[4] The allusion is to Thekla’s song in Part I., Act iii., sc. 7 of Schiller’s Wallenstein.
Du Heilige, rufe dein Kind zurueck!
Ich habe genossen das irdische Glueck,
Ich habe gelebt und gelibet.
[5] The hymn referred to is Paul Gerhardt’s, beginning:
Wir singen dir, Immanuel, Du Lebensfuerst und Gnadenquell.
It was one of her favorite German hymns. The lines she quotes belong to the tenth stanza; “Ich kann nicht sagen Der Will ist da,” are the words pencilled in the margin.
[6] Hartley Coleridge’s Poems. Vol. II., p. 139.
[7] But greatly to Mrs. Prentiss’ annoyance, with the title changed to Ever Heavenward—as if to make it appear to be a sequel to Stepping Heavenward.
[8] Wife of the late Rev. Horatio Brinsmade, D.D., of Newark, N. J.
[9] “Polly” was particularly happy; six years old, I should say, shabby, though evidently washed up for the occasion, and very pretty and all pink with excitement. “Polly, I knowed you’d get a prize,” I heard a young woman, tired out with carrying her own big baby, say. And then she came upon her own geranium with three blossoms on it and marked “Second Prize,” and said, “I can’t believe it,” when they told her that that meant six shillings. But the plant which my companion and myself both cried over, was a little bit of a weedy marigold, the one poor little flower on it carefully fastened about with a paper ring, such as high and mighty greenhouse men sometimes put round a choice rose in bud. That was all; just this one common, very single little flower, with “Lizzie” Something’s name attached and the name of her street. All the streets were put upon the tickets and added greatly to the pathetic effect; just the poorest lanes and alleys in London. Nobody seemed to claim the marigold. Perhaps it was the great treasure of some sick child who couldn’t come to look at it. It was certain not to get a prize, but the child has found something by this time tucked down in the pot and carefully covered over by F., when no one was looking, with a pinch of earth taken from a more prosperous plant alongside.
[10] Miss W. showed me a very pleasant letter of Lady Augusta Stanley, the wife of Dean Stanley, to a Miss C., through whom she received from Miss W.’s little niece a copy of The Story Lizzie Told. Lady Stanley is herself, I believe, at the head of the Society which holds the annual Flower Show. She says in her letter that she had just returned from Scotland, reaching home quite late in the evening. Before retiring, however, she had read your story through. She praises it very warmly, and wonders how anybody but a “Londoner” could have written it.—Letter to Mrs. P., dated New York, September, 1872.
CHAPTER XI.
IN HER HOME.