The characters were invariably true to their creator’s original drawing. A good girl was good from morning to night; a naughty child began and ended the day in disobedience, and by it bottles were smashed, strawberries spilled, and lessons disregarded in unbroken sequence. In later life Miss Edgeworth confessed to having occasionally introduced in “Harry and Lucy” some nonsense as an “alloy to make the sense work well;” but as all her earlier children’s tales were subjected to the pruning scissors of Mr. Edgeworth, this amalgam is to-day hardly noticeable in “Popular Tales,” “Early Lessons,” and “Frank,” which preceded the six volumes of “Harry and Lucy.”

Although a contemporary of Mrs. Barbauld, who had written for little children “Easy Lessons,” Miss Edgeworth does not seem to have been well known in America until about eighteen hundred and five. Then “Harry and Lucy” was brought out by Jacob Johnson, a Philadelphia book-dealer. This was issued in six small red and blue marbled paper volumes, although other parts were not completed until eighteen hundred and twenty-three. Between the first and second parts of volume one the educational hand of Mr. Edgeworth is visible in the insertion of a “Glossary,” “to give a popular meaning of the words.” “This Glossary,” the editor, Mr. Edgeworth, thought, “should be read to children a little at a time, and should be made the subject of conversation. Afterwards they will read it with more pleasure.” The popular meaning of words may be succinctly given by one definition: “Dry, what is not wet.” Could anything be more lucid?

Among the stories by Miss Edgeworth are three rarely mentioned by critics, and yet among the most natural and entertaining of her short tales. They were also printed by Jacob Johnson in Philadelphia, in eighteen hundred and five, under the simple title, “Three Stories for Children.” “Little Dog Trusty” is a dog any small child would like to read about; “The Orangeman” was a character familiar to English children; and “The Cherry Orchard” is a tale of a day’s pleasure whose spirit American children could readily seize. In each Miss Edgeworth had a story to tell, and she told it well, even though “she walked,” as has been often said, “as mentor beside her characters.”

Of Miss Edgeworth’s many tales, “Waste Not, Want Not” was long considered a model. In it what Mr. Edgeworth styled the “shafts of ridicule” were aimed at the rich nephew of Mr. Gresham. Mr. Gresham (whose prototype we strongly suspect was Mr. Edgeworth himself) “lived neither in idleness nor extravagance,” and was desirous of adopting an heir to his considerable property. Therefore, he invited two nephews to visit him, with the object of choosing the more suitable for his purpose; apparently he had only to signify his wish and no parental objection to his plan would be interposed. The boys arrive: Hal, whose mama spends her days at Bath over cards with Lady Diana Sweepstake, is an ill-bred child, neither deferential to his uncle, nor with appetite for buns when queen-cakes may be had. His cousin Ben, on the contrary, has been taught those virtuous habits that make for a respectful attitude toward rich uncles and assure a dissertation upon the beneficial effect of buns versus queen-cakes. The boys, having had their characters thus definitely shown, proceed to live up to them in every particular. From start to finish it is the virtuous Ben—his generosity, thrift, and foresight are never allowed to lapse for an instant—who triumphs in every episode. He saves his string, “good whipcord,” when requested by Mr. Gresham to untie a parcel, and it thereafter serves to spin a fine new top, to help Hal out of a difficulty with his toy, and in the final incident of the story, an archery contest, our provident hero, finding his bowstring “cracked,” calmly draws from his pocket the still excellent piece of cord, and affixing it to his bow, wins the match. Hal betrays his great lack of self-control by exclaiming, “The everlasting whipcord, I declare,” and thereupon Patty, Mr. Gresham’s only child, who has suffered from Hal’s defects of character, openly rejoices when the prize is given to Ben. As is usual with Miss Edgeworth’s badly behaved children, the reader now sees the error of Hal’s ways, and perceives also that in the lad’s acknowledgment of the truth of the formerly scorned motto, “Waste not, want not,” the era of his reformation has begun.

Perpetual action was the key to the success of Miss Edgeworth’s writings. If to us her fictitious children seem like puppets whose strings are too obviously jerked, the monotonous moral cloaked in the variety of incident was liked by her own generation,

However much we may value an English author’s admiration for Miss Edgeworth’s story-telling gifts, it is to America that we naturally turn to seek contemporary opinion. In educational circles there is no doubt that Miss Edgeworth won high praise. That her books were not always easy to procure, however, we know from a letter written from Washington by Mrs. Josiah Quincy, whose life as a child during the Revolution has already been described. When Mrs. Quincy was living in the capital city in eighteen hundred and ten, during her husband’s term as Congressman, she found it difficult to provide her family with books. She therefore wrote to Boston to a friend, requesting to have sent her Miss Edgeworth’s “Moral Tales,” “if the work can be obtained in one of the bookstores. If not,” she continued, “borrow one ... and I will replace it with a new copy. Cut the book out of its binding and enclose the pages in packets.... Be careful to send the entire text and title page.” The scarcity in Washington of books for young people Mrs. Quincy thought justified the hope that reprinting these tales would be profitable to a bookseller in whose efforts to introduce a better taste among the inhabitants she took a keen interest. But Mrs. Quincy need not have sent to Boston for them. Jacob Johnson in Philadelphia had issued most of the English author’s books by eighteen hundred and five, and New York publishers probably made good profit by printing them.

