gar Child--solely indicated by a shawl
tightly folded round her shoulders and chills,--as a Schoolmistress,
unnecessarily severe; as a Preacher, singularly personal in his
remarks, and once, after reading one of Cooper's novels, as an
Indian Maiden. This was, I believe, the only instance when she had
borrowed from another's fiction. Most of the characters that she
assumed for days and sometimes weeks at a time were purely original
in conception; some so much so as to be vague to the general
understanding. I remember that her personation of a certain Mrs.
Smith, whose individuality was supposed to be sufficiently
represented by a sun-bonnet worn wrong side before and a weekly
addition to her family, was never perfectly appreciated by her own
circle although she lived the character for a month. Another
creation known as "The Proud Lady"--a being whose excessive and
unreasonable haughtiness was so pronounced as to give her features
the expression of extreme nausea, caused her mother so much alarm
that it had to be abandoned. This was easily effected. The Proud
Lady was understood to have died. Indeed, most of Polly's
impersonations were got rid of in this way, although it by no means
prevented their subsequent reappearance. "I thought Mrs. Smith was
dead," remonstrated her mother at the posthumous appearance of that
lady with a new infant. "She was buried alive and kem to!" said
Polly with a melancholy air. Fortunately, the representation of a
resuscitated person required such extraordinary acting, and was,
through some uncertainty of conception, so closely allied in facial
expression to the Proud Lady, that Mrs. Smith was resuscitated only
for a day.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

The origin of the title of the Queen of the Pirate Isle, may be
briefly stated as follows:--

An hour after luncheon, one day, Polly, Hickory Hunt, her cousin,
and Wan Lee, a Chinese page, were crossing the nursery floor in a
Chinese junk. The sea was calm and the sky cloudless. Any change in
the weather was as unexpected as it is in books. Suddenly a West
Indian Hurricane, purely local in character and unfelt anywhere
else, struck Master Hickory and threw him overboard, whence, wildly
swimming for his life and carrying Polly on his back, he eventually
reached a Desert Island in the closet. Here the rescued party put up
a tent made of a table cloth providentially snatched from the raging
billows, and from two o'clock until four, passed