"Who wants to help get a stunning doll for little Hetty? I'm glad Mr. Dobbins sent her gloves along this way." It The boys who did not get notes in their mittens tried to think that Hetty had knitted them all the same, and when Tom passed around his hat, the halves and quarters rattled in, then a tradedollar thumped down, and a greenback or two fluttered in silently. Tom took the proceeds and went to the gayest toy-shop in town, and found a famous wax dolly. It was as big and as plump as a live baby, and much prettier, he thought. had a long white frock, and shut its eyes properly when Tom laid it down to count out the money to pay for it. It did not take long to pack it snugly in a smooth box. Then Tom pasted Hetty's open letter on the cover. He went down himself with it to the express, and told the boys it must go free, and that every one might send a Merry Christmas to little Hetty till the lid was full of good wishes. I doubt if there ever was so much writing outside of one box. Every man who handled it seemed to think at once of some little sister or daughter or niece, and for her sake sent a greeting to the little girl in Patchook. Hetty's eyes opened wider than ever before in her life. A letter for her! What could it mean? Mr. Dobbins must have made a mistake. But no, the red-haired boy, Dan, read the address, and handed it straight to her. "Miss Hetty Williams, Patchook, Mass." Her first letter! She never thought of opening it-she was too much astonished and too well pleased. "Sakes alive! Hetty Williams, what be you standin' there for, like as if you was struck dumb? Why don't ye hev sense enough left to open that letter and find out su'thin' about it?" But as Hetty did not stir, Miss Thankful took it from her hand, removed her glasses, wiped them and put them on again, then carefully opened it and slowly read aloud: "There is a box for Hetty Williams, in the express office at Fitchtown. Will be kept till 66 Why, bless ye, Miss Thankful, that's as easy as rollin' off a log. My boy Dan is jest hitchin' up to go to Fitchtown express for some store goods. He'll bring Hetty's box along with him, and glad tew." Just after early nightfall that day, Mr. Dobbins's wagon rattled up to the south door. Miss Thankful and Hetty both rushed out to meet Dan, and it would be hard to say which was the spryer of the two. Miss Thankful took the box from Dan with many thanks, and carried it into the house, saying: "It's rather big and hefty for you, Hetty; " and then the good woman carefully pried off the cover with a claw-hammer and stove-lifter. The Christmas softness had, somehow, found its way to her heart, and so she quietly moved away to put up the "tools," and left Hetty to unfold the wrappings by herself and first see the sight, whatever it might be. Hetty, when Miss Thankful came back, sat as still as a statue, with folded hands, looking only at her treasure. Miss Thankful settled her spectacles, took one good look, and then exclaimed: "Wall, I never! This does beat all natur'. Where upon airth did it ever rain down from?" Just then, her " specs" grew dim, and the old lady took them off and wiped them well; then she continued: "Deary me, deary me! Well, I am right down glad that the Lord 's put it into someun's heart to clap to and send that child a doll baby. I'm sure I never should 'a' thought o' such a thing, if I'd lived a thousand year, and yet how powerful happy the little creetur is over it, to be sure! She looks like a pictur', kneelin' there by the box, with her eyes shinin' so bright and so still, just as if the doll baby was an angel, come down in its long white frock." I only wish Tom could have seen Hetty then, or afterward, when she sat by the bright woodfire, looking with childish delight into the soft blue eyes of her waxen darling. Or if he could have taken one look at the two heads on the pillow of the little attic bed, that night-both pair of eyes fast shut, and Hetty's small arm hugging her treasure tight and fast in her soundest sleep-he would then have known to a certainty that little Hetty Williams was to have at least one happy Christmas. ELIZABETH BUTLER. BY ALICE MEYNELL. [Many of the older boys and girls among our readers, who have seen in the print-shops beautiful engravings known as "The Roll-call," "Quatre Bras," " Balaclava," etc., and have heard of the fame of Elizabeth Thompson, the brilliant English girl who painted the original pictures, will be glad to read the following interesting sketch, written by her sister, Mrs. Meynell. For several of the illustrations to this article (the drawings on pages 190, 191, 192, and 193, showing single-figure studies from some of the prominent English regiments) we are indebted to the artist herself, who drew them expressly for ST. NICHOLAS.] as I have