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gentle little folk, either through disease or obedience to adult behest. Never bad chil- dren; not one juvenile delinquent brought to time. The grim reaper specialized in the fairest and most obedient, mainly little girls. It certainly left the conviction that life at best is a chancy business.

One might think that recalling the readers of long ago would be the reopening of old wounds. Not at all. It is quite exhilarating for elderly minds to go groping through the mists of memory ‘back to their sorrowful school days. Quotations may be a bit wobbly, but the substance is there.

For a year or two in starting school they dallied along with such unemotional titbits as “Ls it a cat?" “It is a cat,” but at the age of about eight they advanced to the second reader _where they were plunged head-on into the tale of The Children in the Wood. You may recall that the poor babes got lost in the forest, finally falling to earth in exhaustion and despair, and the birds fluttered round bringing leaves to cover the little bodies.

Fromthen on, grandpa and his contem- poraries. from the age of nine to 13, sniffled

The Star Weekly MAGAZINE, June 4, 1960

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The wildest offerings of modern TV seem pallid beside the brooding horrors and tales of gruesome disaster and death

that were prescribed reading for public school pupils a half century ago when the old

Ontario Readers were “the gateway to literature.”

their way through a welter of disasters. The third reader started with The White Ship which sailed gaily forth from the harbor thronged with light-hearted revellers, fair ladies and handsome noblemen. Then it was wrecked with all lives lost save one. “And of all the brilliant crowd, the poor butcher of Rouen alone was saved . . . the sole relator of the dismal tale.”

But go deeper and it is found that unre- lieved tragedies rear their heads. There were so many little domestic scenes. The parents urged little Mary, “Mary, go and call the cattle home/And call the cattle home/Across the sands 0’ Dee." So gentle little Mary sets out after the cows and “The creeping tide came up along the sand/And o'er and o'er the sand/And never ‘home came she."

There was Mabel, “little Mabel, with face against the pane,” watching her father and lover take off that stormy night in their fishing boats. All night long she watched for their return. Then came the dawn, bring- ing with it “Two bodies stark and white/Ah! So ghastly in the light/With seaweed in their hair.” If memory is correct, Mabel, too,

passed away, still with her face ‘against the pane.

The third of a tragic little trio was faith- ful little Lucy, who set forth with her lantern in her hand on her nightly chore of gathering faggots to keep the family fire burning. But she was lost on the lonesome moor and "The wretched parents, all that night/Went shout- ing far and wide/But there was neither sound nor sight/ To serve them for a guide.”

Dickens was pastmaster in bringing the tear to the eye and, in one particular story, he followed a death-burdened soul from tearful boyhood to tearful old age- As a child-,—the hero was bereaved of his little sister whom he envisions being swallowed in mourning glory by their favorite star. Like a mys- terious flower, this star opens and closes upon his baby brother, his mother and his only daughter. His heart entirely broken, the old man finally climbs the heavenly stairs to the family star. Dickens doesn't say he actually died--only that “the star was shining; and it shines upon his grave.”

Even little rich girls enjoyed no immunity. There was Lord (Concluded on next page)

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