleading eyes. They looked as if they were gazing into the far future, but they did not see an inch beyond the farm. Anna was a very plain copy of her in body; in mind she was the elder sister's echo. They were very fond of each other, and the prettiest thing about them was their faithful love for their mother, whose memory was kept as green as pastures after rain.

Peter Paul's temperament, however, was not one that could adapt itself to a stagnant existence; so when his three weeks on shore are ended, we see him on his way from the Home Farm to join his ship:

Leena walked far over the pastures with Peter Paul. She was very fond of him, and she had a woman's perception that they would miss him more than he could miss them.

"I am very sorry you could not settle down with us," she said, and her eyes brimmed over.

Peter Paul kissed the tears tenderly from her cheeks.

"Perhaps I shall when I am older, and have shaken off a few more of my whims into the sea. I'll come back yet, Leena, and live very near to you, and grow tulips, and be as good an old bachelor-uncle to your boy as Uncle Jacob is to me."

* * * * *

When they got to the hillock where Mother used to sit, Peter Paul took her once more into his arms.

"Good-bye, good sister," he said, "I have been back in my childhood again, and GOD knows that is both pleasant and good for one."

"And it is funny that you should say so," said Leena, smiling through her tears; "for when we were children you were never happy except in thinking of when you should be a man."

And with this salutary home-thrust (which thoroughly commonplace minds have such a provoking faculty for giving) Leena went back to her children and cattle.

Happy for the artistic temperament that can profit by such rebuffs!



PART III.

Yet, how few believe such doctrine springs From a poor root, Which all the winter sleeps here under foot, And hath no wings To raise it to the truth and light of things; But is stil trod By ev'ry wand'ring clod.

O Thou, Whose Spirit did at first inflame And warm the dead, And by a sacred incubation fed With life this frame, Which once had neither being, forme, nor name, Grant I may so Thy steps track here below,

That in these masques and shadows I may see Thy sacred way; And by those hid ascents climb to that day Which breaks from Thee, Who art in all things, though invisibly, "The Hidden Flower."

HENRY VAUGHAN.

One of the causes which helped to develop my sister's interest in flowers was the sight of the fresh ones that she met with on going to live in New Brunswick after her marriage. Every strange face was a subject for study, and she soon began to devote a note-book to sketches of these new friends, naming them scientifically from Professor Asa Gray's Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States, whilst Major Ewing added as many of the Melicete names as he could glean from Peter, a member of the tribe, who had attached himself to the Ewings, and used constantly to come about their house. Peter and his wife lived in a small colony of the Melicete Indians, which was established on the opposite side of the St. John River to that on which the Reka Dom stood. Mrs. Peter was the most skilful embroiderer in beads amongst her people, and Peter himself the best canoe-builder. He made a beautiful one for the Ewings, which they constantly used; and when they returned to England his regret at losing them was wonderfully mitigated by the present which Major Ewing gave him of an old gun; he declared no gentleman had ever thought of giving him such a thing before!

Julie introduced several of the North American flowers into her stories. The Tabby-striped Arum, or Jack-in-the-Pulpit (as it is called in Mr. Whittier's delightful collection of child-poems[30]), appears in "We and the World," where Dennis, the rollicking Irish hero, unintentionally raises himself in the estimation of his sober-minded Scotch companion Alister, by betraying that he "can speak with other tongues," from his ability to converse with a squaw in French on the subject of the bunch of Arums he had gathered, and was holding in his hand.

[Footnote 30: Child Life. Edited by J.G. Whittier. Nesbitt and Co.]

This allusion was only a slight one, but Julie wrote a complete story on one species of Trillium, having a special affection for the whole genus. Trilliums are amongst the North American herbaceous plants which have lately become fashionable, and easy to be bought in England; but ere they did so, Julie made some ineffectual attempts to transplant tubers of them into English soil; and the last letter she received from Fredericton contained a packet of red Trillium seeds, which came too late to be sown before she died. The species which she immortalized in "The Blind Hermit and the Trinity Flower," was T. erythrocarpum. The story is a graceful legend of an old Hermit whose life was spent in growing herbs for the healing of diseases; and when he, in his turn, was struck with blindness, he could not reconcile himself to the loss of the occupation which alone seemed to make him of use in the world. "They also serve who only stand and wait" was a hard lesson to learn; every day he prayed for some Balm of Gilead to heal his ill, and restore his sight, and the prayer was answered, though not in the manner that he desired. First he was supplied with a serving-boy, who became eyes and feet to him, from gratitude for cures which the Hermit had done to the lad himself; and then a vision was granted to the old man, wherein he saw a flower which would heal his blindness:—



"And what was the Trinity Flower like, my Father?" asked the boy.

"It was about the size of Herb Paris, my son," replied the Hermit. "But, instead of being fourfold every way, it numbered the mystic Three. Every part was threefold. The leaves were three, the petals three, the sepals three. The flower was snow-white, but on each of the three parts it was stained with crimson stripes, like white garments dyed in blood."

A root of this plant was sent to the Hermit by a heavenly messenger, which the boy planted, and anxiously watched the growth of, cheering his master with the hope—"Patience, my Father, thou shalt see yet!"

Meantime greater light was breaking in upon the Hermit's soul than had been there before:

"My son, I repent me that I have not been patient under affliction. Moreover, I have set thee an ill example, in that I have murmured at that which God—Who knoweth best—ordained for me."

And, when the boy ofttimes repeated, "Thou shalt yet see," the Hermit answered, "If God will. When God will. As God will."

And at last, when the white bud opens, and the blood-like stains are visible within, he who once was blind sees, but his vision is opened on eternal Day.

In Aunt Judy's Magazine for 1877 there is another Flower Legend, but of an English plant, the Lily of the Valley. Julie called the tale by the old-fashioned name of the flower, "Ladders to Heaven." The scenery is pictured from spots near her Yorkshire home, where she was accustomed to seeing beautiful valleys blackened by smoke from iron-furnaces, and the woods beyond the church, where she liked to ramble, filled with desolate heaps of black shale, the refuse left round the mouths of disused coal and iron-stone pits. I remember how glad we were when we found the woolly-leaved yellow Mullein growing on some of these dreary places, and helping to cover up their nakedness. In later years my sister heard with much pleasure that a mining friend was doing what he could to repair the damages he had made on the beauty of the country, by planting over the worked-out mines such trees and plants as would thrive in the poor and useless shale, which was left as a covering to once rich and valuable spots.



"Brothers of Pity" (Aunt Judy's Magazine, 1877) shows a deep and minute insight into the feelings of a solitary child, which one fancies Julie must have acquired by the process of contrast with her own surroundings of seven brethren and sisters. A similar power of perception was displayed in her verses on "An Only Child's Tea-party."

She remembered from experiences of our own childhood what a favourite game "funerals" is with those whose "whole vocation" is yet "endless imitation"; and she had watched the soldiers' children in camp play at it so often that she knew it was not only the bright covering of the Union Jack which made death lovely in their eyes, "Blind Baby" enjoyed it for the sake of the music; and even civilians' children, who see the service devoid of sweet sounds, and under its blackest and most revolting aspect, still are strangely fascinated thereby. Julie had heard about one of these, a lonely motherless boy, whose chief joy was to harness Granny to his "hearse" and play at funeral processions round the drawing-room, where his dead mother had once toddled in her turn.

The boy in "Brothers of Pity" is the principal character, and the animals occupy minor positions. Cock-Robin only appears as a corpse on the scene; and Julie did not touch much on bird pets in any of her tales, chiefly because she never kept one, having too much sympathy with their powers and cravings for flight to reconcile herself to putting them in cages. The flight and recapture of Cocky in "Lob" were drawn from life, though the bird did not belong to her, but her descriptions of how he stood on the window-sill "scanning the summer sky with his fierce eyes, and flapping himself in the breeze,... bowed his yellow crest, spread his noble wings, and sailed out into the aether";... and his "dreams of liberty in the tree-tops," all show the light in which she viewed the practice of keeping birds in confinement. Her verses on "Three Little Nest-Birds" and her tale of the Thrush in "An Idyll of the Wood" bear witness to the same feeling. Major Ewing remembers how often she used to wish, when passing bird-shops, that she could "buy the whole collection and set them all free,"—a desire which suggests a quaint vision of her in Seven Dials, with a mixed flock of macaws, canaries, parrots and thrushes shrieking and flying round her head; but the wish was worthy of her in (what Mr. Howells called) "woman's heaven-born ignorance of the insuperable difficulties of doing right."

In this (1877) volume of Aunt Judy's Magazine there is a striking portrait of another kind of animal pet, the "Kit" who is resolved to choose her own "cradle," and not to sleep where she is told. It is needless to say that she gets her own way, since,—

There's a soft persistence about a cat That even a little kitten can show.

She has, however, the grace to purr when she is pleased, which all kits and cats have not!

I'm happy in ev'ry hair of my fur, They may keep the hamper and hay themselves.

There are three other sets of verses in the volume, and all of them were originally written to old wood-cuts, but have since been re-illustrated by Mr. Andre, and published by the S.P.C.K.

