The Argosy — page 58: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

48 The Mother of Lord Macaulay. throughout her life her lover. She founded no hospital or orphanage, but she built up a home. Selina Mills was the daughter of a Bristol bookseller, whose wealth and position doubtless prevented the shadow of the shop from falling much on his child’s thoughts and ideas. We know what a nursery of that day was like. Let our little gentlemen and ladies glance at the picture, and be thankful for the century in which their lot has fallen. On yonder shelf there are two or at the most three story books, in which not a single coloured print lights up the dingy black and white of the letterpress. There is small chance of the volumes ever being added to; and s0, if the little folks ever read at all, they must go through and through the same till they know them better than the namse of their uncles and aunts and cousins. What is that in the corner? Is it a doll that walks and talks, or a baby railway that can run round the room in the twentieth part of a second? No; it is a great lumbering wooden horse, into whose unsympathetic head and tail fancy with her airiest spells can scarcely put motion. In that cupboard there is an inexorable physic bottle, a portion of which must without fail be taken by every inhabitant of the nursery at least once a week ; there is not the faintest hope of a kind Providence stepping in in the shape of the family doctor, and ordering the little dear instead a glass of claret. Scattered about are various strange, uncomfortable-looking objects, long ‘stiff poles, and wooden collars, and boards of mysterious shape. These articles are all supposed to help in some way in the development of the luckless youthful female form. By-and-by in comes mamma with two or three lady friends. Surely there will be some fun now, and the eyes of the little ones will begin to sparkle. But no; there is only a good deal of curtseying and polite speech-making, a little preaching on one side, and a little subdued crying on the other. Then the ladies rustle out again in their stiff flowery silks, leaving the room a trifle more chilly than when they entered it. Truly, as we turn away our eyes from this picture we, with our modern ideas, are inclined to wonder that the very babies did not become men and women at once, and very dull men and women too. From such a nursery, however, Selina Mills came forth at length with much brightness and spirit left in her, as her after story proves. She was now fortunate enough to drift into a very favoured region for a girl in her teens. She went to the school kept by the two Miss More’s, Hannah and Patty. Who that has dwelt on the story of the literary women of England does not know the figures of those two sisters ! How plainly can we see the slight, upright little figure, primly but always becomingly dressed; the animated face with the still delicat features, though the meridian of life is almost past; the clear eyes full of shrewd intelligence. How distinctly too we can hear her voice : for this clever lady, in spite of the words of King Solomon concerming comicbooks.com |