All the pieces signed, like this, with the name of Elizabeth Turner, are taken from little books of "Cautionary Stories" for children, which were published in the first twenty years of this century. One was The Daisy, one The Cowslip, one The Crocus. For long they were favourites in the nursery, and as recently as 1885 The Daisy was reprinted by Messrs. Griffith and Farran. Mrs. Elizabeth Turner, who lived at Whitechurch in Shropshire, died in 1846.

Marjorie Fleming, Poetess

Marjorie Fleming, who wrote these pieces, was a little Scotch girl, a friend of Sir Walter Scott. She was born on 15th January 1803, and died the 19th December 1811, before she was quite nine. You will find an account of her life in a book by Dr. John Brown, called John Leech and Other Papers (published by Messrs. A. and C. Black). Marjorie Fleming was one of the world's most delightful children.

Page 181.

Going into Breeches "

This piece, together with "Feigned Courage," on p. 184, and "Choosing a Profession," on p. 339, is from Poetry for Children, a little book, published in 1809, which was written

Ꮓ

by Mary Lamb and her brother Charles. Writing to Coleridge, the poet, in 1809, Charles Lamb says, "Perhaps you will admire the number of subjects, all of children, picked out by an old bachelor and an old maid. Many parents would not have found so many." Mary Lamb wrote the greater part of the book, and I have therefore put her name to these pieces.

Page 195.

The Two Gardens"

These verses give an opportunity of printing another piece that bears upon the junior garden-I mean the garden in the corner of the garden. It is in Mr. Norman Gale's Songs for Little People:

Mustard and Cress

ELIZABETH, my cousin, is the sweetest little girl,

From her eyes like dark blue pansies, to her tiniest golden curl;

I do not use her great long name, but simply call her Bess, And yesterday I planted her in mustard and in cress.

little room,

My garden is so narrow that there's very
But I'd rather have her name than get a hollyhock to bloom;
And before she comes to visit us with Charley and with

Jess,

She'll pop up green and bonny out of mustard and of cress.

Looking Forward ∞

This section is very incomplete; but I cannot find other suitable verses dealing with it. One of Mary Lamb's quaint pieces, called "Choosing a Profession," touches the subject:

A

Some

CREOLE boy from the West Indies brought,
To be in European learning taught,

years before to Westminster he went,

To a preparatory school was sent.

When from his artless tale the mistress found,
The child had not one friend on English ground,
She, even as if she his own mother were,

Made the dark Indian her peculiar care.

Oft on her favourite's future lot she thought;
To know the bent of his young mind she sought,
For much the kind preceptress wished to find
To what profession he was most inclined,
That where his genius led they might him train;
For nature's kindly bent she held not vain.
But vain her efforts to explore his will;
The frequent question he evaded still :
Till on a day at length he to her came,
Joy sparkling in his eyes; and said, the same
Trade he would be those boys of colour were,
Who danced so happy in the open air.
It was a troop of chimney-sweeping boys,
With wooden music and obstreperous noise,
In tarnished finery and grotesque array,
Were dancing in the street the first of May.

The West Indian's choice was even more difficult to believe in then than it would be now, for that was the time when

chimney-sweepers had actually to climb up the chimneys (like Tom in The Water-Babies) even though the fire was burning. William Blake's "Chimney-Sweeper," from The Songs of Innocence, was written when the state of the boys was at its worst:

WHEN

my mother died I was very young,

And my father sold me while yet my tongue Could scarcely cry, "'Weep, 'weep, 'weep, 'weep!" So your chimneys I sweep and in soot I sleep.

There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head,
That curl'd like a lamb's back, was shaved, so I said,
"Hush, Tom, never mind it, for when your head's bare,
You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair."

And so he was quiet, and that very night,

As Tom was a-sleeping, he had such a sight:
That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, and Jack,
Were all of them locked up in coffins of black,

And by came an angel who had a bright key,

And he open'd the coffins and set them all free;
Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing, they run,
And wash in a river and shine in the sun.

Then naked and white, all their bags left behind,
They rise upon clouds and sport in the wind;
And the angel told Tom if he'd be a good boy,
He'd have God for his father and never want joy.

And so Tom awoke; and we rose in the dark,
And got with our bags and our brushes to work.
Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm,
So if all do their duty they need not fear harm.

Page 205.

"The Pedlar's Caravan"

This piece, and the " Shooting Song" on the page next it, are from The Lilliput Levee, by Matthew Browne (William Brighty Rands), which is now out of print. An illustrated edition, under the title Lilliput Lyrics, may be expected next year.

Page 207. "The Boy Decides"

I have no Looking Forward verses from the point of view of the little girl, except the following scrap, from a piece by Miss Laurens Alma-Tadema, printed in her book of poems entitled Realms of Unknown Kings, which is published by Mr. Grant Richards :

IF no one ever marries me

I shan't mind very much; I shall buy a squirrel in a cage And a little rabbit-hutch :

I shall have a cottage near a wood,
And a pony all my own,

And a little lamb quite clean and tame
That I can take to town: