Excerpt from Barbara's History: A Novel Overgrown for the most part with a mantle of dark ivy, inclosed in a narrow garden that sloped down to a canal at the back, and shut sullenly away from the road by some three or four dusky elm-trees and a. Low wall, our home looked dreary and Solitary enough - all the more dreary and solitary for the prim terraces and squares by which it was on all sides surrounded. Within, however, it was more cheerful; or cus tom made it seem so. From the upper windows we saw the Hampstead hills. In the summer our garden was covered with grass, and the lilac bushes blossomed where they leaned toward the canal. Even the shapeless coal-barges that labored slowly past all the day long had some thing picturesque and pleasant 'about them. Besides, no place can be wholly dull where children's feet patter incessantly up and down the stairs, and children's voices ring merrily along the upper floors. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.