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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/75718-0.txt b/75718-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6501f7d --- /dev/null +++ b/75718-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1330 @@ + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75718 *** + + + + + + MARJORIE FLEMING. + + + A SKETCH. + + + + BEING THE PAPER ENTITLED + + + + + “_PET MARJORIE: A STORY OF CHILD-LIFE + FIFTY YEARS AGO_.” + + + + + BY JOHN BROWN, M. D., + AUTHOR OF “RAB AND HIS FRIENDS.” + + + + + BOSTON: + TICKNOR AND FIELDS. + 1864. + + + + + NOTE. + + +THE separate publication of this sketch has been forced upon me by the +“somewhat free use” made of it in a second and thereby enlarged edition +of the “little book” to which I owe my _introduction_ to Marjorie +Fleming,--but nothing more; a “use” so exceedingly “free” as to extend +almost to everything with which I had ventured perhaps to encumber the +letters and journals of that dear child. To be called “kind and genial” +by the individual who devised this edition has, strange as he may think +it, altogether failed to console me. Empty praise without the solid +pudding is proverbially a thing of naught; but what shall we say of +praise the emptiness of which is aggravated, not merely by the absence, +but by the actual abstraction, of the pudding? + +This little act of conveyancing--this “engaging compilation,” as he +would have called it--puts me in mind of that pleasant joke in the +preface to “Essays by Mr. Goldsmith”: “I would desire in this case, to +imitate that fat man whom I have somewhere heard of in a shipwreck, who +when the sailors, prest by famine, were taking slices from his body, to +satisfy their hunger, insisted with great justice on having the first +cut for himself.” + +I have to thank the proprietors of the _North British Review_ for +permitting this reprint. + + J. B. + + + + + _To_ + + MISS FLEMING, + + TO WHOM I AM INDEBTED FOR ALL ITS MATERIALS, + + _THIS MEMORIAL_ + + OF HER DEAR AND UNFORGOTTEN + + MAIDIE + + IS GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED. + + + + + MARJORIE FLEMING. + + +ONE November afternoon in 1810,--the year in which _Waverley_ was +resumed and laid aside again, to be finished off, its last two volumes +in three weeks, and made immortal in 1814, and when its author, by the +death of Lord Melville, narrowly escaped getting a civil appointment +in India,--three men, evidently lawyers, might have been seen escaping +like school-boys from the Parliament House, and speeding arm in arm +down Bank Street and the Mound, in the teeth of a surly blast of sleet. + +The three friends sought the _bield_ of the low wall old Edinburgh +boys remember well, and sometimes miss now, as they struggle with the +stout west wind. + +The three were curiously unlike each other. One, “a little man of +feeble make, who would be unhappy if his pony got beyond a foot pace,” +slight, with “small, elegant features, hectic cheek, and soft hazel +eyes, the index of the quick, sensitive spirit within, as if he had +the warm heart of a woman, her genuine enthusiasm, and some of her +weaknesses.” Another, as unlike a woman as a man can be; homely, +almost common, in look and figure; his hat and his coat, and indeed +his entire covering, worn to the quick, but all of the best material; +what redeemed him from vulgarity and meanness were his eyes, deep set, +heavily thatched, keen, hungry, shrewd, with a slumbering glow far +in, as if they could be dangerous; a man to care nothing for at first +glance, but, somehow, to give a second and not-forgetting look at. The +third was the biggest of the three, and though lame, nimble, and all +rough and alive with power; had you met him anywhere else, you would +say he was a Liddesdale store-farmer, come of gentle blood; “a stout, +blunt carle,” as he says of himself, with the swing and stride and the +eye of a man of the hills,--a large, sunny, out-of-door air all about +him. On his broad and somewhat stooping shoulders was set that head +which, with Shakespeare’s and Bonaparte’s, is the best known in all the +world. + +He was in high spirits, keeping his companions and himself in roars +of laughter, and every now and then seizing them, and stopping, that +they might take their fill of the fun; there they stood shaking with +laughter, “not an inch of their body free” from its grip. At George +Street they parted, one to Rose Court, behind St. Andrew’s Church, one +to Albany Street, the other, our big and limping friend, to Castle +Street. + +We need hardly give their names. The first was William Erskine, +afterwards Lord Kinnedder, chased out of the world by a calumny, killed +by its foul breath,-- + + “And at the touch of wrong, without a strife, + Slipped in a moment out of life.” + +There is nothing in literature more beautiful or more pathetic than +Scott’s love and sorrow for this friend of his youth. + +The second was William Clerk,--the _Darsie Latimer_ of +_Redgauntlet_; “a man,” as Scott says, “of the most acute +intellects and powerful apprehension,” but of more powerful indolence, +so as to leave the world with little more than the report of what he +might have been,--a humorist as genuine, though not quite so savagely +Swiftian as his brother Lord Eldin, neither of whom had much of that +commonest and best of all the humors, called good. + +The third we all know. What has he not done for every one of us? Who +else ever, except Shakespeare, so diverted mankind, entertained and +entertains a world so liberally, so wholesomely? We are fain to say, +not even Shakespeare, for his is something deeper than diversion, +something higher than pleasure, and yet who would care to split this +hair? + +Had any one watched him closely before and after the parting, what +a change he would see! The bright, broad laugh, the shrewd, jovial +word, the man of the Parliament House and of the world, and, next +step, moody, the light of his eye withdrawn, as if seeing things that +were invisible; his shut mouth, like a child’s, so impressionable, +so innocent, so sad: he was now all within, as before he was all +without; hence his brooding look. As the snow blattered in his face, +he muttered, “How it raves and drifts! On-ding o’ snaw--ay, that’s +the word--on-ding--.” He was now at his own door, “Castle Street, No. +39.” He opened the door, and went straight to his den; that wondrous +workshop, where, in one year, 1823, when he was fifty-two, he wrote +_Peveril of the Peak_, _Quentin Durward_, and _St. Ronan’s +Well_, besides much else. We once took the foremost of our +novelists, the greatest, we would say, since Scott, into this room, and +could not but mark the solemnizing effect of sitting where the great +magician sat so often and so long, and looking out upon that little +shabby bit of sky, and that back green where faithful Camp lies.[1] + +He sat down in his large, green morocco elbow-chair, drew himself close +to his table, and glowered and gloomed at his writing apparatus, “a +very handsome old box, richly carved, lined with crimson velvet, and +containing ink-bottles, taper-stand, etc., in silver, the whole in such +order that it might have come from the silversmith’s window half an +hour before.” He took out his paper, then, starting up angrily, said, +“‘Go spin, you jade, go spin.’ No, d-- it, it won’t do:-- + + ‘My spinnin’-wheel is auld and stiff; + The rock o ’t wunna stand, sir; + To keep the temper-pin in tiff + Employs ower aft my hand, sir.’ + +I am off the fang.[2] I can make nothing of _Waverley_ to-day; +I’ll awa’ to Marjorie. Come wi’ me, Maida, you thief.” The great +creature rose slowly, and the pair were off, Scott taking a _maud_ +(a plaid) with him. “White as a frosted plum-cake, by jingo!” said he, +when he got to the street. Maida gambolled and whisked among the snow; +and his master strode across to Young Street, and through it to 1 North +Charlotte Street, to the house of his dear friend, Mrs. William Keith +of Corstorphine Hill, niece of Mrs. Keith of Ravelston, of whom he said +at her death, eight years after, “Much tradition, and that of the best, +has died with this excellent old lady, one of the few persons whose +spirits and _cleanliness_ and freshness of mind and body made old +age lovely and desirable.” + +Sir Walter was in that house almost every day, and had a key, so in +he and the hound went, shaking themselves in the lobby. “Marjorie! +Marjorie!” shouted her friend, “where are ye, my bonnie wee croodlin +doo?” In a moment a bright, eager child of seven was in his arms, and +he was kissing her all over. Out came Mrs. Keith. “Come yer ways in, +Wattie.” “No, not now. I am going to take Marjorie wi’ me, and you +may come to your tea in Duncan Roy’s sedan, and bring the bairn home +in your lap.” “Tak’ Marjorie, and it _on-ding o’ snaw_!” said +Mrs. Keith. He said to himself, “On-ding--that’s odd--that is the +very word.” “Hoot, awa! look here,” and he displayed the corner of +his plaid, made to hold lambs,--the true shepherd’s plaid, consisting +of two breadths sewed together, and uncut at one end, making a poke +or _cul de sac_. “Tak’ yer lamb,” said she, laughing at the +contrivance; and so the Pet was first well happit up, and then put, +laughing silently, into the plaid neuk, and the shepherd strode off +with his lamb,--Maida gambolling through the snow, and running races in +her mirth. + +Didn’t he face “the angry airt,” and make her bield his bosom, and +into his own room with her, and lock the door, and out with the warm, +rosy, little wifie, who took it all with great composure! There the +two remained for three or more hours, making the house ring with their +laughter; you can fancy the big man’s and Maidie’s laugh. Having made +the fire cheery, he set her down in his ample chair, and, standing +sheepishly before her, began to say his lesson, which happened to +be--“Ziccotty, diccotty, dock, the mouse ran up the clock, the clock +struck wan, down the mouse ran, ziccotty, diccotty, dock.” This done +repeatedly till she was pleased, she gave him his new lesson, gravely +and slowly, timing it upon her small fingers,--he saying it after her,-- + + “Wonery, twoery, tickery, seven; + Alibi, crackaby, ten, and eleven; + Pin, pan, musky, dan; + Tweedle-um, twoddle-um, + Twenty-wan; eerie, orie, ourie, + You, are, out.” + +He pretended to great difficulty, and she rebuked him with most comical +gravity, treating him as a child. He used to say that when he came +to Alibi Crackaby he broke down, and pin-Pan, Musky-dan, Tweedle-um, +Twoddle-um made him roar with laughter. He said _Musky-Dan_ +especially was beyond endurance, bringing up an Irishman and his hat +fresh from the Spice Islands and odoriferous Ind; she getting quite +bitter in her displeasure at his ill behavior and stupidness. + +Then he would read ballads to her in his own glorious way, the two +getting wild with excitement over _Gil Morrice_ or the _Baron +of Smailholm_; and he would take her on his knee, and make her +repeat Constance’s speeches in _King John_, till he swayed to +and fro, sobbing his fill. Fancy the gifted little creature, like one +possessed, repeating,-- + + “For I am sick, and capable of fears,-- + Oppressed with wrong, and, therefore, full of fears; + A widow, husbandless, subject to fears; + A woman, naturally born to fears.” + + “If thou, that bidst me be content, wert grim, + Ugly, and slanderous to thy mother’s womb,-- + Lame, foolish, crooked, swart, prodigious--.” + +Or, drawing herself up “to the height of her great argument,”-- + + “I will instruct my sorrows to be proud, + For grief is proud, and makes his owner stout. + Here I and sorrow sit.” + +Scott used to say that he was amazed at her power over him, saying to +Mrs. Keith, “She’s the most extraordinary creature I ever met with, and +her repeating of Shakespeare overpowers me as nothing else does.” + +Thanks to the little book whose title heads this paper, and thanks +still more to the unforgetting sister of this dear child, who has much +of the sensibility and fun of her who has been in her small grave these +fifty and more years, we have now before us the letters and journals +of Pet Marjorie: before us lies and gleams her rich brown hair, bright +and sunny as if yesterday’s, with the words on the paper, “Cut out in +her last illness,” and two pictures of her by her beloved Isabella, +whom she worshipped; there are the faded old scraps of paper, hoarded +still, over which her warm breath and her warm little heart had poured +themselves; there is the old water-mark, “Lingard, 1808.” The two +portraits are very like each other, but plainly done at different +times; it is a chubby, healthy face, deep-set, brooding eyes, as eager +to tell what is going on within as to gather in all the glories from +without; quick with the wonder and the pride of life: they are eyes +that would not be soon satisfied with seeing; eyes that would devour +their object, and yet childlike and fearless; and that is a mouth that +will not be soon satisfied with love; it has a curious likeness to +Scott’s own, which has always appeared to us his sweetest, most mobile, +and speaking feature. + +There she is, looking straight at us as she did at him,--fearless, +and full of love, passionate, wild, wilful, fancy’s child. One cannot +look at it without thinking of Wordsworth’s lines on poor Hartley +Coleridge:-- + + “O blessed vision, happy child! + Thou art so exquisitely wild, + I thought of thee with many fears,-- + Of what might be thy lot in future years. + I thought of times when Pain might be thy guest, + Lord of thy house and hospitality; + And Grief, uneasy lover! ne’er at rest + But when she sat within the touch of thee. + O too industrious folly! + O vain and causeless melancholy! + Nature will either end thee quite, + Or, lengthening out thy season of delight, + Preserve for thee, by individual right, + A young lamb’s heart among the full-grown flock.” + +And we can imagine Scott, when holding his warm, plump little +playfellow in his arms, repeating that stately friend’s lines:-- + + “Loving she is, and tractable, though wild; + And Innocence hath privilege in her, + To dignify arch looks and laughing eyes + And feats of cunning, and the pretty round + Of trespasses, affected to provoke + Mock chastisement and partnership in play. + And, as a fagot sparkles on the hearth + Not less if unattended and alone + Than when both young and old sit gathered round + And take delight in its activity, + Even so this happy creature of herself + Is all-sufficient; solitude to her + Is blithe society: she fills the air + With gladness and involuntary songs.” + +But we will let her disclose herself. We need hardly say that all this +is true, and that these letters are as really Marjorie’s as was this +light-brown hair; indeed, you could as easily fabricate the one as the +other. + +There was an old servant--Jeanie Robertson--who was forty years in +her grandfather’s family. Marjorie Fleming, or, as she is called in +the letters and by Sir Walter, Maidie, was the last child she kept. +Jeanie’s wages never exceeded £3 a year, and when she left service she +had saved £40. She was devotedly attached to Maidie, rather despising +and ill-using her sister Isabella,--a beautiful and gentle child. +This partiality made Maidie apt at times to domineer over Isabella. +“I mention this,” writes her surviving sister, “for the purpose of +telling you an instance of Maidie’s generous justice. When only five +years old, when walking in Raith grounds, the two children had run on +before, and old Jeanie remembered they might come too near a dangerous +mill-lade. She called to them to turn back. Maidie heeded her not, +rushed all the faster on, and fell, and would have been lost, had her +sister not pulled her back, saving her life, but tearing her clothes. +Jeanie flew on Isabella to “give it her” for spoiling her favorite’s +dress; Maidie rushed in between, crying out, “Pay (whip) Maidjie as +much as you like, and I’ll not say one word; but touch Isy, and I’ll +roar like a bull!” Years after Maidie was resting in her grave, my +mother used to take me to the place, and told the story always in +the exact same words.” This Jeanie must have been a character. She +took great pride in exhibiting Maidie’s brother William’s Calvinistic +acquirements when nineteen months old, to the officers of a militia +regiment then quartered in Kirkcaldy. This performance was so amusing +that it was often repeated, and the little theologian was presented by +them with a cap and feathers. Jeanie’s glory was “putting him through +the carritch” (catechism) in broad Scotch, beginning at the beginning +with “Wha made ye, ma bonnie man?” For the correctness of this and the +three next replies, Jeanie had no anxiety, but the tone changed to +menace, and the closed _nieve_ (fist) was shaken in the child’s +face as she demanded, “Of what are you made?” “DIRT,” was the +answer uniformly given. “Wull ye never learn to say _dust_, ye +thrawn deevil?” with a cuff from the opened hand, was the as inevitable +rejoinder. + +Here is Maidie’s first letter before she was six. The spelling +unaltered, and there are no “commoes.” + + + “MY DEAR ISA,--I now sit down to answer all your kind and + beloved letters which you was so good as to write to me. This is the + first time I ever wrote a letter in my Life. There are a great many + Girls in the Square, and they cry just like a pig when we are under + the painfull necessity of putting it to Death. Miss Potune, a Lady + of my acquaintance, praises me dreadfully. I repeated something out + of Dean Swift, and she said I was fit for the stage, and you may + think I was primmed up with majestick Pride, but upon my word I felt + myselfe turn a little birsay,--birsay