John Leech and other papers

Marjorie Fleming. 221
toothake, and she walked with a long night-shift at
dead of night like a ghost, and I thought she was one.
She prayed for nature's sweet restorer — balmy sleep
— but did not get it — a ghostly figure indeed she was,
enough to make a saint tremble. It made me quiver
and shake from top to toe. Superstition is a very
mean thing, and should be despised and shunned.'
Here is her weakness and her strength again : —
' In the love-novels all the heroines are very desperate.
Isabella will not allow me to speak about lovers and
heroins, and 'tis too refined for my taste.' 'Miss
Egward's (Edgeworth's) tails are very good, particu-
larly some that are very much adapted for youth (!)
as Laz Laurance and Tarelton, False Keys, etc. etc'
'Tom Jones and Grey's Elegey in a country
churchyard are both excellent, and much spoke of by
both sex, particularly by the men.' Are our Marjories
now-a-days better or worse because they cannot read
Tom Jones unharmed? More better than worse;
but who among them can repeat Gray's Lines on
a distant prospect of Eton College as could our
Maidie ?
Here is some more of her prattle : — ' I went into
Isabella's bed to make her smile like the Genius
Demedicus' (the Venus de Medicis) 'or the statute
in an ancient Greece, but she fell asleep in my very
face, at which my anger broke forth, so that I awoke
her from a comfortable nap. All was now hushed
IS