There on the top of the down, The wild heather round me and over me June's high blue, When I look'd at the bracken so bright and the heather so brown, I thought to myself I would offer this book to you, This, and my love together, To you that are seventy-seven, With a faith as clear as the heights of the June-blue heaven, And a fancy as summer-new As the green of the bracken amid the gloom of the heather. [Illustration: _Emily Lady Tennyson from a drawing by G. F. Watts, R.A._ _Emery Walker, Ph.sc._] RECOLLECTIONS OF MY EARLY LIFE By EMILY, LADY TENNYSON Written for her son in 1896 You ask me to tell you something of my life before marriage at Horncastle in Lincolnshire. It would be hard indeed not to do anything you ask of me if within my power. To say the truth, this particular thing you want is somewhat painful. The first thing I remember of my father[1] is his looking at me with sad eyes after my mother's[2] death. Her I recollect, passing the window in a velvet pelisse, and then in a white shawl on the sofa, and then crowned with roses--beautiful in death. I recollect, too, being carried to her funeral; but I asked what they were doing, and in all this had no idea of death. My life before marriage was in many ways sad: in one, however, unspeakably happy. No one could have had a better father, or been happier with her two sisters, Anne and Louisa. Although, if we were too merry and noisy in the mornings, we were summoned by my Aunt Betsy (who lived with us) all three into her room, to hold out our small hands for stripes from a certain little riding-whip; or if, later in the day, our needlework was not well done we had our fingers pricked with a needle, or if the lessons were not finished, we had fools' caps put on our heads, and were banished to a corner of the room. My aunt's nature was by no means cruel; she was, on the whole, kind and dutiful to us, yet no doubt with effort on her part, for she had no instinctive love of children.