on the steamer that brought us over from Ostend, who kept pushing against my mother’s lame foot as she sat on deck, and even complained at her, for taking up so much room. It hurt her most of all, that it should be her own countrymen who were thus rude and heartless. Let us hope that it was merely sea-sickness which made them so inhuman! And the lady resembled them who, when my mother had dragged herself on her crutches to a railway-carriage and was preparing to enter it, shut the door in her face, saying:--“there is no room here!” What a contrast to the good old bathing-man at Hastings, who used to carry her in and out of the water, and was so sorry to see how she suffered, that he would pat her cheek gently, and talk to her as if he were comforting a small child:--“There, there, poor dear! it will be better soon!” That journey from Ostend belongs to the most painful experiences of my childhood, it was nothing but discomfort and sadness, and I shall never forget the wailing of my poor little baby brother Otto, suffering all night long in one of the frightful paroxysms of pain, for which in vain relief was sought. His devoted English nurse, our good Barnes, sat rocking him in her arms the whole time, and every now and then she cast a sympathetic glance my way, but she could do nothing to help or comfort me, she was entirely taken up with her poor little charge. Had there been anyone there who could have told me a story to distract my thoughts, to take me for a moment out of myself, and away from the unhappiness which I was helpless to console! How often may not some pretty well-told tale, some little snatch of song, help a child to forget the misery of its weary limbs and aching head, and soothe it to sleep.