But while I was too young and thoughtless to share in an enthusiasm
for Sterne or Fielding, and Smollett or Don Quixote, my mother and
grandmother were leading me into the pleasant ways of "Pride and
Prejudice," and "The Scenes of Clerical Life," and the delightful
stories of Mrs. Oliphant.

The old house was well provided with leather-bound books of a deeply
serious nature, but in my youthful appetite for knowledge, I could
even in the driest find something vital, and in the more entertaining
I was completely lost.

My father had inherited from his father an amazing knowledge of human
nature, and from his mother's French ancestry, that peculiarly French
trait, called _gaiete de coeur_. Through all the heavy responsibilities
and anxieties of his busy professional life, this kept him young at
heart and cheerful. His visits to his patients were often made
perfectly delightful and refreshing to them by his kind heart, and the
charm of his personality.

I knew many of the patients whom he used to visit in lonely inland
farms, or on the seacoast in York and Wells. I used to follow him
about silently, like an undemanding little dog, content to follow at
his heels.

I had no consciousness of watching or listening, or indeed of any
special interest in the country interiors. In fact, when the time came
that my own world of imaginations was more real to me than any other,
I was sometimes perplexed at my father's directing my attention to
certain points of interest in the character or surroundings of our
acquaintances.

I cannot help believing that he recognized, long before I did myself,
in what direction the current of purpose in my life was setting. Now,
as I write my sketches of country life, I remember again and again the
wise things he said, and the sights he made me see. He was only
impatient with affectation and insincerity.

I may have inherited something of my father's and grandfather's
knowledge of human nature, but my father never lost a chance of trying
to teach me to observe. I owe a great deal to his patience with a
heedless little girl given far more to dreams than to accuracy, and
with perhaps too little natural sympathy for the dreams of others.

The quiet village life, the dull routine of farming or mill life,
early became interesting to me. I was taught to find everything that
an imaginative child could ask, in the simple scenes close at hand.

I say these things eagerly, because I long to impress upo