t, and then
back to the beech trees standing on the lawn, which slopes away from
the house down to a river running at the bottom of a deep valley, up
the long gravelled walk by the hall door, and you turn into a handsome
walled kitchen garden, where fruit trees abound--apple and pear trees
laden with fruit, a quarter of an acre of strawberry beds, and currant
and raspberry bushes in plenty.

But time and tide, trains and steamers, wait to for no man, or woman
either. A few hours later you regretfully bid adieu to the charming
little author, and watch her until the bend of the road hides her from
your sight. Mr. Hungerford sees you through the first stage of the
journey, which is all accomplished satisfactorily, and you reach home
to find that whilst you have been luxuriating in fresh sea and country
air, London has been wrapped in four days of gloom and darkness."

Complement:

Helen C. BLACK, _In memoriam The late Mrs. Hungerford_ from _The
Englishwoman_ April 1897 pp. 102-105

"The sad news of the death of the popular and well-known author, Mrs.
Hungerford, has caused a universal thrill of sorrow, no less to her
many friends than to the large section of the reading public, in every
part of the globe where the English tongue is spoken, who delight in
her simple but bright and witty love-stories, so full of pathos, so
replete with tenderness and human interest. The melancholy event took
place on Sunday morning, the 24th January, after many weeks' illness
from typhoid fever, and has deprived what the beloved little writer was
wont to call 'a perfectly happy and idyllic Irish home' of its chiefest
treasure.

The late Mrs. Hungerford came before the public at the early age of
eighteen, when she made an immediate success with her first novel,
_Phyllis_, which was read and accepted by Mr. James Payn, then reader
for Messrs. Smith Elder & Co. Her natural bent towards literature had,
however, manifested itself in childhood, when she took at school all
the prizes in composition, and used to keep her playfellows enthralled
by the stories and fairy-tales she invented and wrote for them. On
leaving school she at once decided to adopt the pen as a profession, in
which she has had so successful a career. The tone of _Phyllis_ was so
fresh and ingenuous that it soon found favour with the public, and was
shortly followed by the far-famed _Molly Bawn_--a title which was
peculiarly associated with her, inasmuch as it was