MR KINGSLEY'S BLUE PENCIL 35 



news that the Prince Consort was dead. That was on 

 1 4th December 1861. 



Mr Kingsley preferred girls to boys, and he persuaded 

 himself that he could make my sister read Homer and 

 attain to other lengths of erudition; but for me he at 

 that time had not much use, and across some feeble exercise 

 which I had perpetrated he wrote : " CARELESS AND AS 

 BAD AS CAN BE," in blue pencil. " Take that," said he, 

 " and show it to your father ! " I did so, and my father 

 was extremely incensed not with me, but with Mr 

 Kingsley. 



The time came, in later life, when the good old Rector 

 knew me and I him for what we were really worth 

 not much in my case, perhaps, but a bit more than his 

 blue pencil observation had suggested. It is not ten 

 years since he drove me from Kilvington Rectory to 

 Thirsk station, with an old chestnut horse, and said, as 

 I looked at it : " This is not Blair Athol ! " 



