OCTOBER 201 



of Queen Victoria's coronation, when there was a 

 great village junketing together with a violent 

 thunderstorm, and has never felt well since. That, 

 at least, is her story. Sometimes, when she is in a 

 grateful humour, she will give me one of her old 

 books, of which she has a queer and inappropriate 

 collection, acquired when she was in service sixty 

 odd years past. They are all of a serious nature, 

 and Meshach loves them ; so my only means of 

 keeping them both happy is to accept the volume 

 pressed upon me by old Dame Werge, and to 

 restore it surreptitiously on my next visit. If she 

 ever discovers the fraud, she is acute enough to keep 

 the discovery to herself. I could not possibly get 

 any pleasure out of the volume she gave me on 

 Thursday, for it has black marginal lines round 

 every page, which recalls a prejudice of my child- 

 hood. 



When I was a young thing no one ever thought 

 of giving me any present but a book, for nothing 

 else would have been valued by me. My grand- 

 father, however, at one time got into an unlucky 

 vein in his purchasing, and brought me two or three 

 extremely dull ones in succession. They were very 

 dreary, very religious, and abounded in very long 

 words. Moreover, they all had marginal lines round 

 each page. At last another present was due. I 

 tore off the wrapper with terrible misgiving, and 

 burst into floods of tears. There was a veritable 

 Oxford frame of black lines round every page, and 

 I knew that sort of book too well. My good grand- 

 father, when he learnt my prejudice, changed it for 

 me promptly, and took care never to get another of 



