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Such was Catherine Morland at ten At fifteen, appearances werefor balls; her complexion improved, her features were softened by pluure ave way to an inclination for finery, and she grew clean as she grew s her father and rows quite a good-looking girl--she is alht her ears now and then; and hoelcome were the sounds! To look alirl who has been looking plain the first fifteen years of her life than a beauty froood woht to be; but her ti the little ones, that her elder daughters were inevitably left to shift for themselves; and it was not very wonderful that Catherine, who had by nature nothing heroic about her, should prefer cricket, baseball, riding on horseback, and running about the country at the age of fourteen, to books--or at least books of infore could be gained from them, provided they were all story and no reflection, she had never any objection to books at all But fro for a heroine; she read all such works as heroines must read to supply their memories with those quotations which are so serviceable and so soothing in the vicissitudes of their eventful lives

From Pope, she learnt to censure those who "bear about the mockery of woe"

From Gray, that "Many a flower is born to blush unseen, "And waste its fragrance on the desert air"

Fro idea how to shoot"

And frost the rest, that-"Trifles light as air, "Are, to the jealous, confir, "As proofs of Holy Writ"

That "The poor beetle, which we tread upon, "In corporal sufferance feels a pang as great "As when a giant dies"

And that a young wo at Grief"

So far her improvement was sufficient--and in h she could not write sonnets, she brought herself to read the a whole party into raptures by a prelude on the pianoforte, of her own composition, she could listen to other people's perforreatest deficiency was in the pencil--she had no notion of drawing--not enough even to atteht be detected in the design There she fell ht At present she did not know her own poverty, for she had no lover to portray She had reached the age of seventeen, without having seen one amiable youth who could call forth her sensibility, without having inspired one real passion, and without having excited even any admiration but as very e indeed! But strange things enerally accounted for if their cause be fairly searched out There was not one lord in the neighbourhood; no--not even a baronet There was not one fa their acquaintance who had reared and supported a boy accidentally found at their door--not one young in was unknown Her father had no ward, and the squire of the parish no children