Introduction circuitous routes, whereas Holiday House was written for them, and for them only. Whether or no nursery scepticism found its first observer in Miss Sinclair, it is certain that hers was the first comic giant in the modern manner. The fancy that he was so tall that he was ' obliged to climb up a ladder to comb his own hair ' is the beginning of half the nursery wit of the present day. I wonder whether Professor Clifford remembered Miss Sinclair when he wrote his perfect nonsense story of ' The Giant's Shoes ' for The Little People in 1874. I must quote a little : ' The Giant slept for three weeks at a time, and two days after he woke his breakfast was brought to him, consisting of bright brown horses sprinkled on his bread and butter. Besides his boots, the Giant had a pair of shoes, and in one of them his wife lived when she was at home ; on other occasions she lived in the other shoe. She was a sensible, practical kind of woman, with two wooden legs and a clothes-horse, but in other respects not rich. The wooden legs were kept pointed at the ends, in order that if the Giant were dissatisfied with his breakfast, he might pick up any stray people that were within reach, using his wife as a fork ; this annoyed the inhabitants of the district, so that they built their church in a south-westerly direction from the castle, behind tie Giant's back, that he might not be able to pick them up as they went in. But those who stayed outside to play pitch- and-toss were exposed to great danger and sufferings. ' Now, in the village there were two brothers of altogether different tastes and dispositions, and talents and peculiarities and accomplishments, and in this way they were discovered not to be the same person. The elder of them was most marvellously good at singing, and could sing the C Id Hundredth an old hundred times without stopping. Whenever he did this, he stood on one leg and tied the other round his neck to avoid catching cold and spoiling his voice ; but the neighbours fled. And he was also a rare hand at making guava dumplings out of three cats and a shoe-horn, which is an accomplishment
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