A STORY-TELLING JOURNEY.
THE CLUB REORGANIZED.--THE RHINE AND THE LANDS OF THE BALTIC.--TOMMY
TOBY'S STORY OF THE SIX BOY KINGS.
At the first formal meeting of the Club Charlie Leland was chosen
President. He was the intellectual leader among the boys, now that the
old Class had gone; he was a lad of good principles, bright, generous,
and popular. As may be judged from the somewhat discursive dialogue on
the piazza, he had a subject well matured in his mind for the literary
exercises of the Club.
"We all like stories," he said, "and the Rhine lands are regions of
stories, as are the countries of the Baltic Sea. The tales and
traditions of the Rhine would give us a large knowledge of German
history, and, in fact, of the great empire of Europe, over which
Charlemagne ruled, and which now is divided into the kingdoms of
Northern Europe. The stories of haunted castles, spectres, water
nymphs, sylvan deities, and fairies, if shapes of fancy, are full of
instruction, and I know of no subject so likely to prove intensely
interesting as the Rhine and the Baltic; and I would like to propose
it to the Club for consideration, although, owing to my position as
President, I do not make a formal motion that it be adopted."
[Illustration: THE GRAND-DUCAL CASTLE, SCHWERIN.]
Charlie's picturesque allusion to the myths of the Rhine and the
Baltic seemed to act like magic on the minds of the Club; and a
formal motion that the Rhine and the Baltic be the subject of
future literary meetings was at once made, seconded, and unanimously
adopted.
[Illustration: ANCIENT GERMAN HOUSES.]
Master Lewis had entered the room quietly while the business of the
Club was being thus happily and unanimously carried forward. The boys
had asked him to be present at the meeting, and to give them his
opinions of their plans.
"I think," he said, "that your choice of a subject for your literary
evenings is an excellent one, but I notice a tendency to place more
stress on the fine old fictions of Germany and the North than upon
actual history. These fictions for the most part grew out of the
disturbed consciences of bad men in ignorant and barbarous times. They
were shapes of the imagination."
He continued:--
"Let me prepare your minds a little for a proper estimate of these
alluring and entertaining stories."
MASTER LEWIS ON POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS.
The front of Northumberland House, England, used to be ornamented
with the bronze statue of a lion, called Percy. A humorist, wishing
to produce a sensation, placed himself in front of the building, one
day, and, assuming an attitude of astonishment, exclaimed:--
"It wags, it wags!"
His eyes were riveted on the statue, to which the bystanders readily
observed that the exclamation referred. Quite a number of persons
collected, each one gazing on the bronze figure, expecting to see
the phenomenon. Their imagination supplied the desired marvel, and
presently a street full of people fancied that they could see the
lion Percy wag his tail!
An old distich runs something as follows:--
"Who believe that there are witches, there the witches are;
Who believe there aren't no witches, aren't no witches there."
There is much more good sense than poetry in these lines. The
marvels of superstition are witnessed chiefly by those who believe
in them.
[Illustration: ANCIENT RELIGIOUS RITES OF THE PEASANTS.]
The sights held as supernatural are usually not more wonderful than
those that arise from a disordered imagination. The spectres of
demonology are not more fearful than those shapes of fancy produced
by opium and dissipation; and the visions of the necromancer are
not more wonderful than those that arise from a fever, or even from
a troubled sleep.
Yet it is a fact, and a very singular one, that, however at random
the fancies of unhealthy intellects may appear on ordinary subjects,
those fancies obtain a greater or less credit when they touch upon
supernatural things. Instances of monomaniacs (persons insane on a
single subject) who have imagined things quite as marvellous as the
most superstitious, but whose illusions have been treated with the
greatest ridicule, might be cited almost without limit.
I once knew of an elderly lady, who thought that she was a goose.
Making a nest in one corner of the room, she put in it a few kitchen
utensils, which she supposed to be eggs, and began to incubate. She
found the process of incubation, in her case, a very slow one; and
her friends, fearing for her health, called in a doctor. He
endeavored to reason with her, but she only replied to his
philosophy by stretching out her neck, which she seemed to think was
a remarkably long one, and hissing. The old lady had a set of
gilt-band china cups and saucers, which, in her eyes, had been a
sort of household gods. The knowledge of the fact coming to the ears
of the physician, he advised her friends to break the precious
treasures, one after another, before her eyes. The plan worked
admirably. She immediately left her nest, and ran to the rescue of
the china, and the excitement brought her back to her sense of the
proprieties of womanhood.
