Before she had reached the close of this sentence, the pupils were in such roars of laughter that her voice was drowned. She looked around upon us with such astonished eyes that the thing grew all the funnier, and the boys fairly shouted.
Even the gentle teacher was laughing.
"O Fannie, Fannie!" she said at last. "Did you really think I meant pork?"
"Why, what else could you mean?" said bewildered Fannie. And then we all laughed again.
"Why, Fannie," said Miss Henderson, "I thought of course you would understand that I meant Lord Bacon."
"Lord Bacon!" repeated poor Fannie in dismay; "I never heard of him."
So lest you too make the same mistake, I want to introduce you, not to a piece of pork, but to Francis Bacon, who was born in London considerably more than three hundred years ago. Isn't that a long time to be remembered?
What about him? Why, he was a very learned man. A lawyer who wrote books that the lawyers of to-day study carefully.
Also he wrote essays on a great variety of subjects—essays that scholars in these days read and enjoy. In fact, as I look them over, I see many sentences which girls and boys might enjoy before they are old enough or wise enough to be called scholars. Isn't that a queer idea, that you must be quite wise before people will say of you "he, or she, is a scholar?"