Impromptu charades were almost a nightly pastime of ours, from the children's earliest days--they played in them with me when they were only five or six years old.

As they increased in years and practice their love for the sport almost amounted to a passion, and they acted their parts with a steadily increasing ability.
At first they required much drilling; but later they were generally ready as soon as the parts were assigned, and they acted them according to their own devices.

Their stage facility and absence of constraint and self-consciousness in the "Prince and Pauper" was a result of their charading practice.
At ten and twelve Susy wrote plays, and she and Daisy Warner and Clara played them in the library or up-stairs in the school-room, with only themselves and the servants for audience.

They were of a tragic and tremendous sort, and were performed with great energy and earnestness.
They were dramatized (freely) from English history, and in them Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth had few holidays.

The clothes were borrowed from the mother's wardrobe and the gowns were longer than necessary, but that was not regarded as a defect.