Another old lady, who also resided in a neighboring town, fancied
she had become a veritable teapot. She used to silence those who
attempted to reason with her by the luminous argument, "See, here
(crooking one arm at her side) is the handle, and there (thrusting
upward her other arm) is the spout!" What could be more convincing
than that?
Another lady, whose faculties had begun to decline, thought her toes
were made of glass; and a comical figure she cut when she went
abroad, picking up and putting down her feet with the greatest
caution, lest she should injure her precious toes.
Now these cases provoke a smile; but, had these ancient damsels
fancied that they were bewitched, or that they were haunted, or that
they held communion with the spirits of the invisible world, instead
of exciting laughter and pity, they would have occasioned no small
excitement among the simple-minded people of the neighborhood in
which each resided.
A young Scottish farmer, having been to a fair, was riding homeward
on horseback one evening over a lonely road.
He had been drinking rather freely at the fair, according to the
custom, and his head was far from steady, and his conscience far
from easy.
It was moonlight, and he began to reflect what a dreadful thing it
would be to meet a ghost. His fears caused him to look very
carefully about him. As he was approaching the old church in
Teviotdale, he saw a figure in white standing on the wall of the
churchyard, by the highway.
The sight gave him a start, but he continued his journey, hoping
that it was his imagination that had invested some natural object
with a ghostly shape. But the nearer he approached, the more
ghostlike and mysterious did the figure appear.
He stopped, hesitating what to do, and then concluded to ride
slowly. There was no other way to his home than the one he was
following. He knew well enough that his mind was somewhat unsettled
by drinking, and what he saw might, after all, he thought, be
nothing but an illusion. He would approach the object slowly and
cautiously, and, when very near it, would put spurs to his horse and
dash by.
As he drew near, however, the figure showed unmistakable signs of
life, gesticulating mysteriously, and uttering gibberish, that,
although odd, sounded surprisingly human.
It was a ghostly night: the dim moonlight filled the silent air, and
the landscape was flecked with shadows; it was a ghostly
place,--Teviotdale churchyard; and, in perfect keeping with the time
and place, stood the figure, doing as a ghost is supposed to
do,--talking gibberish to the moon.
The young man's nerves were quite unstrung as he put spurs to his
horse for a rush by the object of his fright. As he dashed past, his
hair almost bristling with apprehension, the supposed phantom leaped
upon the back of the horse and clasped the frightened man about his
waist. His apprehensions were startling enough before, but now he
was wrought to the highest pitch of terror.
He drove his spurs into his horse, and the animal flew over the
earth like a phantom steed. Such riding never before was seen in the
winding road of Teviotdale.
In a wonderfully short time the reeking animal stood trembling and
panting before his master's gate. The young man called lustily for
his servants, who, coming out, were commanded in frantic tones to
"Tak aff the ghaist, tak aff the ghaist!" And "tak aff the ghaist"
they did, which proved to be a young lady well known in Teviotdale
for her unfortunate history.
She had married an estimable young man, to whom she was very
strongly attached, and the brightest worldly prospects seemed
opening before her. Her husband was taken ill, and suddenly died.
She had confided in him so fondly that the world lost its
attractions for her on his decease, and she moodily dwelt upon her
misfortune until she became deranged.
Her husband was buried in Teviotdale churchyard, and she was in the
habit of stealing away from her friends at night, to weep over his
grave. These melancholy visits had the effect of giving a new
impetus to her malady, making her for a time the victim of any fancy
that chanced to enter her mind.
On the night of our story she imagined that the young farmer was her
husband, and awaited his approach with great exhilaration of
spirits, determined to give him an affectionate greeting.
The fright came near costing the young man his life. He was taken
from his saddle to his bed, where he lay for weeks prostrated by a
high nervous fever.
An eminent writer, after relating the above authentic story,
remarks:--
"If this woman had dropped from the horse unobserved by the rider,
it would have been very hard to convince the honest farmer that he
had not actually performed a part of his journey with a ghost behind
him."
True. Teviotdale churchyard would have obtained the reputation of
being haunted, and would have been a terror to weak-minded people
for many years to come.
The ignorant and simple are not alone subject to illusions of fancy.
The great and learned Pascal, than whom France has produced no more
worthy philosopher, believed that an awful chasm yawned by his side,
into which he was in danger of being thrown. This dreadful vision,
with other fancies as gloomy, cast a shadow over an eventful period
of his life, and gave a dark coloring to certain of his writings.
