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of their unpublished adventures, so that I should be tempted to give them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. He spoke