offending nun. In fact the Story Woman (or _Märchen-Frau_ as she is
called in Germany) may be taken to represent the imaginary personage
who is known in England by the name of Mother Bunch, or Mother Goose;
and it was in this instance the name given by a certain family of
children to an old book of ballads and poems, which they were
accustomed to read in turn with special solemnities, on one particular
night in the year; the reader for the time being having a peculiar
costume, and the title of "Märchen-Frau," or Mother Bunch, a name
which had in time been familiarly adopted for the ballad-book itself.

This book was not bound in a fashionable colour, nor illustrated by a
fashionable artist; the Chiswick Press had not set up a type for it,
and Hayday's morocco was a thing unknown. It had not, in short, one of
those attractions with which in these days books are surrounded, whose
insides do not always fulfil the promise of the binding. If, however,
it was on these points inferior to modern volumes, it had on others
the advantage. It did not share a precarious favour with a dozen
rivals in mauve, to be supplanted ere the year was out by twelve new
ones in magenta. It was never thrown aside with the contemptuous
remark,--"I've read that!" On the contrary, it always had been to its
possessors, what (from the best Book downwards) a good book always
should be, a friend, and not an acquaintance--not to be too readily
criticized, but to be loved and trusted. The pages were yellow and
worn, not with profane ill-usage, but with honourable wear and tear;
and the mottled binding presented much such an appearance as might be
expected from a book that had been pressed under the pillow of one
reader, and in the pocket of another; that had been wept over and
laughed over, and warmed by winter fires, and damped in the summer
grass, and had in general seen as much of life as the venerable book
in question. It was not the property of one member of the family, but