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Show Jlmc. de Genlis' Childhood. If Mme. de Genlis' own account of her bringing up before her marriage is true she is a remarkable example of a woman who has learned from experience, and has contrived even among the incessant claims of society to repair her parents' neglect in the matter of education. At six she set forth with her mother to Paris, where she spent a few dismal weeks. After she had two teeth taken out (the history of children is always the same) "they put a pair of stiff whalebone stays on me and imprisoned my feet in tight shoes, which prevented me from walking. They rolled mj' hair in curl papers and I wore for the first time a panier. To cure my provincial air an iron collar was fastened round my neck, and as I squinted a little the moment I woke a pair of spectacles was placed.on my nose, and these I was not allowed to move for fmir bnnrs FiTl. ly, to my great surprise, I was given a master to teach me how to walk (which I thought I knew before), and I was forbidden for-bidden to run, or to jump, or to ask questions." The private baptism of her infancy was supplemented by a public ceremony, cere-mony, and then her woes were partly forgotten in the delight of fetes and the glory of her first opera. This was "Roland "Ro-land le Furieux," and she was fortunate enough to hear Chasso, the singer who five years later was ennobled "on account ac-count of his voice and his beautiful style." Unlike his comrades he had somo notion of modulation. Mrs. Andrew An-drew Lang in National Review. |