This was my last appearance on any stage. It was some time, though, before I heard the end of the William Tell business. Malicious little boys who had not been allowed to buy tickets to my theater used to cry out 5 after me in the street:

10 The sarcasm of this verse was more than I could stand. And it made Pepper Whitcomb pretty mad to be called Cock Robin, I can tell you!

QUESTIONS AND HELPS

1. Write or tell the story of Mr. Aldrich's life. In what ways were his boyhood and Mr. Howells's alike? In what ways were they different? Locate Portsmouth on a map. 2. Tell what has been done with the old house at Portsmouth where Mr. Aldrich lived when a boy.

3. Who was Amadis de Gaul? Don Quixote? What is meant by "iron overcoats"? 4. The Prince of Denmark was Hamlet, in Shakespeare's play of that name; "the fair Ophelia" was a young girl at court, whom Hamlet loved; the King and the Grave-digger were other characters in "Hamlet." From these hints, what do you suppose the boys had been playing at their theater?

5. Give the story of William Tell. 6. Tell how the boys played it at Rivermouth and what happened. 7. Put into simpler words: "I shall never be able to banish that awful

moment from my memory"; "issued an injunction against all theatricals thereafter"; attributed the accident to Pepper himself." 8. Describe a maelstrom. How did Tom liken it to Pepper's mouth?

"The Story of a Bad Boy" is full of other fun which you will enjoy. Read also a few of Aldrich's poems, as "Marjorie's Almanac" (Literary Readers, Book Three, page 286), The King," "Before the Rain," "After the Rain," "Alec Yeaton's Son," "A Turkish Legend," and "Like Crusoe walking by the Lonely Strand."

invested: laid out, as money, in united energies: the strength of

ABOU BEN ADHEM

LEIGH HUNT

who

[One of the gentlest and most lovable of the English writers of a century ago was Leigh Hunt. His father was an English lawyer-afterward a clergyman was born in the West Indies and educated in Philadelphia. 5 His mother was a Quaker lady whom his father met and married in Pennsylvania. The elder Hunt remained loyal to the English during the Revolutionary War, and was mobbed by citizens of Philadelphia, barely escaping to England with his life.

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Leigh was the youngest of the children, and was born at Southgate, England, in the year 1784. He was a delicate lad, with an imagination that made him see ghosts and goblins in the dark, but with a courage that was always fighting against fear.

15 He was sent to a celebrated school in London called Christ's Hospital, or the "Blue-Coat School." Several other well-known English authors, both before and after him, attended this school and have described it. In Hunt's time there were some seven hundred boys upon 20 its roll. They wore a uniform consisting of a blue woolen gown or blouse, with leather belt, duck breeches, yellow stockings, and a little worsted cap, which was too small to be of any use and which was usually carried in the hand.

The boys did not have too much to eat. Their breakfast was bread and water-not a great deal of bread but plenty of water. Their dinner was also mainly bread, with a small slice of meat every other day; "about such," says Hunt, "as would be given to an infant 5 three or four years old," and even that was often left half eaten, it was so tough. On the days when they did not have meat, they had milk porridge, very thin, or sometimes rice milk. There were no vegetables nor desserts. Once a month they had roast beef, and twice a 10 year pork. At one of these pork dinners they had the luxury of a pudding made of peas.

One of the masters is described as a stern man who flogged the boys without mercy. On one occasion when three boys were called before him for misconduct, he 15 said he had n't time to flog them all, but they might draw lots to see who should get the whipping. If you are ever inclined to think your school life hard, remember those English boys of a hundred years ago and be thankful for the schools that we have to-day.

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Hunt began to write verses while at school, and published a volume of them when only seventeen. A few years afterward he wrote criticisms of books and plays for a small paper in London, and at twenty-three published a volume of these essays. Not long afterwards he 25 and his brother John started, in London, a paper called The Examiner, which once got him into serious trouble.

In it he had made some rather sarcastic remarks about the Prince of Wales, who in those days was not greatly respected by the people. For this offense Hunt and his brother were fined and sent to prison for two years. 5 Before their trial they were told that if they would agree never to mention the Prince of Wales again in their paper, they might go free; but this they would not promise. They did not greatly mind going to prison, though doubtless they would rather have remained at 10 home, but they were unwilling to give up their right to print what they knew to be the truth. So they refused to make any promises, and to prison they went.

Hunt was very fond of flowers, and in his prison window he grew vines and roses, concealing the iron 15 bars by training the flowers over them. The poets

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Shelley, Keats, and Byron, with many other distinguished people, visited him in his cell; and on the whole he was more honored than disgraced by his imprisonment.

Several years after being released he went to Italy to start a paper with Shelley and Byron. But Shelley died, and Hunt and Byron quarreled, and the paper was soon given up. Afterwards Hunt edited another paper in London, and wrote several books, chiefly poems and literary 25 essays. He died in 1859, at the age of seventy-five. On his tombstone is written the line from "Abou Ben Adhem,"

Write me as one that loves his fellow men.