is a word which is a word that + William composed which is as you may suppose a little enraged. This + horrid fat simpliton says that my Aunt is beautiful, which is intirely + impossible, for that is not her nature.” + +What a peppery little pen we wield! What could that have been out +of the Sardonic Dean? What other child of that age would have used +“beloved” as she does? This power of affection, this faculty of +_be_ loving, and wild hunger to be beloved, comes out more and +more. She perilled her all upon it, and it may have been as well--we +know, indeed, that it was far better--for her that this wealth of love +was so soon withdrawn to its one only infinite Giver and Receiver. This +must have been the law of her earthly life. Love was indeed “her Lord +and King”; and it was perhaps well for her that she found so soon that +her and our only Lord and King, Himself is Love. + +Here are bits from her Diary at Braehead:--“The day of my existence +here has been delightful and enchanting. On Saturday I expected no +less than three well-made Bucks, the names of whom is here advertised. +Mr. Geo. Crakey (Craigie), and Wm. Keith, and Jn. Keith,--the first is +the funniest of every one of them. Mr. Crakey and walked to Craky-hall +(Craigiehall), hand in hand in Innocence and matitation (meditation) +sweet thinking on the kind love which flows in our tender-hearted mind +which is overflowing with majestic pleasure no one was ever so polite +to me in the hole state of my existence. Mr. Craky you must know is a +great Buck, and pretty good-looking. + +“I am at Ravelston enjoying nature’s fresh air. The birds are singing +sweetly, the calf doth frisk, and nature shows her glorious face.” + +Here is a confession: “I confess I have been very more like a little +young divil than a creature for when Isabella went up stairs to teach +me religion and my multiplication and to be good and all my other +lessons I stamped with my foot and threw my new hat which she had made +on the ground and was sulky and was dreadfully passionate, but she +never whiped me but said Marjory go into another room and think what a +great crime you are committing letting your temper git the better of +you. But I went so sulkily that the Devil got the better of me but she +never never never whips me so that I think I would be the better of it +and the next time that I behave ill I think she should do it for she +never never does it.... Isabella has given me praise for checking my +temper for I was sulky even when she was kneeling an hole hour teaching +me to write.” + +Our poor little wifie,--_she_ has no doubts of the personality of +the Devil! “Yesterday I behave extremely ill in God’s most holy church +for I would never attend myself nor let Isabella attend which was a +great crime for she often, often tells me that when to or three are +geathered together God is in the midst of them, and it was the very +same Divil that tempted Job that tempted me I am sure; but he resisted +Satan though he had boils and many many other misfortunes which I have +escaped.... I am now going to tell you the horible and wretched plaege +(plague) that my multiplication gives me you can’t conceive it the most +Devilish thing is 8 times 8 and 7 times 7 it is what nature itself cant +endure.” + +This is delicious; and what harm is there in her “Devilish”? It is +strong language merely; even old Rowland Hill used to say “he grudged +the Devil those rough and ready words.” “I walked to that delightful +place Craky-hall with a delightful young man beloved by all his friends +especially by me his loveress, but I must not talk any more about him +for Isa said it is not proper for to speak of gentalmen but I will +never forget him!... I am very very glad that satan has not given me +boils and many other misfortunes--In the holy bible these words are +written that the Devil goes like a roaring lyon in search of his pray +but the lord lets us escape from him but we” (_pauvre petite!_) +“do not strive with this awfull Spirit.... To-day I pronunced a word +which should never come out of a lady’s lips it was that I called John +a Impudent Bitch. I will tell you what I think made me in so bad a +humor is I got one or two of that bad bad sina (senna) tea to-day,”--a +better excuse for bad humor and bad language than most. + +She has been reading the Book of Esther: “It was a dreadful thing that +Haman was hanged on the very gallows which he had prepared for Mordeca +to hang him and his ten sons thereon and it was very wrong and cruel +to hang his sons for they did not commit the crime; _but then Jesus +was not then come to teach us to be merciful_.” This is wise and +beautiful,--has upon it the very dew of youth and of holiness. Out of +the mouths of babes and sucklings He perfects His praise. + +“This is Saturday and I am very glad of it because I have play half the +Day and I get money too but alas I owe Isabella 4 pence for I am finned +2 pence whenever I bite my nails. Isabella is teaching me to make simme +colings nots of interrigations peorids commoes, etc.... As this is +Sunday I will meditate upon Senciable and Religious subjects. First I +should be very thankful I am not a begger.” + +This amount of meditation and thankfulness seems to have been all she +was able for. + +“I am going to-morrow to a delightfull place, Braehead by name, +belonging to Mrs. Crraford, where there is ducks cocks hens +bubbly-jocks 2 dogs 2 cats and swine which is delightful. I think it +is shocking to think that the dog and cat should bear them” (this is +a meditation physiological), “and they are drowned after all. I would +rather have a man-dog than a woman-dog, because they do not bear like +women-dogs; it is a hard case--it is shocking. I cam here to enjoy +natures delightful breath it is sweeter than a fial (phial) of rose +oil.” + +Braehead is the farm the historical Jock Howison asked and got from our +gay James the Fifth, “the gudeman o’ Ballengiech,” as a reward for the +services of his flail, when the King had the worst of it at Cramond +Brig with the gypsies. The farm is unchanged in size from that time, +and still in the unbroken line of the ready and victorious thrasher. +Braehead is held on the condition of the possessor being ready to +present the King with a ewer and basin to wash his hands, Jock having +done this for his unknown king after the _splore_, and when George +the Fourth came to Edinburgh this ceremony was performed in silver +at Holyrood. It is a lovely neuk this Braehead, preserved almost as +it was 200 years ago. “Lot and his wife,” mentioned by Maidie--two +quaintly cropped yew-trees--still thrive, the burn runs as it did in +her time, and sings the same quiet tune,--as much the same and as +different as _Now_ and _Then_. The house full of old family +relics and pictures, the sun shining on them through the small deep +windows with their plate glass; and there, blinking at the sun, and +chattering contentedly, is a parrot, that might, for its looks of eld, +have been in the ark, and domineered over and _deaved_ the dove. +Everything about the place is old and fresh. + +This is beautiful: “I am very sorry to say that I forgot God--that +is to say I forgot to pray to-day and Isabella told me that I should +be thankful that God did not forget me--if he did, O what become +of me if I was in danger and God not friends with me--I must go to +unquenchable fire and if I was tempted to sin--how could I resist it +O no I will never do it again--no no--if I can help it.” (Canny wee +wifie!) “My religion is greatly falling off because I dont pray with so +much attention when I am saying my prayers, and my charecter is lost +among the Braehead people. I hope I will be religious again--but as +for regaining my charecter I despare for it.” (Poor little ‘habit and +repute’!) + +Her temper, her passion, and her “badness” are almost daily confessed +and deplored: “I will never again trust to my own power, for I see that +I cannot be good without God’s assistance,--I will not trust in my own +selfe, and Isa’s health will be quite ruined by me,--it will indeed.” +“Isa has giving me advice, which is, that when I feal Satan beginning +to tempt me, that I flea him and he would flea me.” “Remorse is the +worst thing to bear, and I am afraid that I will fall a marter to it.” + +Poor dear little sinner! Here comes the world again: “In my travels I +met with a handsome lad named Charles Balfour Esq., and from him I got +ofers of marage--offers of marage, did I say? Nay plenty heard me.” A +fine scent for “breach of promise”! + +This is abrupt and strong: “The Divil is curced and all works. ’Tis a +fine work _Newton on the profecies_. I wonder if there is another +book of poems comes near the Bible. The Divil always girns at the sight +of the Bible.” “Miss Potune” (her “simpliton” friend) “is very fat; +she pretends to be very learned. She says she saw a stone that dropt +from the skies; but she is a good Christian.” Here come her views on +church government: “An Annibabtist is a thing I am not a member of--I +am a Pisplekan (Episcopalian) just now, and” (O you little Laodicean +and Latitudinarian!) “a Prisbeteran at Kirkcaldy!”--(_Blandula! +Vagula! cœlum et animum mutas quæ trans mare_ [i. e. _trans +Bodotriam_]_-curris!_)--“my native town.” “Sentiment is not +what I am acquainted with as yet, though I wish it, and should like +to practise it.” (!) “I wish I had a great, great deal of gratitude +in my heart, in all my body.” “There is a new novel published, named +_Self-Control_” (Mrs. Brunton’s)--“a very good maxim forsooth!” +This is shocking: “Yesterday a marrade man, named Mr. John Balfour, +Esq., offered to kiss me, and offered to marry me, though the man” (a +fine directness this!) “was espused, and his wife was present and said +he must ask her permission; but he did not. I think he was ashamed +and confounded before 3 gentlemen--Mr. Jobson and 2 Mr. Kings.” “Mr. +Banester’s” (Bannister’s) “Budjet is to-night; I hope it will be a good +one. A great many authors have expressed themselves too sentimentally.” +You are right, Marjorie. “A Mr. Burns writes a beautiful song on Mr. +Cunhaming, whose wife desarted him--truly it is a most beautiful one.” +“I like to read the Fabulous historys, about the histerys of Robin, +Dickey, flapsay, and Peccay, and it is very amusing, for some were good +birds and others bad, but Peccay was the most dutiful and obedient to +her parients.” “Thomson is a beautiful author, and Pope, but nothing +to Shakespear, of which I have a little knolege. _Macbeth_ is a +pretty composition, but awful one.” “The _Newgate Calender_ is +very instructive.” (!) “A sailor called here to say farewell; it must +be dreadful to leave his native country when he might get a wife; or +perhaps me, for I love him very much. But O I forgot, Isabella forbid +me to speak about love.” This antiphlogistic regimen and lesson is +ill to learn by our Maidie, for here she sins again: “Love is a very +papithatick thing” (it is almost a pity to correct this into pathetic), +“as well as troublesome and tiresome--but O Isabella forbid me to speak +of it.” Here are her reflections on a pine-apple: “I think the price of +a pine-apple is very dear: it is a whole bright goulden guinea, that +might have sustained a poor family.” Here is a new vernal simile: “The +hedges are sprouting like chicks from the eggs when they are newly +hatched or as the vulgar say, _clacked_.” “Doctor Swift’s works +are very funny; I got some of them by heart.” “Moreheads sermons are +I hear much praised but I never read sermons of any kind; but I read +novelettes and my Bible, and I never forget it, or my prayers.” Bravo +Marjorie! + +She seems now, when still about six, to have broken out into song:-- + + + “EPHIBOL (EPIGRAM OR EPITAPH--WHO KNOWS WHICH?) ON MY DEAR LOVE, + ISABELLA.” + + Here lies sweet Isabel in bed, + With a night-cap on her head; + Her skin is soft, her face is fair, + And she has very pretty hair: + She and I in bed lies nice, + And undisturbed by rats or mice. + She is disgusted with Mr. Worgan, + Though he plays upon the organ. + Her nails are neat, her teeth are white; + Her eyes are very, very bright. + In a conspicuous town she lives, + And to the poor her money gives. + Here ends sweet Isabella’s story, + And may it be much to her glory! + +Here are some bits at random:-- + + “Of summer I am very fond + And love to bathe into a pond: + The look of sunshine dies away, + And will not let me out to play. + I love the morning’s sun to spy + Glittering through the casement’s eye; + The rays of light are very sweet, + And puts away the taste of meat. + The balmy breeze comes down from heaven, + And makes us like for to be living.” + +“The casawary is an curious bird, and so is the gigantic crane, and +the pelican of the wilderness, whose mouth holds a bucket of fish and +water. Fighting is what ladies is not qualyfied for, they would not +make a good figure in battle or in a duel. Alas! we females are of +little use to our country. The history of all the malcontents as ever +was hanged is amusing.” Still harping on the Newgate Calendar! + +“Braehead is extremely pleasant to me by the companie of swine, geese, +cocks, etc., and they are the delight of my soul.” + +“I am going to tell you of a melancholy story. A young turkie of 2 or +3 months old, would you believe it, the father broke its leg, and he +killed another! I think he ought to be transported or hanged.” + +“Queen Street is a very gay one, and so is Princes Street, for all the +lads and lasses, besides bucks and beggars parade there.” + +“I should like to see a play very much, for I never saw one in all +my life, and don’t believe I ever shall; but I hope I can be content +without going to one. I can be quite happy without my desire being +granted.” + +“Some days ago Isabella had a terrible fit of the toothake, and she +walked with a long nightshift at dead of night like a ghost, and I +thought she was one. She prayed for nature’s sweet restorer--balmy +sleep--but did not get it--a ghostly figure indeed she was, enough to +make a saint tremble. It made me quiver and shake from top to toe. +Superstition is a very mean thing and should be despised and shunned.” + +Here is her weakness and her strength again:--“In the love-novels all +the heroines are very desperate. Isabella will not allow me to speak +about lovers and heroins, and ’tis too refined for my taste.” “Miss +Egward’s (Edgeworth’s) tails are very good, particularly some that are +very much adapted for youth (!) as Laz Laurance and Tarelton, False +Keys, etc. etc.” + +“Tom Jones and Grey’s Elegey in a country churchyard are both +excellent, and much spoke of by both sex, particularly by the men.” Are +our Marjories now-a-days better or worse because they cannot read Tom +Jones unharmed? More better than worse; but who among them can repeat +Gray’s Lines on a distant prospect of Eton College as could our Maidie? + +Here is some more of her prattle: “I went into Isabella’s bed to make +her smile like the Genius Demedicus” (the Venus de Medicis) “or the +statute in an ancient Greece, but she fell asleep in my very face, at +which my anger broke forth, so that I awoke her from a comfortable nap. +All was now hushed up again, but again my anger burst forth at her +biding me get up.” + +She begins thus loftily:-- + + “Death the righteous love to see, + But from it doth the wicked flee.” + +Then suddenly breaks off as if with laughter,-- + + “I am sure they fly as fast as their legs can carry them!” + + “There is a thing I love to see,-- + That is, our monkey catch a flee!” + + “I love in Isa’s bed to lie,-- + Oh, such a joy and luxury! + The bottom of the bed I sleep, + And with great care within I creep; + Oft I embrace her feet of lillys, + But she has goton all the pillys. + Her neck I never can embrace, + But I do hug her feet in place.” + +How childish and yet how strong and free is her use of words!