The Copybook

Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.

187

By Adrian Pingstone, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.

Educational Ideals Alexander Haddow

Like the ideal Christian, the ideal teacher is one who spreads joy in everything, great or small.

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188

© Peter Trimming, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0 generic.

Pater’s Bathe Sir Edward Abbott Parry

A charming children’s rhyme that is also a test of the clearest speaker’s diction.

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189

By James Bretherton (?1730-1806), after William Henry Bunbury (1750-1811), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.

Fricassée in France Laurence Sterne

In the opening lines of Laurence Sterne’s Sentimental Journey, the narrator explains the perverse whim that led him to leave his home shores behind.

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190

By Willem van de Velde (1603-1707), via the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, and Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.

Recollections of Slavery Samuel Pepys

Samuel Pepys ran into a little knot of seafaring men at the Exchange, who told him some hair-raising tales about their time in Algiers.

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191

© Andrey Mironov, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0.

Jailbreak St Luke the Evangelist

When Rhoda, maid to John Mark and his mother, said Peter was standing at the gate, nobody in the house believed her.

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192

By Jan Siberechts (1627-?1703), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.

Trouble at Belsize Gardens Clay Lane

In 1720, Welsh promoter William Howell opened a pleasure garden at Belsize House, but the pleasures drew the magistrates’ frowns.

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