h onions and beets; all
spoke of humble thrift and homely cares. In front was a great
chestnut-tree, and in the roadway near were two ancient elms where saucy
crows were building a nest.

Here, after her mother died, Mary Ann Evans was housekeeper. Little more
than a child--tall, timid, and far from strong--she cooked and scrubbed
and washed, and was herself the mother to brothers and sisters. Her
father was a carpenter by trade and agent for a rich landowner. He was a
stern man--orderly, earnest, industrious, studious. On rides about the
country he would take the tall, hollow-eyed girl with him, and at such
times he would talk to her of the great outside world where wondrous
things were done. The child toiled hard, but found time to read and
question--and there is always time to think. Soon she had outgrown some
of her good father's beliefs, and this grieved him greatly; so much,
indeed, that her extra-loving attention to his needs, in a hope to
neutralize his displeasure, only irritated him the more. And if there is
soft, subdued sadness in much of George Eliot's writing we can guess the
reason. The onward and upward march ever means sad separation.

When Mary Ann was blossoming into womanhood her father moved over near
Coventry, and here the ambitious girl first found companionship in her
intellectual desires. Here she met men and women, older than herself, who
were animated, earnest thinkers. They read and then they discussed, and
then they spoke the things that they felt were true. Those eight years at
Coventry transformed the awkward country girl into a woman of intellect
and purpose. She knew somewhat of all sciences, all philosophies, and she
had become a proficient scholar in German and French. How did she acquire
this knowledge? How is any education acquired if not through effort
prompted by desire?

She had already translated Strauss's "Life of Jesus" in a manner that was
acceptable to the author. When Ralph Waldo Emerson came to Coventry to
lecture, he was entertained at the same house where Miss Evans was
stopping. Her brilliant conversation pleased him, and when she questioned
the wisdom of a certain passage in one of his essays the gentle
philosopher turned, smiled, and said that he had not seen it in that
light before; perhaps she was right.

"What is your favorite book?" asked Emerson.

"Rousseau's 'Confessions,'" answered Mary instantly.

It was Emerson's favorite, too; but such honesty from a yo