In some parts of the country there were little schools where children were taught straw-plait and lace-making. Some of these lasted right down to days which people still living can remember, in Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire.
Apprentices, Eighteenth Century. Two apprentices at the looms of their master, a silk-weaver of Spitalfields, London. A striking contrast in industry and idleness. After an engraving by Hogarth published in 1787
CHAPTER XLVII
Play
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. In the Great War our soldiers could not but be struck by the way in which the children in places under bombardment took advantage of any lull in the firing to come out of their hiding places, and go on with their games, in spite of the ruin and desolation and danger all round them.
Many of our English 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.
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.