Yet Pascal, on most subjects, was uncommonly sound in judgment. How
unfavorable might have been the influence, had his disorder assumed
a different form, and placed before him the delusion of a ghost!
Before giving credit to stories of supernatural events, even from
sources that seem to be trustworthy, I hope my young friends will
consider duly how liable to error are an unhealthy mind and an
excited imagination. Every man is not a knave or a cheat who claims
to have witnessed unnatural phenomena, but the judgment of very
excellent persons is liable to be infected by illusions of the
imagination.
I do not say that we may not receive impressions from the spiritual
world. As the geologist, the botanist, the chemist, sees things in
nature that the unschooled and undeveloped do not see, so it may be
that a spiritually educated mind may know more of the spiritual
world than the gross and selfish mind. I will not enlarge upon this
topic or discuss this question; it might not be proper for me so to
do.
Master Lewis had aimed to make clear to the boys that it is easy to
start a superstitious story, and to suggest that such stories in
ignorant times became _legends_.
[Illustration: OLD FORTRESS ON THE RHINE.]
"I propose," said Willie Clifton, "that the first seven meetings of
the Club be devoted to the Rhine."
"We might call this series of meetings _Seven Nights on the Rhine_,"
added Herman Reed.
"The old members of the Club who made the Rhine journey with Mr. Beal
might give us an account of that journey," suggested one of the new
boys.
The plans suggested by these remarks met with approval, and a
committee was appointed to arrange the literary exercises for seven
meetings of the Club, to be known as _Seven Nights on the Rhine_.
The literary exercises for the present evening consisted of the
relation of historic ghost stories, chiefly by members of the old
Club. Among these were the Province House Stories of Hawthorne, the
tradition of Mozart's Requiem, the Cock Lane Ghost, and several
incidents from Scott's novels.
The principal story, however, was given by Tommy Toby, an old member
of the Club, and a graduate of the Academy.
TOMMY TOBY'S STORY OF ST. DUNSTAN AND THE DEVIL AND THE SIX BOY
KINGS.
A splendid court had Athelstane, and foreign princes came there to
be educated. Among these princes was Louis, the son of Charles the
Simple, of France, who, by his long residence in England, obtained
the pretty name of _Louis d'Outremer_.
Splendid weddings were celebrated there. The king married one of his
sisters to the King of France, another to the Emperor of Germany,
another to Hugo the Great, Count of Paris, and another to the Duke
of Aquitaine.
After the fight with the Cornish men, all of the land was at peace
for many years, and the nobility became very scholarly and the
people very polite.
Athelstane had a favorite, a friar, who made more mischief in his
day and generation than any other man. This man is known in history
by the name of St. Dunstan.
When Dunstan was a boy, he was taken very ill of a fever. One night,
being delirious, he got up from his bed, and walked to Glastonbury
church, which was then repairing, and ascended the scaffolds and
went all over the building; and because he did not tumble off and
break his neck, people said that he had performed the feat under the
influence of inspiration, being directed by an angel.
This was called Dunstan's first miracle.
When he recovered from the fever, and heard of the miracle that he
was said to have wrought, he was greatly pleased, and thought to
turn the good opinion of people to his own advantage by performing
other miracles.
So he made a harp that played in the wind,--now soft, now loud; now
sweet, now solemn. He said that the harp played itself. The people
heard the sounds, full of seeming expression, as though touched by
airy fingers, and, as they could not discredit the evidence of their
own ears, they too reported that the harp played itself. And great
was the fame of Dunstan's harp.
But Dunstan, according to old history, became a very bad man; so bad
that I cannot tell you the worst things that he did. He discovered
his true character at last, notwithstanding his sweetly playing
harp.
He pretended to be a magician. Now a magician, in those old times,
was one who was supposed to know things beyond the reach of common
minds, who pretended to calculate the influence of the stars on a
person's destiny, and who understood the effects of poisonous
vegetables and minerals. The Saxon magicians were chiefly nobles and
monks, and all of their great secrets which are worth knowing are
now understood as simple matters of science, even by schoolboys.
Athelstane's conscience must have been rather restless, I fancy,
concerning young Edwin, his brother, whom he caused to be drowned;
and people with unquiet conscience are usually very superstitious.
At any rate, he made a bosom friend of Dunstan, after the latter
took up the black art, and became greatly interested in magic, much
to the sorrow of the people.
At last a party of the king's friends resolved that the bad
influence of the wily prelate should come to an end. They waylaid
him one dark night, in an unfrequented place, and, binding him hand
and foot, threw him into a miry marsh. But the water was shallow,
and Dunstan kept his nose above the mire, and, after shouting
lustily for help, and floundering about for a long time, he
succeeded in getting out, to make a great deal of noise and trouble
in the world, and we have some strange stories to tell you about him
yet.
