home in Dorset, when four of us
were engaged in a game of verbarium, two against two--the opposite party
were gaining rapidly. She suddenly turned to her partner with a comical
air of chagrin and exclaimed: "Why is it they are winning the game? You
and I are a great deal brighter than they!"

The first time I ever saw Mrs. Prentiss was through an invitation to her
home to meet about half a dozen young persons of my own age. She was in
one of her merriest moods. Games of wit were played and she took part
with genuine interest. She at once impressed me with the feeling that
she was one of us, and that this arose from no effort to be sympathetic,
but was simply part of her nature.

This brightness wonderfully attracted young people to her, and gave her
an influence with them that she could not otherwise have exercised. She
recognised it in herself as a power, and used it, as she did all her
powers, for the service of her Master. Young Christians, seeing that her
deeply religious life did not interfere with her keen enjoyment of all
innocent pleasures, realised that there need be no gloominess for them,
either, in a life consecrated to God.

Just as her line of thought would often lie absorbingly in some one
direction for quite a period of time, so her fun ran "in streaks," as
she would have been likely to express it. One winter she amused herself
and her friends by a great number of charades and enigmas, many of
which I copied and still possess. They were dashed off with an ease and
rapidity quite remarkable. And I believe the same thing was true of most
of her books. I have watched her when she was writing some funny piece
of rhyme, and as her pen literally flew over the paper, I could hardly
believe that she was actually composing as she wrote. One day two young
girls were translating one of Heine's shorter poems. They had agreed to
send their several versions to an absent friend, who on his part was to
return his own to them. Mrs. Prentiss entered heartily into the plan and
in an hour had written as many as a dozen translations, all in English
rhyme and differing entirely one from the other. The stimulating effect
on the genius of her companions was such that over thirty translations
were produced in that one afternoon.

In thinking of the ease with which Mrs. Prentiss would suddenly turn
from grave to gay and the reverse, I often recall her answer when I one
day remarked on this trait in her.

"Yes, I have in me t