JANET'S HOME.

JANET'S HOM E.

IN TWO VOLUMES,

VOL. I.

London and Cambridge:
MACMILLAN AND CO.

1863.

The Right of Translation is reserved.

250. p. 55.

JANET'S HOME.

CHAPTER I.

"There is no friend like a sister,
In calm or stormy weather,
To cheer one on the tedious way,
To fetch one if one goes astray,

To lift one if one totters down,

To strengthen whilst one stands."

CHRISTINA ROSSETTI.

I CAN remember, as well as if it were yesterday, the precise moment in my mental life when my selfconsciousness was awakened into the overweening activity which has caused me so much trouble and so many mortifications ever since. How often I have tried to send it to sleep again! How many sops, in the shape of sermons on single-mindedness, poems on the beauty of simplicity, philosophical dissertations, have I not administered to my Cerberus, and how complacently it has swallowed and fattened