The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-03-08
ART OF READING ALOUD

From Hildegarde Hawthornes Books
 and Reading in March St. Nicholas. TWAS looking through the biography of
 of an English statesman the other day. the earlier pages of which are devoted to a description of his wife's childhood in the old Scotch castle where she was born and brought up. The pie ture of the life there was charming in many ways, so simple and healthy and full of outdoor fun and jolly companion- ship between the host of brothers and sis ters. But one thing particularly struck. me, and that was the delightful custom that obtained among these children of reading aloud to each other on stormy afternoons or during the evening" Their meeting place was the great, central hall with it's huge fireplace at one end, with large fur rugs outspread before 1t and wide seats drawn close to 1t. Here, after long rides and tramps over the heathery hills, for these young Scots were passion ately fond of an active existence, they would gather as twilight fell. A lamp swung on a chain above one of the seats, and under this. turn about, one of the children sat and read aloud to the rest. They read the Border ballads. and tales oe adventure and of history; they read the lives of great men and gallant stories of travel by land and sea. Round about them the vast spaces of the ancient hall, .I, tapestry, grew dimmed and more mys- terious in the gathering dusk. Outside perhaps a wintry storm went wailing, skipping it's wet wings against the long windows. In the warm circle of light created by the flaming logs and glowing lamp, the eight or ten children, all lusty and handsome, lay or sat, some of them busy carving or embroldering, others idle and dreaming. and listened as the reader turned silent print to living words. Scott was writing his romances at that time,. and a new volume by the Wizard of the North, as he was called, was eagerly welcomed The shadowy old hall must have been fine place for hearing his stories. Easy to imagine one heard the tramp of armed feet and hoarse voices of command in the court without. Rebecca might have stood in one of those very windows and theratened to leap to death if grim Brian, the KMght-Templar, came step nearer Amy Robsart and Leices- ter might have wandered hand in hand throughout that archway while poor Amy was still happy in the earls love. Here the clans might have mustered in answer to the call of the wild Pibroch, or the old minstrel have tuned h's harp for that last lay
 At any rate, Lady John Russell, in all the happiness as well as the sorrow of the rest of her life, never forgot those wonderful hours when she and her brothers and sisters read, and talked to- gether of what they had read, before the warm hearth. More than that, she kept up the custom, and she and Lord John used to read to each other whenever they could find leisure; for Russelis life was crowded with work. They read many old books, and they read the new ones Thackeray and Dickens were writing then, Wordsworth, Tennyson and Jane Austen Russell would lay aside the heavy cares of state cares his wife un- derstood and shared with him. and the two would laugh like children over "Pick- wick and Martin Chuzziewit, or thrill over the lovely poems that were so new to the world.
 I have been telling this story or past .time because I don't see why all of you. should not have just such pleasant mem ories to look back to when you are grown m. and such a habit to fall back upon. We cannot all lie before fire in vast baronial hall, to be sure, where history is as much at home as the cat on the hearthstone. But almost any place is good place to read in. The evening lamp siows as icheerily in the cozy living room of fiat or bungalow, suburban house or a western ranch, as it can in the old est haunted castle that was ever the scene of romantic happenings. And then, too there's ''all outdoors to read aloud | in when the summer days 1come back to us. It's the book that is the thing, Le.
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