Page:A happy half-century and other essays.djvu/262

 "Chesham Place." Locker tells a pleasant story of meeting Thackeray in Pall Mall, on his way to Kensington, and offering to join him in his walk. This offer was declined, Thackeray explaining that he had some rhymes trotting through his head, and that he was trying to polish them off in the course of a solitary stroll. A few days later they met again, and Thackeray said, "I finished those verses, and they are very nearly being very good. I call them 'Mrs. Katherine's Lantern.' I did them for Dickens's daughter."

"Very nearly being very good!" This is an author's modest estimate. Readers there are who have found them so absolutely good that they leaven the whole heavy mass of album verse. Shall not a century of extortion on the one side and debility on the other be forgiven, because upon one blank page, the property of one thrice fortunate young woman, were written these lines, fragrant with imperishable sentiment:—