very different, as I thought, from the shoal of verses perpetually
setting through the office of such a periodical, and possessing much more
merit. Its authoress was quite unknown to me. She was one Miss Mary
Berwick, whom I had never heard of; and she was to be addressed by
letter, if addressed at all, at a circulating library in the western
district of London. Through this channel, Miss Berwick was informed that
her poem was accepted, and was invited to send another. She complied,
and became a regular and frequent contributor. Many letters passed
between the journal and Miss Berwick, but Miss Berwick herself was never
seen.

How we came gradually to establish, at the office of Household Words,
that we knew all about Miss Berwick, I have never discovered. But we
settled somehow, to our complete satisfaction, that she was governess in
a family; that she went to Italy in that capacity, and returned; and that
she had long been in the same family. We really knew nothing whatever of
her, except that she was remarkably business-like, punctual,
self-reliant, and reliable: so I suppose we insensibly invented the rest.
For myself, my mother was not a more real personage to me, than Miss
Berwick the governess became.

This went on until December, 1854, when the Christmas number, entitled
The Seven Poor Travellers, was sent to press. Happening to be going to
dine that day with an old and dear friend, distinguished in literature as
Barry Cornwall, I took with me an early proof of that number, and
remarked, as I laid it on the drawing-room table, that it contained a
very pretty poem, written by a certain Miss Berwick. Next day brought me
the disclosure that I had so spoken of the poem to the mother of its
writer, in its writer's presence; that I had no such correspondent in
existence as Miss Berwick; and that the name had been assumed by Barry