"A Sweet Little Dear" is the personification of a selfish girl, and "Master Fritz" of an equally selfish boy; but his sister Katerina is delicious by contrast, as she gives heed to his schemes—

And if you make nice feasts every day for me and Nickel, and never keep us waiting for our food, And always do everything I want, and attend to everything I say, I'm sure I shall almost always be good. And if I'm naughty now and then, it'll most likely be your fault: and if it isn't, you mustn't mind; For even if I seem to be cross, you ought to know that I meant to be kind.

An old-fashioned fairy tale, "The Magician turned Mischief-maker," came out in 1877; and a short domestic tale called "A Bad Habit"; but Julie was unable to supply any long contributions this year, as in April her seven-years home at Aldershot was broken up in consequence of Major Ewing being ordered to Manchester, and her time was occupied by the labour and process of removing.

She took down the motto which she had hung over her hearth to temper her joy in the comfort thereof,—Ut migraturus habita,—and moved the scroll on to her next resting-place. No one knew better than she the depth of Mrs. Hemans' definition,—"What is home,—and where,—but with the loving—" and most truly can it be said that wherever Julie went she carried "Home" with her; freedom, generosity, and loving welcome were always to be found in her house,—even if upholstery and carpets ran short! It was a joke amongst some of her friends that though rose-coloured curtains and bevelled-edged looking-glasses could be counted upon in their bed-rooms, such commonplace necessities as soap might be forgotten, and the glasses be fastened in artistic corners of the rooms, rather than in such lights as were best adapted for shaving by!

Julie followed the course of the new lines in which her lot was cast most cheerfully, but the "mighty heart" could not really support the "little body"; and the fatigue of packing, combined with the effects of the relaxing climate of Bowdon, near Manchester, where she went to live, acted sadly upon her constitution. She was able, however, after settling in the North, to pay more frequent visits to Ecclesfield than before; and the next work that she did for Aunt Judy's Magazine bears evidences of the renewal of Yorkshire associations.



This story, "We and the World," was specially intended for boys, and the "law of contrast" in it was meant to be drawn between the career which Cripple Charlie spent at home, and those of the three lads who went out into "the world" together. Then, too, she wished, as I mentioned before, to contrast the national types of character in the English, Scotch, and Irish heroes, and to show the good contained in each of them. But the tale seemed to have been begun under an unlucky star. The first half, which came out in the first six numbers of the Magazine for 1878, is excellent as a matter of art; and as pictures of North-country life and scenery nothing can be better than Walnut-tree Farm and Academy, the Miser's Funeral, and the Bee-master's Visit to his Hives on the Moors, combined with attendance at Church on a hot Sunday afternoon in August (it need scarcely be said that the church is a real one). But, good though all this is, it is too long and "out of proportion," when one reflects how much of the plot was left to be unravelled in the other half of the tale. "The World" could not properly be squeezed into a space only equal in size to that which had been devoted to "Home." If Julie had been in better health, she would have foreseen the dilemma into which she was falling, but she did not, and in the autumn of 1878 she had to lay the tale aside, for Major Ewing was sent to be stationed at York. "We" was put by until the following volume, but for this (1878) one she wrote two other short contributions,—"The Yellow Fly, a Tale with a Sting in it," and "So-so."

To those who do not read between the lines, "So-so" sounds (as he felt) "very soft and pleasant," but to me the tale is in Julie's saddest strain, because of the suspicion of hopelessness that pervades it;—a spirit which I do not trace in any of her other writings.

"Be sure, my child," said the widow to her little daughter, "that you always do just as you are told."

"Very well, mother."

"Or at any rate do what will do just as well," said the small house-dog, as he lay blinking at the fire.

* * * * *

"For the future, my child," said the widow, "I hope you will always do just as you are told, whatever So-so may say."

"I will, mother," said little Joan. (And she did.) But the house-dog sat and blinked. He dared not speak, he was in disgrace.

"I do not feel quite sure about So-so. Wild dogs often amend their ways far on this side of the gallows, and the Faithful sometimes fall, but when any one begins by being only so-so, he is very apt to be so-so to the end. So-so's so seldom change."

Before turning from the record of my sister's life at Manchester, I must mention a circumstance which gave her very great pleasure there. In the summer of 1875 she and I went up from Aldershot to see the Exhibition of Water-Colours by the Royal Society of Painters, and she was completely fascinated by a picture of Mr. J.D. Watson's, called "A Gentleman of the Road." It represented a horseman at daybreak, allowing his horse to drink from a stream, whilst he sat half-turned in the saddle to look back at a gallows which was visible on the horizon against the beams of rising light. The subject may sound very sensational, but it was not that aspect of it which charmed my sister; she found beauty as well as romance in it, and after we returned to camp in the evening she became so restless and engrossed by what she had seen, that she got up during the night, and planned out the headings of a story on the picture, adding—characteristically—a moral or "soul" to the subject by a quotation[31] from Thomas a Kempis—Respice finem. "In all things remember the end."

[Footnote 31: Letter, March 22, 1880.]

This "mapped-out" story, I am sorry to say, remains unfinished. The manuscript went through many vicissitudes, was inadvertently torn up and thrown into the waste-paper basket, whence it was rescued and the pieces carefully enclosed in an envelope ready for mending. It was afterwards lost again for many months in a box that was sent abroad, but the fragments have been put together and copied, as they are interesting from the promise that lies in the few words that remain.

A GENTLEMAN OF THE ROAD.

The old schoolmaster sat on a tombstone, an ancient altar-shaped tomb which may have been reared when the yew tree above it was planted. Children clustered round him like bees upon a branch, and he held the book wide open so that, if possible, all might see into it at once. It was not a school-book, it was a picture book, the one out of which he told tales to the children on half-holidays. The volume was old and the text was in Latin, a language of which the schoolmaster had some little knowledge.

He could read the dial motto pat,—Via crucis via lucis. The Way of the Cross is the Way of Light.

He understood the Latin headings to the Psalms and Canticles better than the clerk, for he could adjust the words to their English equivalents. The clerk took them as they stood, Nunc dimittis, or the Song of Simeon. It was put down so in the rubric, he said, as plain as "Here endeth the first lesson."

The schoolmaster made no such blunders. He could say the Lord's Prayer in Latin, and part of the Creed, and from his seat in church he could make out most of the virtues credited to the last account of one Roger Beaufoy, who in this life had been entitled to write Esquire after his name. The name kept the title after it—Armiger—though the man himself had long departed to a life with other distinctions. If the tablet were to be believed, he had been a gentle squire too. The schoolmaster was wont to murmur the list of his qualities over to himself: fortis—mitis—suavis—largus—urbanus:—desideratissimus too, and no marvel!—nobili genere natus—and tam corpore quam vultus praeclarus!

It was a goodly list that the schoolmaster muttered over, and when it was done he would add—"His very portrait, every line, every word of it!" And then he would sigh.

Old as he was, the schoolmaster was not bearing testimony to the truth of the inscription as regarded the man he referred to; that Roger Beaufoy had gone back with all his virtues and his vices to the Maker of Souls long before the schoolmaster could read what had been written of him by the maker of epitaphs. It was to the character of another Roger—the great-grandson of this squire—that the old man adapted the graceful flattery of the epitaph. It fitted in every fold, and yet he sighed. For in this Roger, as in that, the sterner virtues were lacking. They had not even been supplied upon the marble, though that is a charity not uncommonly granted to the dead. But when the genial virtues abound, the world misses the others so little!

[Here the sheet of paper is torn, but from the words on the part left it is evident that there was a description of the frontispiece in the schoolmaster's book. Apparently the subject of the picture was allegorical, and the figures of "monstrous beasts" were interspersed with "devices" and "scrolls with inscriptions," together with figures]

of kneeling saints, or pilgrims treading the Via Vitae with sandalled shoes and heavy staves; and between the lips of dolorous faces in penal fires issued the words O AEternitas! AEternitas!

All these things the schoolmaster duly interpreted, but the rest of the story he made up out of his own head, a custom which had this among other advantages, that the stories were not always the same, which they must have been had the good man been a merely fluent translator.

At the schoolmaster's elbow nestled his little granddaughter. By herself she could not have secured so good a place, for she was fragile and very gentle, and most of the other children were rough and strong. "First come first served" was the motto of their play. First-come was served first because he helped himself, and the only exception to the rule was when Second-come happened to be stronger and took his place.

This fragment at any rate serves to show what a strong impression the picture had made upon Julie's mind, so it will readily be imagined how intensely delighted she was when she unexpectedly made the acquaintance, at Manchester, of Mr. Galloway, who proved to have bought Mr. Watson's work, and he was actually kind enough to lend the treasure to her for a considerable time, so that she could study it thoroughly, and make a most accurate copy of it. Mr. Galloway's friendship, and that of some other people whom she first met at Bowdon, were the brightest spots in Julie's existence during this period.