been, to record the happy and successful early career of another, she will be ready, for the sake of a task so pleasant, to set aside the feelings of family diffidence, which might make her as modest in respect of her sister's fame as if it were her own. Short biographies of Mrs. Butler have been plentiful enough, and have vied with one another in incorrectness. Elizabeth Thompson (Mrs. Butler) was positively unknown to the great public when her Roll-call" took the world by storm, and it was scarcely to be wondered at that the surprise at her success, joined to the common love of wonders, gave rise to many mistakes in regard to her past. One delusion it is well to put an end to at the outset - the opinion that her sudden success was not preceded by long and careful study. In fact, Mrs. Butler has been a worker at art from the age of five. Her father's system of instruction consisted of reading aloud the things which he wished to instill into her mind, while she practiced drawing and sketching. He believed that this kind of occupation on her part was no hinderance to mental attention, but that, on the contrary, the after-sight of the drawing produced during the reading of some passage of history would recall the events to which the little artist was listening while her pencil was at work. A little questioning at the end of each lesson was, of course, necessary to test whether the pursuit of art had or had not been too absorbing. Undoubtedly the success of this plan was mainly due to his own gentleness and patience. Upon the whole, the system was found to work well, and it was no doubt persevered in because it enabled her father to give his two children more advanced instruction than would have been possible without the constant comment and explanation which a reader is able to supply, better than any other teacher, to his hearers. He undertook the whole education of his daughters, giving up his time, and of course denying himself much that otherwise his cultivated nature would have enjoyed, for the sake of conscientiously fulfilling his self-imposed task. A few words in commemoration may be permitted in this unavoidably personal little record, especially now that he is no longer here to forbid the acknowledgment of all that his celebrated daughter owes to him. Born in 1811, in the West Indies, Elizabeth Thompson's father was early left an orphan, and was brought up in the care of his grandfather; he was educated under private tuition and at Trinity .College, Cambridge, which his delicate health, how.ever, caused him to leave before he had taken his degree. He married, for the first time, very early; lost his young wife after the birth of a son and daughter, and adopted a life of travel and of literary and artistic interests, collecting pictures, studying by way of pleasure, and enjoying the society of which the late Lord Lytton, Charles Dickens, and D'Orsay were the principal stars. During this period he made a trip to America — rather an uncommon thing in those days; and it was a source of keen pleasure to him, not only at the time, but in the memories of his later life. Of my father's friendship with Charles Dickens little need be recorded here, except that it was close and unusually affectionate; that he joined some of the amateur theatricals which the novelist so enthusiastically loved, and that it was Charles Dickens who introduced him to the lady who became his second wife and the mother of the battlepainter. Meeting, in Liverpool, a young girl who inspired him with an admiration attested by some of the most enthusiastic letters he ever wrote, Charles Dickens could not help coveting the prize on behalf of his friend. What he hoped for happened, in effect, more quickly than he had anticipated. He was the confidant of the engagement, the life of the wedding, and, with Mrs. Dickens, the companion of the closing month of a long wedding journey. His note of congratulation on the birth of the eldest daughter, Elizabeth, which event took place at Lausanne immediately after he had left the young couple in Switzerland, has been published in the third volume of "Dickens's Collected Letters." About seven or eight years later he met my par⚫ents again; this time they were living, with their two little girls, within sight of the snow-capped peaks of the Appenines, in an old palace, the Villa de Franchi, immediately overlooking the Mediterranean, with olive-clad hills at the back; on the left, the great promontory of Porto Fino; on the right, the Bay of Genoa, some twelve miles away, and the long line of the Apennines sloping down into the sea. The palace. garden descended, terrace by terrace, to the rocks, being, indeed, less a garden than what is called a villa in the Liguria, and a podere in Tuscany. a fascinating mixture of