--“I +lay at the foot of the bed because Isabella said I disturbed her by +continial fighting and kicking, but I was very dull, and continially +at work reading the Arabian Nights, which I could not have done if I +had slept at the top. I am reading the Mysteries of Udolpho. I am much +interested in the fate of poor, poor Emily.” + +Here is one of her swains:-- + + “Very soft and white his cheeks; + His hair is red, and grey his breeks; + His tooth is like the daisy fair: + His only fault is in his hair.” + +This is a higher flight:-- + + + “DEDICATED TO MRS. H. CRAWFORD BY THE AUTHOR, M. F. + + Three turkeys fair their last have breathed, + And now this world forever leaved; + Their father, and their mother too, + They sigh and weep as well as you: + Indeed, the rats their bones have crunched; + Into eternity theire laanched. + A direful death indeed they had, + As wad put any parent mad; + But she was more than usual calm: + She did not give a single dam.” + +This last word is saved from all sin by its tender age, not to speak of +the want of the _n_. We fear “she” is the abandoned mother, in +spite of her previous sighs and tears. + +“Isabella says when we pray we should pray fervently, and not rattel +over a prayer,--for that we are kneeling at the footstool of our +Lord and Creator, who saves us from eternal damnation, and from +unquestionable fire and brimston.” + +She has a long poem on Mary Queen of Scots:-- + + “Queen Mary was much loved by all, + Both by the great and by the small; + But hark! her soul to heaven doth rise, + And I suppose she has gained a prize; + For I do think she would not go + Into the _awful_ place below. + There is a thing that I must tell,-- + Elizabeth went to fire and hell! + He who would teach her to be civil, + It must be her great friend, the divil!” + +She hits off Darnley well:-- + + “A noble’s son,--a handsome lad,-- + By some queer way or other, had + Got quite the better of her heart; + With him she always talked apart: + Silly he was, but very fair; + A greater buck was not found there.” + +“By some queer way or other”; is not this the general case and the +mystery, young ladies and gentlemen? Goethe’s doctrine of “elective +affinities” discovered by our Pet Maidie. + + + SONNET TO A MONKEY. + + “O lively, O most charming pug! + Thy graceful air and heavenly mug! + The beauties of his mind do shine, + And every bit is shaped and fine. + Your teeth are whiter than the snow; + Your a great buck, your a great beau; + Your eyes are of so nice a shape, + More like a Christian’s than an ape; + Your cheek is like the rose’s blume; + Your hair is like the raven’s plume; + His nose’s cast is of the Roman: + He is a very pretty woman. + I could not get a rhyme for Roman, + So was obliged to call him woman.” + +This last joke is good. She repeats it when writing of James the Second +being killed at Roxburgh:-- + + “He was killed by a cannon splinter, + Quite in the middle of the winter; + Perhaps it was not at that time, + But I can get no other rhyme!” + +Here is one of her last letters, dated Kirkcaldy, 12th October, 1811. +You can see how her nature is deepening and enriching:-- + + + “MY DEAR MOTHER,--You will think that I entirely forget + you but I assure you that you are greatly mistaken I think of you + always and often sigh to think of the distance between us two loving + creatures of nature. We have regular hours for all our occupations + first at 7 o’clock we go to the dancing and come home at 8 we then + read our Bible and get our repeating, and then play till ten, then + we get our music till 11 when we get our writing and accounts we sew + from 12 till 1 after which I get my gramer and then work till five. At + 7 we come and knit till 8 when we dont go to the dancing. This is an + exact description. I must take a hasty farewell to her whom I love, + reverence and doat on and who I hope thinks the same of + +“MARJORY FLEMING. + + “_P. S._--An old pack of cards (!) would be very exeptible.” + + +This other is a month earlier:-- + + + “MY DEAR LITTLE MAMA,--I was truly happy to hear that you + were all well. We are surrounded with measles at present on every + side, for the Herons got it and Isabella Heron was near Death’s + Door, and one night her father lifted her out of bed, and she fell + down as they thought lifeless. Mr. Heron said, ‘That lassie’s deed + noo,’--‘I’m no deed yet.’ She then threw up a big worm nine inches + and a half long. I have begun dancing, but am not very fond of it, + for the boys strikes and mocks me.--I have been another night at the + dancing; I like it better. I will write to you as often as I can; but + I am afraid not every week. _I long for you with the longings of a + child to embrace you,--to fold you in my arms. I respect you with all + the respect due to a mother. You dont know how I love you. So I shall + remain your loving child_,--M. FLEMING.” + +What rich involution of love in the words marked! Here are some lines +to her beloved Isabella, in July, 1811:-- + + “There is a thing that I do want,-- + With you these beauteous walks to haunt; + We would be happy if you would + Try to come over if you could. + Then I would all quite happy be + _Now and for all eternity_. + My mother is so very sweet, + _Ana checks my appetite to eat_; + My father shows us what to do; + But O I’m sure that I want you. + I have no more of poetry; + O Isa do remember me, + And try to love your Marjory.” + +In a letter from “Isa” to + + “Miss Muff Maidie Marjory Fleming, + favored by Rare Rear-Admiral Fleming,” + +she says: “I long much to see you, and talk over all our old stories +together, and to hear you read and repeat. I am pining for my old +friend Cesario, and poor Lear, and wicked Richard. How is the dear +Multiplication table going on? Are you still as much attached to 9 +times 9 as you used to be?” + +But this dainty, bright thing is about to flee,--to come “quick to +confusion.” The measles she writes of seized her, and she died on the +19th of December, 1811. The day before her death, Sunday, she sat up +in bed, worn and thin, her eye gleaming as with the light of a coming +world, and with a tremulous, old voice repeated the following lines by +Burns,--heavy with the shadow of death, and lit with the phantasy of +the judgment-seat,--the publican’s prayer in paraphrase:-- + + “Why am I loth to leave this earthly scene? + Have I so found it full of pleasing charms?-- + Some drops of joy, with draughts of ill between, + Some gleams of sunshine ’mid renewing storms? + Is it departing pangs my soul alarms? + Or Death’s unlovely, dreary, dark abode? + For guilt, for GUILT, my terrors are in arms; + I tremble to approach an angry God, + And justly smart beneath his sin-avenging rod. + + “Fain would I say, Forgive my foul offence, + Fain promise never more to disobey; + But should my Author health again dispense, + Again I might forsake fair virtue’s way, + Again in folly’s path might go astray, + Again exalt the brute and sink the man. + Then how should I for heavenly mercy pray, + Who act so counter heavenly mercy’s plan, + Who sin so oft have mourned, yet to temptation ran? + + “O thou great Governor of all below, + If I might dare a lifted eye to thee, + Thy nod can make the tempest cease to blow, + And still the tumult of the raging sea; + With that controlling power assist even me + Those headstrong furious passions to confine, + For all unfit I feel my powers to be + To rule their torrent in the allowed line; + O aid me with thy help, OMNIPOTENCE DIVINE.” + +It is more affecting than we care to say to read her Mother’s and +Isabella Keith’s letters written immediately after her death. Old and +withered, tattered and pale, they are now: but when you read them, how +quick, how throbbing with life and love! how rich in that language of +affection which only women and Shakespeare and Luther can use,--that +power of detaining the soul over the beloved object and its loss! + + “_K. Philip to Constance_-- + You are as fond of grief as of your child. + + _Const._--Grief fills the room up of my absent child, + Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me; + Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, + Remembers me of all his gracious parts, + Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form, + Then I have reason to be fond of grief.” + +What variations cannot love play on this one string! + +In her first letter to Miss Keith, Mrs. Fleming says of her dead +Maidie: “Never did I behold so beautiful an object. It resembled +the finest wax-work. There was in the countenance an expression of +sweetness and serenity which seemed to indicate that the pure spirit +had anticipated the joys of heaven ere it quitted the mortal frame. +To tell you what your Maidie said of you would fill volumes; for you +was the constant theme of her discourse, the subject of her thoughts, +and ruler of her actions. The last time she mentioned you was a few +hours before all sense save that of suffering was suspended, when +she said to Dr. Johnstone, ‘If you let me out at the New Year, I will +be quite contented.’ I asked her what made her so anxious to get out +then? ‘I want to purchase a New Year’s gift for Isa Keith with the +sixpence you gave me for being patient in the measeles; and I would +like to choose it myself.’ I do not remember her speaking afterwards, +except to complain of her head, till just before she expired, when she +articulated, ‘O mother! mother!’” + + +Do we make too much of this little child, who has been in her grave +in Abbotshall Kirkyard these fifty and more years? We may of her +cleverness,--not of her affectionateness, her nature. What a picture +the _animosa infans_ gives us of herself,--her vivacity, her +passionateness, her precocious love-making, her passion for nature, for +swine, for all living things, her reading, her turn for expression, +her satire, her frankness, her little sins and rages, her great +repentances! We don’t wonder Walter Scott carried her off in the neuk +of his plaid, and played himself with her for hours. + +The year before she died, when in Edinburgh, she was at a Twelfth Night +Supper at Scott’s, in Castle Street. The company had all come,--all +but Marjorie. Scott’s familiars, whom we all know, were there,--all +were come but Marjorie; and all were dull because Scott was dull. +“Where’s that bairn? what can have come over her? I’ll go myself +and see.” And he was getting up, and would have gone; when the bell +rang, and in came Duncan Roy and his henchman Tougald, with the sedan +chair, which was brought right into the lobby, and its top raised. +And there, in its darkness and dingy old cloth, sat Maidie in white, +her eyes gleaming, and Scott bending over her in ecstasy--“hung over +her enamored.” “Sit ye there, my dautie, till they all see you”; and +forthwith he brought them all. You can fancy the scene. And he lifted +her up and marched to his seat with her on his stout shoulder, and +set her down beside him; and then began the night, and such a night! +Those who knew Scott best said, that night was never equalled; Maidie +and he were the stars; and she gave them _Constance’s_ speeches +and _Helvellyn_, the ballad then much in vogue, and all her +_répertoire_,--Scott showing her off, and being ofttimes rebuked +by her for his intentional blunders. + +We are indebted for the following--and our readers will be not +unwilling to share our obligations--to her sister: “Her birth was 15th +January, 1803; her death, 19th December, 1811. I take this from her +Bibles.[3] I believe she was a child of robust health, of much vigor +of body, and beautifully formed arms, and, until her last illness, +never was an hour in bed. She was niece to Mrs. Keith, residing in +No. 1 North Charlotte Street, who was _not_ Mrs. Murray Keith, +although very intimately acquainted with that old lady. My aunt was a +daughter of Mr. James Rae, surgeon, and married the younger son of old +Keith of Ravelstone. Corstorphine Hill belonged to my aunt’s husband; +and his eldest son, Sir Alexander Keith, succeeded his uncle to both +Ravelstone and Dunnottar. The Keiths were not connected by relationship +with the Howisons of Braehead, but my grandfather and grandmother +(who was), a daughter of Cant of Thurston and Giles-Grange, were on +the most intimate footing with _our_ Mrs. Keith’s grandfather +and grandmother; and so it has been for three generations, and the +friendship consummated by my cousin William Keith marrying Isabella +Craufurd. + +“As to my aunt and Scott, they were on a very intimate footing. He +asked my aunt to be godmother to his eldest daughter Sophia Charlotte. +I had a copy of Miss Edgeworth’s ‘Rosamond, and Harry and Lucy’ for +long, which was ‘a gift to Marjorie from Walter Scott,’ probably +the first edition of that attractive series, for it wanted ‘Frank,’ +which is always now published as part of the series, under the title +of _Early Lessons_. I regret to say these little volumes have +disappeared. + +“Sir Walter was no relation of Marjorie’s, but of the Keiths, through +the Swintons; and, like Marjorie, he stayed much at Ravelstone in his +early days, with his grandaunt Mrs. Keith; and it was while seeing him +there as a boy, that another aunt of mine composed, when he was about +fourteen, the lines prognosticating his future fame that Lockhart +ascribes in his Life to Mrs. Cockburn, authoress of ‘The Flowers of the +Forest’:-- + + “Go on, dear youth, the glorious path pursue + Which bounteous Nature kindly smooths for you; + Go bid the seeds her hands have sown arise, + By timely culture, to their native skies; + Go, and employ the poet’s heavenly art, + Not merely to delight, but mend the heart.” + +Mrs. Keir was my aunt’s name, another of Dr. Rae’s daughters.” We +cannot better end than in words from this same pen: “I have to ask +you to forgive my anxiety in gathering up the fragments of Marjorie’s +last days, but I have an almost sacred feeling to all that pertains to +her. You are quite correct in stating that measles were the cause of +her death. My mother was struck by the patient quietness manifested by +Marjorie during this illness, unlike her ardent, impulsive nature; but +love and poetic feeling were unquenched. When Dr. Johnstone rewarded +her submissiveness with a sixpence, the request speedily followed that +she might get out ere New Year’s day came. When asked why she was so +desirous of getting out, she immediately rejoined, ‘Oh, I am so anxious +to buy something with my sixpence for my dear Isa Keith.’ Again, when +lying very still, her mother asked her if there was anything she +wished: ‘Oh yes! if you would just leave the room door open a wee bit, +and play ‘The Land o’ the Leal,’ and I will lie and _think_, and +enjoy myself’ (this is just as stated to me by her mother and mine). +Well, the happy day came, alike to parents and child, when Marjorie was +allowed to come forth from the nursery to the parlor. It was Sabbath +evening, and after tea. My father, who idolized this child, and never +afterwards in my hearing mentioned her name, took her in his arms; +and, while walking her up and down the room, she said, ‘Father, I will +repeat something to you; what would you like?’ He said, ‘Just choose +yourself, Maidie.’ She hesitated for a moment between the paraphrase, +‘Few are thy days, and full of woe,’ and the lines of Burns already +quoted, but decided on the latter, a remarkable choice for a child. +The repeating these lines seemed to stir up the depths of feeling in +her soul. She asked to be allowed to write a poem; there was a doubt +whether it would be right to allow her, in case of hurting her eyes. +She pleaded earnestly, ‘Just this once’; the point was yielded, her +slate was given her, and with great rapidity she wrote an address of +fourteen lines, ‘to her loved cousin on the author’s recovery,’ her +last work on earth:-- + + ‘Oh! Isa, pain did visit me, + I was at the last extremity; + How often did I think of you, + I wished your graceful form to view, + To clasp you in my weak embrace, + Indeed I thought I’d run my race: + Good care, I’m sure, was of me taken, + But still indeed I was much shaken, + At last I daily strength did gain, + And oh! at last, away went pain; + At length the doctor thought I might + Stay in the parlor all the night; + I now continue so to do, + Farewell to Nancy and to you.’ + +“She went to bed apparently well, awoke in the middle of the night with +the old cry of woe to a mother’s heart, ‘My head, my head!’ Three days +of the dire malady, ‘water in the head,’ followed, and the end came.” + + “Soft, silken primrose, fading timelessly.” + +It is needless, it is impossible, to add anything to this: the fervor, +the sweetness, the flush of poetic ecstasy, the lovely and glowing eye, +the perfect nature of that bright and warm intelligence, that darling +child,--Lady Nairne’s words, and the old tune, stealing up from the +depths of the human heart, deep calling unto deep, gentle and strong +like the waves of the great sea hushing themselves to sleep in the +dark; the words of Burns, touching the kindred chord, her last numbers +“wildly sweet” traced, with thin and eager fingers, already touched by +the last enemy and friend,--_moriens canit_,--and that love which +is so soon to be her everlasting light, is her song’s burden to the end. + + “She set as sets the morning star, which goes + Not down behind the darkened west, nor hides + Obscured among the tempests of the sky, + But melts away into the light of heaven.” + + +Cambridge: Stereotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 1: This favorite dog “died about January, 1809, and was +buried, in a fine moonlight night, in the little garden behind the +house in Castle Street. My wife tells me she remembers the whole family +in tears about the grave, as her father himself smoothed the turf above +Camp with the saddest face she had ever seen. He had been engaged to +dine abroad that day, but apologized on account of the death of ‘a dear +old friend.’”--Lockhart’s _Life of Scott_.] + +[Footnote 2: Applied to a pump when it is dry and its valve has lost +its “fang”; from the German, _fangen_, to hold.] + +[Footnote 3: “Her Bible is before me; _a pair_, as then called; +the faded marks are just as she placed them. There is one at David’s +lament over Jonathan.”] + + + + + MARJORIE FLEMING. + + + A SKETCH. + + + + + BEING THE PAPER ENTITLED + + + + + “_PET MARJORIE: A STORY OF CHILD-LIFE + FIFTY YEARS AGO._” + + + + + BY JOHN BROWN, M. D., + AUTHOR OF “RAB AND HIS FRIENDS.” + + + + + BOSTON: + TICKNOR AND FIELDS. + 1864. + + + + + DR. BROWN’S WRITINGS. + + + SPARE HOURS; + + + BY JOHN BROWN, M. D. + + 1 vol. 12mo. $1.50. + +The author of “Rab and his Friends” scarcely needs an introduction +to American readers. By this time many have learned to agree, with a +writer in the NORTH BRITISH REVIEW, that “Rab” is, all things +considered, the most perfect prose narrative since Lamb’s “Rosamond +Gray.” + + + [From the LONDON TIMES, October 21.] + + “Of all the John Browns, commend us to Dr. John Brown, the physician, + the man of genius, the humorist, the student of men, women, and dogs. + By means of two beautiful volumes he has given the public a share of + his by-hours, and more pleasant hours it would be difficult to find in + any life. + + “Dr. Brown’s master-piece is the story of a dog called ‘Rab.’ The tale + moves from the most tragic pathos to the most reckless humor, and + could not have been written but by a man of genius. Whether it moves + to laughter or to tears, it is perfect in its way, and immortalizes + its author.” + + + RAB AND HIS FRIENDS. + + 3d edition. 1 vol. 16mo. Paper. 