Page:Blanchard on L. E. L.pdf/11

Rh chose the same scene for her residence. When one series of inmates quitted it, she still resided there with their successors, returning continually, after every wandering, "like a blackbird to his bush." L. E. L. was a reader almost in her cradle, and a writer, if the term may be employed when the mechanical aids to authorship were wanting, before she had been many years out of it. Her first efforts in learning were indicative of acute intellect; and the uses to which she invariably turned the rewards of her quickness and diligence already implied the presence of those admirable qualities, which afterwards characterised her private life. Need we here say to any that ever knew her, that we mean the ardour of her affections, and the unreserved generosity of her nature. It is not less because it is believed that the public would desire to know all that can be related about the earliest years of one who has interested and delighted them so long, than because it is certain that some of the most trivial and childish circumstances will serve to exhibit those qualities of the intellect and the heart—that to these pages are transferred such anecdotes of her infancy as the fond recollections of her first friends have treasured up and supplied.

She was taught to read by an invalid friend and neighbor, who amused herself by scattering the letters of the alphabet over the carpet, and making her little pupil pick them up as they were named. The principle of rewards was adopted solely, and these rewards, as they were won, were as regularly brought to her brother. That living relative who was her only playmate and companion, relates, in a letter from which we write—"If she came home without a reward, she went up stairs with her nurse, of whom she was particularly fond, to