ST. NICHOLAS
An
Illustrated Magazine
For Young Folks.
CONDUCTED BY
MARY MAPES DODGE.
VOLUME XIII.
Part II., May, 1886, to October, 1886.
THE CENTURY CO. NEW YORK.
F. WARNE & CO., LONDON.
Copyright, 1886, by The Century Co.
The de Vinne Press.
ST. NICHOLAS:
VOLUME XIII.
PART II.
Six Months—May, 1886, to October, 1886.
CONTENTS OF PART II., VOLUME XIII.
DEPARTMENTS.
Plays and Music.
Jack-in-the-Pulpit. (Illustrated.)
Introduction—"Everything is Lovely, and the Goose Hangs High"—Girls! To the Rescue!—About Little Lord Fauntleroy—Fishing for Necklaces—A Suggestion to the Bottled Fish—The Newspaper Plant (illustrated)—One More Living Barometer, 552; A Bumble Grumble—Pretty Dusty Wings—Trees that Rain—Shooting Stars—Coasting in August—More about Turtles—A Fish that Weaves its Nest—A Clever Humming-bird (illustrated), 632; Introduction—The Seventeen-year Locust (illustrated)—The Great Lubber Locust (illustrated)—The Dog and the Queer Grasshoppers (illustrated), 712; Introduction—Longfellow's First Letter—The Water-snake as a Fisherman—More Animal Weather-Prophets—A Useful Bird with an Aristocratic Name—A Wise Humming-bird—The Pitcher Plant (illustrated), 792; Introduction—Poor Lark!—Those Mocking-birds Again—A Living Island (illustrated)—Wrong Names for Things—Who can Answer This? 872; Introduction—A Perfectly Quiet Day—How He Proved It—Walking Without Legs—A Queer Sunshade (illustrated)—A Queer Jumble—That Dear Little Lord, 952.
Frontispieces.
"In Spring-time—When Shakspere was a Boy," by Léon Moran, facing Title-page of Volume—"A June Morning," by E. C. Held, facing page 563—"La Fayette and the British Ambassador," by F. H. Lungren, facing page 643—"The Captain and the Captain's Mate," by Mary Hallock Foote, facing page 723—"The Connoisseurs," after a painting by Sir Edwin Landseer, facing page 803—"Martha Washington," from an unfinished portrait by Gilbert Stuart, facing page 883.
(SEE PAGE 490.)
ST. NICHOLAS.
Vol. XIII. MAY, 1886. No. 7.
[Copyright, 1886, by The CENTURY CO.]
By Rose Kingsley.
On Henley street, in quiet Stratford town, there stands an old half-timbered house. The panels between the dark beams are of soft-colored yellow plaster. The windows are filled with little diamond panes; and in one of the upper rooms they are guarded with fine wire outside the old glass, which is misty with innumerable names scratched all over it. Poets and princes, wise men and foolish, have scrawled their names after a silly fashion, on windows, wall, and ceiling of that oak-floored room, because, on the 22d of April, 1564, a baby was born there—the son of John and Mary Shakspere. And on the following Wednesday, April 26, the baby was carried down to the old church beside the sleepy Avon and baptized by the name of William.
Little did John Shakspere and the gossips dream, when the baby William's name was duly inscribed in the register-book with its corners and clasps of embossed brass, that he was destined to become England's greatest poet. Little did they dream, honest folk, that the old market town and the house on
The baby grew up as most babies do; and when he was two and a half years old, a little brother Gilbert was born. As we walk through the streets to-day, we can fancy the little lads toddling about the town together, while father John was minding his glove and wool trade at the old house. John Shakspere, in those early days, was a well-to-do man. He was a chamberlain of the borough when little Gilbert was born; and in 1568 he was elected High Bailiff, or Mayor, of Stratford, although he, in common with many of his fellow-burgesses, could not write his own name. He had land, too, at Snitterfield, where his father had lived; and his wife, Mary Arden, was the owner of Ashbies, the farm at Wilmcote, hard by.
