or 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 Gray'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 gray his breeks;
His tooth is like