Reading aloud was both a pastime and an education to families in those early days of the Republic. Although Mrs. Quincy made every effort to procure Miss Edgeworth’s stories for her family because, in her opinion, “they obtained a decided preference to the works of Hannah More, Mrs. Trimmer and Mrs. Chapone,” for reading aloud she chose extracts from Shakespeare, Milton, Addison, and Goldsmith. Indeed, if it were possible to ask our great-grandparents what books they remembered reading in their childhood, I think we should find that beyond somewhat hazy recollections of Miss Edgeworth’s books and Berquin’s “The Looking Glass for the Mind,” they would either mention “Robinson Crusoe,” Newbery’s tales of “Giles Gingerbread,” “Little King Pippin,” and “Goody Two-Shoes” (written fifty years before their own childhood), or remember only the classic tales and sketches read to them by their parents.

Certainly this is the case if we may take as trustworthy the recollections of literary people whose childhood was passed in the first part of the nineteenth century. Catharine Sedgwick, for instance, has left a charming picture of American family life in a country town in eighteen hundred—a life doubtless paralleled by many households in comfortable circumstances. Among the host of little prigs and prudes in story-books of the day, it is delightful to find in Catharine Sedgwick herself an example of a bookish child who was natural. Her reminiscences include an account of the way the task of sweeping out the schoolhouse after hours was made bearable by feasts of Malaga wine and raisins. These she procured from the store where her father kept an open account, until the bill having been rendered dotted over with such charges “per daughter Catharine,” these treats to favorite schoolmates ceased. Also a host of intimate details of this large family’s life in the country brings us in touch with the times: fifteen pairs of calfskin shoes ordered from the village shoemaker, because town-bought morocco slippers were few and far between; the excitement of a silk gown; the distress of a brother, whose trousers for fête occasions were remodelled from an older brother’s “blue broadcloth worn to fragility—so that Robert [the younger brother] said he could not look at them without making a rent;” and again the anticipation of the father’s return from Philadelphia with gifts of necessaries and books.

After seventeen hundred and ninety-five Mr. Sedgwick was compelled as a member of Congress to be away the greater part of each year, leaving household and farm to the care of an invalid wife. Memories of Mr. Sedgwick’s infrequent visits home were mingled in his daughter’s mind with the recollections of being kept up until nine o’clock to listen to his reading from Shakespeare, Don Quixote, or Hudibras. “Certainly,” wrote Miss Sedgwick, “I did not understand them, but some glances of celestial light reached my soul, and I caught from his magnetic sympathy some elevation of feeling, and that love of reading which has been to me an ‘education.’” “I was not more than twelve years old,” she continues, “I think but ten—when one winter I read Rollin’s Ancient History. The walking to our schoolhouse was often bad, and I took my lunch (how well I remember the bread and butter, and ‘nut cake’ and cold sausage, and nuts and apples that made the miscellaneous contents of that enchanting lunch-basket!), and in the interim between morning and afternoon school I crept under my desk (the desks were so made as to afford little close recesses under them) and read and munched and forgot myself in Cyrus’ greatness.”

It is beyond question that the keen relish induced by the scarcity of juvenile reading, together with the sound digestion it promoted, overbalanced in mental gain the novelties of a later day.

The Sedgwick library was probably typical of the average choice in reading-matter of the contemporary American child. Half a dozen little story-books, Berquin’s “Children’s Friend” (the very form and shade of color of its binding with its green edges were never forgotten by any member of the Sedgwick family), and the “Looking Glass for the Mind” were shelved side by side with a large volume entitled “Elegant Extracts,” full of ballads, fables, and tales delightful to children whose imagination was already excited by the solemn mystery of Rowe’s “Letters from the Dead to the Living.” Since none of these books except those containing an infusion of religion were allowed to be read on Sunday, the Sedgwick children extended the bounds by turning over the pages of a book, and if the word “God” or “Lord” appeared, it was pounced upon as sanctified and therefore permissible.

Where families were too poor to buy story-books, the children found what amusement they could in the parents’ small library. In ministers’ families sermons were more plentiful than books. Mrs. H. B. Stowe, when a girl, found barrels of sermons in the garret of her father, the Rev. Dr. Beecher, in Litchfield, Connecticut. Through these sermons his daughter searched hungrily for mental food. It seemed as if there were thousands of the most unintelligible things. “An appeal on the unlawfulness of a man’s marrying his wife’s sister” turned up in every barrel by the dozens, until she despaired of finding an end of it. At last an ancient volume of “Arabian Nights” was unearthed. Here was the one inexhaustible source of delight to a child so eager for books that at ten years of age she had pored over the two volumes of the “Magnalia.”

