very conventional
woman--the mother of thirteen children--could she have been the black-
eyed, slim girl to whom you and a dozen other lads lost their hearts? On
the whole, one would rather have cherished the former portrait and not
have seen the original in her last estate. It was therefore with a
flutter of delight that one found in this case the old charm as fresh as
ever--meaning, of course, the prison escape with its amazing ingenuity
and breathless interest.

When one had lost his bashfulness and could associate with grown-up
books, then he was admitted to the company of Scott, and Thackeray, and
Dickens, who were and are, as far as one can see, to be the leaders of
society. My fond recollection goes back to an evening in the early
sixties when a father read to his boy the first three chapters of the
_Pickwick Papers_ from the green-coloured parts, and it is a bitter
regret that in some clearance of books that precious Pickwick was allowed
to go, as is supposed, with a lot of pamphlets on Church and State, to
the great gain of an unscrupulous dealer.

The editions of Scott are now innumerable, each more tempting than the
other; but affection turns back to the old red and white, in forty-eight
volumes, wherein one first fell under the magician's spell. Thackeray,
for some reason I cannot recall, unless it were a prejudice in our home,
I did not read in youth, but since then I have never escaped from the
fascination of _Vanity Fair_ and _The Newcomes_, and another about which
I am to speak. What giants there were in the old days, when an average
Englishman, tried by some business worry, would say, "Never mind,
Thackeray's new book will be out to-morrow." They stand, these three
sets, Scott, Thackeray, and Dickens, the very heart of one's library of
fiction. Wearied by sex novels, problem novels, theological novels, and
all the other novels with a purpose, one returns to the shelf and takes
down a volume from this circle, not because one has not read it, but
because one has read it thirty times and wishes for sheer pleasure's sake
to read it again. Just as a tired man throws off his dress coat and
slips on an old study jacket, so one lays down the latest thoughtful, or
intense, or something worse pseudo work of fiction, and is at ease with
an old gossip who is ever wise and cheery, who never preaches and yet
gives one a fillip of goodness. Among the masters one must give a
foremost place to Balzac, who stri