a musty volume from its shelf at some melancholy old book-stall on
Cornhill.




FLEABODY AND OTHER QUEER NAMES

WHEN an English novelist does us the honor to introduce any of our
countrymen into his fiction, he generally displays a commendable
desire to present something typical in the way of names for his
adopted characters--to give a dash of local color, as it were, with his
nomenclature. His success is seldom commensurate to the desire. He falls
into the error of appealing to his invention, instead of consulting
some city directory, in which he would find more material than he could
exhaust in ten centuries. Charles Reade might have secured in the pages
of such a compendium a happier title than Fullalove for his Yankee
sea-captain; though I doubt, on the whole, if Anthony Trollope could
have discovered anything better than Olivia Q. Fleabody for the young
woman from "the States" in his novel called "Is He Popenjoy?"

To christen a sprightly young female advocate of woman's rights Olivia
Q. Fleabody was very happy indeed; to be candid, it was much better than
was usual with Mr. Trollope, whose understanding of American life and
manners was not enlarged by extensive travel in this country. An English
tourist's preconceived idea of us is a thing he brings over with him on
the steamer and carries home again intact; it is as much a part of his
indispensable impedimenta as his hatbox. But Fleabody is excellent; it
was probably suggested by Peabody, which may have struck Mr. Trollope as
comical (just as Trollope strikes _us_ as comical), or, at least, as not