One hundred years ago a little girl named Mary Butt was living with her
parents at the pretty rectory of Stanford on the Terne, in England. She
was a bright and beautiful child, and when she grew up she became Mrs.
Sherwood, the writer of a great many charming stories for young people.
But nothing that she wrote is so entertaining as the story of her
childhood, which, when she was an old lady, she told to please her
grandchildren. I wonder how the girls who read this paper would endure
the discipline which little Mary submitted to so patiently in 1782.
From the time she was six until she was thirteen she wore every day an
iron collar around her neck, and a backboard strapped tightly over her
shoulders. This was to make her perfectly straight. Perhaps you may have
seen here and there a very stately old lady who never was known to lean
back in her chair, but who always held herself as erect as a soldier on
duty. If so, she was taught, you may be sure, to carry herself in that
way when she was a little girl.
Poor Mary's iron collar was put on in the morning, and was not taken off
until dark, and, worse than that, she says: "I generally did all my
lessons standing in stocks, with the collar around my neck. I never sat
on a chair in my mother's presence."
Her brother and herself were great readers, but you can count on the
fingers of one hand all the books they had to read. _Robinson Crusoe_,
two sets of _Fairy Tales_, _The Little Female Academy_, and _Æsop's
Fables_ formed the entire juvenile library. They used to take _Robinson
Crusoe_, and seat themselves at the bottom of the wide staircase, the
two heads bent over the page together. Whenever they turned a leaf, they
ascended a step, until they reached the top, and then they began to go
down again.
Little Marten was not very persevering with his Latin, so, although it
was not then the fashion for girls, Mary's mother decided that she
should begin the study in order to encourage him. The sister soon
distanced the brother, and before she was twelve her regular task of a
morning was fifty lines of Virgil, translated as she stood in the
stocks.
You will ask what sort of dress this little girl was allowed to wear one
hundred years ago. In summer she had cambric, and in winter,
linsey-woolsey or stuff gowns, with a simple white muslin for best. Her
mother always insisted on a pinafore, which was a great loose apron worn
over everything else, and enveloping her from head to feet.
It is quite refreshing to find that neither the backboard nor the Latin
took from the child a love of play and of dolls. Her special pet was a
huge wooden doll, which she carried to the woods with her, tied by a
string to her waist, after the grown people had decided that she was too
big to care for dolls. A friend one day presented her with a fine gauze
cap, and this was the only ornament she ever possessed as a child.
I think the little girls who compare 1882 with 1782 must be thankful
they were not born in the last century. I know that I am. Yet little
Mary Butt was a very happy child, spending, when permitted, hours of
great delight in the woods and groves, and listening eagerly to the talk
of the learned and travelled visitors who came to Stanford Rectory.
[Illustration: "IT'S TELLING ME ALL ABOUT THE SEA."]