There was always an immensely big strong man, one Bobby Maurice, a good-natured giant, nearly three inches high and over two ounces in weight, who among other feats would eat a whole pea at a sitting, and hold out an acorn at arm's-length, and throw a pepper-corn over two yards--which has remained the record. Then, coming back down-stream, she would take the sculls and I the tiller, and I would tell her (in French) all about our school adventures at Brossard's and Bonzig, and the Lafertés, and the Revolution of February; and in that way she picked up a lot of useful and idiomatic Parisian which considerably astonished Fräulein Werner, the German governess, who yet knew French almost as well as her own language--almost as well as Mr. Ollendorff himself. She also changed one of the heroes in her famous novel, _Tommy Holt_, into a French boy, and called him _Rapaud_! She was even more devoted to animals than the rest of the family: the beautiful Angora, Kitty, died when Marty was five, from an abscess in her cheek, where she'd been bitten by a strange bull-terrier; and Marty tearfully wrote her epitaph in a beautiful round hand-- "Here lies Kitty, full of grace; Died of an _abbess_ in her face!" This was her first attempt at verse-making, and here's her last, from the French of Sully-Prudhomme: "If you but knew what tears, alas! One weeps for kinship unbestowed, In pity you would sometimes pass My poor abode! "If you but knew what balm, for all Despond, lies in an angel's glance, Your looks would on my window fall As though by chance! "If you but knew the heart's delight To feel its fellow-heart is by, You'd linger, as a sister might, These gates anigh! "If you but knew how oft I yearn For one sweet voice, one presence dear, Perhaps you'd even simply turn And enter here!" She was only just seventeen when she wrote them, and, upon my word, I think they're almost as good as the original! Her intimate friendship with Chucker-out, the huge St. Bernard, lasted for nearly both their lives, alas! It began when they both weighed exactly the same, and I could carry both in one arm. When he died he turned the scale at sixteen stone, like me. It has lately become the fashion to paint big dogs and little girls, and engravings of these pictures are to be seen in all the print-sellers' shops. It always touches me very much to look at these works of art, although--and I hope it is not libellous to say so--the big dog is always hopelessly inferior in beauty and dignity and charm to Chucker-out, who was champion of his day. And as for the little girls--_Ah, mon Dieu!_ Such pictures are not high art of course, and that is why I don't possess one, as I've got an æsthetic character to keep up; but why they shouldn't be I can't guess. Is it because no high artist--except Briton Riviere--will stoop to so easily understood a subject?