February 1

AS you may know, the Lady of the House and I have Great-Aunt Louisa's fascinating scrapbooks and diaries in our safekeeping. While leafing through one of them one evening, we came across these lines by the Victorian poet and writer Christina Rossetti: Love is like a rose, the joy of all the earth, Love is like a lovely rose, the world's delight. An unkown hand had added a little note underneath in attractive copperplate
handwriting: "Grandpa and Granma, who lived in London, knew Christina and her brother, the paiter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti; their family was italian. Christina refused two offers of mariage, and and died unmarried. I remember enjoying her 'Goblin Market', when I was young." Love is indeed "the joy of all the earth", and it is a pity that everyone in this world doesn't always get their share of it.