tails of the story, there seems to he a progressive increase in maturity, that is a consequence and a measure of the nine months' interval between the author's revision of Part I and her revision of Parts II and III.
It will be observed that the differences involve little or no addition. The one piece of addition is in the episode of Eepersip's young sister Fleuriss, which is considerably more developed. The obvious reason for this is that the author's own young sister, at the time of the first draft, existed only as an insistent demand on Barbara's part; whereas in the period of the revision she was a dream fulfilled, subject to adoring daily observation.
As to ordinary literacy, there is no perceptible difference, and has been none since the typewritten by-products of Barbara's sixth and seventh years. In short, what the leader is here given is an articulate eight—and nine-year-old child's outpouring of her own dreams and longings in a fanciful tale, superficially revised by the hand of a twelve-year-old girl whose life on its more artificial side is made up principally of books and music.
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It was the youthful author's idea, not mine, that her story should be accompanied by a ward of ex-
