and "her" of every letter. And this shall be a paper of reparation to Mrs. Dingley. No one else in literary history has been so de- frauded of her honours. In love "to divide is not to take away," as Shelley says; and Ding- ley's half of the tender things said to MD is equal to any whole, and takes nothing from the whole of Stella's half. But the sentimen- talist has fought against Mrs. Dingley from the outset. He has disliked her, shirked her, mis- conceived her, and effaced her. Sly sentimen- talist--he finds her irksome. Through one of his most modern representatives he has but lately called her a "chaperon." A chaperon! MD was not a sentimentalist. Stella was not so, though she has been pressed into that character; D certainly was not, and has in this respect been spared by the chronicler; and MD together were "saucy charming MD," "saucy little, pretty, dear rogues," "little monkeys mine," "little mischievous girls," "nautinau- tinautidear girls," "brats," "huzzies both," "impudence and saucy-face," "saucy noses," "my dearest lives and delights," "dear little young women," "good dallars, not crying dal- lars" (which means "girls"), "ten thousand times dearest MD," and so forth in a hundred -9- |