But, though the parents were illiterate, they knew the value of a good education. The Free Grammar School had been refounded a few years before by Edward VI. And although there is no actual record of his school days, we may take it as certain that little Will Shakspere was sent to the Free School when about seven years old, as we know his brother Gilbert was, a little later. The old Grammar School still stands; and boys still learn their lessons in the self-same room with the high pitched roof and oaken beams, where little Will Shakspere studied his "A, B, C-book," and got his earliest notions of Latin. But during part of Shakspere's school days the schoolroom was under repair; and boys and master—Walter Roche by name—migrated for a while to the Guild Chapel next door. And this was surely in the poet's mind when, in later years, he talked of a "pedant who keeps a school i' the church."
All boys learned their Latin then from two well-known books—the "Accidence" and the "Sententiæ Pueriles." And that William was no exception to the rule we may see by translations from the latter in several of his plays, and by an account, in one of his plays, of Master Page's examination in the "Accidence." An old desk which came from the Grammar School and stood there in Shakspere's time is shown at the birthplace. And when we look at it we wonder what sort of a boy little William was—whether his future greatness made a mark in any way during his school days; whether that conical forehead of his stood him in good stead as he learned his Latin Grammar; whether he was quiet and studious, or merry and mischievous; whether he hid dormice and apples and birds' eggs in his desk, and peeped at them during school hours; whether he got into scrapes and was whipped. Just think of Shakspere getting a whipping! No doubt he often did. Masters in those days were not greater, but rather less, respecters of persons than they are now, and they believed very firmly in the adage which is going out of fashion, that to spare the rod is to spoil the child. So we may think of little Will Shakspere coming out of the Grammar School and passing the old Guild Chapel and the Falcon Inn with two little red fists crammed into two little red and streaming eyes, and going home to mother Mary in Henley street to be comforted and coddled and popped down on the settle in the wide chimney corner, with some dainty, dear to the heart of small boys who got into trouble three hundred years ago just as they do now. Let us hope his cake was not like one he describes as "dough on both sides."
But I fancy that lessons bore a very small part in Will Shakspere's education. He certainly never knew much Latin; but he knew all about country things as only a country-bred boy can know about them. He and Gilbert must have run many a time to Ashbies, their mother's farm at Wilmcote, and watched the oxen plowing in the heavy clay fields; and cried, perhaps, as children do now "as the butcher takes away the calf"; and played with the shepherd's "bob-tailed cur"; and gossiped with Christopher Sly, who could tell them all manner of wonderful tales, for had he not been peddler, card-maker, bear-herd, "and now by present profession a tinker"?
They must have listened to their father and their uncle Henry up at the big farm close to Snitterfield church (where Henry Shakspere lived) as the two men discussed the price of a yoke of oxen at Stratford or Warwick fair, or debated whether they should "sow the head-land with wheat,—with red wheat, Davy,"[A] or grumbled over the "smith's note for shoeing and plough-irons," or told the latest turn in the quarrel between "William Visor of Woncot" and "Clement Perkes of the Hill." Very likely the little hazel-eyed boys took William Visor's part, though they wisely kept their opinions to themselves, since small boys in that period were not allowed the liberty of speech they enjoy in these degenerate times. William Visor was a neighbor of the Ardens, and possibly a friend of "Marian Hackett, the fat ale-wife of Wincot"; for Wincot, Woncot, and Wilmcote are all the same place. Or perhaps the young lads sided with Clement Perkes; for the Hill where he lived at Weston was known as Cherry Orchard Farm, a name full of tempting suggestions to little boys. And we know that Shakspere, like many less wise people, was fond of "ripe red cherries." He mentions them again and again. He and Gilbert, and their little friends the Sadlers and Harts and Halls, must have played bob-cherry, as we do now,—drawing up the stem of the cherry with our tongues, and, with a sudden snap, getting the round, ripe fruit between our lips,—and then have used the stones for "cherry-pit"—a child's game that is frequently mentioned by Shakspere and other old writers, which consisted in pitching cherry-stones into a small hole.