This while our noble king,
His broadsword brandishing,
Down the French host did ding,[11]
As to o'erwhelm it;
And many a deep wound lent,
His arms with blood besprent,
And many a cruel dent
Bruiséd his helmet.
[Footnote 11: To ding is to strike.]
Glo'ster, that duke so good,
Next of the royal blood,
For famous England stood,
With his brave brother,—
Clarence, in steel so bright,
Though but a maiden knight,
Yet in that furious fight
Scarce such another.
Warwick in blood did wade;
Oxford the foe invade,
And cruel slaughter made,
Still as they ran up.
Suffolk his axe did ply;
Beaumont and Willoughby
Bare them right doughtily,
Ferrers and Fanhope.
Upon Saint Crispin's[12] day
Fought was this noble fray,
Which fame did not delay
To England to carry;
O, when shall Englishmen
With such acts fill a pen,
Or England breed again
Such a King Harry!
[Footnote 12: Crispin was a Christian saint who suffered martyrdom in the third century. The 25th of October was made sacred to him. It was on Saint Crispin's day, 1415, that the Battle of Agincourt was fought.]
SOME CHILDREN'S BOOKS OF THE PAST
By GRACE E. SELLON
Probably somewhere about your home, put away so far from sight that you never think of them any more, are some of the ABC books and the alphabet blocks and the brightly colored story books about horses, dogs and other familiar animals that used to amuse you when you were just learning to say the alphabet and to spell a few three-letter words. Perhaps you can remember how much you liked to have the stories read to you and how much fun there was in repeating your A B C's when you could point out the big, colored letters in your book or on your blocks. But have you ever thought that you were any more fortunate than other children of other ages in having these interesting things to help you? Have you ever wondered whether, far back in history before our country was discovered and settled by white men, boys and girls had the same kinds of picture books and drawing-slates, alphabet games and other playthings that used to delight you in the days when you were going to kindergarten or learning your first simple lessons from your mother?
If you have never thought enough about this matter to ask some older person about it, you will find the lesson books and story books used by children of even a hundred years ago very curious. Suppose we go farther back, to 1620, the year of the Mayflower, let us say. You could never imagine what a child then living in England was given to learn his letters from. As soon as he was able to remember the first little things that children are taught, his mother would fasten to his belt a string from which was suspended what she would call his hornbook. This was not at all what we think of to-day as a book, for it was made of a piece of cardboard covered on one side with a thin sheet of horn, and surrounded by a frame with a handle. Through the covering of horn the little boy could see the alphabet written on the cardboard in both large and small letters. After these would come rows of syllables to help him in learning to pronounce simple combinations of sounds. Probably last on the sheet there would be the Lord's Prayer, which he must be taught to say without a mistake. As he went about he could easily take up his hornbook once in a while and say over to himself the letters and the rows of syllables. Sometimes—especially if he had been obedient and had studied well—he was given a hornbook made of gingerbread; and then, of course, he would find that the tiresome lines of letters had all at once become very attractive.