A direful death indeed they had,
As wad put any parent mad;
But she was more than usual calm,
She did not give a single dam.”
The naughty little scamp! I mean, for not leaving out the l in the word “Calm,” so as to perfect the rhyme. It seems a pity to damage with a lame rhyme a couplet that is otherwise without a blemish.
Marjorie wrote four journals. She began the first one in January, 1809, when she was just six years old, and finished it five months later, in June.
She began the second in the following month, and finished it six months afterward (January, 1810), when she was just seven.
She began the third one in April, 1810, and finished it in the autumn.
She wrote the fourth in the winter of 1810-11, and the last entry in it bears date July 19, 1811, and she died exactly five months later, December 19th, aged eight years and eleven months. It contains her rhymed Scottish histories.
Let me quote from Dr. John Brown: