One day this happened in the presence of a woman, a sempstress, who was sitting by at work. She was poor in pocket, but rich in knowledge of life, and kind of heart, and she cried: “Oh, you poor, spoiled child! If you had a nice, clean rag-doll, such as any work-woman’s child may play with, you would, I warrant, get more pleasure from it than from any of these big, hard, silk-clothed ladies that you can’t baby or coddle to save your life! I’ve a good mind--” then she paused, but the weary, little face, turned from the splendid doll in dull dislike, brought her to a determination; she went on: “I’ll have to be quick, though, for her mother would never give her consent, never!” So Marie was put to sleep, and the sewing-woman left her proper occupation and worked hard and fast on something else, for this was the day of the creation of Dinah. And I often ask myself this question: If that woman of bright intelligence and good will, acting under the influence of loving pity for an unhappy child, could yet produce such a blood-chilling nightmare as Dinah, what under the blue canopy of Heaven could that same woman produce if her hand were directed by hate or revenge? Nothing short of an eye-crossing, world-convulsing creation, I’m sure! At all events, I made a picture of Dinah, to show a friend of Mrs. Tyler, and when she looked at it, she had a congestive chill, and it was a good picture too. Personally, I don’t approve of written descriptions of people, because they never describe. See descriptions of lost people given to detectives, where height, weight, and possible age are dwelt on with great particularity, while a large, seedy wart, mounted conspicuously on the bridge of his nose, or a drooping, partially paralyzed lid of the right eye is never mentioned. Then again, though Dinah was no beauty, I felt so much respect for her powers of endurance, her silent patience under most trying circumstances, that writing a personal description of her becomes a painful task. However, if you will go back to your earliest youth (a longish journey for some of us, yes, but one still easily made), and recall the paper-dolls of that period, dolls generally cut from the white margin of the evening paper by the purloined scissors of that member of the family who most objected to your using them, you will remember those dolls were always out in very wide paper pantalettes, modest but ugly, chaste but very inartistic--well, if you will, in your imagination, trim off the superfluous width of those pantys, so as to make legs instead, you will have before your mind’s eye an excellent ground plan of Dinah’s structure.