] day
Fought was this noble fray,
Which fame did not delay
To England to carry;
O, when shall Englishmen
With such acts fill a pen,
Or England breed again
Such a King Harry!

[Footnote 12: Crispin was a Christian saint who suffered martyrdom in
the third century. The 25th of October was made sacred to him.
It was on Saint Crispin's day, 1415, that the Battle of Agincourt
was fought.]

SOME CHILDREN'S BOOKS OF
THE PAST

_By_ GRACE E. SELLON

Probably somewhere about your home, put away so far from sight that you
never think of them any more, are some of the ABC books and the alphabet
blocks and the brightly colored story books about horses, dogs and other
familiar animals that used to amuse you when you were just learning to
say the alphabet and to spell a few three-letter words. Perhaps you can
remember how much you liked to have the stories read to you and how much
fun there was in repeating your A B C's when you could point out the
big, colored letters in your book or on your blocks. But have you ever
thought that you were any more fortunate than other children of other
ages in having these interesting things to help you? Have you ever
wondered whether, far back in history before our country was discovered
and settled by white men, boys and girls had the same kinds of picture
books and drawing-slates, alphabet games and other playthings that used
to delight you in the days when you were going to kindergarten or
learning your first simple lessons from your mother?

If you have never thought enough about this matter to ask some older
person about it, you will find the lesson books and story books used by
children of even a hundred years ago very curious. Suppose we go farther
back, to 1620, the year of the Mayflower, let us say. You could never
imagine what a child then living in England was given to learn his
letters from. As soon as he was able to remember the first little things
that children are taught, his mother would fasten to his belt a string
from which was suspended what she would call his _hornbook_. This was
not at all what we think of to-day as a book, for it was made of a piece
of cardboard covered on one side with a thin sheet of horn, and
surrounded by a frame with a handle. Through the covering of horn the
little boy could see the alphabet written on the cardboard in both large
and small letters. After these would come rows of syllables to help him
in learning to p