And our sports, as well as our
books, had a spice of Merry Old England. They were full of kings
and queens, and made sharp contrasts, as well as odd mixtures,
with the homeliness of our everyday life.
One of them, a sort of rhymed dialogue, began with the couplet:--
"Queen Anne, Queen Anne, she sits in the sun,
As fair as a lady, as white as a nun."
If "Queen Anne" did not give a right guess as to which hand of
the messenger held the king's letter to her, she was contempt-
uously informed that she was
"as brown as a bun."
In another name, four little girls joined hands across, in
couples, chanting:--
"I wish my father were a king,
I wish my mother were a queen,
And I a little companion!"
concluding with a close embrace in a dizzying whirl, breathlessly
shouting all together,--
"A bundle of fagots! A bundle of fagots!"
In a third, which may have begun with a juvenile reacting of the
Colonial struggle for liberty, we ranged ourselves under two
leaders, who made an archway over our heads of their lifted hands
and arms, saying, as we passed beneath,--
"Lift up the gates as high as the sky,
And let King George and his army pass by!"
We were told to whisper "Oranges" or "Lemons" for a pass-word;
and "Oranges" always won the larger enlistment, whether British
or American.
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