The author of this little book, Dinah Maria Mulock Craik, was a woman as modest, sweet, and wholesome as the story itself. She lived in England, but her writings endeared her to people all over the world. Some American ladies who went to call upon her in her home, Wildwood Cottage, in Hampstead, near London, describe her as wearing a black silk gown with a plain linen collar, her brown hair drawn smoothly back from an open brow, and her face, gracious and winning to an unusual degree, bearing the look of one who had tasted of sorrow. This was when she was already a well-known writer, having won her place in literature by hard and faithful work; but probably she did not dream, even then, that she would come to be recognized as, next to Dickens, the most widely-read novelist of her time.

She was born April 20, 1826, at Stoke-upon-Trent, one of the chief manufacturing towns of Staffordshire, England. Staffordshire is the central county of England, and has many curious and interesting features. It forms the sloping base of a long chain of hills, where in countless ages the sea, sometimes covering the land and again driven away from it by the upheaval of a great body of earth and stone, has worn down the grit and limestone rock into clay. Did you know that all clay was mud made by the washing away of rocks? Just think how many hundreds of years it took to make the little ball of clay you model with!

Well, the people who lived in this country found out, eighteen hundred years ago, that they could mould their clay into pots and basins, even if they could not make things grow in it; so they dug up the clay, shaped it with their hands, and baked it in the sun, making jars, bowls, and other useful things which they sold to farmers in exchange for food.

About that time there came marching over the thickly wooded land, companies of Roman soldiers, who took all the clay bowls they wanted for their own use, and showed the potters how to make better ones. They also compelled them to make floors, roofs, and wall ornaments of clay baked in very hot ovens, called kilns. Much of this old Roman pottery was, of course, broken and lost, but still, if you should ever go there, you would find pieces of it in the banks of the little rivers and brooks near the clay pits, pieces more than a thousand years old.

Because it is so full of clay—dark blue clay, and red and yellow ochres, used for coloring and painting, as well as red and black chalk—the country seems to have been made for potteries. Besides this, there used always to be plenty of wood to keep the kilns hot, for a great forest covered nearly all the land. This was a continuation of the Forest of Arden, about which you will read some day, as well as about Sherwood Forest, which sheltered Robin Hood and his merry men.—Have you heard about them yet?—Later, when better fuel was needed, two great coal fields were discovered underlying the county, one of them twenty miles long by two broad. Here, then, where all was so perfectly prepared for his work, it was natural that the greatest potter of modern times, and one of the greatest of all times, should be born—Josiah Wedgwood, who lived for many years in the very town where Mrs. Craik was born. He not only loved to make dishes and jars of all kinds as perfect as possible, but while shut in with a long illness he studied the chemistry and the arithmetic needed in his trade. In years of hard labour and close study he so mastered his trade that he made it both a science and an art. He, more than any other, turned the county into one of the busiest places in the world, where thousands of men work from morning till night to supply the whole world with every sort of thing that can be made out of clay. Perhaps on the bottom of your plates at home you may find printed the words "Staffordshire, England."

Before Wedgwood's time—in 1653, to be accurate—Stoke-upon-Trent was a small group of thatched houses and two pot-works, gathered around the ancient parish church. In 1762, thirty-two years after Wedgwood's birth, it had a population of 8,000, of whom 7,000 were employed, in one way or another, in the pottery trade. The whole country-side is now black with smoke from the many factories. At one time, when the potters used salt to glaze their ware—that is, to put a bright polish on it—they used to open up their huge ovens every Saturday morning, between the hours of eight and twelve, and cast in salt. It would then melt, and run over the surface of the clay jugs and things inside, and leave a smooth, shining surface. If you let some salt and water, very strong of salt, boil over an old crock of your mother's, when the fire is making the stove red-hot, you will see how it works. Indeed, it was through an accidental boiling-over of this sort that salt-glaze was discovered. On Saturdays, when the salt was cast into the kilns, it made great clouds of smoke and vapor, filling streets and houses, and spreading far out into the country, so heavy that travelers to town lost their way, and persons in the street ran against each other.

Here lived, and preached, and argued, and laid down the law, a brilliant, enthusiastic Irishman, named Thomas Mulock, the father of the woman who wrote this book. He was a minister, but one who did not agree with any of the other ministers around him. He had a warm, eager nature, and a temper to match, and as the second of twenty-two children must have exercised from his early childhood all that power of domineering which made Lord Byron nickname him "Muley Mulock." By this name he was known over half of Europe, but for all that he was much loved and admired, and moved in the same circle as Byron, Scott, Southey, and Wordsworth. From him, Mrs. Craik undoubtedly inherited her gifts as a writer.

Her mother was a daughter of Mr. Mellard, a tanner and a member of the Reverend Thomas Mulock's congregation. She was one of three sisters who used to talk with the young minister over the wall that separated their gardens. There is a legend that he went all in white to the wedding, his shoes being of white satin; but this is very likely only a picturesque bit of gossip, kept alive by the fact that Mr. Mulock was quite romantic enough and independent enough to have done such a thing if it had happened to strike his fancy. His wife was a frail little woman, and the troubles which soon beset her husband on account of his strong, new opinions, were hard for her to bear, as was also the way in which he, like a hot-blooded Irishman, sure that he was right and all the rest of the world wrong, marched straight into the thick of any theological fight that might be going on. Dinah, at last, although merely an inexperienced girl, persuaded her mother to go with her to London, to seek a little peace and quiet, leaving the father to fight out his battles alone in the country place he found—or made—so full of strife.

This was a tremendous responsibility for a young girl with no means to speak of and only an ordinarily good education, such as was given to young ladies in the girls' schools of those days. At school she seems to have been a great favorite, and is described as being always the center of a bevy of girls, who hung round her lovingly, and for whom she prophesied the most wonderful things. She was always sure they had great abilities, but seemed to be quite unconscious that she herself was the most gifted of them all, and would be remembered when they were forgotten.