Athelstane died in the year 940, and he was succeeded upon the
throne by his half-brother, Edmund, who was the first of the six boy
kings.
Edmund was eighteen years of age when he took his place on the
honorable Saxon throne of Alfred the Great. He was a high-spirited
young man, warm-hearted and brave. He conquered Cumberland from the
Ancient Britons, and protected his kingdom against the fierce
sea-kings of the North. Like his great ancestor, King Alfred, he was
fond of learning and art. He improved and adorned public places and
buildings. He made a very elegant appearance, and held a showy
court, and they called him the Magnificent.
But Edmund was fond of convivial suppers, and used himself to drink
deeply of wine. He lived fast, and his friends lived fast, though
they appeared to live very happily and merrily.
But young men given to festive suppers and to wine are not apt to
make a long history; and the history of Edmund the Magnificent, the
first boy king, was a short one.
Edmund was succeeded in the year 946 by Edred, his brother, a
well-meaning youth, who was the second of the six boy kings of
England.
Dunstan had become abbot of Glastonbury Abbey, the church where he
performed the miracle when he was sick of the fever. He was very
ambitious to meddle in affairs of state, but his bad name had
weakened his influence with Edmund, and it seemed likely to do the
same with well-intentioned Edred. He desired to create a public
impression again that he was a saint.
He retired to a cell and there spent his time working very hard as a
smith, and--so the report went--in devotion.
[Illustration: ST. DUNSTAN AND THE DEVIL.]
Then the people said: "How humble and penitent Dunstan is! He has
the back-ache all day, and the leg-ache all night, and he suffers
all for the cause of purity and truth."
Then Dunstan told the people that the Devil came to tempt him,
which, with his aches for the good cause, made his situation very
trying.
The Devil, he said, wanted him to lead a life of selfish
gratification, but he would not be tempted to do a thing like that;
he never thought of himself,--oh, no, good soul, not he.
The people said that Dunstan must have become a very holy man, or
the Devil would not appear to him bodily.
One day a great noise was heard issuing from the retreat of this
man, and filling all the air for miles, the like of which was never
known before. The people were much astonished. Some of them went to
Dunstan to inquire the cause. He told them a story of a miracle more
marvellous than any that he had previously done.
The Devil came to him, he said, as he was at work at his forge, and
tempted him to lead a life of pleasure. He quickly drew his pincers
from the fire, and seized his tormentor by the nose, which put him
in such pain that he bellowed so lustily as to shake the hills. The
people said that it was the bellowing of the Evil One that they had
heard.
This wonderful story ended to Dunstan's liking, for the artful do
flourish briefly sometimes.
The boy king Edred was in ill-health, and suffered from a lingering
illness for years. He felt the need of the counsel of a good man. He
said to himself,--
"There is Dunstan, a man who has given up all selfish feelings and
aspirations, a man whom even the Devil cannot corrupt. I will bring
him to court, and will make him my adviser."
Then pure-hearted Edred brought the foxy prelate to his court, and
made him--of all things in the world!--the royal treasurer.
Edred died in the year 955, having for nine years aimed to do justly
and to govern well. His decease, like his brother's before him, was
sincerely lamented.
He left a well-ordered government, except in the department of the
treasury. Some remarkable "irregularities"--as stealing is sometimes
called nowadays--had taken place there, some of the public money
having become mixed up with Dunstan's.
The next of the six boy kings of England was Edwy the Fair,--fifteen
years of age when he ascended the throne.
He was the son of Edmund,--a handsome boy, and as good at heart as
he was handsome. Though so young, he had married a beautiful
princess, named Elgiva. So we have here a boy king and a girl queen.
As if one bad prelate were not enough, there was, besides Dunstan,
another great mischief-maker, Odo, the Dane, Archbishop of
Canterbury.
The coronation of Edwy was the occasion of great rejoicing. They had
a sumptuous feast in the evening, attended by all the prelates and
thanes. Edwy liked the society of the girl queen better than that of
these rude people, and in the midst of the festivities he retired to
the queen's apartment to see her and the queen mother.
Odo, the archbishop, noticed that the boy king had left his place at
the tables. He rightly guessed the reason, and deemed such conduct
disrespectful to himself and to the guests. So he went and made
complaint to Dunstan, and Dunstan went to look for the missing king.
