Page:A happy half-century and other essays.djvu/170

 "Poor thing! I hope to Heaven she will escape such sovereignty and such honours!"

She did escape scot-free. Whoever married—let us hope he married—Miss Birch, was no Mark Antony to draw fame to her feet. His very name is unknown to the world. Perhaps, as "Mrs.—Something—Rogers," she illustrated in her respectable middle age that beneficent process by which Nature frustrates the educator, and converts the infant Cleopatra or the infant Hypatia into the rotund matron, of whom she stands permanently in need.