Maria Poppet had fine gifts as a story-teller too. If she had been required by one of her little mothers’ governesses to write a composition, the task would have offered no difficulties to her. What she saw in the London of nearly a hundred years ago she makes us see--the Twelfth-night customs, the Lord Mayor’s Show, Punch and Judy, the Christmas Pantomime, the Zoo, the life of little Lady Flora, waited upon by governess and maids and powdered footmen, and the lives of the little milliner girls, driven by cruel Aunt Sharpshins from six o’clock in the morning until eight o’clock at night. How delightfully puzzling are some of the quaint old words Maria Poppet uses. She speaks of the “turbans” worn by the ladies of her day. Did you think turbans belonged to “Arabian Nights” characters only? Maria wore “a frock and trousers” and “stays”--or no, she wore “a small under-bodice of white jean instead of stays”; her frock was made of “lemon-colored merino”; her little mother pattered about the room in “list” shoes. And Maria’s mothers did not go to the dry-goods store nor the grocer’s, nor did they buy pies at the baker’s. They visited the “draper’s” and the “green-grocer’s” and bought “raspberry tarts” at the “pastry-cook’s.” And what do you suppose a “teetotum” is? And a “tinkerum”? If you have a great-grandmother perhaps she can tell you; and she may sing, as did my grandmother, the quaint old tunes, “They’re all nodding” and “Cherry ripe” and others which Maria heard the London street organ play. Sometimes boys and girls look rather scornfully upon old-fashioned things. They think that nothing which is not “up to date” can possibly be as fine as modern shows. Well, I, for one, never saw a Fifth Avenue window display--and I love to gaze into Fifth Avenue shops--more dazzling than the pastry-cook’s window on Twelfth-night; nor a more gorgeous parade than the Lord Mayor’s; nor a play more enchanting than the New Grand Christmas Pantomime which the London Doll saw at Drury-Lane Theatre in the “old-fashioned” days of the story. And I do not believe that any American child, visiting one of our enormous, bewildering toy departments at Christmas time, sees treasures more truly satisfying than Lady Flora found in the London toyshops years and years ago. You will not wonder that when I finished reading Maria Poppet’s most entertaining “Memoirs” I was eager to find copies of her story to place in all our Brooklyn children’s libraries. I searched the shops in vain. The little book had been “out of print” for many years, the book-trade people reported. So I treasured in my office the shabby copy I had found in the old library, hoping that some day something would happen that would give to all our children the fun of reading the charming story. That something has happened at last.