could she become "mistress of the piano," she closed and locked the
obnoxious instrument and put the key in her pocket, saying playfully,
"Now you see there _is_ a royal way of becoming `mistress of the
piano.'" But not so simple and natural and girlish are all the things
told of the Queen's young days. Loyal English people have said to me,
"You will find few stories of Her Majesty's childhood, but those few will
all be good."

Yes, too good. The chroniclers of forty and fifty years ago--the same in
whose loyal eyes the fifteen children of George III. were all "children
of light"--could find no words in which to paint their worship for this
rising star of sovereignty. According to them, she was not only the pearl
of Princesses for piety and propriety, for goodness and graciousness, but
a marvel of unchildlike wisdom, a prodigy of cleverness and learning; in
short, a purely perfect creature, loved of the angels to a degree
perilous to the succession. The simplest little events of her daily life
were twisted into something unnaturally significant, or unhealthily
virtuous. If she was taken through a cotton-mill at Manchester, and asked
a score or two of questions about the machinery and the strange processes
of spinning and weaving, it was not childish curiosity--it was a love of
knowledge, and a patriotic desire to encourage British manufactures.

If she gave a few pennies to a blind beggar at Margate, the amiable act
was heralded as one, of almost divine beneficence, and the beggar pitied,
as never before, for his blindness. The poor man had not beheld the face
of the "little angel" who dropped the coin into his greasy hat! If, full
of "high spirits," she took long rides on a donkey at Ramsgate, and ran
races with other children on the sands, it was a proof of the sweetest
human condescension--the donkey's opinion not being taken.