“Fury took possession of me, and I killed her with my knife.  An hour later I laid her in a grave in the wood.  Then I mounted my horse, galloped to Cordova, and gave myself up at the first guard-house....  Poor Carmen! it is the gipsies who are to blame for having brought her up like that.”

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MARY RUSSELL MITFORD

Our Village

Mary Russell Mitford was known first as a dramatist, with tragedy as her forte, and in later years as a novelist, but by posterity she will be remembered as a portrayer of country life, in simply worded sketches, with a quiet colouring of humour.  These sketches were collected, as “Our Village,” into five volumes, between 1824 and 1832.  Miss Mitford was born Dec. 16, 1787, at Alresford, Hampshire, England, the daughter of a foolish spendthrift father, to whom she was pathetically devoted, and lived in her native county almost throughout her life.  In her later years she received a Civil List pension.  She died on January 10, 1855.  The quietness of the country is in all Miss Mitford’s writing, but it is a cheerful country, pervaded by a rosy-cheeked optimism.  Her letters, too, scribbled on small scraps of paper, are as attractive as her books.

I.—­Some of the Inhabitants

Will you walk with me through our village, courteous reader?  The journey is not long.  We will begin at the lower end, and proceed up the hill.

The tidy, square, red cottage on the right hand, with the long, well-stocked garden by the side of the road, belongs to a retired publican from a neighbouring town; a substantial person with a comely wife—­one who piques himself on independence and idleness, talks politics, reads the newspapers, hates the minister, and cries out for reform.  He hangs over his gate, and tries to entice passengers to stop and chat.  Poor man!  He is a very respectable person, and would be a very happy one if he would add a little employment to his dignity.  It would be the salt of life to him.

Next to his house, though parted from it by another long garden with a yew arbour at the end, is the pretty dwelling of the shoemaker, a pale, sickly-looking, black-haired man, the very model of sober industry.  There he sits in his little shop from early morning till late at night.  An earthquake would hardly stir him.  There is at least as much vanity in his industry as in the strenuous idleness of the retired publican.  The shoemaker has only one pretty daughter, a light, delicate, fair-haired girl of fourteen, the champion, protectress, and play-fellow of every brat under three years old, whom she jumps, dances, dandles, and feeds all day long.  A very attractive person is that child-loving girl.  She likes flowers, and has a profusion of white stocks under her window, as pure and delicate as herself.