of all our day;

Are yet the master light of all our seeing.”

A child is a deep mystery. It has a life of its own, which it reveals to no one unless it meets with sympathy. Snub its first halting confidences concerning the inner life, or laugh at them, or be cross or indifferent, and you close the door against yourself forever. Now there is no faculty given us that the soul can spare. If we destroy in childhood the faculty of apprehending the spiritual or supernatural, as detrimental to this life, if there be left

Before I was three years old my father removed to Yorkshire, to Shipley, in the West Riding. I never can write or speak those two last words, “West Riding,” without a sensible rise of temperature, and an intense longing to be in England. For the West Riding is the heart of England, and, whatever is distinctively English, is also distinctively West Riding. Its men and women are so full of life, so spontaneously cheerful, so sure of themselves, so upright and downright in speech and action, that no one can for a moment misunderstand either their liking or disliking. Their opinions hold no element of change or dissent. They are as hearty and sincere in their religion, as their business, and if they form a friendship with a family, it will likely be one to the third and fourth generation. I correspond today with people whom I never saw, but whose friendship for my family dates back to a mutual rejoicing over the victory of Waterloo.

Of course I was not able to make any such observations on West Riding humanity when I first went there, but I felt the goodness of the people then, and in later years I both observed and experienced it. And it was well for me in my early childhood to live a while among such a strong, happy people. They impressed upon my plastic mind their confidant cheerfulness, and their sureness that life was a very good thing.

Shipley was then a pretty country town, though it is now a great manufacturing city, not far behind Bradford and Leeds. 12 I was three years there and during those years gradually dropped all remains of infancy, and became a child, a child eager for work and for play, and half-afraid the world might not last until I found out all about it. At first I went to a dame’s school. She did not take children over five years of age, and to these babies she taught only reading and needlework and knitting. We sat on very low benches in a room opening into a garden, and we spent a good deal of time in the garden. But she taught me to hem, and to seam, to fell and to gather, to stroke and to backstitch, and when I left her I could read any of the penny chap books I could buy. Most of them contained an abbreviated adventure from the “Arabian Nights” collection.

Soon after we removed to Shipley a woman came into our lives, called Ann Oddy, and my sister and I were told to be respectful to her and to obey her orders. She was a clever housekeeper, a superior cook, and had many domestic virtues; but she was authoritative, tyrannical, and quite determined to have things her own way. Fortunately I won her favor early, and for two simple reasons: first, my hair was easy to curl, and Sister Jane’s had to be carefully put in papers, and then did not “keep in.” Second, because she thought Jane was always ready to go “neighboring” with Mother, and then was so secret as to where she had been, and so “know nothing” of what was said; but I was better pleased to stay in the children’s room with a book and herself for company.

Indeed I liked Ann’s society. She had a grewsome assortment of stories, chiefly about bad fellows and their young women, but sometimes concerning bad children who had come to grief for disobeying their good parents, or for breaking the Sabbath Day. There was generally, however, an enthralling climax, relating to a handsome young man, whom she saw hanged at York Castle for murdering his sweetheart. At this narration I usually laid down my book, and listened with trembling interest to the awful fate of this faithless lover, and Ann’s warnings against men of all kinds who wanted helpless women to marry them. In those days I felt sure Ann Oddy had the true wisdom, and was quite resolved to look upon all handsome young men as probable murderers.

The three years I spent at Shipley were happy years. I enjoyed every hour of them, though the days were twenty times as long as days are now. There was a great deal of visiting, and visiting meant privileges of all kinds. We were frequently asked out to tea with our parents, especially if there were children in the house to which we were going, and there were children’s parties nearly every week at somebody’s house.

It was a good thing, then, that our usual fare was very plain, and not even the quantity left to our own desire or discretion. Breakfast was always a bowl of bread and milk boiled, and a rather thick slice of bread and butter after it. Fresh meat was sparingly given us at dinner, but we had plenty of broth, vegetables, and Yorkshire pudding. Our evening meal was bread and milk, rice or tapioca pudding, and a thick slice of sweet loaf—that is, bread made with currants, and caraway seeds, and a little sugar. But when we went out for dinner or tea, we had our share of the good things going; and, if the company was at our house, Ann Oddy usually put a couple of Christ Church tarts, or cheesecakes, among our plain bread. She always pretended to wonder where they came from; and, if I said pleadingly, “Don’t take them away, Ann,” she would answer in a kind of musing manner, “I’ll be bound the Missis put them there. Some people will meddle.” Then Jane would help herself, and I did the same, and we both knew that Ann had put the tarts there, and that she intended us to eat them. Yet this same little pretense of surprise was kept up for many years, and I grew to enjoy the making of it more perfect, and the changing of the words a little.

The house at which I liked best of all to visit was that of Jonathan Greenwood. He had a pretty place—with a fine strawberry bed—at Baildon Green. He was then a handsome bachelor of about forty years of age, and I considered him quite an old man. I knew also that he was Miss Crabtree’s sweetheart, and Ann’s look of disapproval, and the suspicious shake of her head made me anxious about both of them. What if Miss Crabtree should have another sweetheart! And what if Jonathan killed her because she had deceived him! Then there might be the York tragedy over again. These thoughts 14 troubled me so much that I ventured to suggest their probability to Ann. She laughed my fears to scorn.

“Martha Crabtree have another sweetheart! Nay, never my little lass! It will be the priest, not the hangman, that will tie Jonathan up.”

“Tie Jonathan up, Ann!” I ejaculated.

“To be sure,” she answered. “Stop talking.”

“But, Ann——”

“Do as I bid you.”

Then I resolved to ask Jonathan that afternoon. It was Thursday, and he would be sure to call for a cup of tea as he came from Leeds market. I did not do so, because he