Before Esmond was written Thackeray had added the profession of lecturer to that of author.  He was a very loving father and was always anxious not only that his daughters should be happy when they were young, but that when he died he should leave them well off.  Again and again in his letters we find him turning to this thought:  “If I can’t leave them a fortune, why, we must try to leave them the memory of having had a good time,” he says.  But he wanted to leave them a fortune, and so he took to lecturing.  His lectures were a great success, and he delivered them in many places in England, Scotland, Ireland and America.

It was while he was lecturing in Scotland that he heard a little boy read one of his ballads.  It was a satirical ballad, and somehow Thackeray did not like to hear it from the little boy’s lips.  Turning away he said to himself, “Pray God I may be able some day to write something good for children.  That will be better than glory or Parliament.”

But already he had written something good for children in the fairy tale of The Rose and the Ring.  One year he spent the winter with his children in Rome, and wrote the fairy tale for them and their friends, and drew the pictures too.

I have no room in this book to tell you the story, but there is a great deal of fun in it, and I hope you will read it for yourselves.  Here, for instance, is what happened to a porter for being rude to the fairy Blackstick.  After saying many other rude things, he asked if she thought he was going to stay at the door all day.

“’You are going to stay at that door all day and all night, and for many a long year,’ the fairy said, very majestically; and Gruffenuff, coming out of the door, straddling before it with his great calves, burst out laughing, and cried ’Ha, ha, ha! this is a good un!  Ha—­ah what’s this?  Let me down—­O-o-H’m!’ and then he was dumb.

“For as the fairy waved her wand over him, he felt himself rising off the ground, and fluttering up against the door, and then, as if a screw ran into his stomach, he felt a dreadful pain there, and was pinned to the door; and then his arms flew up over his head; and his legs, after writhing about wildly, twisted under his body; and he felt cold, cold, growing over him, as if he was turning into metal; and he said, ‘O-o-H’m!’ and could say no more, because he was dumb.

“He was turned into metal!  He was from being brazen, brass!  He was neither more nor less than a knocker!  An there he was, nailed to the door in the blazing summer day, till he burned almost red-hot; and there he was, nailed to the door all the bitter winter nights, till his brass nose was dropping with icicles.  And the postman came and rapped at him, and the vulgarist boy with a letter came and hit him up against the door.  And the King and Queen coming home from a walk that evening, the King said, ’Hallo, my dear! you have had a new knocker put on the door.  Why, it’s