In September 1878 the Ewings removed to Fulford, near York, and, on their arrival, Julie at once devoted herself to adorning her new home. We were very much amused by the incredulous amazement betrayed on the stolid face of an elderly workman, to whom it was explained that he was required to distemper the walls of the drawing-room with a sole colour, instead of covering them with a paper, after the manner of all the other drawing-rooms he had ever had to do with. But he was too polite to express his difference of taste by more than looks;—and some days after the room was finished, with etchings duly hung on velvet in the panels of the door,—the sole-coloured walls well covered with pictures, whence they stood out undistracted by gold and flowery paper patterns—the distemperer called, and asked if he might be allowed, as a favour, to see the result of Mrs. Ewing's arrangements. I forget if he expressed anything by words, as he stood in the middle of the room twisting his hat in his fingers—but we had learned to read his face, and Julie was fully satisfied with the fresh expression of amazement mixed with admiration which she saw there.

One theory which she held strongly about the decoration of houses was, that the contents ought to represent the associations of the inmates, rather than the skill of their upholsterer; and for this reason she would not have liked to limit any of her rooms to one special period, such as Queen Anne's, unless she had possessed an old house, built at some date to which a special kind of furniture belonged. She contrived to make her home at York a very pretty one; but it was of short duration, for in March 1879 Major Ewing was despatched to Malta, and Julie had to begin to pack her Lares and Penates once more.

It may, perhaps, be wondered that she was allowed to spend her time and strength on the labour of packing, which a professional worker would have done far better,—but it is easier to see the mistakes of others than to rectify our own! There were many difficulties to be encountered, not the least of these being Julie's own strong will, and bad though it was, in one sense, for her to be physically over-tired, it was better than letting her be mentally so; and to an active brain like hers, "change of occupation" is the only possible form of "rest." Professional packers and road and rail cars represent money, and Julie's skill in packing both securely and economically was undeniably great. This is not surprising if we hold, as an old friend does, that ladies would make far better housemaids than uneducated women do, because they would throw their brains as well as muscles into their work. Julie did throw her brains into everything, big or little, that she undertook; and one of her best and dearest friends,—whose belief in my sister's powers and "mission" as a writer were so strong that she almost grudged even the time "wasted" on sketching, which might have been given to penning more stories for the age which boasts Gordon as its hero,—and who, being with Julie at her death, could not believe till the very End came that she would be taken, whilst so much seemed to remain for her to do here,—confessed to me afterwards she had learned to see that Julie's habit of expending her strength on trifles arose from an effort of nature to balance the vigour of her mind, which was so much greater than that of her body.

During the six months that my sister resided in York she wrote a few contributions for Aunt Judy's Magazine. To the number for January 1879 she gave "Flaps," a sequel to "The Hens of Hencastle."

The latter story was not written by her, but was a free adaptation which Colonel Yeatman-Biggs made from the German of Victor Bluethgen. Julie had been greatly amused by the tale, but, finding that it ended in a vague and unsatisfactory way, she could not be contented, so took up her pen and wrote a finale, her chief aim being to provide a happy ending for the old farm-dog, Flaps himself, after whom she named her sequel. The writing is so exactly similar to that of "The Hens," that the two portions can scarcely be identified as belonging to different writers. Julie used often to reproach me for indulging in what John Wesley called "the lust of finishing," but in matters concerning her own art she was as great an offender on this score as any one else!

Julie gave a set of verses on "Canada Home" to the same number as "Flaps," and to the March (1879) number she gave some other verses on "Garden Lore." In April the second part of "We and the World" began to appear, and a fresh character was introduced, who is one of the most important and touching features of the tale. Biddy Macartney is a real old Irish melody in herself, with her body tied to a coffee-barrow in the Liverpool Docks, and her mind ever wandering in search of the son who had run away to sea. Jack, the English hero, comes across Biddy in the docks just before he starts as a stowaway for America, and his stiff, crude replies to her voluble outpourings are essentially British and boy-like:—

"You hope Micky 'll come back, I suppose?"

"Why wouldn't I, acushla? Sure, it was by reason o' that I got bothered with the washin' after me poor boy left me, from my mind being continually in the docks instead of with the clothes. And there I would be at the end of the week, with the captain's jerseys gone to old Miss Harding, and his washing no corricter than hers, though he'd more good-nature in him over the accidents, and iron-moulds on the table-cloths, and pocket-handkerchers missin', and me ruined intirely with making them good, and no thanks for it, till a good-natured sowl of a foreigner that kept a pie-shop larned me to make the coffee, and lint me the money to buy a barra, and he says, 'Go as convanient to the ships as ye can, mother: it'll ease your mind. My own heart,' says he, laying his hand to it, 'knows what it is to have my body here, and the whole sowl of me far away.'"

"Did you pay him back?" I asked. I spoke without thinking, and still less did I mean to be rude; but it had suddenly struck me that I was young and hearty, and that it would be almost a duty to share the contents of my leather bag with this poor old woman, if there were no chance of her being able to repay the generous foreigner.

"Did I pay him back?" she screamed. "Would I be the black-hearted thief to him that was kind to me? Sorra bit nor sup but dry bread and water passed me lips till he had his own again, and the heart's blessings of owld Biddy Macartney along with it."

I made my peace with old Biddy as well as I could, and turned the conversation back to her son.

"So you live in the docks with your coffee-barrow, mother, that you may be sure not to miss Micky when he comes ashore?"

"I do, darlin'! Fourteen years all but three days! He'll be gone fifteen if we all live till Wednesday week."

"Fifteen? But, mother, if he were like me when he went, he can't be very like me now. He must be a middle-aged man. Do you think you'd know him?"

This question was more unfortunate than the other, and produced such howling and weeping, and beating of Biddy's knees as she rocked herself among the beans, that I should have thought every soul in the docks would have crowded round us. But no one took any notice, and by degrees I calmed her, chiefly by the assertion—"He'll know you, mother, anyhow."

"He will so, GOD bless him!" said she. "And haven't I gone over it all in me own mind, often and often, when I'd see the vessels feelin' their way home through the darkness, and the coffee staymin' enough to cheer your heart wid the smell of it, and the least taste in life of something betther in the stone bottle under me petticoats. And then the big ship would be coming in with her lights at the head of her, and myself would be sitting alone with me patience, GOD helping me, and one and another strange face going by. And then he comes along, cold maybe, and smells the coffee. 'Bedad, but that's a fine smell with it,' says he, for Micky was mighty particular in his aitin' and drinkin'. 'I'll take a dhrop of that,' says he, not noticing me particular, and if ever I'd the saycret of a good cup he gets it, me consayling me face. 'What will it be?' says he, setting down the mug. 'What would it be, Micky, from your mother?' says I, and I lifts me head. Arrah, but then there's the heart's delight between us. 'Mother!' says he. 'Micky!' says I. And he lifts his foot and kicks over the barra, and dances me round in his arms. 'Ochone!' says the spictators; 'there's the fine coffee that's running into the dock.' 'Let it run,' says I, in the joy of me heart, 'and you after it, and the barra on the top of ye, now Micky me son's come home!'"

"Wonderfully jolly!" said I. "And it must be pleasant even to think of it."

There is another new character in the second part of "We," who is also a fine picture:—Alister the blue-eyed Scotch lad, with his respect for "book-learning," and his powers of self-denial and endurance; but Julie certainly had a weakness for the Irish nation, and the tender grace with which she touches Dennis O'Moore and Biddy shines conspicuously throughout the story. In one scene, however, I think she brings up her Scotch hero neck-and-neck, if not ahead, of her favourite Irishman.

This is in Chapter VII., where an entertainment is being held on board ship, and Dennis and Alister are called upon in turn to amuse the company with a song. Dennis gets through his ordeal well; he has a beautiful voice, which makes him independent of the accompaniment of a fiddle (the only musical instrument on board), and Julie describes his simpatico rendering of "Bendemeer's Stream" from the way in which she loved to hear one of our brothers sing it. He had learned it by ear on board ship from a fellow-passenger, and she was never tired of listening to the melody. When this same brother came to visit her whilst she was ill at Bath, and sang to her as she lay in bed,—"Bendemeer's Stream" was the one strain she asked for, and the last she heard.

Dennis O'Moore's performance met with warm applause, and then the boatswain, who had a grudge against Alister, because the Scotch Captain treated his countryman with leniency, taunted the shy and taciturn lad to "contribute to the general entertainment."

I was very sorry for Alister, and so was Dennis, I was sure, for he did his best to encourage him.

"Sing 'GOD Save the Queen,' and I'll keep well after ye with the fiddle," he suggested. But Alister shook his head. "I know one or two Scotch tunes," Dennis added, and he began to sketch out an air or two with his fingers on the strings.

Presently Alister stopped him. "Yon's the Land o' the Leal?"

"It is," said Dennis.

"Play it a bit quicker, man, and I'll try 'Scots, wha hae.'"

Dennis quickened at once, and Alister stood forward. He neither fidgeted nor complained of feeling shy, but, as my eyes (I was squatted cross-legged on the deck) were at the level of his knees, I could see them shaking, and pitied him none the less that I was doubtful as to what might not be before me. Dennis had to make two or three false starts before poor Alister could get a note out of his throat, but when he had fairly broken the ice with the word "Scots!" he faltered no more. The boatswain was cheated a second time of his malice. Alister could not sing in the least like Dennis, but he had a strong manly voice, and it had a ring that stirred one's blood, as he clenched his hands and rolled his R's to the rugged appeal—

Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled, Scots, wham Bruce has aften led; Welcome to your gory bed, Or to victory!

