Perhaps part of the marvel of the book comes from the knowledge that
the authoress was a slight, delicate young girl. One wonders what
her future work would have been, had she lived to gain a wider
experience of life; or was it well for her fame that nature took the
pen so soon from her hand? Her suppressed vehemence may have been
better suited to those tangled Yorkshire byways than to the more
open, cultivated fields of life.

There is not much similarity between the two books, yet when
recalling Emily Bronte my thoughts always run on to Olive Schreiner.
Here, again, was a young girl with the voice of a strong man. Olive
Schreiner, more fortunate, has lived; but I doubt if she will ever
write a book that will remind us of her first. "The Story of an
African Farm" is not a work to be repeated. We have advanced in
literature of late. I can well remember the storm of indignation
with which the "African Farm" was received by Mrs. Grundy and her
then numerous, but now happily diminishing, school. It was a book
that was to be kept from the hands of every young man and woman. But
the hands of the young men and women stretched out and grasped it, to
their help. It is a curious idea, this of Mrs. Grundy's, that the
young man and woman must never think--that all literature that does
anything more than echo the conventions must be hidden away.

Then there are times when I love to gallop through history on Sir
Walter's broomstick. At other hours it is pleasant to sit in
converse with wise George Eliot. From her garden terrace I look down
on Loamshire and its commonplace people; while in her quiet, deep
voice she tells me of the hidden hearts that beat and throb beneath
these velveteen jackets and lace falls.