e of the vacancy between stakes--with
LOCALITY to help, of course.

Although I am away off here in a Swedish village (1) and those stakes
did not stand till the snow came, I can see them today as plainly as
ever; and whenever I think of an English monarch his stakes rise before
me of their own accord and I notice the large or small space which he
takes up on our road. Are your kings spaced off in your mind? When you
think of Richard III. and of James II. do the durations of their reigns
seem about alike to you? It isn't so to me; I always notice that there's
a foot's difference. When you think of Henry III. do you see a great
long stretch of straight road? I do; and just at the end where it joins
on to Edward I. I always see a small pear-bush with its green fruit
hanging down. When I think of the Commonwealth I see a shady little
group of these small saplings which we called the oak parlor; when
I think of George III. I see him stretching up the hill, part of him
occupied by a flight of stone steps; and I can locate Stephen to an inch
when he comes into my mind, for he just filled the stretch which went
by the summer-house. Victoria's reign reached almost to my study door on
the first little summit; there's sixteen feet to be added now; I believe
that that would carry it to a big pine-tree that was shattered by some
lightning one summer when it was trying to hit me.

We got a good deal of fun out of the history road; and exercise, too. We
trotted the course from the conqueror to the study, the children calling
out the names, dates, and length of reigns as we passed the stakes,
going a good gait along the long reigns, but slowing down when we
came upon people like Mary and Edward VI., and the short Stuart and
Plantagenet, to give time to get in the statistics. I offered prizes,
too--apples. I threw one as far as I could send it, and the child that
first shouted the reign it fell in got the apple.

The children were encouraged to stop locating things as being "over by
the arbor," or "in the oak parlor," or "up at the stone steps," and say
instead that the things were in Stephen, or in the Commonwealth, or in
George III. They got the habit without trouble. To have the long road
mapped out with such exactness was a great boon for me, for I had the
habit of leaving books and other articles lying around everywhere, and
had not previously been able to definitely name the place, and so had
often been obliged to go to fetch th