15 cents. + + + [From the MORNING HERALD.] + + “Who is he that has not heard of, if not read, ‘Rab and his Friends’? + We suppose that there have been few stories ever printed which, in so + short a time, won for their author fame. Certainly never was a story + so short and so pathetic, so full of joyous tears, so brimming with + the actions from which spring sacred pity. We do not envy the man, and + we cannot imagine the woman or girl, who could read the story of ‘Rab + and his Friends’ without tears actual or imminent.” + + + [From CHAMBERS’ JOURNAL.] + + “What Landseer is upon canvas, that Dr. Brown is upon paper. The + canine family was never before so well represented in literature.” + + + PET MARJORIE. + + 1 vol. 16mo. Paper. 25 cents. + + +» For sale by all booksellers, or sent, _postpaid_, to any address +on receipt of the price, by the publishers, + + =TICKNOR & FIELDS, Boston=. + + + + + MR. LONGFELLOW’S NEW VOLUME. + + +The recent publication of Mr. Longfellow’s new work may justly be +regarded as one of the most important events in the literature of the +year. The work itself is pronounced by competent critics the most +finished production of the poet’s genius. + + + TALES OF A WAYSIDE INN, + + _AND OTHER POEMS_. + + BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. + + 1 vol. 16mo. $1.25. + +Handsomely bound in muslin, bevelled boards, and gilt top. + +» Sent, _postpaid_, to any address on receipt of the price, by the +publishers, + + =TICKNOR & FIELDS=, + =135 Washington St., Boston=. + + + + + THE GREAT BATTLE BOOK. + + + TICKNOR & FIELDS have just published + + My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field. + + BY “CARLETON.” + +1 vol. 12mo. Profusely illustrated with Engravings, Maps, and Diagrams. +$1.00. + +The object of this book is to tell the youth of America, in plain and +simple terms, + + + _THE CAUSES OF THE REBELLION_; + +to give them an idea of the valor and courage of their fathers and +brothers, who are now upholding the national cause by fighting + + + _THE BATTLES OF THEIR COUNTRY_. + +With this view, the author has given authentic and vivid descriptions +of some of the most important battles of the war, drawn from his +own personal observations, and has thus made his work at once an +ABSORBING NARRATIVE and a TRUTHFUL HISTORY of the war. + +All parents who desire their sons to have a clear and distinct idea of +the nature of the struggle through which the country is passing, should +buy this book. “CARLETON,” the author, is well known as one of +the best and most reliable of the army correspondents. + +» A copy sent, _postpaid_, to any address on receipt of ONE +DOLLAR, by the publishers, + + =TICKNOR & FIELDS, Boston=. + + + + + CHOICE NEW BOOKS, + + LATELY PUBLISHED BY + + TICKNOR AND FIELDS, BOSTON. + + + _THE LIFE OF WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT_, Author of “The Conquest + of Mexico,” “The Conquest of Peru,” etc. By GEORGE TICKNOR, + Author of the “History of Spanish Literature.” 1 vol. Quarto. + Illustrated with Steel Portraits, Wood Cuts, and Autographs, and + elegantly printed and bound. $7.50. + + _TALES OF A WAYSIDE INN_, and Other Poems. By HENRY WADSWORTH + LONGFELLOW. With Vignette Illustration by F. O. C. Darley. 1 vol. + 16mo. Bevelled and gilt. $1.25. + + _THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF JOHN WINTHROP._ By ROBERT C. + WINTHROP. 1 vol. 8vo. Handsomely bound in muslin, with Steel + Portraits and Wood Engravings. $3.00. + + _HOUSEHOLD FRIENDS._ A book for all seasons. Illustrated with + Engravings on Steel. 1 vol. Small 4to. Cloth, handsomely stamped. + $3.00. Also for sale in elegant Turkey morocco. $6.00. + + _ANGEL VOICES_; or, Words of Counsel for Overcoming the World. An + entirely new edition. 1 vol. Small 4to. Cloth, appropriately stamped. + $2.00. + + _LITTLE ANNA._ A Story for Pleasant Little Children. By + A. STEIN. Translated from the German. 1 vol. 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Bevelled boards and red edges. + $1.50. + + _FREEDOM AND WAR._ Discourses connected with the Times. By Rev. + HENRY WARD BEECHER. 1 vol. 12mo. $1.50. + +» Copies of the above sent _postpaid_, on receipt of the +advertised price, by the publishers. + + =135 Washington Street, Boston.= + + + + + =TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES= + + +Simple typographical errors have been silently corrected. Punctuation, +hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant +preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not +changed. + +Inconsistent quotation marks left as printed. + +In order to get proper compatibility for epubs versions, white right +pointing index unicode character was replaced by right-pointing double +angle quotation mark. + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75718 *** diff --git a/75718-h/75718-h.htm b/75718-h/75718-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..53edab9 --- /dev/null +++ b/75718-h/75718-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,1858 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html lang="en"> +<head> + <meta charset="UTF-8"> + <title> + Marjorie Fleming | Project Gutenberg + </title> + <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover"> + <style> + +body { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + +/* General headers */ + +h1 { + text-align: center; + clear: both; +} + +h2, h3 { + text-align: center; + font-weight: bold; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + +p { + margin-top: .51em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .49em; + text-indent: 1.5em; +} + +.nind {text-indent:0;} + +.nindc {text-align:center; text-indent:0;} + +.large {font-size: 125%;} + +.space-above2 { margin-top: 2em; } +.space-below2 { margin-bottom: 2em; } + +.spa1 { + margin-top: 1em + } + +hr { + width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: 33.5%; + margin-right: 33.5%; + clear: both; +} + +.hanging2 {padding-left: 2em; + text-indent: -2em; + } + +hr.chap {width: 65%; margin-left: 17.5%; margin-right: 17.5%;} +@media print { hr.chap {display: none; visibility: hidden;} } + +hr.r5 {width: 5%; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 47.5%; margin-right: 47.5%;} +hr.r65 {width: 65%; margin-top: 3em; margin-bottom: 3em; margin-left: 17.5%; margin-right: 17.5%;} + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always;} +h2.nobreak {page-break-before: avoid;} + +.pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */ + /* visibility: hidden; */ + position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: small; + text-align: right; + font-style: normal; + font-weight: normal; + font-variant: normal; + text-indent: 0; +} /* page numbers */ + +.blockquot { + margin-left: 5%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + +/* Dropcap */ + +.dropcap { + float: left; + font-size: 250%; + margin-top:-.7%; +} + +p.dropcap:first-letter +{ + color: transparent; + visibility: hidden; + margin-left: -0.9em; +} + +.right {text-align: right;} + +.allsmcap {font-variant: small-caps; text-transform: lowercase;} + + +/* Images */ + +img { + max-width: 100%; + width: 100%; + height: auto + } + +.width500 { + max-width: 500px + } + +.x-ebookmaker img { + width: 80% + } + +.x-ebookmaker .width500 { + width: 100% + } + + +.figcenter { + margin: auto; + text-align: center; + page-break-inside: avoid; + max-width: 100%; +} + +/* Footnotes */ +.footnotes {border: 1px dashed;} + +.footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} + +.footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;} + +.fnanchor { + vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: + none; +} + +/* Poetry */ +/* uncomment the next line for centered poetry */ +.poetry-container {display: flex; justify-content: center;} +.poetry-container {text-align: center;} +.poetry {text-align: left; margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%;} +.poetry .stanza {margin: 1em auto;} +.poetry .verse {text-indent: -3em; padding-left: 3em;} + +/* Transcriber's notes */ +.transnote {background-color: #E6E6FA; + color: black; + font-size:small; + padding:0.5em; + margin-bottom:5em; + font-family:sans-serif, serif; +} + +/* Poetry indents */ +.poetry .indent0 {text-indent: -3em;} +.poetry .indent1 {text-indent: -2.5em;} +.poetry .indent10 {text-indent: 2em;} +.poetry .indent2 {text-indent: -2em;} +.poetry .indent3 {text-indent: -1.5em;} +.poetry .indent4 {text-indent: -1em;} + + + </style> +</head> +<body> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75718 ***</div> + + +<figure class="figcenter width500" id="cover" style="width: 1600px;"><br> +<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="1600" height="2725" alt="A touching biographical appreciation on the Scottish child poet Marjorie Fleming, who died at the age of eight."> +</figure> + + + + +<h1>MARJORIE FLEMING.</h1> + + +<p class="nindc space-above2 space-below2"> +<span class="large">A SKETCH.</span></p> + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2 space-below2"> +<span class="allsmcap">BEING THE PAPER ENTITLED</span></p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2 space-below2"> +“<i>PET MARJORIE: A STORY OF CHILD-LIFE<br> +FIFTY YEARS AGO</i>.”</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2 space-below2"><span class="large">BY</span> JOHN BROWN, M. D.,<br> +<span class="allsmcap">AUTHOR OF “RAB AND HIS FRIENDS.</span>”</p> + + +<figure class="figcenter width500" id="logo" style="width: 200px;"> +<img src="images/logo.jpg" width="200" height="257" alt="decorative"> +</figure> + + +<p class="nindc">BOSTON:<br> +TICKNOR AND FIELDS.<br> +<span class="allsmcap">1864.</span> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="NOTE">NOTE.</h2> +</div> + + +<p>THE separate publication of this sketch has been forced upon me by the +“somewhat free use” made of it in a second and thereby enlarged edition +of the “little book” to which I owe my <i>introduction</i> to Marjorie +Fleming,—but nothing more; a “use” so exceedingly “free” as to extend +almost to everything with which I had ventured perhaps to encumber the +letters and journals of that dear child. To be called “kind and genial” +by the individual who devised this edition has, strange as he may think +it, altogether failed to console me. Empty praise without the solid +pudding is proverbially a thing of naught; but what shall we say of +praise the emptiness of which is aggravated, not merely by the absence, +but by the actual abstraction, of the pudding?</p> + +<p>This little act of conveyancing—this “engaging compilation,” as he +would have called it—puts me in mind of that pleasant joke in the +preface to “Essays by Mr. Goldsmith”: “I would desire in this case, to +imitate that fat man whom I have somewhere heard of in a shipwreck, who +when the sailors, prest by famine, were taking slices from his body, to +satisfy their hunger, insisted with great justice on having the first +cut for himself.”</p> + +<p>I have to thank the proprietors of the <i>North British Review</i> for +permitting this reprint.</p> + +<p class="right"> +J. B.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + + +<div class="chapter"> +<p class="nindc"> +<i>To</i><br> +<br> +MISS FLEMING,<br> +<br> +<span class="allsmcap">TO WHOM I AM INDEBTED FOR ALL ITS MATERIALS,</span><br> +<br> +<i>THIS MEMORIAL</i><br> +<br> +<span class="allsmcap">OF HER DEAR AND UNFORGOTTEN</span><br> +<br> +MAIDIE<br> +<br> +<span class="allsmcap">IS GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED.</span><br> +</p> +</div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</span></p> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="MARJORIE_FLEMING">MARJORIE FLEMING.</h2> +</div> + + +<p class="nind"> +<span class="dropcap">O</span>NE November afternoon in 1810,—the year in which <i>Waverley</i> was +resumed and laid aside again, to be finished off, its last two volumes +in three weeks, and made immortal in 1814, and when its author, by the +death of Lord Melville, narrowly escaped getting a civil appointment +in India,—three men, evidently lawyers, might have been seen escaping +like school-boys from the Parliament House, and speeding arm in arm +down Bank Street and the Mound, in the teeth of a surly blast of sleet.</p> + +<p>The three friends sought the <i>bield</i> of the low wall old Edinburgh +boys remember well, and sometimes miss now, as they struggle with the +stout west wind.</p> + +<p>The three were curiously unlike each other. One, “a little man of +feeble make, who would be unhappy if his pony got beyond a foot pace,” +slight, with “small, elegant features, hectic cheek, and soft hazel +eyes, the index of the quick, sensitive spirit within, as if he had +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</span> +the warm heart of a woman, her genuine enthusiasm, and some of her +weaknesses.” Another, as unlike a woman as a man can be; homely, +almost common, in look and figure; his hat and his coat, and indeed +his entire covering, worn to the quick, but all of the best material; +what redeemed him from vulgarity and meanness were his eyes, deep set, +heavily thatched, keen, hungry, shrewd, with a slumbering glow far +in, as if they could be dangerous; a man to care nothing for at first +glance, but, somehow, to give a second and not-forgetting look at. The +third was the biggest of the three, and though lame, nimble, and all +rough and alive with power; had you met him anywhere else, you would +say he was a Liddesdale store-farmer, come of gentle blood; “a stout, +blunt carle,” as he says of himself, with the swing and stride and the +eye of a man of the hills,—a large, sunny, out-of-door air all about +him. On his broad and somewhat stooping shoulders was set that head +which, with Shakespeare’s and Bonaparte’s, is the best known in all the +world.</p> + +<p>He was in high spirits, keeping his companions and himself in roars +of laughter, and every now and then seizing them, and stopping, that +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</span> +they might take their fill of the fun; there they stood shaking with +laughter, “not an inch of their body free” from its grip. At George +Street they parted, one to Rose Court, behind St. Andrew’s Church, one +to Albany Street, the other, our big and limping friend, to Castle +Street.</p> + +<p>We need hardly give their names. The first was William Erskine, +afterwards Lord Kinnedder, chased out of the world by a calumny, killed +by its foul breath,—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“And at the touch of wrong, without a strife,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Slipped in a moment out of life.”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p class="nind"> +There is nothing in literature more beautiful or more pathetic than +Scott’s love and sorrow for this friend of his youth.</p> + +<p>The second was William Clerk,—the <i>Darsie Latimer</i> of +<i>Redgauntlet</i>; “a man,” as Scott says, “of the most acute +intellects and powerful apprehension,” but of more powerful indolence, +so as to leave the world with little more than the report of what he +might have been,—a humorist as genuine, though not quite so savagely +Swiftian as his brother Lord Eldin, neither of whom had much of that +commonest and best of all the humors, called good.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</span></p> + +<p>The third we all know. What has he not done for every one of us? Who +else ever, except Shakespeare, so diverted mankind, entertained and +entertains a world so liberally, so wholesomely? We are fain to say, +not even Shakespeare, for his is something deeper than diversion, +something higher than pleasure, and yet who would care to split this +hair?</p> + +<p>Had any one watched him closely before and after the parting, what +a change he would see! The bright, broad laugh, the shrewd, jovial +word, the man of the Parliament House and of the world, and, next +step, moody, the light of his eye withdrawn, as if seeing things that +were invisible; his shut mouth, like a child’s, so impressionable, +so innocent, so sad: he was now all within, as before he was all +without; hence his brooding look. As the snow blattered in his face, +he muttered, “How it raves and drifts! On-ding o’ snaw—ay, that’s +the word—on-ding—.” He was now at his own door, “Castle Street, No. +39.” He opened the door, and went straight to his den; that wondrous +workshop, where, in one year, 1823, when he was fifty-two, he wrote +<i>Peveril of the Peak</i>, <i>Quentin Durward</i>, and <i>St. Ronan’s +Well</i>, besides much else. We once took the foremost of our +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</span> +novelists, the greatest, we would say, since Scott, into this room, and +could not but mark the solemnizing effect of sitting where the great +magician sat so often and so long, and looking out upon that little +shabby bit of sky, and that back green where faithful Camp lies.<a id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p> + +<p>He sat down in his large, green morocco elbow-chair, drew himself close +to his table, and glowered and gloomed at his writing apparatus, “a +very handsome old box, richly carved, lined with crimson velvet, and +containing ink-bottles, taper-stand, etc., in silver, the whole in such +order that it might have come from the silversmith’s window half an +hour before.” He took out his paper, then, starting up angrily, said, +“‘Go spin, you jade, go spin.’ No, d— it, it won’t do:—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘My spinnin’-wheel is auld and stiff;</div> + <div class="verse indent2">The rock o ’t wunna stand, sir;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To keep the temper-pin in tiff</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Employs ower aft my hand, sir.’