3. His master could chastise him if he was idle or "saucy", and even have him sent to the house of correction for further punishment. Both masters and apprentices could complain of each other to the magistrates at the Quarter Sessions, and the hearing of the complaints often took up a lot of time. According to many of the complaints, of which records still exist, some of the apprentices must have had rather a hard time—"seven years, hard". Some complained of having to eat mouldy cheese and rotten meat; others, of their ragged clothes; others, that their masters beat them with pokers, hammers, pint-pots, to say nothing of whips and sticks; prevented them from going to church; and others, that their masters turned them out-of-doors, or ran away and left them. The masters, on their side, often complain that their apprentices are idle, that they rob them, that they stop out at night and keep company with bad characters, and so on. So it seems they did not always get on well together.

4. But then there were the others—those who made the best of it. Where the master did his duty, and the apprentice took pains to learn, they got on pretty well together. It was not an easy life for the apprentice, but it made him a craftsman.

5. In some parts of the country, in manufacturing districts, there were little schools where children were taught straw-plait and lace-making. Then, especially in villages, the parish clerk, or some old lady, kept a small school, in which a few boys and girls picked up a little reading, writing, and arithmetic.

6. Elementary schools, out of which our present schools have grown, began about a century ago. Many and great changes have taken place since then, and knowledge is within the reach of every boy or girl to-day.

Summary.—Many boys and girls were put out as apprentices from old charity schools, and many parishes have still funds for apprenticing boys and girls to trades. For centuries a man could only become a craftsman who had been an apprentice. The apprentice had to serve for seven years, and the life was often very hard and trying, but it made good craftsmen in many cases. There were plait schools and lace-making schools in some parts of the country, and almost every village had its little school taught by the parish clerk or an old lady. Our present elementary schools began less than a century ago, and they have passed through many changes already.

[CHAPTER XLVII]
PLAY

1. In all the many centuries of our history there have been boys and girls; and, whatever has been going on in the world around them, they have found time to play. Many of their games go back so far in the history of man that their origin is forgotten. Yet there are games which children play now just as they did in the days of Queen Elizabeth; and those queer rhymes, which you know so well, and understand nothing about, have been repeated, some of them, since England began to be England.

2. There is plenty to say about games, but not enough space to say it all here. There are some games which come and go as regularly as the seasons. The queer part of it all is: Who starts the game? As sure as the early spring evenings arrive you will find boys playing at marbles. Town or country, it does not matter, all at once "marbles are in". Nobody says it is "marble season"; nobody ever yet found the boy who brings out the first marble of the season. Somehow a something inside a boy tells him it is "marble" time, and the marbles appear in his pocket.

3. It is just the same with "tops"; they come and they go with absolute regularity. They come as if by magic, and by magic they disappear. When the errand-boy, who has left school a month or two, stops, basket on arm, to watch the game, you may be sure that it is the height of the season. When the ground is occupied by the little chaps who have just come up from the infant school, and the errand-boy passes whistling by on the other side, it is quite certain that the season is over and gone.