houses, some with straw-thatched roofs, others tile--roses clambering
over the doors and flowering hedgerows white with hawthorn-flowers.

Occasionally, I met a farmer's cart drawn by one of those great, fat,
gentle Shire horses that George Eliot has described so well. All spoke of
peace and plenty, quiet and rest. The green fields and the flowers, the
lark-song and the sunshine, the dipping willows by the stream, and the
arch of the old stone bridge as I approached the village--all these I had
seen and known and felt before from "Mill on the Floss."

I found the house where they say the novelist was born. A plain,
whitewashed, stone structure, built two hundred years ago; two stories,
the upper chambers low, with gable-windows; a little garden at the side
bright with flowers, where sweet marjoram vied with onions and beets; all
spoke of humble thrift and homely cares. In front was a great
chestnut-tree, and in the roadway near were two ancient elms where saucy
crows were building a nest.

Here, after her mother died, Mary Ann Evans was housekeeper. Little more
than a child--tall, timid, and far from strong--she cooked and scrubbed
and washed, and was herself the mother to brothers and sisters. Her
father was a carpenter by trade and agent for a rich landowner. He was a
stern man--orderly, earnest, industrious, studious. On rides about the
country he would take the tall, hollow-eyed girl with him, and at such
times he would talk to her of the great outside world where wondrous
things were done. The child toiled hard, but found time to read and
question--and there is always time to think. Soon she had outgrown some
of her good father's beliefs, and this grieved him greatly; so much,
indeed, that her extra-loving attention to his needs, in a hope to
neutralize his displeasure, only irritated him the more. And if there is