204 OCTOBER 



a little proud of its immediate success. It was 

 beautifully written in a fair round hand, and no one 

 could complain that it was, in one sense at least, 

 hard reading. Eventually it was lent to a more 

 distant relative whose opinion on most subjects was 

 considered final. It was a great blow to me when 

 this relative returned my beloved book without 

 praise even of the mildest order, advising me to 

 write about children, and about English children, 

 und to refrain from attempting German love 

 stories until I should know a little more of my 

 subject. I could never again endure even to think 

 of the sorrows of Gustav and Christine, for my 

 self-confidence was easily shaken ; the book was 

 cared for by my sisters for a while, and finally dis- 

 appeared, no one remembers how. I have a dim 

 suspicion that I burnt it ; a book of which people 

 could speak so slightingly was better dead and for- 

 gotten. 



My next story was a much shorter one. It dealt, 

 I remember, with exciting adventures on the ice- 

 floe, and the dramatis personce were Norwegian, 

 as was also the floe. The characters if characters 

 they can be called who were utterly destitute of 

 character suffered a great deal from the cold. As 

 with my first book a knowledge of German and 

 Germany had seemed unnecessary, so with my 

 second an acquaintance with Norway and the 

 Norwegian language was quite as unimportant 

 a matter. I can recall, though, that in one place, 

 at any rate, I tried to infuse a little local colour into 

 my descriptive narrative ; I have a distinct memory 

 of a sentence which bears out this assertion 