Applause didn't seem to steady his legs in the least, and he never moved his eyes from the sea, and his face only grew whiter by the time he drove all the blood to my heart with—

Wha will be a traitor knave? Wha can fill a coward's grave? Wha sae base as be a slave? Let him turn and flee!

"GOD forbid!" cried Dennis impetuously. "Sing that verse again, my boy, and give us a chance to sing with ye!" which we did accordingly; but, as Alister and Dennis were rolling R's like the rattle of musketry on the word turn, Alister did turn, and stopped suddenly short. The Captain had come up unobserved.

"Go on!" said he, waving us back to our places.

By this time the solo had become a chorus. Beautifully unconscious, for the most part, that the song was by way of stirring Scot against Saxon, its deeper patriotism had seized upon us all. Englishmen, Scotchmen, and sons of Erin, we all shouted at the top of our voices, Sambo's fiddle not being silent. And I maintain that we all felt the sentiment with our whole hearts, though I doubt if any but Alister and the Captain knew and sang the precise words—

Wha for Scotland's King and law Freedom's sword will strongly draw, Freeman stand, or freeman fa'? Let him on wi' me!

The description of Alister's song, as well as that of Dennis, was to some extent drawn from life, Julie having been accustomed to hear "Scots, wha hae" rendered by a Scot with more soul than voice, who always "moved the hearts of the people as one man" by his patriotic fire.

My sister was greatly aided by two friends in her descriptions of the scenery in "We," such as the vivid account of Bermuda and the waterspout in Chapter XI., and that of the fire at Demerara in Chapter XII., and she owed to the same kind helpers also the accuracy of her nautical phrases and her Irish dialect. Certainly this second part of the tale is full of interest, but I cannot help wishing that the materials had been made into two books instead of one. There are more than enough characters and incidents to have developed into a couple of tales.

Julie had often said how strange it seemed to her, when people who had a ready pen for writing consulted her as to what they should write about! She suffered so much from over-abundance of ideas which she had not the physical strength to put on paper.

Even when she was very ill, and unable to use her hands at all, the sight of a lot of good German wood-cuts, which were sent to me at Bath, suggested so many fresh ideas to her brain, that she only longed to be able to seize her pen and write tales to the pictures.

Before we turn finally away from the subject of her liking for Irish people, I must mention a little adventure which happened to her at Fulford.

There is one parish in York where a great number of Irish peasants live, and many of the women used to pass Julie's windows daily, going out to work in the fields at Fulford. She liked to watch them trudging by, with large baskets perched picturesquely on the tops of their heads, but in the town the "Irishers" are not viewed with equal favour by the inhabitants. One afternoon Julie was out sketching in a field, and came across one of these poor Irish women. My sister's mind at the time was full of Biddy Macartney, and she could not resist the opportunity of having a chat with this suggestive "study" for the character. She found an excuse for addressing the old woman about some cattle which seemed restless in the field, but quickly discovered, to her amusement, that when she alluded to Ireland, her companion, in the broadest brogue, stoutly denied having any connection with the country. No doubt she thought Julie's prejudices would be similar to those of her town neighbours, but in a short time some allusion was inadvertently made to "me father's farm in Kerry," and the truth leaked out. After this they became more confidential; and when Julie admired some quaint silver rings on her companion's finger, the old woman was most anxious to give her one, and was only restrained by coming to the decision that she would give her a recipe for "real Irish whisky" instead. She began with "You must take some barley and put it in a poke—" but after this Julie heard no more, for she was distracted by the cattle, who had advanced unpleasantly near; the Irish woman, however, continued her instructions to the end, waving her arms to keep the beasts off, which she so far succeeded in doing, that Julie caught the last sentence—

"And then ye must bury it in a bog."

"Is that to give it a peaty flavour?" asked my sister, innocently.

"Oh, no, me dear!—it's because of the excise-man."

When they parted, the old woman's original reserve entirely gave way, and she cried: "Good luck to ye! and go to Ireland!"

Julie remained in England for some months after Major Ewing started for Malta, and as he was despatched on very short notice, and she had to pack up their goods; also—as she was not strong—it was decided that she should avoid going out for the hot summer weather, and wait for the healthier autumn season. Her time, therefore, was now chiefly spent amongst civilian friends and relations, and I want this fact to be specially noticed, in connection with the next contributions that she wrote for the Magazine.

In February 1879, the terrible news had come of the Isandlwana massacre, and this was followed in June by that of the Prince Imperial's death. My sister was, of course, deeply engrossed in the war tidings, as many of her friends went out to South Africa—some to return no more. In July she contributed "A Soldier's Children" to Aunt Judy, and of all her child verses this must be reckoned the best, every line from first to last breathing how strong her sympathies still were for military men and things, though she was no longer living amongst them:

Our home used to be in the dear old camp, with lots of bands, and trumpets, and bugles, and dead-marches, and three times a day there was a gun, But now we live in View Villa, at the top of the village, and it isn't nearly such fun.

The humour and pathos in the lines are so closely mixed, it is very difficult to read them aloud without tears; but they have been recited—as Julie was much pleased to know—by the "old Father" of the "Queer Fellows" to whom the verses were dedicated, when he was on a troopship going abroad for active service, and they were received with warm approbation by his hearers. He read them on other occasions, also in public, with equal success.

The crowning military work, however, which Julie did this year was "Jackanapes." This she wrote for the October number of Aunt Judy: and here let me state that I believe if she had still been living at Aldershot, surrounded by the atmosphere of military sympathies and views of honour, the tale would never have been written. It was not aimed, as some people supposed, personally at the man who was with the Prince Imperial when he met his death. Julie would never have sat in judgment on him, even before he, too, joined the rank of those Dead, about whom no evil may be spoken. It was hearing this same man's conduct discussed by civilians from the standard of honour which is unhappily so different in civil and military circles, and more especially the discussion of it amongst "business men," where the rule of "each man for himself" is invariable, which drove Julie into uttering the protest of "Jackanapes." I believe what she longed to show forth was how the life of an army—as of any other body—depends on whether the individuality of its members is dead; a paradox which may perhaps be hard to understand, save in the light of His teaching, Who said that the saving of a man's life lay in his readiness to lose it. The merging of selfish interests into a common cause is what makes it strong; and it is from Satan alone we get the axiom, "Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life." Of "Jackanapes" itself I need not speak. It has made Julie's name famous, and deservedly so, for it not only contains her highest teaching, but is her best piece of literary art.

There are a few facts connected with the story which, I think, will be interesting to some of its admirers. My sister was in London in June 1879, and then made the acquaintance of Mr. Randolph Caldecott, for whose illustrations to Washington Irving's "Bracebridge Hall" and "Old Christmas" she had an unbounded admiration, as well as for his Toy Books. This introduction led us to ask him, when "Jackanapes" was still simmering in Julie's brain, if he would supply a coloured illustration for it. But as the tale was only written a very short time before it appeared, and as the illustration was wanted early, because colours take long to print, Julie could not send the story to be read, but asked Mr. Caldecott to draw her a picture to fit one of the scenes in it. The one she suggested was a "fair-haired boy on a red-haired pony," having noticed the artistic effect produced by this combination in one of her own nephews, a skilful seven-year-old rider who was accustomed to follow the hounds.

This coloured illustration was given in Aunt Judy's Magazine, with the tale, but when it was republished as a book, in 1883, the scene was reproduced on a smaller scale in black and white only.

"Jackanapes" was much praised when it came out in the Magazine, but it was not until it had been re-issued as a book that it became really well known. Even then its success was within a hair's-breadth of failing. The first copies were brought out in dull stone-coloured paper covers, and that powerful vehicle "the Trade," unable to believe that a jewel could be concealed in so plain a casket, refused the work of J.H.E. and R.C. until they had stretched the paper cover on boards, and coloured the Union Jack which adorns it! No doubt "the Trade" understands its fickle child "the Public" better than either authors or artists do, and knows by experience that it requires tempting with what is pretty to look at, before it will taste. Certainly, if praise from the public were the chief aim that writers, or any other workers, strove after, their lives for the most part would consist of disappointment only, so seldom is "success" granted whilst the power to enjoy it is present. They alone whose aims are pointed above earthly praise can stand unmoved amidst neglect or blame, filled with that peace of a good conscience which the world can neither give nor take away.



PART IV.

I shall know by the gleam and glitter Of the golden chain you wear, By your heart's calm strength in loving, Of the fire they have had to bear. Beat on, true heart, for ever; Shine bright, strong golden chain; And bless the cleansing fire, And the furnace of living pain!

ADELAIDE A. PROCTER.

Towards the end of October 1879, Julie started for Malta, to join Major Ewing, but she became so very ill whilst travelling through France that her youngest sister, and her friend, Mrs. R.H. Jelf (from whose house in Folkestone she had started on her journey), followed her to Paris, and brought her back to England as soon as she could be moved.

