_Lucy and her Dhaye_, the
history of a little English girl and her dark-skinned nurse, who was so
devoted to her that she nearly broke her heart when Lucy went home to
England and she was left behind. But the best of them all was _Little
Henry and his Bearer_, which is one of the most famous stories ever
written for children. The history of little Henry, the neglected orphan
child whom nobody loved save his poor faithful heathen "bearer," or
native servant, is exceedingly pretty and touching.

Mrs. Sherwood was always thinking about children and trying to find out
ways of helping them to be happy and good. A page from her diary will
show how often she must have been grieved and distressed at the spoilt
boys and girls she saw in the houses of the English merchants and Civil
servants at Calcutta and elsewhere.

"I must now proceed," she writes, "to some description of Miss Louisa,
the eldest daughter then in India of our friends, who at that time
might have been about six or seven. She was tall of her age, very
brown, and very pale. She had been entirely reared in India, and was
accustomed from her earliest infancy to be attended by a multitude of
servants, whom she despised thoroughly as being black, although, no
doubt, she preferred their society to her own country-people, as they
ministered with much flattery and servility to her wants. Wherever she
had moved during these first years of her life she had been followed by
her ayah, and probably by one or two bearers, and she was perfectly
aware that if she got into any mischief they would be blamed and not
herself. In the meantime, except in the article of food, every desire
and every caprice and every want had been indulged to satiety. No one
who has not seen it could imagine the profusion of toys which are
scattered about an Indian house wherever the 'babalogue' (children
people) are permitted to range. There may be seen fine polished and
painted toys from Benares, in which all the household utensils of the
country, the fruits, and even the animals, are represented, the last
most ludicrously incorrect. Toys in painted clay from Morshedabad and
Calcutta, representing figures of gods and goddesses, with horses,
camels, elephants, peacocks, and parrots, and now and then a 'tope
walla,' or hat wearer, as they call the English, in full regimentals
and cocked hat, seated on a clumsy, ill-formed thing meant for a horse.
Then add to these English, French, and Dutch toys, whic