</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</span></p> + +<p class="nind"> +I am off the fang.<a id="FNanchor_2" href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> I can make nothing of <i>Waverley</i> to-day; +I’ll awa’ to Marjorie. Come wi’ me, Maida, you thief.” The great +creature rose slowly, and the pair were off, Scott taking a <i>maud</i> +(a plaid) with him. “White as a frosted plum-cake, by jingo!” said he, +when he got to the street. Maida gambolled and whisked among the snow; +and his master strode across to Young Street, and through it to 1 North +Charlotte Street, to the house of his dear friend, Mrs. William Keith +of Corstorphine Hill, niece of Mrs. Keith of Ravelston, of whom he said +at her death, eight years after, “Much tradition, and that of the best, +has died with this excellent old lady, one of the few persons whose +spirits and <i>cleanliness</i> and freshness of mind and body made old +age lovely and desirable.”</p> + +<p>Sir Walter was in that house almost every day, and had a key, so in +he and the hound went, shaking themselves in the lobby. “Marjorie! +Marjorie!” shouted her friend, “where are ye, my bonnie wee croodlin +doo?” In a moment a bright, eager child of seven was in his arms, and +he was kissing her all over. Out came Mrs. Keith. “Come yer ways in, +Wattie.” “No, not now. I am going to take Marjorie wi’ me, and you +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</span> +may come to your tea in Duncan Roy’s sedan, and bring the bairn home +in your lap.” “Tak’ Marjorie, and it <i>on-ding o’ snaw</i>!” said +Mrs. Keith. He said to himself, “On-ding—that’s odd—that is the +very word.” “Hoot, awa! look here,” and he displayed the corner of +his plaid, made to hold lambs,—the true shepherd’s plaid, consisting +of two breadths sewed together, and uncut at one end, making a poke +or <i>cul de sac</i>. “Tak’ yer lamb,” said she, laughing at the +contrivance; and so the Pet was first well happit up, and then put, +laughing silently, into the plaid neuk, and the shepherd strode off +with his lamb,—Maida gambolling through the snow, and running races in +her mirth.</p> + +<p>Didn’t he face “the angry airt,” and make her bield his bosom, and +into his own room with her, and lock the door, and out with the warm, +rosy, little wifie, who took it all with great composure! There the +two remained for three or more hours, making the house ring with their +laughter; you can fancy the big man’s and Maidie’s laugh. Having made +the fire cheery, he set her down in his ample chair, and, standing +sheepishly before her, began to say his lesson, which happened to +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</span> +be—“Ziccotty, diccotty, dock, the mouse ran up the clock, the clock +struck wan, down the mouse ran, ziccotty, diccotty, dock.” This done +repeatedly till she was pleased, she gave him his new lesson, gravely +and slowly, timing it upon her small fingers,—he saying it after her,—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“Wonery, twoery, tickery, seven;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Alibi, crackaby, ten, and eleven;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Pin, pan, musky, dan;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Tweedle-um, twoddle-um,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Twenty-wan; eerie, orie, ourie,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">You, are, out.”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>He pretended to great difficulty, and she rebuked him with most comical +gravity, treating him as a child. He used to say that when he came +to Alibi Crackaby he broke down, and pin-Pan, Musky-dan, Tweedle-um, +Twoddle-um made him roar with laughter. He said <i>Musky-Dan</i> +especially was beyond endurance, bringing up an Irishman and his hat +fresh from the Spice Islands and odoriferous Ind; she getting quite +bitter in her displeasure at his ill behavior and stupidness.</p> + +<p>Then he would read ballads to her in his own glorious way, the two +getting wild with excitement over <i>Gil Morrice</i> or the <i>Baron +of Smailholm</i>; and he would take her on his knee, and make her +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</span> +repeat Constance’s speeches in <i>King John</i>, till he swayed to +and fro, sobbing his fill. Fancy the gifted little creature, like one +possessed, repeating,—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“For I am sick, and capable of fears,—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Oppressed with wrong, and, therefore, full of fears;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A widow, husbandless, subject to fears;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A woman, naturally born to fears.”</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“If thou, that bidst me be content, wert grim,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Ugly, and slanderous to thy mother’s womb,—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Lame, foolish, crooked, swart, prodigious—.”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>Or, drawing herself up “to the height of her great argument,”—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“I will instruct my sorrows to be proud,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For grief is proud, and makes his owner stout.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Here I and sorrow sit.”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>Scott used to say that he was amazed at her power over him, saying to +Mrs. Keith, “She’s the most extraordinary creature I ever met with, and +her repeating of Shakespeare overpowers me as nothing else does.”</p> + +<p>Thanks to the little book whose title heads this paper, and thanks +still more to the unforgetting sister of this dear child, who has much +of the sensibility and fun of her who has been in her small grave these +fifty and more years, we have now before us the letters and journals +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</span> +of Pet Marjorie: before us lies and gleams her rich brown hair, bright +and sunny as if yesterday’s, with the words on the paper, “Cut out in +her last illness,” and two pictures of her by her beloved Isabella, +whom she worshipped; there are the faded old scraps of paper, hoarded +still, over which her warm breath and her warm little heart had poured +themselves; there is the old water-mark, “Lingard, 1808.” The two +portraits are very like each other, but plainly done at different +times; it is a chubby, healthy face, deep-set, brooding eyes, as eager +to tell what is going on within as to gather in all the glories from +without; quick with the wonder and the pride of life: they are eyes +that would not be soon satisfied with seeing; eyes that would devour +their object, and yet childlike and fearless; and that is a mouth that +will not be soon satisfied with love; it has a curious likeness to +Scott’s own, which has always appeared to us his sweetest, most mobile, +and speaking feature.</p> + +<p>There she is, looking straight at us as she did at him,—fearless, +and full of love, passionate, wild, wilful, fancy’s child. One cannot +look at it without thinking of Wordsworth’s lines on poor Hartley +Coleridge:—</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</span></p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“O blessed vision, happy child!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thou art so exquisitely wild,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I thought of thee with many fears,—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of what might be thy lot in future years.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I thought of times when Pain might be thy guest,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Lord of thy house and hospitality;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And Grief, uneasy lover! ne’er at rest</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But when she sat within the touch of thee.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">O too industrious folly!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">O vain and causeless melancholy!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Nature will either end thee quite,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Or, lengthening out thy season of delight,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Preserve for thee, by individual right,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A young lamb’s heart among the full-grown flock.”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p class="nind"> +And we can imagine Scott, when holding his warm, plump little +playfellow in his arms, repeating that stately friend’s lines:—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“Loving she is, and tractable, though wild;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And Innocence hath privilege in her,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To dignify arch looks and laughing eyes</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And feats of cunning, and the pretty round</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of trespasses, affected to provoke</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Mock chastisement and partnership in play.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And, as a fagot sparkles on the hearth</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Not less if unattended and alone</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Than when both young and old sit gathered round</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And take delight in its activity,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Even so this happy creature of herself</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Is all-sufficient; solitude to her</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Is blithe society: she fills the air</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With gladness and involuntary songs.”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</span></p> + +<p>But we will let her disclose herself. We need hardly say that all this +is true, and that these letters are as really Marjorie’s as was this +light-brown hair; indeed, you could as easily fabricate the one as the +other.</p> + +<p>There was an old servant—Jeanie Robertson—who was forty years in +her grandfather’s family. Marjorie Fleming, or, as she is called in +the letters and by Sir Walter, Maidie, was the last child she kept. +Jeanie’s wages never exceeded £3 a year, and when she left service she +had saved £40. She was devotedly attached to Maidie, rather despising +and ill-using her sister Isabella,—a beautiful and gentle child. +This partiality made Maidie apt at times to domineer over Isabella. +“I mention this,” writes her surviving sister, “for the purpose of +telling you an instance of Maidie’s generous justice. When only five +years old, when walking in Raith grounds, the two children had run on +before, and old Jeanie remembered they might come too near a dangerous +mill-lade. She called to them to turn back. Maidie heeded her not, +rushed all the faster on, and fell, and would have been lost, had her +sister not pulled her back, saving her life, but tearing her clothes. +Jeanie flew on Isabella to “give it her” for spoiling her favorite’s +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</span> +dress; Maidie rushed in between, crying out, “Pay (whip) Maidjie as +much as you like, and I’ll not say one word; but touch Isy, and I’ll +roar like a bull!” Years after Maidie was resting in her grave, my +mother used to take me to the place, and told the story always in +the exact same words.” This Jeanie must have been a character. She +took great pride in exhibiting Maidie’s brother William’s Calvinistic +acquirements when nineteen months old, to the officers of a militia +regiment then quartered in Kirkcaldy. This performance was so amusing +that it was often repeated, and the little theologian was presented by +them with a cap and feathers. Jeanie’s glory was “putting him through +the carritch” (catechism) in broad Scotch, beginning at the beginning +with “Wha made ye, ma bonnie man?” For the correctness of this and the +three next replies, Jeanie had no anxiety, but the tone changed to +menace, and the closed <i>nieve</i> (fist) was shaken in the child’s +face as she demanded, “Of what are you made?” “<span class="allsmcap">DIRT</span>,” was the +answer uniformly given. “Wull ye never learn to say <i>dust</i>, ye +thrawn deevil?” with a cuff from the opened hand, was the as inevitable +rejoinder.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</span></p> + +<p>Here is Maidie’s first letter before she was six. The spelling +unaltered, and there are no “commoes.”</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p class="space-above2"> +“<span class="allsmcap">MY DEAR ISA</span>,—I now sit down to answer all your kind and +beloved letters which you was so good as to write to me. This is the +first time I ever wrote a letter in my Life. There are a great many +Girls in the Square, and they cry just like a pig when we are under +the painfull necessity of putting it to Death. Miss Potune, a Lady +of my acquaintance, praises me dreadfully. I repeated something out +of Dean Swift, and she said I was fit for the stage, and you may +think I was primmed up with majestick Pride, but upon my word I felt +myselfe turn a little birsay,—birsay is a word which is a word that +William composed which is as you may suppose a little enraged. This +horrid fat simpliton says that my Aunt is beautiful, which is intirely +impossible, for that is not her nature.”</p> +</div> + +<p>What a peppery little pen we wield! What could that have been out +of the Sardonic Dean? What other child of that age would have used +“beloved” as she does? This power of affection, this faculty of +<i>be</i> loving, and wild hunger to be beloved, comes out more and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</span> +more. She perilled her all upon it, and it may have been as well—we +know, indeed, that it was far better—for her that this wealth of love +was so soon withdrawn to its one only infinite Giver and Receiver. This +must have been the law of her earthly life. Love was indeed “her Lord +and King”; and it was perhaps well for her that she found so soon that +her and our only Lord and King, Himself is Love.</p> + +<p>Here are bits from her Diary at Braehead:—“The day of my existence +here has been delightful and enchanting. On Saturday I expected no +less than three well-made Bucks, the names of whom is here advertised. +Mr. Geo. Crakey (Craigie), and Wm. Keith, and Jn. Keith,—the first is +the funniest of every one of them. Mr. Crakey and walked to Craky-hall +(Craigiehall), hand in hand in Innocence and matitation (meditation) +sweet thinking on the kind love which flows in our tender-hearted mind +which is overflowing with majestic pleasure no one was ever so polite +to me in the hole state of my existence. Mr. Craky you must know is a +great Buck, and pretty good-looking.</p> + +<p>“I am at Ravelston enjoying nature’s fresh air. The birds are singing +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</span> +sweetly, the calf doth frisk, and nature shows her glorious face.”</p> + +<p>Here is a confession: “I confess I have been very more like a little +young divil than a creature for when Isabella went up stairs to teach +me religion and my multiplication and to be good and all my other +lessons I stamped with my foot and threw my new hat which she had made +on the ground and was sulky and was dreadfully passionate, but she +never whiped me but said Marjory go into another room and think what a +great crime you are committing letting your temper git the better of +you. But I went so sulkily that the Devil got the better of me but she +never never never whips me so that I think I would be the better of it +and the next time that I behave ill I think she should do it for she +never never does it.... Isabella has given me praise for checking my +temper for I was sulky even when she was kneeling an hole hour teaching +me to write.”</p> + +<p>Our poor little wifie,—<i>she</i> has no doubts of the personality of +the Devil! “Yesterday I behave extremely ill in God’s most holy church +for I would never attend myself nor let Isabella attend which was a +great crime for she often, often tells me that when to or three are +geathered together God is in the midst of them, and it was the very +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</span> +same Divil that tempted Job that tempted me I am sure; but he resisted +Satan though he had boils and many many other misfortunes which I have +escaped.... I am now going to tell you the horible and wretched plaege +(plague) that my multiplication gives me you can’t conceive it the most +Devilish thing is 8 times 8 and 7 times 7 it is what nature itself cant +endure.”</p> + +<p>This is delicious; and what harm is there in her “Devilish”? It is +strong language merely; even old Rowland Hill used to say “he grudged +the Devil those rough and ready words.” “I walked to that delightful +place Craky-hall with a delightful young man beloved by all his friends +especially by me his loveress, but I must not talk any more about him +for Isa said it is not proper for to speak of gentalmen but I will +never forget him!... I am very very glad that satan has not given me +boils and many other misfortunes—In the holy bible these words are +written that the Devil goes like a roaring lyon in search of his pray +but the lord lets us escape from him but we” (<i>pauvre petite!