Page:Twilight Hours (1868).djvu/11

 T is now nearly two years since a small volume came to me by post, directed to Queen's College, Harley Street, —

"With the grateful regards of the author, an old pupil, these first essays in composition."

The book consisted of stories for young children, and bore the title of " Rainbows in Spring-tide." The writer hid herself under the nom de plume of "Sadie." I turned over the pages, and found in the tales themselves a pleasant ease and genial insight into child-nature, enlivened here and there with touches of quaint humour and vivid description. One would have augured from them that the writer might probably attain a fair measure of success in the not inglorious region of the literature of the nursery. But mingling with the prose there were also, scattered here and there, brought in with a visible want of connexion which showed that they belonged to a different mood, and were the offspring of different hours, a few 'pieces' in verse. And these, as I read them, seemed to indicate