I was delighted when my mother told me one day
that a yellow flower I brought her was a cowslip, for I thought
she meant that it was the genuine English cowslip, which I had
read about. I was disappointed to learn that it was a native
blossom, the marsh-marigold.
My sisters had some books that I appropriated to myself a great
deal: "Paul and Virginia;" "Elizabeth, or the Exiles of Siberia;"
"Nina: an Icelandic Tale;" with the "Vicar of Wakefield;" the
"Tour to the Hebrides;" "Gulliver's Travels;" the "Arabian
Nights;" and some odd volumes of Sir Walter Scott's novels.
I read the "Scottish Chiefs"--my first novel when I was about
five years old. So absorbed was I in the sorrows of Lady Helen
Mar and Sir William Wallace, that I crept into a corner where
nobody would notice me, and read on through sunset into
moonlight, with eyes blurred with tears. I did not feel that I
was doing anything wrong, for I had heard my father say he was
willing his daughters should read that one novel. He probably did
not intend the remark for the ears of his youngest, however.
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