Even after she came to London, she made friends among other girls, and in spite of her unceasing and exacting work, seems always to have had time to enjoy them and make them enjoy her. She was only twenty years old when, in 1846, she went to London, and undertook the main support of her mother and the two young brothers who soon joined them. She did everything her pen could find to do, writing stories for fashion books and other periodicals, and had the satisfaction, finally, of knowing that she had succeeded in caring for her aged mother to the end of her life.

Of the two brothers, the elder, Thomas, Jr., true son of his father, took part in some act of rebellion while studying at the Royal Academy. His father sided with the principals of the school and approved of the son's being expelled, his own heart aching, most probably, while he did what he thought was his duty. The son's heart, in turn, was sore at what he must have thought unloving conduct on the father's part. At any rate, he decided soon after to go to Australia, and, as he was about to board the ship, fell off the quay and was killed.

This was a heavy blow to the brave young sister, now left with only the younger brother. He was a musician and a photographer of no mean rank at a time when few persons thought of photography as an art. Though he never proved a support to her, always leaning on her motherly care and getting himself into many scrapes from which she had to pull him out he was nevertheless the joy of his sister's life.

In London Miss Mulock made friends whose assistance, later, was worth a great deal to her. She had published, in 1849, her first novel, The Ogilvies, which brought her recognition, and made men and women of real power in the world of letters seek her out. When they knew her personally, her simple cordiality, friendliness, and, above all, her thorough goodness of heart, made them her warm friends. When she found herself able to take a cottage—the "Wildwood Cottage" already spoken of—she quickly gathered around her some of the brightest and best people in the great city. From that time on, her books came out steadily and in great numbers. In all, she wrote forty-six works, including many novels, some essays, and two or three volumes of poetry.

The greatest of her novels is John Halifax, Gentleman, considered by many the best story of English middle-class life ever written. This novel was translated into French, German, Italian, Greek, and Russian, and is still one of the most frequently called for books in the public libraries. Her poems, Douglas, Douglas, Tender and True, and Philip My King, are known wherever English is spoken.

There is an interesting story connected with the latter poem. Philip Bourke Marston, the boy to whom it refers, was the son of one of Miss Mulock's London friends, Westland Marston, a famous dramatic poet and critic. When his little son was born, August 13, 1850, he asked Miss Mulock to be Philip's godmother, and traces of her deep affection for the gifted child are to be found among her writings. A Hero was written for him, and it is to him, evidently, that the lovely little poem, A Child's Smile, refers. The boy lost his sight when only three years old. The cause is said to have been too much belladonna, given to prevent scarlet fever. For many years enough sight remained to enable him, in his own words, to see "the three boughs waving in the wind, the pageant of sunset in the west, and the glimmer of a fire upon the hearth." Shut in thus to the inner world of thought and feeling, Philip indulged in an imaginative series of wonderful adventures, and in long daydreams excited by music. Perhaps his blindness, coupled with his vivid imagination, is the reason why the beautiful poems he wrote when he grew older show such a wonderfully vivid power of portraying nature. When he saw a tree-bough waving in the wind, he saw it only dimly with his outward eyes, but as he sat dreaming over it afterward, it became more real to him than any bough was likely to become to an everyday, hearty boy who saw so many trees, with so many branches, that he hardly noticed them at all. It must have been a great comfort to him to have such a godmother as Miss Mulock—a real fairy godmother, who could weave magic spells of the most interesting stories, and heal the aches of his poor heart by sweet little poems.

It was at Wildwood Cottage that Miss Mulock formed that close acquaintance with George Lillie Craik that finally led to her marriage with him. Mr. Craik met with a serious railroad accident near her house, which she promptly gave up to him, she staying with a friend near by; in the long days of convalescence they learned to know each other thoroughly. The marriage was singularly happy. Mr. Craik was a man of letters as well as a publisher, and they had every taste in common. Their life together was beautiful and full of a deep peace.

Although they had no children of their own, they had an adopted daughter, Dorothy, and she it is for whom The Adventures of a Brownie was written. It is probably because of Mrs. Craik's devotion and love for her that the little book is so free from self-consciousness, so evidently written wholeheartedly "as told to my child."

Mrs. Craik's death, which took place in 1887, was, like her life, full of self-sacrificing affection and obedience to duty. She had not been ill, beyond a few attacks of heart-trouble that no one considered serious. By some blessed chance, on the morning of her last day on earth, her husband took an especially loving farewell of her—so much so that Dorothy laughed at him, and Mrs. Craik, smiling happily, reminded her that, although they had been so long married, they were lovers still. It was within a few weeks of Dorothy's marriage when the sudden heart failure came, and Mrs. Craik's one wish was that she might be permitted to live four weeks longer, so that her death might not overshadow her daughter's wedding. She resigned even this unselfish wish when she saw that it was not God's will.

The beauty of her character, it may be supposed, quite as much as any peculiar merit in her writings, led Queen Victoria, who always tried to reward uprightness of life as well as unusual skill in any art, to bestow upon Mrs. Craik the only mark of recognition in her power. This was a small pension, and although she often was criticised for keeping a sum of money she did not need, while many less fortunate writers did need it, she retained it as her right, to use as her conscience dictated. She set it aside for struggling authors who would accept help from the queen's bounty that they would refuse from her private funds.

Other writers may be more brilliant and more profound than Mrs. Craik, but her tales of simple goodness bring, not only a sense of rest and relief to the reader, but also a new desire to put goodness into his own daily life. In all her stories Mrs. Craik makes goodness as lovely as it really is. There are sad things in them, but the sadness is always made sweet at last by courage and patience and kindliness.