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Page 48
It is hardly needful to impress upon the boys what vigour the blowing of
horns and penny trumpets will impart to the ceremonies; but they may
require to be reminded that Eton men in old days were only allowed to go
a-Maying on condition that they did not wet their feet!
Above all, out-door May Fun is no fun unless the weather is fine; and I
hope this little paper will show that if the 1st of May is chilly, and
the flowers are backward, nothing can be more proper than to keep our
feast on the 12th of May--_May-day, Old Style_. If the Clerk of the
Weather Office is unkind on both these days, give up out-door fun at
once, and prepare for a fancy-ball in the nursery; all the guests to be
dressed as May-day characters. Garland-making and country expeditions
can then be deferred till Midsummer-day. It is not _very_ long to wait,
and penny trumpets do not spoil with keeping.
But do not be defrauded of at least one early ramble in the woods and
fields. It is well, in the impressionable season of life, to realize, if
only occasionally, how much of the sweetest air, the brightest and best
hours of the day, people spend in bed. Any one who goes out every day
before breakfast knows how very seldom he is kept in by bad weather. For
one day when it rains very early there are three or four when it rains
later. But we wait till the world has got dirty, and the air full of the
smoke of thousands of breakfasts, and clouds are beginning to gather,
and then we say England has a horrible climate. I do not believe in many
quack medical prescriptions, but I have the firmest faith in May dew as
a wash for the complexion. Any morning dew is nearly as efficacious if
it is gathered in warm clothes, thick boots, and at a sufficient
distance from home.
There are some households in which there are no children, and there are
some in which the good things of this life are very abundant. To these
it may not be very impertinent to suggest a remembrance of the old
alderman of Lynn's kindly benefaction. To beg leave for the children of
the workhouse to gather May-day nosegays for you, and to give them a May
feast afterwards, would be to give pleasure of a kind in which such
unhomely lives are most deficient. A country ramble "with an object,"
and the grace-in-memory of a traditionary holiday and feast, shared in
common with many homes and with other children.
To go a-Maying "to fetche the flowr�s fresh" is indeed the best part of
the whole affair.
But, when the sunny bank under the hedge is pale with primroses, when
dog-violets spread a mauve carpet over clearings in the little wood, if
cowslips be plentiful though oxslips are few, and rare orchids bless the
bogs of our locality, pushing strange insect heads, through beds of
_Drosera_ bathed in perpetual dew--then, dear children, restrain the
natural impulse to grub everything up and take the whole flora of the
neighbourhood home in your pinafores. In the first place, you can't. In
the second place, it would be very hard on other people if you could.
Cull skilfully, tenderly, unselfishly, and remember what my mother used
to say to me and my brothers and sisters when we were "collecting"
anything, from fresh-water alg� to violet roots for our very own
gardens, "_Leave some for the Naiads and Dryads_."
IN MEMORIUM, MARGARET GATTY
In Memoriam.
MARGARET,
[Daughter of the Rev. Alexander John Scott, D.D.]
(LORD NELSON'S CHAPLAIN, AND THE FRIEND IN WHOSE ARMS HE DIED AT
TRAFALGAR),
was Born June 3rd, 1809.
In 1839 she was Married to the Rev. Alfred Gatty,
OF ECCLESFIELD, YORKSHIRE,
where she Died on October the 4th, 1873, aged 64.
My mother became editor of _Aunt Judy's Magazine_ in May 1866. It was
named after one of her most popular books--_Aunt Judy's Tales_; and Aunt
Judy became a name for herself with her numerous child-correspondents.
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