ens," and "can't get interested in Scott," with a placidity that plainly shows she lays the blame for this state of affairs on the two great masters who have amused and charmed the world. As for Northanger Abbey, or Emma, she would as soon think of finding entertainment in Henry Esmond. She has probably never read a single masterpiece of our language; she has never been moved by a noble poem, or stirred to the quick by a well-told page of history; she has never opened the pores of her mind for the reception of a vigorous thought, or the solution of a mental problem; yet she may be found daily in the circulating library, and is seldom visible on the street without a book or two under her arm.
"In the love-novels all the heroines are very desperate," wrote little Marjorie Fleming in her diary, nearly eighty years ago, and added somewhat plaintively, "Isabella will not allow me to speak of lovers and heroins,"—yearning, as we can see, over the forbidden topic, and mutable in her spelling, as befits her tender age. But what books had she read, this bright-eyed, healthy, winsome little girl,—