When the latter came to the queen's apartment, and was refused
admittance, he broke open the door, upbraided Edwy for his absence
from the feast, and, seizing him by the collar, dragged and pushed
him roughly back to the banqueting-hall.
Edwy, of course, resented this treatment. Dunstan replied by
accusing him of great impropriety, and talked in a very overbearing
way, and Edwy, though a considerate boy, and of a mild disposition,
at last lost his temper.
"You have a very nice sense of propriety," he said. "You were the
treasurer in the last reign, I believe. I intend to call you to
account for the way that you fulfilled your trust."
Dunstan was greatly astonished, and, guilty man that he was, he
began to feel very unsafe.
The boy king made the attempt which he had threatened, to call
Dunstan to account for his late doings in the treasury. But the
latter, when he found that Edwy was in earnest, fled to Ghent.
The nobles saw somewhat into his true character when he thus
disappeared from court, and a party of men was sent in pursuit of
him to put out his eyes. But he was too foxy to be caught, and
arrived safely in Belgium at last, to make a great deal of trouble
in the world yet.
Incited by Dunstan, Odo raised a rebellion. When he had drawn to
himself a sufficient party to insure his personal safety, he
proclaimed Edgar, the younger brother of Edwy, king.
Dunstan returned to England, and joined Odo, and this precious pair
soon discovered the value of their piety, as you shall presently
see.
Edwy the Fair loved the girl queen. She was beautiful as well as
amiable, and was as devoted to her husband as she was lovely. Odo
and Dunstan wished to break the spirit of Edwy, and thought to
accomplish their end by capturing the queen. They caused her to be
stolen from one of the royal palaces, and her cheeks to be burned
with hot irons, in order to destroy the beauty that had so enchanted
the boy king. They then sent her to Ireland, and sold her as a
slave.
The Irish people pitied the weeping maiden, and loved her. They
healed the scars on her cheeks, that the hot irons had made. When
her beauty returned, she grew light-hearted again, and all her
dreams were of the king.
Then the Irish people released her from bondage, and gave her money
to return to Edwy.
She entered England full of joyful anticipations, and made rapid
journeys towards the place where Edwy held his court. But Odo and
Dunstan, who had been apprised of her coming, intercepted her, and
ordered that she should be tortured and put to death. They caused
the cords of her limbs to be severed, so that she was unable to walk
or move. The beautiful girl survived the cutting and maiming but a
few days.
Weeping continually over her disappointments and sorrows, and
shrieking at times from the acuteness of her pain, she died at
Gloucester,--perhaps the most unfortunate princess who ever came to
the English throne.
When Edwy heard of her death, he ceased to struggle for his right;
he cared for nothing more. He grew paler and thinner day by day, his
beauty faded, his thoughts turned heavenward, and he aspired to a
better crown and kingdom. He died of a broken heart before he
reached the age of twenty, having aimed for three years to govern
well.
Edwy's short reign was followed by that of his brother Edgar, who
succeeded to the Anglo-Saxon throne in the year 959, and was an
unprincipled and dissolute king.
He was fifteen years of age when he began to reign. One of his first
acts was to reward the intriguing Dunstan for his crimes by
bestowing upon him the archbishopric of Canterbury. Think of
conferring an archbishopric as the price of a brother's ruin and
death! Ah, better to be Edwy the Fair in his early grave, with the
birds singing and the violets waving above him, than the cruel boy
Edgar upon the throne.
He resigned the government almost wholly to Dunstan, his primate,
and spent his time in gayety, pleasure, and ease. He was unstable,
profligate, and vicious. He once broke into a convent and carried
off a beautiful nun, named Editha. For this violation of the
sanctuary, Dunstan commanded him not to wear his crown for seven
years, which was no great punishment, as he could ornament his head
as well in some other way.
Dunstan certainly possessed great ability as a statesman. He
employed the vast armaments of England against the neighboring
sovereigns, and compelled the King of Scotland and the Princes of
Wales, of the Isle of Man, and of the Orkneys, to do homage to
Edgar.
The boy king annually made a voyage around England in great state,
accompanied by princes and nobles.
On one of these occasions, when he wished to visit the Abbey of St.
John the Baptist, on the River Dee, he appointed eight crowned kings
to pull the oars of his barge, while he himself acted as steersman.
The vainglorious young sovereign then went into the grand old abbey
and said his prayers, after which he returned in the same pomp,
rowed by the eight subject kings.
This event is celebrated in the songs and ballads of the olden time,
which tell of the glory of England, when the eight crowns glimmered
on the sun-covered waters of the Dee.
