"I should like to see a play very much, for I never saw one in all my
life, and don't believe I ever shall; but I hope I can be content
without going to one. I can be quite happy without my desire being
granted."

"Some days ago Isabella had a terrible fit of the toothake, and she
walked with a long night-shift at dead of night like a ghost, and I
thought she was one. She prayed for nature's sweet restorer--balmy
sleep--but did not get it--a ghostly figure indeed she was, enough to
make a saint tremble. It made me quiver and shake from top to toe.
Superstition is a very mean thing and should be despised and shunned."

Here is her weakness and her strength again: "In the love-novels all the
heroines are very desperate. Isabella will not allow me to speak about
lovers and heroins, and 'tis too refined for my taste." "Miss Egward's
(Edgeworth's) tails are very good, particularly some that are very much
adapted for youth (!) as Laz Laurance and Tarelton, False Keys, etc.
etc."

"Tom Jones and Grey's Elegey in a country churchyard are both excellent,
and much spoke of by both sex, particularly by the men." Are our
Marjories nowadays better or worse because they cannot read Tom Jones
unharmed? More better than worse; but who among them can repeat Gray's
Lines on a distant prospect of Eton College as could our Maidie?

Here is some more of her prattle: "I went into Isabella's bed to make
her smile like the Genius Demedicus" (the Venus de Medicis) "or the
statute in an ancient Greece, but she fell asleep in my very face, at
which my anger broke forth, so that I awoke her from a comfortable nap.
All was now hushed up again, but again my anger burst forth at her