</i>) +“do not strive with this awfull Spirit.... To-day I pronunced a word +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</span> +which should never come out of a lady’s lips it was that I called John +a Impudent Bitch. I will tell you what I think made me in so bad a +humor is I got one or two of that bad bad sina (senna) tea to-day,”—a +better excuse for bad humor and bad language than most.</p> + +<p>She has been reading the Book of Esther: “It was a dreadful thing that +Haman was hanged on the very gallows which he had prepared for Mordeca +to hang him and his ten sons thereon and it was very wrong and cruel +to hang his sons for they did not commit the crime; <i>but then Jesus +was not then come to teach us to be merciful</i>.” This is wise and +beautiful,—has upon it the very dew of youth and of holiness. Out of +the mouths of babes and sucklings He perfects His praise.</p> + +<p>“This is Saturday and I am very glad of it because I have play half the +Day and I get money too but alas I owe Isabella 4 pence for I am finned +2 pence whenever I bite my nails. Isabella is teaching me to make simme +colings nots of interrigations peorids commoes, etc.... As this is +Sunday I will meditate upon Senciable and Religious subjects. First I +should be very thankful I am not a begger.”</p> + +<p>This amount of meditation and thankfulness seems to have been all she +was able for.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</span></p> + +<p>“I am going to-morrow to a delightfull place, Braehead by name, +belonging to Mrs. Crraford, where there is ducks cocks hens +bubbly-jocks 2 dogs 2 cats and swine which is delightful. I think it +is shocking to think that the dog and cat should bear them” (this is +a meditation physiological), “and they are drowned after all. I would +rather have a man-dog than a woman-dog, because they do not bear like +women-dogs; it is a hard case—it is shocking. I cam here to enjoy +natures delightful breath it is sweeter than a fial (phial) of rose +oil.”</p> + +<p>Braehead is the farm the historical Jock Howison asked and got from our +gay James the Fifth, “the gudeman o’ Ballengiech,” as a reward for the +services of his flail, when the King had the worst of it at Cramond +Brig with the gypsies. The farm is unchanged in size from that time, +and still in the unbroken line of the ready and victorious thrasher. +Braehead is held on the condition of the possessor being ready to +present the King with a ewer and basin to wash his hands, Jock having +done this for his unknown king after the <i>splore</i>, and when George +the Fourth came to Edinburgh this ceremony was performed in silver +at Holyrood. It is a lovely neuk this Braehead, preserved almost as +it was 200 years ago. “Lot and his wife,” mentioned by Maidie—two +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</span> +quaintly cropped yew-trees—still thrive, the burn runs as it did in +her time, and sings the same quiet tune,—as much the same and as +different as <i>Now</i> and <i>Then</i>. The house full of old family +relics and pictures, the sun shining on them through the small deep +windows with their plate glass; and there, blinking at the sun, and +chattering contentedly, is a parrot, that might, for its looks of eld, +have been in the ark, and domineered over and <i>deaved</i> the dove. +Everything about the place is old and fresh.</p> + +<p>This is beautiful: “I am very sorry to say that I forgot God—that +is to say I forgot to pray to-day and Isabella told me that I should +be thankful that God did not forget me—if he did, O what become +of me if I was in danger and God not friends with me—I must go to +unquenchable fire and if I was tempted to sin—how could I resist it +O no I will never do it again—no no—if I can help it.” (Canny wee +wifie!) “My religion is greatly falling off because I dont pray with so +much attention when I am saying my prayers, and my charecter is lost +among the Braehead people. I hope I will be religious again—but as +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</span> +for regaining my charecter I despare for it.” (Poor little ‘habit and +repute’!)</p> + +<p>Her temper, her passion, and her “badness” are almost daily confessed +and deplored: “I will never again trust to my own power, for I see that +I cannot be good without God’s assistance,—I will not trust in my own +selfe, and Isa’s health will be quite ruined by me,—it will indeed.” +“Isa has giving me advice, which is, that when I feal Satan beginning +to tempt me, that I flea him and he would flea me.” “Remorse is the +worst thing to bear, and I am afraid that I will fall a marter to it.”</p> + +<p>Poor dear little sinner! Here comes the world again: “In my travels I +met with a handsome lad named Charles Balfour Esq., and from him I got +ofers of marage—offers of marage, did I say? Nay plenty heard me.” A +fine scent for “breach of promise”!</p> + +<p>This is abrupt and strong: “The Divil is curced and all works. ’Tis a +fine work <i>Newton on the profecies</i>. I wonder if there is another +book of poems comes near the Bible. The Divil always girns at the sight +of the Bible.” “Miss Potune” (her “simpliton” friend) “is very fat; +she pretends to be very learned. She says she saw a stone that dropt +from the skies; but she is a good Christian.” Here come her views on +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</span> +church government: “An Annibabtist is a thing I am not a member of—I +am a Pisplekan (Episcopalian) just now, and” (O you little Laodicean +and Latitudinarian!) “a Prisbeteran at Kirkcaldy!”—(<i>Blandula! +Vagula! cœlum et animum mutas quæ trans mare</i> [i. e. <i>trans +Bodotriam</i>]<i>-curris!</i>)—“my native town.” “Sentiment is not +what I am acquainted with as yet, though I wish it, and should like +to practise it.” (!) “I wish I had a great, great deal of gratitude +in my heart, in all my body.” “There is a new novel published, named +<i>Self-Control</i>” (Mrs. Brunton’s)—“a very good maxim forsooth!” +This is shocking: “Yesterday a marrade man, named Mr. John Balfour, +Esq., offered to kiss me, and offered to marry me, though the man” (a +fine directness this!) “was espused, and his wife was present and said +he must ask her permission; but he did not. I think he was ashamed +and confounded before 3 gentlemen—Mr. Jobson and 2 Mr. Kings.” “Mr. +Banester’s” (Bannister’s) “Budjet is to-night; I hope it will be a good +one. A great many authors have expressed themselves too sentimentally.” +You are right, Marjorie. “A Mr. Burns writes a beautiful song on Mr. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</span> +Cunhaming, whose wife desarted him—truly it is a most beautiful one.” +“I like to read the Fabulous historys, about the histerys of Robin, +Dickey, flapsay, and Peccay, and it is very amusing, for some were good +birds and others bad, but Peccay was the most dutiful and obedient to +her parients.” “Thomson is a beautiful author, and Pope, but nothing +to Shakespear, of which I have a little knolege. <i>Macbeth</i> is a +pretty composition, but awful one.” “The <i>Newgate Calender</i> is +very instructive.” (!) “A sailor called here to say farewell; it must +be dreadful to leave his native country when he might get a wife; or +perhaps me, for I love him very much. But O I forgot, Isabella forbid +me to speak about love.” This antiphlogistic regimen and lesson is +ill to learn by our Maidie, for here she sins again: “Love is a very +papithatick thing” (it is almost a pity to correct this into pathetic), +“as well as troublesome and tiresome—but O Isabella forbid me to speak +of it.” Here are her reflections on a pine-apple: “I think the price of +a pine-apple is very dear: it is a whole bright goulden guinea, that +might have sustained a poor family.” Here is a new vernal simile: “The +hedges are sprouting like chicks from the eggs when they are newly +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</span> +hatched or as the vulgar say, <i>clacked</i>.” “Doctor Swift’s works +are very funny; I got some of them by heart.” “Moreheads sermons are +I hear much praised but I never read sermons of any kind; but I read +novelettes and my Bible, and I never forget it, or my prayers.” Bravo +Marjorie!</p> + +<p>She seems now, when still about six, to have broken out into song:—</p> + + +<p class="nindc"><span class="allsmcap"> +“EPHIBOL (EPIGRAM OR EPITAPH—WHO KNOWS WHICH?)<br> +ON MY DEAR LOVE, ISABELLA.”</span></p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Here lies sweet Isabel in bed,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With a night-cap on her head;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Her skin is soft, her face is fair,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And she has very pretty hair:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">She and I in bed lies nice,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And undisturbed by rats or mice.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">She is disgusted with Mr. Worgan,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Though he plays upon the organ.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Her nails are neat, her teeth are white;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Her eyes are very, very bright.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In a conspicuous town she lives,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And to the poor her money gives.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Here ends sweet Isabella’s story,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And may it be much to her glory!</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>Here are some bits at random:—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“Of summer I am very fond</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And love to bathe into a pond:</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</span> + <div class="verse indent0">The look of sunshine dies away,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And will not let me out to play.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I love the morning’s sun to spy</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Glittering through the casement’s eye;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The rays of light are very sweet,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And puts away the taste of meat.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The balmy breeze comes down from heaven,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And makes us like for to be living.”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>“The casawary is an curious bird, and so is the gigantic crane, and +the pelican of the wilderness, whose mouth holds a bucket of fish and +water. Fighting is what ladies is not qualyfied for, they would not +make a good figure in battle or in a duel. Alas! we females are of +little use to our country. The history of all the malcontents as ever +was hanged is amusing.” Still harping on the Newgate Calendar!</p> + +<p>“Braehead is extremely pleasant to me by the companie of swine, geese, +cocks, etc., and they are the delight of my soul.”</p> + +<p>“I am going to tell you of a melancholy story. A young turkie of 2 or +3 months old, would you believe it, the father broke its leg, and he +killed another! I think he ought to be transported or hanged.”</p> + +<p>“Queen Street is a very gay one, and so is Princes Street, for all the +lads and lasses, besides bucks and beggars parade there.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</span></p> + +<p>“I should like to see a play very much, for I never saw one in all +my life, and don’t believe I ever shall; but I hope I can be content +without going to one. I can be quite happy without my desire being +granted.”</p> + +<p>“Some days ago Isabella had a terrible fit of the toothake, and she +walked with a long nightshift at dead of night like a ghost, and I +thought she was one. She prayed for nature’s sweet restorer—balmy +sleep—but did not get it—a ghostly figure indeed she was, enough to +make a saint tremble. It made me quiver and shake from top to toe. +Superstition is a very mean thing and should be despised and shunned.”</p> + +<p>Here is her weakness and her strength again:—“In the love-novels all +the heroines are very desperate. Isabella will not allow me to speak +about lovers and heroins, and ’tis too refined for my taste.” “Miss +Egward’s (Edgeworth’s) tails are very good, particularly some that are +very much adapted for youth (!) as Laz Laurance and Tarelton, False +Keys, etc. etc.”</p> + +<p>“Tom Jones and Grey’s Elegey in a country churchyard are both +excellent, and much spoke of by both sex, particularly by the men.” Are +our Marjories now-a-days better or worse because they cannot read Tom +Jones unharmed? More better than worse; but who among them can repeat +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</span> +Gray’s Lines on a distant prospect of Eton College as could our Maidie?</p> + +<p>Here is some more of her prattle: “I went into Isabella’s bed to make +her smile like the Genius Demedicus” (the Venus de Medicis) “or the +statute in an ancient Greece, but she fell asleep in my very face, at +which my anger broke forth, so that I awoke her from a comfortable nap. +All was now hushed up again, but again my anger burst forth at her +biding me get up.”</p> + +<p>She begins thus loftily:—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“Death the righteous love to see,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But from it doth the wicked flee.”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p class="nind">Then suddenly breaks off as if with laughter,—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“I am sure they fly as fast as their legs can carry them!”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“There is a thing I love to see,—</div> + <div class="verse indent1">That is, our monkey catch a flee!”</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“I love in Isa’s bed to lie,—</div> + <div class="verse indent1">Oh, such a joy and luxury!</div> + <div class="verse indent1">The bottom of the bed I sleep,</div> + <div class="verse indent1">And with great care within I creep;</div> + <div class="verse indent1">Oft I embrace her feet of lillys,</div> + <div class="verse indent1">But she has goton all the pillys.</div> + <div class="verse indent1">Her neck I never can embrace,</div> + <div class="verse indent1">But I do hug her feet in place.”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</span></p> + +<p>How childish and yet how strong and free is her use of words!—“I +lay at the foot of the bed because Isabella said I disturbed her by +continial fighting and kicking, but I was very dull, and continially +at work reading the Arabian Nights, which I could not have done if I +had slept at the top. I am reading the Mysteries of Udolpho. I am much +interested in the fate of poor, poor Emily.”</p> + +<p>Here is one of her swains:—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“Very soft and white his cheeks;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">His hair is red, and grey his breeks;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">His tooth is like the daisy fair:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">His only fault is in his hair.”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>This is a higher flight:—</p> + + +<p class="nindc space-above2"> +<span class="allsmcap">“DEDICATED TO MRS. H. CRAWFORD BY THE AUTHOR, M. F.</span></p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Three turkeys fair their last have breathed,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And now this world forever leaved;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Their father, and their mother too,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">They sigh and weep as well as you:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Indeed, the rats their bones have crunched;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Into eternity theire laanched.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A direful death indeed they had,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">As wad put any parent mad;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But she was more than usual calm:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">She did not give a single dam.”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>This last word is saved from all sin by its tender age, not to speak of +the want of the <i>n</i>. We fear “she” is the abandoned mother, in +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</span> +spite of her previous sighs and tears.</p> + +<p>“Isabella says when we pray we should pray fervently, and not rattel +over a prayer,—for that we are kneeling at the footstool of our +Lord and Creator, who saves us from eternal damnation, and from +unquestionable fire and brimston.”</p> + +<p>She has a long poem on Mary Queen of Scots:—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“Queen Mary was much loved by all,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Both by the great and by the small;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But hark! her soul to heaven doth rise,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And I suppose she has gained a prize;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For I do think she would not go</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Into the <i>awful</i> place below.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">There is a thing that I must tell,—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Elizabeth went to fire and hell!