with desks and black-boards, and left alone with two other girls, who stared at them stonily. One of them broke silence by asking, "What is your name?" "Sydney Owenson," was the answer. "My name," observed the questioner, "is Mary Anne Grattan, and my papa is the greatest man in Ireland."
Quick-witted Sydney, not to be outdone, promptly responded, "My papa is free of the six and ten per cents!"
After remaining three years at Madame Tersen's, the two Owensons were sent to a finishing school kept by a Mrs. Anderson, who had been governess at the Marquis of Drogheda's. Their kind-hearted father was content to wear a shabby coat as long as his girls were well educated. What Sydney calls "her flimsy, fussy, flirty Celtic temperment" now began to assert itself. She was extremely small in stature, with black curls, cut in a crop, while Olivia was fair, with lovely golden hair, but then Sydney had a jaunty little air of her own, as she remarks with satisfaction, peculiarly Irish. She could sing, dance, speak French, play the Irish harp, and already she had shown signs of literary ability, for her poems^ written between the age of twelve and fourteen, had been printed at her father's expense. One of her ballads is likely to live longer than her novels, the well-known "Kate Kearney." It has all the qualities of a true
