. Life and letters of Maggie Benson. and locked the door,so that I had to finish my laughter alone ! In her last illness my sister wrote some littlerecollections of early days. She speaks with delightof the books that were read to us by my mother inwinter evenings such as Thalaba, Ivanhoe, and Phantastes, and even more of the times when mymother, who had a great gift of improvisation, waspersuaded to tell us a story out of her own says that she could not read to herself tillshe was five years old, and was thought backward ;and that her writing was so bad that it was describedas the
. Life and letters of Maggie Benson. and locked the door,so that I had to finish my laughter alone ! In her last illness my sister wrote some littlerecollections of early days. She speaks with delightof the books that were read to us by my mother inwinter evenings such as Thalaba, Ivanhoe, and Phantastes, and even more of the times when mymother, who had a great gift of improvisation, waspersuaded to tell us a story out of her own says that she could not read to herself tillshe was five years old, and was thought backward ;and that her writing was so bad that it was describedas the work of spiders which had fallen into theinkpot, while her figures were supposed to resemblepotatoes. She remembered too how she burst intotears of anger over a subtraction sum, and how alooking-glass was fetched to show her how ugly itmade her, which offended, she says, her sense ofdignity. She says that she was inclined to dissolveinto tears over her work, and that in answer to aquestion from a friend of my mothers as to what ID. Photo by J. WulUr, Whitby.] Mrs. Benson, Nellie, Maggie, Beth and Fred. ^S*59. [To face page 10. CHILDHOOD she was reading, she said that it was a book called* Reading without Tears, or Tears without Reading—she was not sure which. She described how she caused amusement bydeclaiming a poem— The pears and the applesHang rusty on the bough instead of russet. She and my sister used to do a little prepara-tion by themselves in the dining-room for half-an-hour before tea,— but if the butler * came in, wetalked to him, and consulted him about our history,and he described what he would do in case therewas a revolution. In the hymn-singing on Sunday afternoons mysister says that she always left out the line Andevery virtue we possess in Our Blest Redeemer,because she did not think it was right to claim topossess any virtues. She remembered too how two dolls were givenher, one a boy in Scotch costume, who was said bythe donor to be The Marquis of Lome
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