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">He who would teach her to be civil,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">It must be her great friend, the divil!”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p class="nind">She hits off Darnley well:—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“A noble’s son,—a handsome lad,—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">By some queer way or other, had</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Got quite the better of her heart;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With him she always talked apart:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Silly he was, but very fair;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A greater buck was not found there.”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p class="nind"> +“By some queer way or other”; is not this the general case and the +mystery, young ladies and gentlemen? Goethe’s doctrine of “elective +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</span> +affinities” discovered by our Pet Maidie.</p> + + +<p class="nindc space-above2"><span class="allsmcap">SONNET TO A MONKEY.</span></p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“O lively, O most charming pug!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thy graceful air and heavenly mug!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The beauties of his mind do shine,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And every bit is shaped and fine.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Your teeth are whiter than the snow;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Your a great buck, your a great beau;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Your eyes are of so nice a shape,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">More like a Christian’s than an ape;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Your cheek is like the rose’s blume;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Your hair is like the raven’s plume;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">His nose’s cast is of the Roman:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">He is a very pretty woman.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I could not get a rhyme for Roman,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">So was obliged to call him woman.”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p class="nind">This last joke is good. She repeats it when writing of James the Second +being killed at Roxburgh:—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“He was killed by a cannon splinter,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Quite in the middle of the winter;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Perhaps it was not at that time,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But I can get no other rhyme!”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>Here is one of her last letters, dated Kirkcaldy, 12th October, 1811. +You can see how her nature is deepening and enriching:—</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</span></p> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p class="space-above2"> +<span class="allsmcap">“MY DEAR MOTHER</span>,—You will think that I entirely forget +you but I assure you that you are greatly mistaken I think of you +always and often sigh to think of the distance between us two loving +creatures of nature. We have regular hours for all our occupations +first at 7 o’clock we go to the dancing and come home at 8 we then +read our Bible and get our repeating, and then play till ten, then +we get our music till 11 when we get our writing and accounts we sew +from 12 till 1 after which I get my gramer and then work till five. At +7 we come and knit till 8 when we dont go to the dancing. This is an +exact description. I must take a hasty farewell to her whom I love, +reverence and doat on and who I hope thinks the same of</p> + +<p class="right"> +“<span class="allsmcap">MARJORY FLEMING</span>.</p> + +<p>“<i>P. S.</i>—An old pack of cards (!) would be very exeptible.”</p> +</div> + +<p class="space-above2">This other is a month earlier:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p class="space-above2"> +<span class="allsmcap">“MY DEAR LITTLE MAMA</span>,—I was truly happy to hear that you +were all well. We are surrounded with measles at present on every +side, for the Herons got it and Isabella Heron was near Death’s +Door, and one night her father lifted her out of bed, and she fell +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</span> +down as they thought lifeless. Mr. Heron said, ‘That lassie’s deed +noo,’—‘I’m no deed yet.’ She then threw up a big worm nine inches +and a half long. I have begun dancing, but am not very fond of it, +for the boys strikes and mocks me.—I have been another night at the +dancing; I like it better. I will write to you as often as I can; but +I am afraid not every week. <i>I long for you with the longings of a +child to embrace you,—to fold you in my arms. I respect you with all +the respect due to a mother. You dont know how I love you. So I shall +remain your loving child</i>,—<span class="allsmcap">M. FLEMING</span>.”</p> +</div> + +<p class="space-above2"> +What rich involution of love in the words marked! Here are some lines +to her beloved Isabella, in July, 1811:—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“There is a thing that I do want,—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With you these beauteous walks to haunt;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">We would be happy if you would</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Try to come over if you could.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Then I would all quite happy be</div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Now and for all eternity</i>.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">My mother is so very sweet,</div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Ana checks my appetite to eat</i>;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">My father shows us what to do;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But O I’m sure that I want you.</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</span> + <div class="verse indent0">I have no more of poetry;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">O Isa do remember me,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And try to love your Marjory.”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>In a letter from “Isa” to</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent3">“Miss Muff Maidie Marjory Fleming,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">favored by Rare Rear-Admiral Fleming,”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p class="nind"> +she says: “I long much to see you, and talk over all our old stories +together, and to hear you read and repeat. I am pining for my old +friend Cesario, and poor Lear, and wicked Richard. How is the dear +Multiplication table going on? Are you still as much attached to 9 +times 9 as you used to be?”</p> + +<p>But this dainty, bright thing is about to flee,—to come “quick to +confusion.” The measles she writes of seized her, and she died on the +19th of December, 1811. The day before her death, Sunday, she sat up +in bed, worn and thin, her eye gleaming as with the light of a coming +world, and with a tremulous, old voice repeated the following lines by +Burns,—heavy with the shadow of death, and lit with the phantasy of +the judgment-seat,—the publican’s prayer in paraphrase:—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent2">“Why am I loth to leave this earthly scene?</div> + <div class="verse indent4">Have I so found it full of pleasing charms?—</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</span> + <div class="verse indent2">Some drops of joy, with draughts of ill between,</div> + <div class="verse indent4">Some gleams of sunshine ’mid renewing storms?</div> + <div class="verse indent4">Is it departing pangs my soul alarms?</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Or Death’s unlovely, dreary, dark abode?</div> + <div class="verse indent4">For guilt, for <span class="allsmcap">GUILT</span>, my terrors are in arms;</div> + <div class="verse indent2">I tremble to approach an angry God,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And justly smart beneath his sin-avenging rod.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent2">“Fain would I say, Forgive my foul offence,</div> + <div class="verse indent4">Fain promise never more to disobey;</div> + <div class="verse indent2">But should my Author health again dispense,</div> + <div class="verse indent4">Again I might forsake fair virtue’s way,</div> + <div class="verse indent4">Again in folly’s path might go astray,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Again exalt the brute and sink the man.</div> + <div class="verse indent4">Then how should I for heavenly mercy pray,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Who act so counter heavenly mercy’s plan,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Who sin so oft have mourned, yet to temptation ran?</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent2">“O thou great Governor of all below,</div> + <div class="verse indent4">If I might dare a lifted eye to thee,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Thy nod can make the tempest cease to blow,</div> + <div class="verse indent4">And still the tumult of the raging sea;</div> + <div class="verse indent4">With that controlling power assist even me</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Those headstrong furious passions to confine,</div> + <div class="verse indent4">For all unfit I feel my powers to be</div> + <div class="verse indent2">To rule their torrent in the allowed line;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">O aid me with thy help, <span class="allsmcap">OMNIPOTENCE DIVINE</span>.”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>It is more affecting than we care to say to read her Mother’s and +Isabella Keith’s letters written immediately after her death. Old and +withered, tattered and pale, they are now: but when you read them, how +quick, how throbbing with life and love! how rich in that language of +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</span> +affection which only women and Shakespeare and Luther can use,—that +power of detaining the soul over the beloved object and its loss!</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“<i>K. Philip to Constance</i>—</div> + <div class="verse indent10">You are as fond of grief as of your child.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Const.</i>—Grief fills the room up of my absent child,</div> + <div class="verse indent10">Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me;</div> + <div class="verse indent10">Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,</div> + <div class="verse indent10">Remembers me of all his gracious parts,</div> + <div class="verse indent10">Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form,</div> + <div class="verse indent10">Then I have reason to be fond of grief.”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p class="nind">What variations cannot love play on this one string!</p> + +<p>In her first letter to Miss Keith, Mrs. Fleming says of her dead +Maidie: “Never did I behold so beautiful an object. It resembled +the finest wax-work. There was in the countenance an expression of +sweetness and serenity which seemed to indicate that the pure spirit +had anticipated the joys of heaven ere it quitted the mortal frame. +To tell you what your Maidie said of you would fill volumes; for you +was the constant theme of her discourse, the subject of her thoughts, +and ruler of her actions. The last time she mentioned you was a few +hours before all sense save that of suffering was suspended, when +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</span> +she said to Dr. Johnstone, ‘If you let me out at the New Year, I will +be quite contented.’ I asked her what made her so anxious to get out +then? ‘I want to purchase a New Year’s gift for Isa Keith with the +sixpence you gave me for being patient in the measeles; and I would +like to choose it myself.’ I do not remember her speaking afterwards, +except to complain of her head, till just before she expired, when she +articulated, ‘O mother! mother!’”</p> + +<p class="space-above2"> +Do we make too much of this little child, who has been in her grave +in Abbotshall Kirkyard these fifty and more years? We may of her +cleverness,—not of her affectionateness, her nature. What a picture +the <i>animosa infans</i> gives us of herself,—her vivacity, her +passionateness, her precocious love-making, her passion for nature, for +swine, for all living things, her reading, her turn for expression, +her satire, her frankness, her little sins and rages, her great +repentances! We don’t wonder Walter Scott carried her off in the neuk +of his plaid, and played himself with her for hours.</p> + +<p>The year before she died, when in Edinburgh, she was at a Twelfth Night +Supper at Scott’s, in Castle Street. The company had all come,—all +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</span> +but Marjorie. Scott’s familiars, whom we all know, were there,—all +were come but Marjorie; and all were dull because Scott was dull. +“Where’s that bairn? what can have come over her? I’ll go myself +and see.” And he was getting up, and would have gone; when the bell +rang, and in came Duncan Roy and his henchman Tougald, with the sedan +chair, which was brought right into the lobby, and its top raised. +And there, in its darkness and dingy old cloth, sat Maidie in white, +her eyes gleaming, and Scott bending over her in ecstasy—“hung over +her enamored.” “Sit ye there, my dautie, till they all see you”; and +forthwith he brought them all. You can fancy the scene. And he lifted +her up and marched to his seat with her on his stout shoulder, and +set her down beside him; and then began the night, and such a night! +Those who knew Scott best said, that night was never equalled; Maidie +and he were the stars; and she gave them <i>Constance’s</i> speeches +and <i>Helvellyn</i>, the ballad then much in vogue, and all her +<i>répertoire</i>,—Scott showing her off, and being ofttimes rebuked +by her for his intentional blunders.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</span></p> + +<p>We are indebted for the following—and our readers will be not +unwilling to share our obligations—to her sister: “Her birth was 15th +January, 1803; her death, 19th December, 1811. I take this from her +Bibles.<a id="FNanchor_3" href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> I believe she was a child of robust health, of much vigor +of body, and beautifully formed arms, and, until her last illness, +never was an hour in bed. She was niece to Mrs. Keith, residing in +No. 1 North Charlotte Street, who was <i>not</i> Mrs. Murray Keith, +although very intimately acquainted with that old lady. My aunt was a +daughter of Mr. James Rae, surgeon, and married the younger son of old +Keith of Ravelstone. Corstorphine Hill belonged to my aunt’s husband; +and his eldest son, Sir Alexander Keith, succeeded his uncle to both +Ravelstone and Dunnottar. The Keiths were not connected by relationship +with the Howisons of Braehead, but my grandfather and grandmother +(who was), a daughter of Cant of Thurston and Giles-Grange, were on +the most intimate footing with <i>our</i> Mrs. Keith’s grandfather +and grandmother; and so it has been for three generations, and the +friendship consummated by my cousin William Keith marrying Isabella +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</span> +Craufurd.</p> + +<p>“As to my aunt and Scott, they were on a very intimate footing. He +asked my aunt to be godmother to his eldest daughter Sophia Charlotte. +I had a copy of Miss Edgeworth’s ‘Rosamond, and Harry and Lucy’ for +long, which was ‘a gift to Marjorie from Walter Scott,’ probably +the first edition of that attractive series, for it wanted ‘Frank,’ +which is always now published as part of the series, under the title +of <i>Early Lessons</i>. I regret to say these little volumes have +disappeared.</p> + +<p>“Sir Walter was no relation of Marjorie’s, but of the Keiths, through +the Swintons; and, like Marjorie, he stayed much at Ravelstone in his +early days, with his grandaunt Mrs. Keith; and it was while seeing him +there as a boy, that another aunt of mine composed, when he was about +fourteen, the lines prognosticating his future fame that Lockhart +ascribes in his Life to Mrs. Cockburn, authoress of ‘The Flowers of the +Forest’:—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“Go on, dear youth, the glorious path pursue</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Which bounteous Nature kindly smooths for you;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Go bid the seeds her hands have sown arise,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">By timely culture, to their native skies;</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</span> + <div class="verse indent0">Go, and employ the poet’s heavenly art,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Not merely to delight, but mend the heart.”