ed
admiration and awe, a human creature--not dead and gone, and merely a
printed name--that had actually published a book. Poor Miss Bond was a
kindly sort of person, fond of children, and mightily beloved by them in
turn; and, though keenly alive to the ludicrous, without a grain of
malice in her. I remember how, about this time, when, assisted by some
three or four boys more, I had succeeded in building a huge house, full
four feet long and three feet high, that contained us all, and a fire,
and a great deal of smoke to boot, Miss Bond the authoress came, and
looked in upon us, first through the little door, and then down through
the chimney, and gave us kind words, and seemed to enjoy our enjoyment
very much; and how we all deemed her visit one of the greatest events
that could possibly have taken place. She had been intimate with the
parents of Sir Walter Scott; and, on the appearance of Sir Walter's
first publication, the "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border," she had
taken a fit of enthusiasm, and written to him; and, when in the cold
paroxysm, and inclined to think she had done something foolish, had
received from Sir Walter, then Mr. Scott, a characteristically
warm-hearted reply. She experienced much kindness at his hands ever
after; and when she herself became an author, she dedicated her book to
him. He now and then procured boarders for her; and when, after leaving
Cromarty for Edinburgh, she opened a school in the latter place, and got
on with but indifferent success, Sir Walter--though straggling with his
own difficulties at the time--sent her an enclosure of ten pounds, to
scare, as he said in his note, "the wolf from the door." But Miss Bond,
like the original of his own Jeanie Deans, was a "proud bodie;" and the
ten pounds were returned, with the intimation that the wolf had not yet
come to the door. Poor lady! I suspect he came to the door at last. Like
many other writers of books, her voyage through life skirted, for the
greater part of the way, the bleak lee-shore of necessity; and it cost
her not a little skilful steering at times to give the strand a
respectable offing. And in her solitary old age, she seemed to have got
fairly aground. There was an attempt made by some of her former pupils
to raise money enough to purchase for her a small annuity; but when the
design was in progress, I heard of her death. She illustrated in her
life the remark recorded by herself in her "Letters," as made by a
humble