“In the summer time when she gave strawberry parties, the road leading to the cottage was crowded with the carriages of all the rank and fashion in the county. By example as well as precept she ‘brightened the path along which she dwelt.’ Her kindly nature did not exhaust itself in a girlish enthusiasm for pets and flowers, but went forth to meet her fellow-men and women whose virtues seemed to expand and whose faults to vanish at her approach.” Her conversation had a peculiar charm, considered by some “to be even better than her books,” delivered, as it was, by a “voice beautiful as a chime of bells.” It was in the year 1847 that Miss Mitford first made the acquaintance of Mr. James T. Fields—a distinguished American—both author and publisher—whose “bright, genial, vivacious letters” and “spirited lectures on ‘Charles Lamb,’ ‘Longfellow,’ and others” are highly spoken of by contemporaries. Mr. Fields writes in his interesting book entitled _Yesterday with Authors_:— “It was a fortunate hour for me when kind-hearted John Kenyon said, as I was leaving his hospitable door in London one summer midnight: ‘you must know my friend Miss Mitford. She lives directly in the line of your route to Oxford, and you must call with my card and make her acquaintance.’ The day selected for my call at her cottage door happened to be a perfect one in which to begin an acquaintance with the lady of ‘Our Village.’ She was then living at Three Mile Cross ... on the high road between Basingstoke and Reading [where] the village street contained the public-house and several small shops near-by. There was also close at hand the village pond full of ducks and geese, and I noticed several young rogues on their way to school were occupied in worrying their feathered friends. The windows of the cottage were filled with flowers, and cowslips and violets were plentifully scattered about the little garden. I remember the room into which I was shown was sanded, and a quaint old clock behind the door was marking off the hour in small but loud pieces. The cheerful lady called to me from the head of the stairs to come up into her sitting-room. I sat down by the open window to converse with her, and it was pleasant to see how the village children, as they went by, stopped to bow and curtsy. One curly-headed urchin made bold to take off his well-worn cap, and waited to be recognized as ‘little Johnny.’ ‘No great scholar,’ said the kind-hearted lady to me, ‘but a sad rogue among our flock of geese. Only yesterday the young marauder was detected by my maid with a plump gosling stuffed half-way into his pocket!’ While she was thus discoursing of Johnny’s peccadilloes, the little fellow looked up with a knowing expression, and very soon caught in his cap a ginger-bread dog which she threw to him from the window. ‘I wish he loved his book as well as he relishes sweet cakes,’ she sighed, as the boy kicked up his heels and disappeared down the lane....