Julie now consulted Sir William Jenner about her health, and, seeing the disastrous effect that travelling had upon her, he totally forbade her to start again for several months, until she had recovered some strength and was better able to bear fatigue. This verdict was a heavy blow to my sister, and the next four years were ones of great trial and discomfort to her. A constant succession of disappointed hopes and frustrated plans, which were difficult, even for Madam Liberality, to bear!

She hoped when her husband came home on leave at Christmas, 1879, that she should be able to return with him, but she was still unfit to go; and then she planned to follow later with a sister, who should help her on the journey, and be rewarded by visiting the island home of the Knights, but this castle also fell to the ground. Meantime Julie was suffering great inconvenience from the fact that she had sent all her possessions to Malta several months before, keeping only some light luggage which she could take with her. Amongst other things from which she was thus parted, was the last chapter of "We and the World," which she had written (as she often did the endings of her tales) when she was first arranging the plot. This final scene was buried in a box of books, and could not be found when wanted, so had to be rewritten and then my sister's ideas seem to have got into a fresh channel, for she brought her heroes safely back to their Yorkshire home, instead of dropping the curtain on them after a gallant rescue in a Cornish mine, as she originally arranged. Julie hoped against hope, as time went on, that she should become stronger, and able to follow her Lares and Penates, so she would not have them sent back to her, until a final end was put to her hopes by Major Ewing being sent on from Malta to Ceylon, and in the climate of the latter place the doctors declared it would be impossible for her to live. The goods, therefore, were now sent back to England, and she consoled herself under the bitter trial of being parted from her husband, and unable to share the enjoyment of the new and wonderful scenes with which he was surrounded, by thankfulness for his unusual ability as a vivid and brilliant letter-writer. She certainly practised both in days of joy and sorrow the virtue of being laetus sorte mea; which she afterwards so powerfully taught in her "Story of a Short Life." I never knew her fail to find happiness wherever she was placed, and good in whomsoever she came across. Whatever her circumstances might be they always yielded to her causes for thankfulness, and work to be done with a ready and hopeful heart. That "lamp of zeal," about which Margery speaks in "Six to Sixteen," was never extinguished in Julie, even after youth and strength were no longer hers:—

Like most other conscientious girls, we had rules and regulations of our own devising; private codes, generally kept in cipher for our own personal self-discipline, and laws common to us both for the employment of our time in joint duties—lessons, parish work, and so forth.

I think we made rather too many rules, and that we re-made them too often. I make fewer now, and easier ones, and let them much more alone. I wonder if I really keep them better? But if not, may GOD, I pray Him, send me back the restless zeal, the hunger and thirst after righteousness, which He gives us in early youth! It is so easy to become more thick-skinned in conscience, more tolerant of evil, more hopeless of good, more careful of one's own comfort and one's own property, more self-satisfied in leaving high aims and great deeds to enthusiasts, and then to believe that one is growing older and wiser. And yet those high examples, those good works, those great triumphs over evil which single hands effect sometimes, we are all grateful for, when they are done, whatever we may have said of the doing. But we speak of saints and enthusiasts for good, as if some special gifts were made to them in middle age which are withheld from other men. Is it not rather that some few souls keep alive the lamp of zeal and high desire which GOD lights for most of us while life is young?

In spite, however, of my sister's contentment with her lot, and the kindness and hospitality shown to her at this time by relations and friends, her position was far from comfortable; and Madam Liberality's hospitable soul was sorely tried by having no home to which she could welcome her friends, whilst her fragile body battled against constantly moving from one house to another when she was often unfit to do anything except keep quiet and at rest. She was not able to write much, and during 1880 only contributed two poems to Aunt Judy's Magazine, "Grandmother's Spring," and "Touch Him if You Dare."

To the following volume (1881) she again was only able to give two other poems, "Blue and Red; or the Discontented Lobster," and "The Mill Stream"; but these are both much longer than her usual Verses for Children—and, indeed, are better suited for older readers—though the former was such a favourite with a three-year-old son of one of our bishops that he used to repeat it by heart.

In November 1881, Aunt Judy's Magazine passed into the hands of a fresh publisher, and a new series was begun, with a fresh outside cover which Mr. Caldecott designed for it. Julie was anxious to help in starting the new series, and she wrote "Daddy Darwin's Dovecot" for the opening number. All the scenery of this is drawn from the neighbourhood of Ecclesfield, where she had lately been spending a good deal of her time, and so refreshed her memory of its local colouring. The story ranks equal to "Jackanapes" as a work of literary art, though it is an idyll of peace instead of war, and perhaps, therefore, appeals rather less deeply to general sympathies; but I fully agree with a noted artist friend, who, when writing to regret my sister's death, said, "'Jackanapes' and 'Daddy Darwin' I have never been able to read without tears, and hope I never may." Daddy had no actual existence, though his outward man may have been drawn from types of a race of "old standards" which is fast dying out. The incident of the theft and recovery of the pigeons is a true one, and happened to a flock at the old Hall farm near our home, which also once possessed a luxuriant garden, wherein Phoebe might have found all the requisites for her Sunday posy. A "tea" for the workhouse children used to be Madam Liberality's annual birthday feast; and the spot where the gaffers sat and watched the "new graft" strolling home across the fields was so faithfully described by Julie from her favourite Schroggs Wood, that when Mr. Caldecott reproduced it in his beautiful illustration, some friends who were well acquainted with the spot, believed that he had been to Ecclesfield to paint it.



Julie's health became somewhat better in 1882, and for the Magazine this year she wrote as a serial tale "Laetus Sorte Mea; or, the Story of a Short Life." This was not republished as a book until four days before my sister's death, and it has become so well known from appearing at this critical time that I need say very little about it. A curious mistake, however, resulted from its being published then, which was that most of the reviewers spoke of it as being the last work that she wrote, and commented on the title as a singularly appropriate one, but those who had read the tale in the Magazine were aware that it was written three years previously, and that the second name was put before the first, as it was feared the public would be perplexed by a Latin title. The only part of the book that my sister added during her illness was Leonard's fifth letter in Chapter X. This she dictated, because she could not write. She had intended to give Saint Martin's history when the story came out in the Magazine, but was hindered by want of space.[32] Many people admire Leonard's story as much as that of Jackanapes, but to me it is not quite so highly finished from an artistic point of view. I think it suffered a little from being written in detachments from month to month. It is, however, almost hypercritical to point out defects, and the circumstances of Leonard's life are so much more within the range of common experiences than those of Jackanapes, it is probable that the lesson of the Short Life, during which a V.C. was won by the joyful endurance of inglorious suffering, may be more helpful to general readers than that of the other brief career, in which Jackanapes, after "one crowded hour of glorious life," earned his crown of victory.

[Footnote 32: Letter, Oct. 5, 1882.]

On one of Julie's last days she expressed a fear to her doctor that she was very impatient under her pain, and he answered, "Indeed you are not; I think you deserve a Victoria Cross for the way in which you bear it." This reply touched her very much, for she knew the speaker had not read Leonard's Story; and we used to hide the proof-sheets of it, for which she was choosing head-lines to the pages, whenever her doctors came into the room, fearing that they would disapprove of her doing any mental work.

In the volume of Aunt Judy for 1883 "A Happy Family" appeared, but this had been originally written for an American Magazine, in which a prize was offered for a tale not exceeding nine hundred words in length. Julie did not gain the prize, and her story was rather spoiled by having to be too closely condensed.

She also wrote three poems for Aunt Judy in 1883, "The Poet and the Brook," "Mother's Birthday Review," and "Convalescence." The last one and the tale of "Sunflowers and a Rushlight" (which came out in November 1883) bear some traces of the deep sympathy she had learned for ill health through her own sufferings of the last few years; the same may, to some extent, be said of "The Story of a Short Life." "Mother's Birthday Review" does not come under this heading, though I well remember that part, if not the whole of it, was written whilst Julie lay in bed; and I was despatched by her on messages in various directions to ascertain what really became of Hampstead Heath donkeys during the winter, and the name of the flower that clothes some parts of the Heath with a sheet of white in summer.

In May 1883, Major Ewing returned home from Ceylon, and was stationed at Taunton. This change brought back much comfort and happiness into my sister's life. She once more had a pretty home of her own, and not only a home but a garden. When the Ewings took their house, and named it Villa Ponente from its aspect towards the setting sun, the "garden" was a potato patch, with soil chiefly composed of refuse left by the house-builders; but my sister soon began to accumulate flowers in the borders, especially herbaceous ones that were given to her by friends, or bought by her in the market. Then in 1884 she wrote "Mary's Meadow," as a serial for Aunt Judy's Magazine, and the story was so popular that it led to the establishment of a "Parkinson Society for lovers of hardy flowers." Miss Alice Sargant was the founder and secretary of this, and to her my sister owed much of the enjoyment of her life at Taunton, for the Society produced many friends by correspondence, with whom she exchanged plants and books, and the "potato patch" quickly turned into a well-stocked flower-garden.

Perhaps the friend who did most of all to beautify it was the Rev, J. Going, who not only gave my sister many roses, but planted them round the walls of her house himself, and pruned them afterwards, calling himself her "head gardener." She did not live long enough to see the roses sufficiently established to flower thoroughly, but she enjoyed them by anticipation, and they served to keep her grave bright during the summer that followed her death.

