treat of such subjects. The dialogue, when she makes them
talk, is unnatural, and her invention so poor that when she
puts in a little romance of her own making one regrets it.
And so one might go on picking it all to pieces like a
dandelion blossom. Nevertheless it endures, outliving scores
of in a way better books on the same themes, because her own
delightful personality manifests itself and shines in all
these little pictures. This short passage describing how she
took Lizzie, the little village child she loved, to gather
cowslips in the meadows, will serve as an illustration.

They who know these feelings (and who is so happy as not to
have known some of them) will understand why Alfieri became
powerless, and Froissart dull; and why even needlework, the
most effective sedative, that grand soother and composer of
women's distress, fails to comfort me today. I will go out
into the air this cool, pleasant afternoon, and try what
that will do. . . . I will go to the meadows, the beautiful
meadows and I will have my materials of happiness, Lizzie
and May, and a basket for flowers, and we will make a
cowslip ball. "Did you ever see a cowslip ball, Lizzie?"
"No." "Come away then; make haste! run, Lizzie!"

And on we go, fast, fast! down the road, across the lea,
past the workhouse, along by the great pond, till we slide
into the deep narrow lane, whose hedges seem to meet over
the water, and win our way to the little farmhouse at the
end. "Through the farmyard, Lizzie; over the gate; never
mind the cows; they are quiet enough." "I don't mind 'em,"
said Miss Lizzie, boldly and' truly, and with a proud