TOM AND MAGGIE'S HAPPY DAY

GEORGE ELIOT

George Eliot (1819-1880) was the pen name of Mary Ann Evans, one of the greatest of English women novelists. Her father was first a carpenter and then a steward of landed estates. After her mother's death and the marriage of her elder sisters, the future novelist became both housekeeper and companion to her father. 5 She drove with him during the day and read Scott to him at night. "Her education, long pursued with unwavering industry, was unusually good, including Greek, Latin, French, German, Hebrew, and music. After her father's death she went abroad with some literary friends, tarried at Geneva to perfect herself in foreign 10 tongues, visited London on her return, met the editor of the Westminster Review, and began her memorable career as his assistant."

Her first great novel was Adam Bede. When it appeared Thackeray said that "a star of the first magnitude had just arisen." Tom and Maggie Tulliver are the central figures in her 15 next book, Mill on the Floss. In it she succeeded in interesting two continents in the simple lives of two children.

Much of George Eliot's best work deals with country life. She is as emphatically the great painter of English rural life as Dickens is of the wretched life of the city slums, as Thackeray 20 is of men and women of fashion, as Scott is of knightly customs.

George Eliot is genius and culture. - JUSTIN MCCARTHY. George Eliot in all her novels instills her own faith in plain living and high thinking by showing that it is well in life to care greatly for something worthy of cur care; choose worthy work, and believe in it with all our souls. JOHN MORLEY.

The next morning Maggie was trotting with her own fishing rod in one hand and a handle of the basket in the other, stepping always, by a peculiar

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gift, in the muddiest places, and looking darkly radiant because Tom was good to her. She had told Tom, however, that she should like him to put the worms on the hook for her, although she 5 accepted his word when he assured her that worms

could n't feel (it was Tom's private opinion that it did n't much matter if they did).

He knew all about worms, and fish, and those things; and what birds were mischievous, and how 10 padlocks opened, and which way the handles of the gates were to be lifted. Maggie thought this sort of knowledge was very wonderful, much more difficult than remembering what was in the books; and she was rather in awe of Tom's superiority, for 15 he was the only person who called her knowledge

"stuff," and did not feel surprised at her cleverness. Tom, indeed, was of opinion that Maggie was a silly little thing; all girls were silly; they could n't throw a stone so as to hit anything, could n't do anything with a pocketknife, and were frightened 5. at frogs. Still, he was very fond of his sister, and meant always to take care of her, make her his housekeeper, and punish her when she did wrong.

They were on their way to the Round Pool, the wonderful pool which the floods had made a 10 long while ago. No one knew how deep it was; and it was mysterious, too, that it should be almost a perfect round, framed in with willows and tall reeds, so that the water was only to be seen when you got close to the brink. The sight of the old 15 favorite spot always heightened Tom's good humor, and he spoke to Maggie in the most amicable whispers, as he opened the precious basket and prepared their tackle. He threw her line for her, and put the rod into her hand. Maggie thought it prob- 20 able that the small fish would come to her hook, and the large ones to Tom's. But she had forgotten all about the fish, and was looking dreamily at the glassy water, when Tom said, in a loud whisper, "Look! look, Maggie!" and came run- 25 ning to prevent her from snatching her line away.

Maggie was frightened lest she had been doing something wrong, as usual, but presently Tom drew out her line and brought a large tench bouncing on the grass.

5 Tom was excited. "O Magsie! you little duck! Empty the basket."

Maggie was not conscious of unusual merit, but it was enough that Tom called her Magsie, and was pleased with her. There was nothing to mar 10 her delight in the whispers and the dreamy silences,

when she listened to the light dipping sounds of the rising fish, and the gentle rustling, as if the willows, and the reeds, and the water had their happy whisperings also. Maggie thought it would make 15 a very nice heaven to sit by the pool in that way, and never be scolded. She never knew that she had a bite until Tom told her, but she liked fishing very much.

It was one of their happy mornings. They 20 trotted along and sat down together, with no

thought that life would ever change much for them; they would only get bigger and not go to school, and it would always be like the holidays; they would always live together and be fond of 25 each other. And the mill with its booming, - the

great chestnut tree under which they played at

houses, their own little river, the Ripple, where the banks seemed like home, and Tom was always seeing the water rats, while Maggie gathered the purple plumy tops of the reeds, which she forgot

and dropped afterward, above all, the great Floss, 5 along which they wandered with a sense of travel, to see the rushing spring tide, the awful Eagre, come up like a hungry monster, or to see the Great Ash which had once wailed and groaned like a man, these things would always be just the same 10 to them. Tom thought people were at a disadvantage who lived on any other spot on the globe; and Maggie, when she read about Christian's passing "the river over which there is no bridge," always saw the Floss between the green pastures. 15

Life did change for Tom and Maggie; and yet they were not wrong in believing that the thoughts and loves of these first years would always make part of their lives. We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it, — if 20 it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass, the same hips and haws on the autumn hedgerows, the same redbreasts that we used to 25 call "God's birds," because they did no harm to