by her son J. M. BARRIE Graphic Second Edition Completing Twentieth Thousand london HODDER AND STOUGHTON 27 paternoster row 1897 to the memory of my sister Jane Ann...

On the day I was born we bought six hair-bottomed chairs, and in our little house it was an event, the first great victory in a woman’s long campaign; how they had been laboured for, the pound-note and the thirty threepenny-bits they cost, what anxiety there was about the purchase, the show they made in possession of the west room, my father’s unnatural coolness when he brought them in (but his face was white)—I so often heard the tale afterwards, and shared as boy and man in so many similar tri

What she had been, what I should be, these were the two great subjects between us in my boyhood, and while we discussed the one we were deciding the other, though neither of us knew it. Before I reached my tenth year a giant entered my native place in the night, and we woke to find him in possession.  He transformed it into a new town at a rate with which we boys only could keep up, for as fast as he built dams we made rafts to sail in them; he knocked down houses, and there we were crying ‘Pill

My mother was a great reader, and with ten minutes to spare before the starch was ready would begin the ‘Decline and Fall’—and finish it, too, that winter.  Foreign words in the text annoyed her and made her bemoan her want of a classical education—she had only attended a Dame’s school during some easy months—but she never passed the foreign words by until their meaning was explained to her, and when next she and they met it was as acquaintances, which I think was clever of her.  One of her deli

A devout lady, to whom some friend had presented one of my books, used to say when asked how she was getting on with it, ‘Sal, it’s dreary, weary, uphill work, but I’ve wrastled through with tougher jobs in my time, and, please God, I’ll wrastle through with this one.’  It was in this spirit, I fear, though she never told me so, that my mother wrestled for the next year or more with my leaders, and indeed I was always genuinely sorry for the people I saw reading them.  In my spare hours I was tr

I should like to call back a day of her life as it was at this time, when her spirit was as bright as ever and her hand as eager, but she was no longer able to do much work.  It should not be difficult, for she repeated herself from day to day and yet did it with a quaint unreasonableness that was ever yielding fresh delight.  Our love for her was such that we could easily tell what she would do in given circumstances, but she had always a new way of doing it. Well, with break of day she wakes a

And sometimes I was her maid of all work. It is early morn, and my mother has come noiselessly into my room.  I know it is she, though my eyes are shut, and I am only half awake.  Perhaps I was dreaming of her, for I accept her presence without surprise, as if in the awakening I had but seen her go out at one door to come in at another.  But she is speaking to herself. ‘I’m sweer to waken him—I doubt he was working late—oh, that weary writing—no, I maunna waken him.’ I start up.  She is wringing

These familiar initials are, I suppose, the best beloved in recent literature, certainly they are the sweetest to me, but there was a time when my mother could not abide them.  She said ‘That Stevenson man’ with a sneer, and, it was never easy to her to sneer.  At thought of him her face would become almost hard, which seems incredible, and she would knit her lips and fold her arms, and reply with a stiff ‘oh’ if you mentioned his aggravating name.  In the novels we have a way of writing of our

I was sitting at my desk in London when a telegram came announcing that my mother was again dangerously ill, and I seized my hat and hurried to the station.  It is not a memory of one night only.  A score of times, I am sure, I was called north thus suddenly, and reached our little town trembling, head out at railway-carriage window for a glance at a known face which would answer the question on mine.  These illnesses came as regularly as the backend of the year, but were less regular in going,

When it was known that I had begun another story my mother might ask what it was to be about this time. ‘Fine we can guess who it is about,’ my sister would say pointedly. ‘Maybe you can guess, but it is beyond me,’ says my mother, with the meekness of one who knows that she is a dull person. My sister scorned her at such times.  ‘What woman is in all his books?’ she would demand. ‘I’m sure I canna say,’ replies my mother determinedly.  ‘I thought the women were different every time.’ ‘Mother, I

For years I had been trying to prepare myself for my mother’s death, trying to foresee how she would die, seeing myself when she was dead.  Even then I knew it was a vain thing I did, but I am sure there was no morbidness in it.  I hoped I should be with her at the end, not as the one she looked at last but as him from whom she would turn only to look upon her best-beloved, not my arm but my sister’s should be round her when she died, not my hand but my sister’s should close her eyes.  I knew th