Then she would turn to _Paradise Lost_, and how often have we not
heard her repeat the lines:
And, in the lowest deep, a lower deep Still threatening to devour me,
opens wide, finding, as Aristotle would have said, relief and even
comfort in the "purgation" through poetry, of the passions of pity and
terror.
I will end my account of Leaker with one of her memories of happier
moods in which we can feel the magic of spring laying hold on the vivid
imagination of the bright-eyed Devonshire girl:
One early spring day I heard my eldest brother tell my mother that he
had seen a primrose. She said, "Do not tell Salome, for if she knows
there will be no keeping her at home." But I had heard, and that was
enough. Early next morning away I went, rambling all day from field to
field, picking primroses. First a handful of the common yellow ones,
then some coloured ones, and did ever a Queen prize jewels as I did
those coloured flowers? But the joy in them only lasted a little while.
I would next see some white ones, and then the coloured ones were thrown
away, and I would set to work to gather the pale ones. Oh, how beautiful
they looked! I can see them now, and almost feel the rapture I felt
then.
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