eally
understanding it. You may need to read it once just to see what it is
about; again with the aid of the notes and comments we make upon it; a
third time to let it cast its spell upon you. If you do that you will
not forget it, but will return to it often as years go on and the hard
world buffets you with those stern experiences which make you men and
women. Every time you read it you will find new graces, more touching
sentiment.

Will you read it now for the first time, paying only so much attention
to the footnotes as may be necessary for you to understand the
language?

DREAM CHILDREN: A REVERY

_By_ CHARLES LAMB

Children love to listen to stories about their elders when _they_ were
children; to stretch their imagination to the conception of a
traditionary great-uncle, or grandame, whom they never saw.

It was in this spirit that my little ones crept about me the other
evening to hear about their great-grandmother Field,[335-1] who lived in
a great house in Norfolk (a hundred times bigger than that in which they
and papa lived) which had been the scene--so at least it was generally
believed in that part of the country--of the tragic incidents which they
had lately become familiar with from the ballad of the Children in the
Wood.[335-2]

Certain it is that the whole story of the children and their cruel uncle
was to be seen fairly carved out in wood upon the chimney-piece of the
great hall,[335-3] the whole story down to the Robin Redbreast; till a
foolish person pulled it down to set up a marble one of modern invention
in its stead, with no story upon it.

Here Alice put out one of her dear mother's looks, too tender to be
called upbraiding.

Then I went on to say, how religious and how good their
great-grandmother Field was, how beloved and respected by everybody,
though she was not indeed the mistress of this great house, but had only
the charge of it (and yet in some respects she might be said to be the
mistress of it too) committed to her by the owner, who preferred living
in a newer and more fashionable mansion which he had purchased somewhere
in the adjoining county; but still she lived in it in a manner as if it
had been her own, and kept up the dignity of the great house in a sort
while she lived. Afterwards it came to decay, and was nearly pulled
down, and all its old ornaments stripped and carried away to the owner's
other house, where they were set up, and looked as awkward as if s