Nevertheless it endures, outliving scores of in a way better books on the same themes, because her own delightful personality manifests itself and shines in all these little pictures.

This short passage describing how she took Lizzie, the little village child she loved, to gather cowslips in the meadows, will serve as an illustration.
They who know these feelings (and who is so happy as not to have known some of them) will understand why Alfieri became powerless, and Froissart dull; and why even needlework, the most effective sedative, that grand soother and composer of women's distress, fails to comfort me today.

I will go out into the air this cool, pleasant afternoon, and try what that will do....

I will go to the meadows, the beautiful meadows and I will have my materials of happiness, Lizzie and May, and a basket for flowers, and we will make a cowslip ball.

"Did you ever see a cowslip ball, Lizzie ?" "No." "Come away then; make haste! run, Lizzie!" And on we go, fast, fast! down the road, across the lea, past the workhouse, along by the great pond, till we slide into the deep narrow lane, whose hedges seem to meet over the water, and win our way to the little farmhouse at the end.