“When cold as clay when cold as ice To get into a bed tis nice It is a nice thing for to creep But not to dose away and sleep Into a bed where Isa lies And to my questions she replies Corrects my faults improves my mind And tells me of the faults she find But she is sound asleep sometimes For that I have not got good rimes But when awake I her teize much And she doth squall at every touch Then Isa reads in bed alone And reads the fasts by good Nelson Then I get up to say my prayers To get my porridge and go downstairs.” If Marjorie’s journal ranges in its discussion of subjects literally from “Shakespeare” (or, as she calls him, “Shakepear,” “of which I have a little knolege of,” thus summed up: “Macbeth is a pretty compisition but awful one Macbeth is so bad and wicked, but Lady Macbeth is so hardened in guilt she does not mind her faults and sins no,”) to the “Musical Glasses” (Nancy’s and Isabella’s uncle has got musical glasses and the sound of them is exceedingly sweet), her poetry is equally universal in its range. From the “Ephibol on my Dear Love Isabella,” composed when the poetess was six, to loyal verses on the King’s Birthday:— “Poor man his health is very bad And he is often very mad,” and the Chef d’Oeuvre on “Mary Queen of Scots” we have a wide selection:— “Poor Mary Queen of Scots was born With all the graces which adorn Her birthday is so very late That I do now forget the date Her education was in france There she did learn to sing and dance There she was married to the dauphin But soon he was laid in the coffin,” and so on through the whole romantic and tragic story to the end at Fotheringay. Nay, even beyond it, goes our poet historian, lured on by her sense of poetical justice against Queen Elizabeth: “Elizabeth was a cross old maid Now when her youth began to fade Her temper was worce then before And people did not her adore But Mary was much loved by all Both by the great and by the small But hark her soul to heaven did rise And I do think she gained a prize For I do think she would not go Into the awfull place below There is a thing that I must tell Elizabeth went to fire and hell Him who will teach her to be cevel It must be her great friend the divel.” It is very consoling to know that Marjorie did not think any the worse of beautiful Queen Mary for being a Catholic: “She was a Roman Catholic strong Nor did she think that it was wrong.” Perhaps the fact that she herself was a “Pisplikan just now and a Prisbeteren at Kercaldy, my native town, which though dirty is clein in the country,” made her more tolerant than others of her nation: “For they her faith could not well bear And to upbraid her they would dare.”