Next to roses I think the flowers that Julie had most of were primulas of various kinds, owing to the interest that was aroused in them by the incident in "Mary's Meadow" of Christopher finding a Hose-in-hose cowslip growing wild in the said "meadow." My sister was specially proud of a Hose-in-hose cowslip which was sent to her by a little boy in Ireland, who had determined one day with his brothers and sisters, that they would set out and found an "Earthly Paradise" of their own, and he began by actually finding a Hose-in-hose, which he named it after "Christopher," and sent a bit of the root to Mrs. Ewing.

The last literary work that she did was again on the subject of flowers. She began a series of "Letters from a Little Garden" in the number of Aunt Judy for November 1884, and these were continued until February 1885. The Letter for March was left unfinished, though it seemed, when boxes of flowers arrived day by day during Julie's illness from distant friends, as if they must almost have intuitively known the purport of the opening injunction in her unpublished epistle, enjoining liberality in the practice of cutting flowers for decorative purposes! Her room for three months was kept so continuously bright by the presence of these creations of GOD which she loved so well:—

"DEAR LITTLE FRIEND,

"A garden of hardy flowers is pre-eminently a garden for cut flowers. You must carefully count this among its merits, because if a constant and undimmed blaze outside were the one virtue of a flower-garden, upholders of the bedding-out system would now and then have the advantage of us. For my own part I am prepared to say that I want my flowers quite as much for the house as the garden, and so I suspect do most women." The gardener's point of view is not quite the same.

"Speaking of women, and recalling Mr. Charles Warner's quaint idea of all his 'Polly' was good for on the scene of his conflicts with Nature, the 'striped bug' and the weed 'Pusley,'—namely, to sit on an inverted flower-pot and 'consult' him whilst he was hoeing,—it is interesting to notice that some generations ago the garden was very emphatically included within woman's 'proper sphere,' which was not, in those days, a wide one."

The Letters were the last things that my sister wrote; but some brief papers which she contributed to The Child's Pictorial Magazine were not published until after her death. In the May number "Tiny's Tricks and Toby's Tricks" came out, and in the numbers for June, July, and August 1885, there were three "Hoots" from "The Owl in the Ivy Bush; or the Children's Bird of Wisdom." They are in the form of quaint letters of advice, and my sister adopted the Spectator's method of writing as an eye-witness in the first person, so far as was possible in addressing a very youthful class of readers. She had a strong admiration for many of both Steele and Addison's papers.

* * * * *

The list that I promised to give of Julie's published stories is now completed; and, if her works are to be valued by their length, it may justly be said that she has not left a vast amount of matter behind her, but I think that those who study her writings carefully, will feel that some of their greatest worth lies in the wonderful condensation and high finish that they display. No reviewer has made a more apt comparison than the American one in Every other Saturday, who spoke of "Jackanapes" as "an exquisite bit of finished work—a Meissonier, in its way."

To other readers the chief value of the books will be in the high purpose of their teaching, and the consciousness that Julie held her talent as a direct gift from GOD, and never used it otherwise than to His glory. She has penned nothing for which she need fear reproach from her favourite old proverb, "A wicked book is all the wickeder because it can never repent." It is difficult for those who admire her writings to help regretting that her life was cut off before she had accomplished more, but to still such regrets we cannot do better than realize (as a kind friend remarked) "how much she has been able to do, rather than what she has left undone." The work which she did, in spite of her physical fragility, far exceeds what the majority of us perform with stronger bodies and longer lives. This reflection has comforted me, though I perhaps know more than others how many subjects she had intended to write stories upon. Some people have spoken as if her forte lay in writing about soldiers only, but her success in this line was really due to her having spent much time among them. I am sure her imagination and sympathy were so strong, that whatever class of men she was mixed with, she could not help throwing herself into their interests, and weaving romances about them. Whether such romances ever got on to paper was a matter dependent on outward circumstances and the state of her health.

One of the unwritten stories which I most regret is "Grim the Collier"; this was to have been a romance of the Black Country of coal-mines, in which she was born, and the title was chosen from the description of a flower in a copy of Gerarde's Herbal, given to her by Miss Sargant:—

Hieracium hortense latifolium, sine Pilosella maior, Golden Mouseeare, or Grim the Colliar. The floures grow at the top as it were in an vmbel, and are of the bignesse of the ordinary Mouseeare, and of an orenge colour. The seeds are round, and blackish, and are carried away with the downe by the wind. The stalks and cups of the flours are all set thicke with a blackish downe, or hairinesse, as it were the dust of coles; whence the women who keepe it in gardens for novelties sake, have named it Grim the Colliar.

I wish, too, that Julie could have written about sailors, as well as soldiers, in the tale of "Little Mothers' Meetings," which had been suggested to her mind by visits to Liverpool. The sight of a baby patient in the Children's Hospital there, who had been paralyzed and made speechless by fright, but who took so strange a fancy to my sister's sympathetic face that he held her hand and could scarcely be induced to release it, had affected her deeply. So did a visit that she paid one Sunday to the Seamen's Orphanage, where she heard the voices of hundreds of fatherless children ascending with one accord in the words, "I will arise and go to my Father," and realized the Love that watched over them. These scenes were both to have been woven into the tale, and the "Little Mothers" were boy nurses of baby brothers and sisters.

Another phase of sailor life on which Julie hoped to write was the "Guild of Merchant Adventurers of Bristol." She had visited their quaint Hall, and collected a good deal of historical information and local colouring for the tale, and its lesson would have been one on mercantile honour.

I hope I have kept my original promise, that whilst I was making a list of Julie's writings, I would also supply an outline biography of her life; but now, if the Children wish to learn something of her at its End, they shall be told in her own words:—

Madam Liberality grew up into much the same sort of person that she was when a child. She always had been what is termed old-fashioned, and the older she grew the better her old-fashionedness became her, so that at last her friends would say to her, "Ah, if we all wore as well as you do, my dear! You've hardly changed at all since we remember you in short petticoats." So far as she did change, the change was for the better. (It is to be hoped we do improve a little as we get older.) She was still liberal and economical. She still planned and hoped indefatigably. She was still tender-hearted in the sense in which Gray speaks—

"To each his sufferings: all are men Condemned alike to groan, The tender for another's pain, The unfeeling for his own."

She still had a good deal of ill-health and ill-luck, and a good deal of pleasure in spite of both. She was happy in the happiness of others, and pleased by their praise. But she was less head-strong and opinionated in her plans, and less fretful when they failed. It is possible, after one has cut one's wisdom-teeth, to cure oneself even of a good deal of vanity, and to learn to play the second fiddle very gracefully; and Madam Liberality did not resist the lessons of life.

GOD teaches us wisdom in divers ways. Why He suffers some people to have so many troubles, and so little of what we call pleasure in this world, we cannot in this world know. The heaviest blows often fall on the weakest shoulders, and how these endure and bear up under them is another of the things which GOD knows better than we.

Julie did absolutely remain "the same" during the three months of heavy suffering which, in GOD'S mysterious love, preceded her death. Perhaps it is well for us all to know that she found, as others do, the intervals of exhausted relief granted between attacks of pain were not times in which (had it been needed) she could have changed her whole character, and, what is called, "prepare to die." Our days of health and strength are the ones in which this preparation must be made, but for those who live, as she did, with their whole talents dedicated to GOD'S service, death is only the gate of life—the path from joyful work in this world to greater capacities and opportunities for it in the other.

I trust that what I have said about Julie's religious life will not lead children to imagine that she was gloomy, and unable to enjoy her existence on earth, for this was not the case. No one appreciated and rejoiced in the pleasures and beauties of the world more thoroughly than she did: no one could be a wittier and brighter companion than she always was.

Early in February 1885, she was found to be suffering from a species of blood-poisoning, and as no cause for this could then be discovered, it was thought that change of air might do her good, and she was taken from her home at Taunton, to lodgings at Bath. She had been three weeks in bed before she started, and was obliged to return to it two days after she arrived, and there to remain on her back; but this uncomfortable position did not alter her love for flowers and animals.

The first of these tastes was abundantly gratified, as I mentioned before, by the quantities of blossoms which were sent her from friends; as well as by the weekly nosegay which came from her own Little Garden, and made her realize that the year was advancing from winter to spring, when crocuses and daffodils were succeeded by primroses and anemones.

Of living creatures she saw fewer. The only object she could see through her window was a high wall covered with ivy, in which a lot of sparrows and starlings were building their nests. As the sunlight fell on the leaves, and the little birds popped in and out, Julie enjoyed watching them at work, and declared the wall looked like a fine Japanese picture. She made us keep bread-crumbs on the window-sill, together with bits of cotton wool and hair, so that the birds might come and fetch supplies of food, and materials for their nests.

Her appreciation of fun, too, remained keen as ever, and, strange as it may seem, one of the very few books which she liked to have read aloud was Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn"; the dry humour of it—the natural way in which everything is told from a boy's point of view—and the vivid and beautiful descriptions of river scenery—all charmed her. One of Twain's shorter tales, "Aurelia's unfortunate Young Man," was also read to her, and made her laugh so much, when she was nearly as helpless as the "young man" himself, that we had to desist for fear of doing her harm. Most truly may it be said that between each paroxysm of pain "her little white face and undaunted spirit bobbed up ... as ready and hopeful as ever." She was seldom able, however, to concentrate her attention on solid works, and for her religious exercises chiefly relied on what was stored in her memory.

