The poor cottage was crumbling around us, and if we had stayed much longer we should have been buried in the ruins. And yet it was great grief to go. Besides my general aversion to new habitations, I had associations with those old walls which endeared them to me more than I can tell. There I had toiled and striven, and tasted of bitter anxiety.... There in the fulness of age, I had lost those whose love had made my home sweet and precious.... Other recollections, less dear and less sad, added their interest to the place. Friends many and kind; strangers, whose names were an honor, had come to that bright garden, and that garden room.... It was a heart-tug to leave that garden. I walked from the one cottage to the other on an autumn evening, when the vagrant birds, whose habit of assembling here for their annual departure, gives, I suppose, the name of Swallowfield to the village, were circling and twittering over my head.... Here I am in the prettiest village, in the snuggest and cosiest of all snug cabins; a trim cottage garden, divided by a hawthorn hedge from a little field guarded by grand old trees; a cheerful glimpse of the high-road in front, just to hint that there is such a thing as a peopled world; and on either side the deep silent lanes that form the distinctive character of English scenery. MARY RUSSELL MITFORD: ‘Recollections of a Literary Life.’ * * * * * [Sidenote: Miss Martineau did not like her.] I must say that personally I did not like her so well as I liked her works. The charming _bonhomie_ of her writings appeared at first in her conversation and manners; but there were other things which presently sadly impaired its charm. It is no part of my business to pass judgment on her views and modes of life. What concerned me was her habit of flattery, and the twin habit of disparagement of others. I never knew her respond to any act or course of conduct which was morally lofty. She could not believe in it, nor, of course, enjoy it; and she seldom failed to “see through” it, and to delight in her superiority to admiration. She was a devoted daughter, where the duty was none of the easiest; and servants and neighbors were sincerely attached to her. The little intercourse I had with her was spoiled by her habit of flattery; but I always fell back on my old admiration of her as soon as she was out of sight, and her ‘Village’ rose up in my memory. HARRIET MARTINEAU: ‘Autobiography.’ Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1877. * * * * * [Sidenote: “Not flattery prepense.”]