Читать книгу Home Amusements - M. E. W. Sherwood - Страница 4

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Happy the children who have inherited a garret! We mean the good old country garret, wherein have been stowed away the accumulations of many generations of careful housewives. The more worthless these accumulations, the better for the children. An old aunt who saved all the old bonnets, an old uncle who had a wardrobe of cast-off garments to which he had appended the legend,

“Too poor to wear, too good to give away—”

these are the purveyors to the histrionic talents of nations yet unborn. Old garrets are really the factories of History, Poetry, and the Drama.

Into such a garret crept the lame little Walter Scott, and what did he not bring out of it! Talk of the lumber of a garret and the accumulations of a house, and you mention to the thoughtful the gold and diamond mines of a future literature. A bright boy or girl will unearth many a pearl of price from those old trunks, those dilapidated bureau-drawers, those piles of old love-letters, those garments of the past, that broken-down guitar, that stringless violin, that too-reedy flute. The taste for old furniture has rather emptied the garret of its time-honored chairs and old clocks, but there is still in its ghost-haunted corners quite enough goblin tapestry for the fancy of the growing child.

A country home is, of course, the most precious possession a child can have—a country home in which his ancestors have lived for years, and which has a large garret, a capacious cellar, and several barns. One might wish that every child might be born in Salem or Plymouth, or near one of those old settlements. But as that would be quite impossible, considering the acres which we are compelled to cover as a nation, we may as well see what can be done, in the way of Home Amusements, with the garret as well as the parlor. The garret, in both town and country, has been the earliest home of the legitimate drama since the first youthful aspirant for histrionic honors strapped on the sock and buskin. A good country barn has also been sometimes the scene not only of the strolling but of the resident player.