This faculty was always a strong one. She was catechized in church with the village children when only four years old, and when six, could repeat many poems from an old collection called "The Diadem," such as Mrs. Hemans' "Cross in the Wilderness," and Dale's "Christian Virgin to her Apostate Lover"; but she reminded me one day during her illness of how little she understood what she was saying in the days when she fluently recited such lines to her nursery audience!

She liked to repeat the alternate verses of the Psalms, when the others were read to her; and to the good things laid up in her mind she owed much of the consolation that strengthened her in hours of trial. After one night of great suffering, in which she had been repeating George Herbert's poem, "The Pulley," she said that the last verse had helped her to realize what the hidden good might be which underlaid her pain—

Let him be rich and weary; that, at least, If goodness lead him not, yet weariness May toss him to My breast.

During the earlier part of her illness, when every one expected that she would recover, she found it difficult to submit to the unaccountable sufferings which her highly-strung temperament felt so keenly; but after this special night of physical and mental darkness, it seemed as if light had broken upon her through the clouds, for she said she had, as it were, looked her pain and weariness in the face, and seen they were sent for some purpose—and now that she had done so, we should find that she would be "more patient than before." We were told to take a sheet of paper, and write out a calendar for a week with the text above, "In patience possess ye your souls." Then as each day went by we were to strike it through with a pencil; this we did, hoping that the passing days were leading her nearer to recovery, and not knowing that each was in reality "a day's march nearer home."

For the text of another week she had "Be strong and of a good courage," as the words had been said by a kind friend to cheer her just before undergoing the trial of an operation. Later still, when nights of suffering were added to days of pain, she chose—"The day is Thine, the night also is Thine."

Of what may be termed external spiritual privileges she did not have many, but she derived much comfort from an unexpected visitor. During nine years previously she had known the Rev. Edward Thring as a correspondent, but they had not met face to face, though they had tried on several occasions to do so. Now, when their chances of meeting were nearly gone, he came and gave great consolation by his unravelling of the mystery of suffering, and its sanctifying power; as also by his interpretation that the life which we are meant to lead under the dispensation of the Spirit who has been given for our guidance into Truth, is one which does not take us out of the world, but keeps us from its evil, enabling us to lead a heavenly existence on earth, and so to span over the chasm which divides us from heaven.

Perhaps some of us may wonder that Julie should need lessons of encouragement and comfort who was so apt a teacher herself; but however ready she may always have been to hope for others, she was thoroughly humble-minded about herself. On one day near the end, when she had received some letter of warm praise about her writings, a friend said in joke, "I wonder your head is not turned by such things"; and Julie replied: "I don't think praise really hurts me, because, when I read my own writings over again they often seem to me such 'bosh'; and then, too, you know I lead such a useless life, and there is so little I can do, it is a great pleasure to know I may have done some good."

It pleased her to get a letter from Sir Evelyn Wood, written from the Soudan, telling how he had cried over Laetus; and she was almost more gratified to get an anonymous expression from "One of the Oldest Natives of the Town of Aldershot" of his "warm and grateful sense of the charm of her delightful references to a district much loved of its children, and the emotion he felt in recognizing his birthplace so tenderly alluded to." Julie certainly set no value on her own actual MSS., for she almost invariably used them up when they were returned from the printers, by writing on the empty sides, and destroying them after they had thus done double duty. She was quite amused by a relation who begged for the sheets of "Jackanapes," and so rescued them from the flames!

On the 11th of May an increase of suffering made it necessary that my sister should undergo another operation, as the one chance of prolonging her life. This ordeal she faced with undaunted courage, thanking God that she was able to take chloroform easily, and only praying He would end her sufferings speedily, as He thought best, since she feared her physical ability to bear them patiently was nearly worn out.

Her prayer was answered, when two days later, free from pain, she entered into rest. On the 16th of May she was buried in her parish churchyard of Trull, near Taunton, in a grave literally lined with moss and flowers;—so many floral wreaths and crosses were sent from all parts of England, that when the grave was filled up they entirely covered it, not a speck of soil could be seen; her first sleep in mother earth was beneath a coverlet of fragrant white blossoms. No resting-place than this could be more fitting for her. The church is deeply interesting from its antiquity, and its fine oak-screen and seats, said to be carved by monks of Glastonbury, whilst the churchyard is an idyllically peaceful one, containing several yew-trees; under one of these, which over-shadows Julie's grave, the remains of the parish stocks are to be seen—a quaint mixture of objects, that recalls some of her own close blendings of humour and pathos into one scene. Here, "for a space, the tired body lies with feet towards the dawn," but I must hope and believe that the active soul, now it is delivered from the burden of the flesh, has realized that Gordon's anticipations were right when he wrote: "The future world must be much more amusing, more enticing, more to be desired, than this world,—putting aside its absence of sorrow and sin. The future world has been somehow painted to our minds as a place of continuous praise, and, though we may not say it, yet we cannot help feeling that, if thus, it would prove monotonous. It cannot be thus. It must be a life of activity, for happiness is dependent on activity: death is cessation of movement; life is all movement."

If Archbishop Trench, too, was right in saying;

The tasks, the joys of earth, the same in heaven will be; Only the little brook has widen'd to a sea,

have we not cause to trust that Julie still ministers to the good and happiness of the young and old whom she served so well whilst she was seen amongst them? Let her, at any rate, be to us one of those who shine as the stars to lead us unto God:

God's saints are shining lights: who stays Here long must passe O'er dark hills, swift streames, and steep ways As smooth as glasse; But these all night, Like Candles, shed Their beams, and light Us into bed.

They are, indeed, our pillar-fires, Seen as we go; They are that Citie's shining spires We travel to. A sword-like gleame Kept man for sin— First out, this beame Will guide him In.



"If we still love those we lose, can we altogether lose those we love?"

"The Newcomes," Chap. vii.

(The last entry in J.H.E.'s Commonplace Book.)

LIST OF MRS. EWING'S WORKS.

