ny
people come to see him. Some quite famous ladies."

Hanny opened her eyes very wide.

"Let me see--I think I can find one of his poems." She took a pile of
magazines from the top of the high old-fashioned bureau. "Oh,
yes,--though, like 'Time the Avenger,' I think it's too old for you. I
'm not very fond of poetry. Here is 'Annabel Lee.'"

Then Cousin Jennie was called into the other room, where some one wanted
to talk about the best way to ruffle a lawn skirt. Should the ruffles be
on the straight or bias?

Hanny read the verses over and over, and saw the city by the sea where
dwelt beautiful Annabel Lee, and how her high-born kinsman, who came in
great state in a chariot, carried her away from the one who loved her so
dearly. But when, later on, she came to know and understand the poem,
and the high-born kinsman had come for some of those she held most dear,
she could always go back to the vague mysterious awe that filled and
thrilled her then. She sat as if in a trance until grandmother, who had
taken her nap, came and took the arm-chair beside the open window.

"Well, are you rested?" said grandmother, cheerfully. "I should think
Janey and Polly would wear you out. It isn't a good thing for little
girls to run too much. But everything has changed since my day. Although
I think they ran and played then; but they had to help work, there was
so much out-of-doors work. Everything is easier now. There are so many
improvements. And, oh, how much there is to read! I'm not sure that is
so good for them."

"But it is very delightful," returned the little girl.

"If it only made people wiser!"

"But they are growing curiously wise," said Hanny. "There is the
telegraph. It seemed so queer that you could make a bit of wire talk,
that at first people didn't believe it. Uncle Faid did not when he saw
it at the Fair."

"And people laughed about the steamboat, I remember, and the idea of
railroad trains drawn by an engine. Yes, there are a good many strange
things. And steamships crossing the ocean. There used to be
sailing-vessels, and it took such a long while."

Hanny told grandmother about her friend who had gone abroad; and
grandmother, in return, told her about some Welsh ancestors who had to
fly for their lives on account of being mixed up with some insurrection
about a young prince, and the stormy time they had coming over,--how
they were driven up and down the coast, and their voyage consumed two
months. Th