oduce
Nelson's name or some other great man's and this recurred regularly.
'What are we for now?' he would ask me as we left our house. I had to
decide whether we took a hero or an author, which I soon learnt to do
with capricious resolution. We were one Sunday for Shakespeare; another
for Nelson or Pitt. 'Nelson, papa,' was my most frequent rejoinder, and
he never dissented, but turned his steps toward Nelson's cathedral dome,
and uncovered his head there, and said: 'Nelson, then, to-day'; and
we went straight to his monument to perform the act of homage. I chose
Nelson in preference to the others because near bed-time in the evening
my father told me stories of our hero of the day, and neither Pitt nor
Shakespeare lost an eye, or an arm, or fought with a huge white bear on
the ice to make himself interesting. I named them occasionally out of
compassion, and to please my father, who said that they ought to have
a turn. They were, he told me, in the habit of paying him a visit,
whenever I had particularly neglected them, to learn the grounds for my
disregard of their claims, and they urged him to intercede with me,
and imparted many of their unpublished adventures, so that I should be
tempted to give them a chance on the following Sunday.

'Great Will,' my father called Shakespeare, and 'Slender Billy,' Pitt.
The scene where Great Will killed the deer, dragging Falstaff all over
the park after it by the light of Bardolph's nose, upon which they put
an extinguisher if they heard any of the keepers, and so left everybody
groping about and catching the wrong person, was the most wonderful
mixture of fun and tears. Great Will was extremely youthful, but
everybody in the park called him, 'Father William'; and when he wanted
to know which way the deer had gone, King Lear (or else my memory
deceives me) punned, and Lady Macbeth waved a handkerchief for it to
be steeped in the blood of the deer; Shylock ordered one pound of
the carcase; Hamlet (the fact was impressed on me) offered him a
three-legged stool; and a number of kings and knights and ladies lit
their torches from Bardolph; and away they flew, distracting the keepers
and leaving Will and his troop to the deer. That poor thing died from a
different weapon at each recital, though always with a flow of blood
and a successful dash of his antlers into Falstaff; and to hear Falstaff
bellow! But it was mournful to hear how sorry Great Will was over the
animal he had slain. H