+ -+ + -+ + TITLE. FIRST PUBLISHED IN: SUBSEQUENTLY. PUBLISHER. + -+ + -+ + A Bit of Green Monthly Packet, "Melchior's Dream, Bell & Sons, July, 1861 and other Tales" 1862 The Blackbird's August, 1861 " " Nest Melchior's Dream December, 1861 " " Friedrich's Ballad " " The Viscount's " " Friend The Mystery of the London Society, "Miscellanea," S.P.C.K. Bloody Hand January and February, vol. xvii. 1865 The Yew Lane Ghosts Monthly Packet, "Melchior's Dream, Bell & Sons, June, 1865 and other Tales" 1885. The Brownies Monthly Packet, "The Brownies, " 1865 and other Tales" Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances Ida Aunt Judy's "Mrs. Overtheway's " Magazine,May, 1866 Remembrances" Mrs. Moss June and July, 1866 " " The Promise July, 1866 "Verses for S.P.C.K. Children" vol. ix. The Burial of the September, 1866 { "Songs for Music, H. King & Co Linnet { by Four Friends" { "Papa Poodle, S.P.C.K. { and other Pets" Christmas Wishes December, 1866 "Verses for " Children" vol. ix. Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances The Snoring December, 1866; Jan. "Mrs. Overtheway's Bell & Sons. Ghosts and February, 1867 Remembrances" An Idyll of the September, 1867 "The Brownies, " Wood and other Tales" Three Christmas December, 1867 " " Trees Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances Reka Dom June, July, August, "Mrs. Overtheway's " September, and Oct. 1868 Remembrances" Kerguelen's October, 1868 " " Land The Land of Lost March and April, 1869 "The Brownies, Bell & Sons. Toys and other Tales" Kind William and November, 1869 "Old-fashioned S.P.C.K. the Water Sprite Fairy Tales" Christmas Crackers December, 1869; "The Brownies, Bell & Sons. Jan. 1870 and other Tales" Amelia and the February and March, " " Dwarfs 1870 The Cobbler and February, 1870 "Old-fashioned S.P.C.K. the Ghosts Fairy Tales" The Nix in April, 1870 " " Mischief Benjy in May and June, 1870 "Lob Lie-by-the- Bell & Sons. Beastland Fire and other Tales" The Hillman and Aunt Judy's Magazine, "Old-Fashioned S.P.C.K. the Housewife May, 1870 Fairy Tales" The Neck June, 1870 " " Under the Sun July, 1870 The First Wife's August, 1870 "Old-fashioned S.P.C.K. Wedding Ring Fairy Tales" The Magic Jar September, 1870 " " Snap Dragons Monthly Packet, "Snapdragons" " Christmas Number, 1870 Timothy's Shoes Aunt Judy's Magazine, "Lob Lie-by-the- Bell & Sons. November, December, Fire, and other 1870; January, 1871 Tales" A Flat Iron for November, 1870, to "A Flat Iron " a Farthing October, 1871 for a Farthing" The Widow and February, 1871 "Old-fashioned S.P.C.K. the Strangers Fairy Tales" The Laird and April, 1871 " " the Man of Peace The Blind Hermit Monthly Packet, "Dandelion Clocks" " and the Trinity May, 1871 Flower The Ogre Courting Aunt Judy's Magazine, "Old-fashioned " June, 1871 Fairy Tales" The Six Little August, 1871 Girls and the Five Little Pigs The Little Master September, 1871 "Papa Poodle, and S.P.C.K. to his Big Dog other Pets" The Peace Egg December, 1871 "Lob Lie-by-the- Bell & Sons. Fire, and other Tales" Six to Sixteen January to October. "Six to Sixteen" " 1872 Murdoch's Rath February, 1872 "Old-fashioned S.P.C.K. Fairy Tales" The Magician's March, 1872 " " Gifts Knave and Fool June, 1872 " " The Miller's Thumb November, 1872 to "Jan of the Bell & Sons. October, 1873 Windmill. A Story of the Plains" Ran Away to Sea November, 1872 "Songs for Music, King & Co. by Four Friends" Among the Merrows November, 1872 "Brothers of Pity, S.P.C.K. and other Tales" The Willow Man December, 1872 "Tongues in Trees" " The Fiddler in January, 1873 "Old-fashioned " the Fairy Ring Fairy Tales" A Friend in January, 1873 "Verses for " the Garden Children," vol. ix. In Memoriam November, 1873 "Parables from Bell & Sons. Margaret Gatty Nature." (Complete edition) Madam Liberality Aunt Judy's Magazine, "A Great " December, 1873 Emergency, and other Tales" Old Father Little Folks { "Lob Lie-by-the- " Christmas { Fire, and other { Tales, 1873 { (Illustrated by { R. Caldecott.) { Lob Lie-by-the- { " " Fire { Our Garden Aunt Judy's Magazine, "Our Garden" S.P.C.K. March, 1874 Dolly's Lullaby April, 1874 "Baby, Puppy, " and Kitty" The Blue Bells May, 1874 "The Blue Bells " on the Lea on the Lea" May Day, Old Style May, 1874 "Miscellanea," " and New Style vol. xvii. A Great Emergency June to October, "A Great Emergency, Bell & Sons. 1874 and other Tales" The Dolls' Wash September, 1874 "The Dolls' Wash" S.P.C.K. Three Little October, 1874 "Three Little " Nest-Birds Nest-Birds" A very Ill- December, 1874, to "A Great Emergency, Bell & Sons. tempered Family March, 1875 and other Tales" Songs for Music, by Four Friends Ah! Would I Could Forget The Elleree. A Song of Second Sight Faded Flowers Fancy Free. A Girl's Song From Fleeting Pleasures. A Requiem for One Alive How Many Years "Songs for Music, by "Verses for S.P.C.K Ago? Four Friends," H. Children, and The Lily of King & Co., 1874. Songs for Music," the Lake vol. ix. Madrigal Maiden with the Gipsy Look My Lover's Gift Other Stars The Runaway's Return, or Ran Away to Sea Serenade Speed Well Teach Me (From the Danish.) With a Difference Anemones (left in MS.) Autumn Leaves (left in MS.) Cousin Peregrine's Aunt Judy's Magazine, "Miscellanea," vol. S.P.C.K. Wonder Stories. xvii. The Chinese March, 1875 Jugglers Waves of the May, 1875 " " Great South Sea Jack of Pera July, 1875 " " Little Woods August, 1875 " " Good Luck is Better August, 1875 "Old-fashioned " than Gold Fairy Tales" A Hero to his October, 1875 "Little Boys and " Hobby Horse Wooden Horses" The Kyrkegrim November, 1875 "Dandelion Clocks" " turned Preacher Hints for Private November and "The Peace Egg," " Theatricals December, 1875; vol. x. February, 1876 Toots and Boots January, 1876 "Brothers of Pity, " and other Tales of Beasts and Men" The Blind Man February, 1876 "Dandelion Clocks" " and the Talking Dog The Princes of April, 1876 "Miscellanea," S.P.C.K. Vegetation vol. xvii I Won't April, 1876 "Old-fashioned " Fairy Tales" Father Hedgehog and June to August, 1876 "Brothers of Pity, " His Neighbours and other Tales" House Building June, 1876 "Doll's " and Repairs Housekeeping" An Only Child's July, 1876 " " Tea-Party Dandelion Clocks August, 1876 "Dandelion Clocks, " and other Tales" Our Field September, 1876 "A Great Emergency, Bell & Sons. and other Tales" Papa Poodle September, 1876 "Papa Poodle, and S.P.C.K. other Pets" A Week Spent in a October, 1876 "A Week Spent in a Wells, Glass Pond Glass Pond" Darton & Co. Big Smith October, 1876 "Little Boys and S.P.C.K. Wooden Horses" The Magician turned November, 1876 "Old-fashioned " Mischief-Maker Fairy Tales" A Bad Habit January, 1877 "Melchior's Dream, Bell & Sons, and other Tales" 1885. Brothers of Pity April, 1877 "Brothers of Pity, S.P.C.K. and other Tales" Kit's Cradle April, 1877 "Baby, Puppy, and " Kitty" Ladders to Heaven May, 1877 "Dandelion Clocks," " &c. Boy and Squirrel June, 1877 "Tongues in Trees" " Master Fritz August, 1877 "Master Fritz" " A Sweet Little September, 1877 "A Sweet Little " Dear Dear" We and the World November, 1887, to "We and the World" Bell & Sons. June, 1878, and April to October, 1879 The Yellow Fly December, 1877 "Baby, Puppy, and S.P.C.K. Kitty" So-so September, 1878 "Dandelion Clocks," " &c. Flaps Aunt Judy's Magazine "Brothers of Pity, " January, 1879 and other Tales" Canada Home January, 1879 "Verses for " Children," &c. vol. ix. Garden Lore March, 1879 " " A Soldier's July, 1879 "A Soldier's " Children Children" Jackanapes October, 1879 "Jackanapes" " Grandmother's June, 1880 "Grandmother's S.P.C.K. Spring Spring" Touch Him if You July, 1880 "Touch Him if you " Dare Dare" The Mill Stream August, 1881 "The Mill Stream" " Blue and Red; or, September, 1881 "Blue and Red," " the Discontented &c. Lobster Daddy Darwin's November, 1881 "Daddy Darwin's " Dovecote Dovecote" Laetus Sorte Mea: May to October, 1882 "The Story of a " or, the Story Short Life" of a Short Life Sunflowers and a November, 1882 "Mary's Meadow." " Rushlight &c., vol. xvi. The Poet and the January, 1883 "The Poet and the " Brook Brook" Mother's Birthday April, 1883 "Mother's Birthday " Review Review" Convalescence May, 1883 "Convalescence" " A Happy Family September, 1883 "Melchior's Dream, Bell & Sons. and other Tales" Mary's Meadow November, 1883, to "Mary's Meadow, S.P.C.K. March, 1884 and other Tales" The Peace Egg. January, 1884 "The Peace Egg," " A Christmas &c. Mumming Play Letters from a November, 1884, to "Mary's Meadow, " Little Garden February, 1885 and other Tales" Tiny's Tricks and Child's Pictorial "Brothers of Pity, " Toby's Tricks Magazine and other May, 1885 Tales," vol. xii. The Owl in the June, 1885 " " Ivy Bush; or, the Children's Bird of Wisdom Introduction Owlhoot I. July, 1885 " " Owlhoot II. August, 1885 " " + -+ + -+ +

TRANSLATIONS.

- A Child's Wishes From the German of Aunt Judy's Magazine, R. Reinick 1866. War and the Dead From the French of October, 1866. Jean Mace Tales of the Khoja From the Turkish April to December, 1874. The Adventures of an Adapted from the German November and of an Elf December, 1875. The Snarling Princess Adapted from the German December, 1875. The Little Parsnip Adapted from the German January, 1876. Man -



LETTERS

TO MISS E. LLOYD

Ecclesfield. August 19, 1864.

MY DEAREST ELEANOR

It is with the greatest pleasure that I "sit down" and square my elbows to answer one question of your letter. The one about the Liturgical Lessons. Nothing (I find) is more difficult in this short life than to emulate John's example—and "explain my meaning!" but I will do my best. Beloved! In the first place I am going to do what I hope will be more to your benefit than my credit! Send you my rough notes. If you begin at the first page and read straight ahead to where allusion is made to the Apocryphal Lessons, you will have my first Course, and you will see that I was working by degrees straight through the Morning Prayer. But then (like the Turnip Tom-toddies!) we found that "the Inspector was coming"—and though the class was pretty well getting up "Matins"—it knew very little about the Prayer-book—so then I took a different tack. We left off minutiae and Bible references and took to a sort of general sketch of the whole Prayer-book. For this I did not make fresh notes at the time—but when the Inspector came and I being too ill to examine them—M. did it—I wrote out in a hurry the questions and answers that follow the Apocrypha point for her benefit. My dear old Eleanor—I am such a bad hand myself—that I feel it perfectly ludicrous to attempt to help you—but here are a few results of my limited experience which are probably all wrong—but the best I have to offer!