Morning journal and courier., 1892-05-07

English shrine; and during five vesn
 largely passed in wandering up and dovr
 the face of this historic land, have neve,
 before come upon any human being who
 SO thoroughly illustrated the fact that ir
 nearly every family of good repute thert
 somewhere runs the currish strsin n,
 blood. VI | All this family who remain Are rich
 through miserliness. The hard, stern ns
 ture was not in Robert Evans. It bepar
 with Isaac, the novelist's brother. Who dropped dead in his chair after all his nig, | gardly gaining. The peasant folk relate
 how he watched in the hedges lest his la. oorers might toss potato to hungry cot
 tier or tramp in the highway; how . poor
 old servitor named Crsbstock was chased
 away from Griff because he let @ miners
 lad keep turnip that had fallen from his cart; and how another old servant named
 Jackson hung himself in the farm offices
 behind Griff from sheer desperation at
 the niggardliness and brutality of miser
 Isaac Evans. If you ever come to Griff
 and Walter Evans, Esq, is still its tenant
 unless this picture of himself may change
 his nature-you will be turned away, as
 have been myself and hundreds of others,
 with the brutal and soulless sheer that
 Griff is no place for sentiment; people
 must keep away; they bother the ocou-
 pants and lessen the value of the rentals
 An, 1t was another sort of soul whose
 eyes once looked from those pleasant win
 dows upon all who passed or came; whose
 heart bled for the poverty and suffering
 around her; whose tender spirit sought
 ont ell who were in ignorance and dolor; who ministered to the sick, relieved the
 needy and taught poor miners children:
 until all the greed and injustice that have
 his s-lk kal &1an
 cannot efface the brightness that one gen. tie presence left upon it: and in the mem ories of gray old men and women near, for her sake alone, it is all but forgiven, and Grif is still Griff with sad and tender charm. It will not be long until these few hungry human crabs who bear another's deathless name will have passed away and have lift for day, as time is reckoned, @ little shadow here. Then all may come. with reverent blessing for George Eliot's girlhood home.
 To the literary pilgrim there are many charming surprises in the neighborhood of Griff during quest of identification of places and persons with Individuality of the novelist. It is little more than fifty years since George Eliot left Griff forever; quite forty years since she bade farewell to the lovely home st "Bird Groye,n Poles hill, Coventry.
 Yet there are scores of folk remaining, high and lowly, who knew her intimately as maid and women. Some who were her playmates still survive. A few of those whom she gathered into the cottage of old Dame Moore, just opposite the gates of Griff, and taught the way of hope, are still here to bless her with quivering voice and tear -dimmed eyes.
 One of the most genial of English gen. t1aw a,.1 I.1 Al Il MT. Montagu Wilks, solicitor, of Coven- try. Through his hearty, kindly aid much searching for these folks by stranger in a strange land is frightened and made @ gladsome pleasure. Through him learned of many about Coventry who had loving "reminiscences of one whom all knew had loved. Her dearest friend of early wo- menhood was Mrs. Charles Bray, who now lives with a sister, Mrs. Hamsll, on the | Radford road, in the suburbs of Coventry.
 Probably no other person now living | could throw so much resllight on the nov elist's early life as could Mrs Bray. An neighbor of Mrs. Bray; while MT. Joseph | Cash, wealthy Coventry manufacturer, owns and resides in Birds Grove" the | house in which George Eliot wrote ''Scenes | of Clerical Life" By far the most inter- | esting and uncommunicative of the novel, | Ist's contemporaries here is an ancient pro- lessor of music, ninety three years old, named Simms, who resides on the Rsdford | road. He was for upwards of ffty-three years organist of Coventry's famous St | church. and it was he who taught | George Eliot the mastery of the organ and | piano forte.
 My own discoveries of those who had lived about Griff when the members of | George Elot's family were all together 1ere include John Msrston, an old wheel wright, whose smithy still stands near the | stealing; "Bill" Jaques, seventy-seven years of age, a schoolmate of Isaac Evans md a playmate of the novelist; the old nan, Crabstock, whose generosity with a jingle turnip lost him his place at Griff; Richard Emmons, living st Stockingford, low very old man and reputed by the to have ''hatfuls of sovereigns," who was. in turn, field laborer, house ser 'ant and footman at Griff, footman at pack at Griff for Isaac Evans, until his leath in 1890; and William Moore, now eventy-three years of age, who lives at little miners hamlet between dworth and Griff.
 The latter is the son of the yeritable | Dame Moore who kept the dame's school | opposite Griff's gates. It was in his moth | ITS cottage that George Eliot, then @ maid m of fifteen, gathered together the chil- | lren of the miners and cottiers about Griff | md taught them, for several years, for an | lour or two each Sunday morning. and | hen took her ragged charges to Chilvers Cotton church. In the afternoon they all ,ame togetler again, when she taught Ihem from the scriptures and some sim pie melodies of the time.
 "God bless ee, sirl" said old William Moore, the tears triokling down his wrin- kled face, 'I can see 'er hangel face she wor q plain sort O hangel, sir-this minute afore my eyes. Mary Ann teached ' class fur nigh onto five year. She wor \ great scholard, sir, an a 'ooman truel"
 To me that old cottage where that kind y work was done is almost the sweetest | place about Griff. If the present occu- pants will let you who come get as far ,s the door of the old mansion, the two huge, tiny paned windows at it's left will bring another picture clear and true on which the mind loves to dwell: "An child, already living in 6 world of her own imagination, impressi- ble to her finger-tips" is the center of the simple homeside evening scene. There are the energetic mother, knitting | aver, the brother busy at his books or an "elder girl prim and tidy with her work before her,h and a grave, stern, but kindly father who is turning the pages of some picture book, with pre- scient anxiety and boundless love, in his gray eyes, as he looks now upon the book and now upon the rebellious hair that tumbles over that wise young daugh- :er's head.
 And you will turn away from Griff with ! blessing for the father who made this | girl his inseparable companion until her years of womanhood had come, and al- | for what came out of this olden freside | circle; circling and widening until it had | toned with the fruit of one woman's gen. us all our good old globe