Page:In the dozy hours, and other papers.djvu/68

 54 complete that they leave nothing for the imagination to supply.

In the matter of books, Mrs. Wiggin displays the same admirable conservatism, her modern instincts being checked and held in sway by the recollection of those few dear old volumes which little girls used to read over and over again, until they knew them by heart. Yet I hardly think that "naughty" is a kind word to apply to Miss Edgeworth's Rosamond, who is not very wise, I admit, and under no circumstances a prig, but always docile and charming and good. And why should the "red morocco housewife," which Rosamond, in one of her rare moments of discretion, chooses instead of a stone plum, be stigmatized as "hideous but useful." It may have been an exceedingly neat and pretty possession. We are told nothing to the contrary, and I had a brown one stamped with gold when I was a little girl, which, to my infant eyes represented supreme artistic excellence. It also hurts my feelings very much to hear Casablanca dubbed an "inspired idiot," who lacked the sense to escape. Unless the Roman sentries found dead at their posts in Pompeii were also