vine, olive, maize, flowers, and corn. A fountain in marble, lined with maiden-hair, played at the junction of each terraced flight of steps. A great billiard-room on the first floor, hung with Chinese designs, was Elizabeth Thompson's first school-room; and there Charles Dickens, upon one of his Italian visits, burst in upon a lesson in multiplication. It was the first and almost the only time I ever saw him. In dim remembrance, he abides as a noisy, very rosy, very energetic, and emphatically English personality, though his person itself is quite forgotten; and the fact that nine times nine are eighty-one has remained in the girls' minds as one of the most unmistakable items of arithmetic, accompanied by the clap of hands and the cordial shout with which he proclaimed it. 66 The two children never went to school, and had no other teacher than their father-except their mother for music, and the usual professors for accomplishments in later years. And whether living happily in their beautiful Genoese home, or farther north among the picturesque Italian lakes, or in Switzerland, or among the Kentish hop-gardens and the parks of Surrey (the family having a more than Bedaween fondness for liberty of movement), Elizabeth's one central occupation of drawing was never abandoned literally not for a day. With it went a peculiar faculty of observation which her father fostered continually. On the family vetturino journeys to Florence, to Switzerland, and elsewhere the small artist's head was always out of the window, watching with a perfectly inexhaustible interest the changing of horses and the evervarying humors of the road-side. In England, the subjects of study—and of very profitable study undoubtedly — were the action of the cricket-field and the labors of cart-horses in the hay-harvest. Assuredly the child was never idle, for her eyes were hard at work. The promise of her sketches had declared itself very early to eyes able to discriminate between what is significant and living in such elementary attempts, and what is only the common work of baby fingers. Both her parents were, in fact, artists; her father having an altogether exceptional, though untaught, power in drawing heads, and her mother being a landscape- the child's wise guides alarmed at what might have When the child was fifteen, it was resolved (the family being at that time in England) that the routine of art-training might begin without inter After a winter of hard work came a threeyears' sojourn at Bonchurch, in the Isle of Wight, where Elizabeth Thompson received instruction in water-color and landscape from a Mr. Gray, continuing her own sketches from imagination and nature with ceaseless pleasure. Bonchurch is a pretty place, but Bonchurch life is hardly picturesque; fortunately, horses are everywhere, and are always good subjects, even though nothing rougher or more characteristic be at hand than carriagehorses, or the well-groomed mare of the family butcher. After still another visit abroad came a prolonged stay in London and another application, this time under new circumstances, for the national artinstruction at South Kensington. The head-master *It is impossible to present within the limits of one page an adequate copy of "The Roll-call," as the required reduction would make the faces so small that their expression would be lost. We give a reduced outline of the entire picture, and on pages 188 and 189 show copies of some of its most interesting groups. All the reproductions here given from the picture of "The Roll-call" are made with the kind permission of the Fine Art Society, 148 New Bond street, London, owners of the copyright. The painting belongs to Her Majesty the Queen, and is now at Windsor Castle, but was in the possession of the Fine Art Society for some time, and was seen by nearly a quarter of a million people. The steel-plate engraving (from which our engravings are copied) was prepared by Mr. F. Stackpoole, A. R. A., at a cost of nearly £2000 ($10,000); and after thirty-five hundred impressions had been taken off, the plate was destroyed, although in good condition, in order that the value of the engravings might not be lessened by the issue of inferior impressions. home, and in which her half-sister had married son at once the new pupil's sketches were submitted, with the GROUP FROM "THE ROLL-CALL" In 1868, she was painting in private at Genoa, the city which had been her early GROUP FROM sor Bellucci, the most emi- the very antithesis, in fact, of class teaching, Her studies in the galleries were also full of delight and profit, though she made no other copies, and she was wont to say that of all the influences of the Florentine school which stood her in good stead in her after work, that of Andrea del Sarto was the most valuable and J |