Edgar, who was King of England up to the year 975, married twice,
and left two sons. The elder of these was named Edward, the son of a
good queen, Ethelfreda; the other was named Ethelred, the son of the
bad queen, Elfrida.
Edward had the best claim to the throne, but the intriguing Elfrida
endeavored to secure the succession to her own son, Ethelred, a boy
about seven years old. Dunstan decided against her, and caused
Edward to be crowned. The boy king was at this time thirteen years
of age.
He was an amiable, susceptible boy, loving every one, and wishing
every one well, and believing, with childish simplicity, that all
the world was as pure at heart and as unselfish as himself.
But Elfrida hated him, and resolved that his reign should be a short
one, if it was within the reach of her arts to make it so.
She retired with little Ethelred to Crofe Castle, a beautiful
country seat in Dorsetshire. Green forests waved around it, and blue
hills seemed to semicircle the sky. The silver horn of the hunter
often echoed through the stream-cleft woodlands, and merrily blew
before the castle gate.
Edward and a youthful court party went hunting one day in the dreamy
old forests of Dorsetshire. Chancing to ride near Crofe Castle,
Edward thought that he would like to see Elfrida and his little
brother. So he separated himself from his attendants, rode to the
castle, and blew his horn.
Elfrida presently appeared, her face glowing with smiles.
"Thou art welcome, dear king," she said, in a winning way. "Pray
dismount and come in, and we will have pleasant talk and good
cheer."
"No, madam," said Edward. "My company would notice my absence, and
think that some evil had befallen me. Please bring me a cup of wine,
and I will drink to your health and to my little brother's, in my
saddle, and then I must away with speed."
Elfrida turned away to order the wine. She gave another order at the
same time in a whisper to an armed attendant.
The wine was brought. Elfrida filled the cup and handed it to the
boy king. As he held it up it sparkled in the light. Elfrida stood
in the gateway, holding little Ethelred by the hand.
"Health," said Edward, putting the bright cup to his lips.
There crept up behind him softly an armed man, whose muscles stood
out like brass, and whose eyes burned like fire. He sprang upon the
boy king and stabbed him in the back. The affrighted horse dashed
away, dragging the bleeding body by the stirrup,--on, on, on, over
rut and rock, bush and brier.
They tracked him by his blood. They found his broken body at last.
They took it up tenderly and with many tears, and laid it beneath
the moss and fern.
[Illustration: THE MURDER OF EDWARD.]
When little Ethelred saw his brother stabbed and bleeding, and
dragged over the rough earth, he began to weep. Elfrida beat him and
sent him to his chamber.
What a night was that when the moon silvered the forest! One boy
king mangled and dead on the cold ground, and another boy king
weeping in the forest castle, and beaten and bruised for being
touched at heart at the murder of his bright, innocent brother.
Ethelred came to the English throne at the age of ten. He was the
last of the six boy kings.
The people held him in disfavor from the first on account of his bad
mother, and when Dunstan put the crown on his head at Kingston, he
pronounced a curse instead of a blessing. Neither the blessing nor
the curse of a man like Dunstan could be of much account, and we do
not believe that the latter did the little boy Ethelred any harm.
Dunstan was now old and as full of craft and wickedness as he was
full of years. He continued to practise jugglery, which he called
performing miracles, whenever he found his influence declining, or
had an important end to accomplish.
In the reign of Ethelred Dunstan died. As he had used politics to
help the church, he was made a saint. This was in a rude and
ignorant age.
Poor boy kings! Edmund was murdered; Edwy died of a broken heart;
Edward was stabbed and dragged to death at his horse's heels; and
Ethelred lost his kingdom. Three of them were good and three were
bad. Only one of them was happy.
Edmund, eighteen years of age, reigned from 940 to 946; Edred, 946
to 955; Edwy, fifteen years of age, 955 to 958; Edgar, fifteen years
of age, 958 to 975; Edward, thirteen years of age, 975 to 979;
Ethelred, ten years of age, 979 to 1016.
So the boy kings reigned in all seventy-six years, and governed
England in their youth for nearly fifty years.
"I like your story, Master Toby," said Master Lewis; "as a story, I
mean. The historic facts are mainly as you have given them, but I
think St. Dunstan's intentions may have been good, after all. He lived
in an age of superstition, when it was believed that any political act
was right that would increase the power of the church. Christianity
then was not what it had been in the early church nor what it is
to-day. Men must be somewhat regarded in the light of the times in
which they lived."
The literary exercises for the evening were thus closed.