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p class="nind"> +Mrs. Keir was my aunt’s name, another of Dr. Rae’s daughters.” We +cannot better end than in words from this same pen: “I have to ask +you to forgive my anxiety in gathering up the fragments of Marjorie’s +last days, but I have an almost sacred feeling to all that pertains to +her. You are quite correct in stating that measles were the cause of +her death. My mother was struck by the patient quietness manifested by +Marjorie during this illness, unlike her ardent, impulsive nature; but +love and poetic feeling were unquenched. When Dr. Johnstone rewarded +her submissiveness with a sixpence, the request speedily followed that +she might get out ere New Year’s day came. When asked why she was so +desirous of getting out, she immediately rejoined, ‘Oh, I am so anxious +to buy something with my sixpence for my dear Isa Keith.’ Again, when +lying very still, her mother asked her if there was anything she +wished: ‘Oh yes! if you would just leave the room door open a wee bit, +and play ‘The Land o’ the Leal,’ and I will lie and <i>think</i>, and +enjoy myself’ (this is just as stated to me by her mother and mine). +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</span> +Well, the happy day came, alike to parents and child, when Marjorie was +allowed to come forth from the nursery to the parlor. It was Sabbath +evening, and after tea. My father, who idolized this child, and never +afterwards in my hearing mentioned her name, took her in his arms; +and, while walking her up and down the room, she said, ‘Father, I will +repeat something to you; what would you like?’ He said, ‘Just choose +yourself, Maidie.’ She hesitated for a moment between the paraphrase, +‘Few are thy days, and full of woe,’ and the lines of Burns already +quoted, but decided on the latter, a remarkable choice for a child. +The repeating these lines seemed to stir up the depths of feeling in +her soul. She asked to be allowed to write a poem; there was a doubt +whether it would be right to allow her, in case of hurting her eyes. +She pleaded earnestly, ‘Just this once’; the point was yielded, her +slate was given her, and with great rapidity she wrote an address of +fourteen lines, ‘to her loved cousin on the author’s recovery,’ her +last work on earth:—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Oh! Isa, pain did visit me,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I was at the last extremity;</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</span> + <div class="verse indent0">How often did I think of you,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I wished your graceful form to view,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To clasp you in my weak embrace,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Indeed I thought I’d run my race:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Good care, I’m sure, was of me taken,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But still indeed I was much shaken,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">At last I daily strength did gain,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And oh! at last, away went pain;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">At length the doctor thought I might</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Stay in the parlor all the night;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I now continue so to do,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Farewell to Nancy and to you.’</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p class="nind"> +“She went to bed apparently well, awoke in the middle of the night with +the old cry of woe to a mother’s heart, ‘My head, my head!’ Three days +of the dire malady, ‘water in the head,’ followed, and the end came.”</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“Soft, silken primrose, fading timelessly.”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>It is needless, it is impossible, to add anything to this: the fervor, +the sweetness, the flush of poetic ecstasy, the lovely and glowing eye, +the perfect nature of that bright and warm intelligence, that darling +child,—Lady Nairne’s words, and the old tune, stealing up from the +depths of the human heart, deep calling unto deep, gentle and strong +like the waves of the great sea hushing themselves to sleep in the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</span> +dark; the words of Burns, touching the kindred chord, her last numbers +“wildly sweet” traced, with thin and eager fingers, already touched by +the last enemy and friend,—<i>moriens canit</i>,—and that love which +is so soon to be her everlasting light, is her song’s burden to the end.</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“She set as sets the morning star, which goes</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Not down behind the darkened west, nor hides</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Obscured among the tempests of the sky,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But melts away into the light of heaven.”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + + +<hr class="r65"> + +<p>Cambridge: Stereotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co.</p> + + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p class="nind"><a id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1" class="label">[1]</a> +This favorite dog “died about January, 1809, and was +buried, in a fine moonlight night, in the little garden behind the +house in Castle Street. My wife tells me she remembers the whole family +in tears about the grave, as her father himself smoothed the turf above +Camp with the saddest face she had ever seen. He had been engaged to +dine abroad that day, but apologized on account of the death of ‘a dear +old friend.’”—Lockhart’s <i>Life of Scott</i>.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p class="nind"><a id="Footnote_2" href="#FNanchor_2" class="label">[2]</a> +Applied to a pump when it is dry and its valve has lost +its “fang”; from the German, <i>fangen</i>, to hold.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p class="nind"><a id="Footnote_3" href="#FNanchor_3" class="label">[3]</a> +“Her Bible is before me; <i>a pair</i>, as then called; +the faded marks are just as she placed them. There is one at David’s +lament over Jonathan.”</p> + +</div> +</div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<figure class="figcenter width500" id="titlepage" style="width: 1200px;"> + <img src="images/titlepage.jpg" width="1200" height="1901" alt="Title page of the book Marjorie Fleming, a sketch, by John Brown."> +</figure> +</div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>MARJORIE FLEMING.</h2> + + +<p class="nindc space-above2 space-below2"> +<span class="large">A SKETCH.</span></p> + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2 space-below2"> +<span class="allsmcap">BEING THE PAPER ENTITLED</span></p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2 space-below2"> +“<i>PET MARJORIE: A STORY OF CHILD-LIFE<br> +FIFTY YEARS AGO.</i>”</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2 space-below2"><span class="large">BY</span> JOHN BROWN, M. D.,<br> +<span class="allsmcap">AUTHOR OF “RAB AND HIS FRIENDS.</span>”</p> + + +<figure class="figcenter width500" id="logo_2" style="width: 200px;"> +<img src="images/logo_2.jpg" width="200" height="257" alt="decorative"> +</figure> + + +<p class="nindc">BOSTON:<br> +TICKNOR AND FIELDS.<br> +<span class="allsmcap">1864.</span> +</p> +</div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="DR_BROWNS_WRITINGS">DR. BROWN’S WRITINGS.</h2> +</div> + + +<hr class="r5"> + + +<p class="nindc">SPARE HOURS;</p> + + +<p class="nindc"><span class="allsmcap">BY JOHN BROWN</span>, M. D.</p> + +<p class="nindc">1 vol. 12mo. $1.50.</p> + +<p>The author of “Rab and his Friends” scarcely needs an introduction +to American readers. By this time many have learned to agree, with a +writer in the <span class="allsmcap">NORTH BRITISH REVIEW</span>, that “Rab” is, all things +considered, the most perfect prose narrative since Lamb’s “Rosamond +Gray.”</p> + + +<p class="nindc"> +[From the <span class="allsmcap">LONDON TIMES</span>, October 21.]</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>“Of all the John Browns, commend us to Dr. John Brown, the physician, +the man of genius, the humorist, the student of men, women, and dogs. +By means of two beautiful volumes he has given the public a share of +his by-hours, and more pleasant hours it would be difficult to find in +any life.</p> + +<p>“Dr. Brown’s master-piece is the story of a dog called ‘Rab.’ The tale +moves from the most tragic pathos to the most reckless humor, and +could not have been written but by a man of genius. Whether it moves +to laughter or to tears, it is perfect in its way, and immortalizes +its author.”</p> +</div> + + +<hr class="r5"> + + +<p class="nindc">RAB AND HIS FRIENDS.</p> + +<p class="nindc">3d edition. 1 vol. 16mo. Paper. 15 cents.</p> + + +<p class="nindc">[From the <span class="allsmcap">MORNING HERALD</span>.]</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>“Who is he that has not heard of, if not read, ‘Rab and his Friends’? +We suppose that there have been few stories ever printed which, in so +short a time, won for their author fame. Certainly never was a story +so short and so pathetic, so full of joyous tears, so brimming with +the actions from which spring sacred pity. We do not envy the man, and +we cannot imagine the woman or girl, who could read the story of ‘Rab +and his Friends’ without tears actual or imminent.”</p> +</div> + + +<p class="nindc"> +[From <span class="allsmcap">CHAMBERS’ JOURNAL</span>.]</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>“What Landseer is upon canvas, that Dr. Brown is upon paper. The +canine family was never before so well represented in literature.”</p> +</div> + + +<hr class="r5"> + + +<p class="nindc">PET MARJORIE.</p> + +<p class="nindc">1 vol. 16mo. Paper. 25 cents.</p> + + +<hr class="r5"> + +<p>» For sale by all booksellers, or sent, <i>postpaid</i>, to any address +on receipt of the price, by the publishers,</p> + +<p class="right"> +<b>TICKNOR & FIELDS, Boston</b>.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p class="nindc">MR. LONGFELLOW’S NEW VOLUME.</p> +</div> + + +<hr class="r5"> + +<p>The recent publication of Mr. Longfellow’s new work may justly be +regarded as one of the most important events in the literature of the +year. The work itself is pronounced by competent critics the most +finished production of the poet’s genius.</p> + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">TALES OF A WAYSIDE INN,<br> +<i>AND OTHER POEMS</i>.</p> + +<p class="nindc"> +<span class="allsmcap">BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.</span></p> + +<p class="nindc">1 vol. 16mo. $1.25.</p> + +<p>Handsomely bound in muslin, bevelled boards, and gilt top.</p> + +<p>» Sent, <i>postpaid</i>, to any address on receipt of the price, by the +publishers,</p> + +<p class="right"> +<span style="margin-right: 8em;"><b>TICKNOR & FIELDS</b>,</span><br> +<span style="margin-right: 4em;"><b>135 Washington St., Boston</b></span>.</p> + + +<hr class="r5"> + + +<p class="nindc">THE GREAT BATTLE BOOK.</p> + + +<hr class="r5"> + + +<p class="nindc"> +<span class="allsmcap">TICKNOR & FIELDS</span> have just published</p> + +<p class="nindc">My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field.</p> + +<p class="nindc">BY “CARLETON.”</p> + +<p class="nindc">1 vol. 12mo. Profusely illustrated with Engravings, Maps, and Diagrams. +$1.00.</p> + +<p>The object of this book is to tell the youth of America, in plain and +simple terms,</p> + + +<p class="nindc"><i>THE CAUSES OF THE REBELLION</i>;</p> + +<p class="nind"> +to give them an idea of the valor and courage of their fathers and +brothers, who are now upholding the national cause by fighting</p> + + +<p class="nindc"><i>THE BATTLES OF THEIR COUNTRY</i>.</p> + +<p>With this view, the author has given authentic and vivid descriptions +of some of the most important battles of the war, drawn from his +own personal observations, and has thus made his work at once an +<span class="allsmcap">ABSORBING NARRATIVE</span> and a <span class="allsmcap">TRUTHFUL HISTORY</span> of the war.</p> + +<p>All parents who desire their sons to have a clear and distinct idea of +the nature of the struggle through which the country is passing, should +buy this book. “<span class="allsmcap">CARLETON</span>,” the author, is well known as one of +the best and most reliable of the army correspondents.</p> + +<p class="right">» A copy sent, <i>postpaid</i>, to any address on receipt of <span class="allsmcap">ONE +DOLLAR</span>, by the publishers,</p> + +<p class="right"><span style="margin-right: 8em;"> +<b>TICKNOR & FIELDS, Boston</b>.</span></p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p class="nindc">CHOICE NEW BOOKS,</p> +</div> + +<p class="nindc"><span class="allsmcap">LATELY PUBLISHED BY</span></p> + +<p class="nindc">TICKNOR AND FIELDS, BOSTON.</p> + + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p class="hanging2"> +<i>THE LIFE OF WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT</i>, Author of “The Conquest +of Mexico,” “The Conquest of Peru,” etc. By <span class="allsmcap">GEORGE TICKNOR</span>, +Author of the “History of Spanish Literature.” 1 vol. Quarto. +Illustrated with Steel Portraits, Wood Cuts, and Autographs, and +elegantly printed and bound. $7.50.</p> + +<p class="hanging2"> +<i>TALES OF A WAYSIDE INN</i>, and Other Poems. By <span class="allsmcap">HENRY WADSWORTH +LONGFELLOW</span>. With Vignette Illustration by F. O. C. Darley. 1 vol. +16mo. Bevelled and gilt. $1.25.</p> + +<p class="hanging2"> +<i>THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF JOHN WINTHROP.</i> By <span class="allsmcap">ROBERT C. +WINTHROP</span>. 1 vol. 8vo. Handsomely bound in muslin, with Steel +Portraits and Wood Engravings. $3.00.</p> + +<p class="hanging2"> +<i>HOUSEHOLD FRIENDS.</i> A book for all seasons. Illustrated with +Engravings on Steel. 1 vol. Small 4to. Cloth, handsomely stamped. +$3.00. Also for sale in elegant Turkey morocco. $6.00.</p> + +<p class="hanging2"> +<i>ANGEL VOICES</i>; or, Words of Counsel for Overcoming the World. An +entirely new edition. 1 vol. Small 4to. Cloth, appropriately stamped. +$2.00.</p> + +<p class="hanging2"> +<i>LITTLE ANNA.</i> A Story for Pleasant Little Children. By +<span class="allsmcap">A. STEIN</span>. Translated from the German. 1 vol. Square 16mo. +Illustrated with Engravings on Wood. 75 cents.</p> + +<p class="hanging2"> +<i>SOUNDINGS PROM THE ATLANTIC.</i> By <span class="allsmcap">OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES</span>. +1 vol. 16mo. $1.25.</p> + +<p class="hanging2"> +<i>THOUGHTS OF THE EMPEROR MARCUS AURELIUS ANTONINUS.</i> Translated +by <span class="allsmcap">GEORGE LONG</span>. 1 vol. 16mo. $1.00.</p> + +<p class="hanging2"> +<i>IN WAR TIME</i>, and Other Poems. By <span class="allsmcap">JOHN GREENLEAF +WHITTIER</span>. 1 vol. 16mo. Cloth, bevelled and gilt. $1.00.</p> + +<p class="hanging2"> +<i>MENTAL HYGIENE.</i> By <span class="allsmcap">I. RAY</span>, M. D., Superintendent of +Butler Hospital, Providence, R. I. 1 vol. 16mo. $1.25.</p> + +<p class="hanging2"> +<i>OUR OLD HOME</i>; A Series of English Sketches. By <span class="allsmcap">NATHANIEL +HAWTHORNE</span>, Author of the “Scarlet Letter,” etc. 1 vol. 16mo. +Brown cloth, uniform with Hawthorne’s works. $1.25.</p> + +<p class="hanging2"> +<i>REMAINS IN PROSE AND VERSE.</i> By <span class="allsmcap">ARTHUR HENRY HALLAM</span>. 1 +vol. 16mo. Cloth. Bevelled boards and gilt top. $1.50.</p> + +<p class="hanging2"> +<i>METHODS OF STUDY IN NATURAL HISTORY.</i> With many Original +Illustrations. By <span class="allsmcap">LOUIS AGASSIZ</span>. 1 vol. 16mo. $1.25.</p> + +<p class="hanging2"> +<i>GALA DAYS.</i> By <span class="allsmcap">GAIL HAMILTON</span>, Author of “Country Living +and Country Thinking.” 1 vol. 16mo. Bevelled boards and red edges. +$1.50.</p> + +<p class="hanging2"> +<i>FREEDOM AND WAR.</i> Discourses connected with the Times. By Rev. +<span class="allsmcap">HENRY WARD BEECHER</span>. 1 vol. 12mo. $1.50.</p> +</div> + +<p>» Copies of the above sent <i>postpaid</i>, on receipt of the +advertised price, by the publishers.</p> + +<p class="right"> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;"><b>135 Washington Street, Boston.</b></span></p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<div class="transnote spa1"> +<p class="nindc"><b>TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES</b></p> + + +<p>Simple typographical errors have been silently corrected. Punctuation, +hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant +preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not +changed.</p> + +<p>Inconsistent quotation marks left as printed.</p> + +<p>In order to get proper compatibility for epubs versions, white right +pointing index unicode character was replaced by right-pointing double +angle quotation mark. +</p> +</div></div> + +<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75718 ***</div> +</body> +</html> + diff --git a/75718-h/images/cover.jpg b/75718-h/images/cover.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..45df11b --- /dev/null +++ b/75718-h/images/cover.jpg diff --git a/75718-h/images/logo.jpg b/75718-h/images/logo.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..df9bf1a --- /dev/null +++ b/75718-h/images/logo.jpg diff --git a/75718-h/images/logo_2.jpg b/75718-h/images/logo_2.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..df9bf1a --- /dev/null +++ b/75718-h/images/logo_2.jpg diff --git a/75718-h/images/titlepage.jpg b/75718-h/images/titlepage.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..a769e40 --- /dev/null +++ b/75718-h/images/titlepage.jpg diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b5dba15 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This book, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. 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