The library advantages of a more fortunately placed old-fashioned child we know from Dr. Holmes’s frequent reference to incidents of his boyhood. He frankly confessed that he read in and not through many of the two thousand books in his father’s library; but he found much to interest him in the volumes of periodicals, especially in the “Annual Register” and Rees’s “Encyclopedia.” Although apparently allowed to choose from the book-shelves, there were frequent evidences of a parent’s careful supervision. “I remember,” he once wrote to a friend, “many leaves were torn out of a copy of Dryden’s Poems, with the comment ‘Hiatus haud diflendus,’ but I had like all children a kind of Indian sagacity in the discovery of contraband reading, such as a boy carries to a corner for perusal. Sermons I had enough from the pulpit. I don’t know that I ever read one sermon of my own accord during my childhood. The ‘Life of David,’ by Samuel Chandler, had adventures enough, to say nothing of gallantry, in it to stimulate and gratify curiosity.” “Biographies of Pious Children,” wrote Dr. Holmes at another time, “were not to my taste. Those young persons were generally sickly, melancholy, and buzzed around by ghostly comforters or discomforters in a way that made me sick to contemplate.” Again, Dr. Holmes, writing of the revolt from the commonly accepted religious doctrines he experienced upon reading the Rev. Thomas Scott’s Family Bible, contrasted the gruesome doctrines it set forth with the story of Christian told in “Pilgrim’s Progress,” a book which captivated his imagination.

As to story-books, Dr. Holmes once referred to Mrs. Barbauld and Dr. Aikin’s joint production, “Evenings at Home,” with an accuracy bearing testimony to his early love for natural science. He also paid a graceful tribute to Lady Bountiful of “Little King Pippin” in comparing her in a conversation “At the Breakfast Table” with the appearance of three maiden ladies “rustling through the aisles of the old meeting-house, in silk and satin, not gay but more than decent.”

Although Dr. Holmes was not sufficiently impressed with the contents of Miss Edgeworth’s tales to mention them, at least one of her books contained much of the sort of information he found attractive in “Evenings at Home.” “Harry and Lucy,” besides pointing a moral on every page, foreshadowed that taste for natural science which turned every writer’s thought toward printing geographical walks, botanical observations, natural history conversations, and geological dissertations in the guise of toy-books of amusement. A batch of books issued in America during the first two decades of the nineteenth century is illustrative of this new fashion. These books, belonging to the Labor-in-Play school, may best be described in their American editions.

One hundred years ago the American publishers of toy works were devoting their attention to the make-up rather than to the contents of their wares. The steady progress of the industrial arts enabled a greater number of printers to issue juvenile books, whose attractiveness was increased by better illustrations; and also with the improved facilities for printing and publishing, the issues of the various firms became more individual. At the beginning of the century the cheaper books entirely lost their charming gilt, flowery Dutch, and silver wrappers, as home products came into use. Size and illustrations also underwent a change.

In Philadelphia, Benjamin and Jacob Johnson, and later Johnson and Warner, issued both tiny books two inches square, and somewhat larger volumes containing illustrations as well as text. These firms used for binding gray and blue marbled paper, gold-powdered yellow cardboard, or salmon pink, blue, and olive-green papers, usually without ornamentation. In eighteen hundred J. and J. Crukshank, of the same town, began to decorate with copper-plate cuts the outside of the white or blue paper covers of their imprints for children. Other printers followed their example, especially after wood-engraving became more generally used.

In Wilmington, Delaware, John Adams printed and sold “The New History of Blue Beard” in both peacock-blue and olive-green paper covers; but Peter Brynberg, also of that town, was still in eighteen hundred and four using quaint wall-paper to dress his toy imprints. Matthew Carey, the well-known printer of school-books for the children of Philadelphia, made a “Child’s Guide to Spelling and Reading” more acceptable by a charming cover of yellow and red striped paper dotted over with little black hearts suggestive of the old Primer rhyme for the letter B:

In New York the dealers in juvenile books seem either to have bound in calf such classics as “The Blossoms of Morality,” published by David Longworth at the Shakespeare Gallery in eighteen hundred and two, or in decorated but unattractive brown paper. This was the cover almost invariably used for years by Samuel Wood, the founder of the present publishing-house of medical works. He began in eighteen hundred and six to print the first of his many thousands of children’s religious, instructive, and nursery books. As was the custom in order to insure a good sale, Wood first brought out a primer, “The Young Child’s A B C.” He decorated its Quaker gray cover with a woodcut of a flock of birds, and its title-page with a picture, presumably by Alexander Anderson, of a girl holding up a dove in her left hand and holding down a lamb with her right.

In New England, Nathaniel Coverly of Salem sometimes used a watered pink paper to cover his sixteen page toy-books, and in Boston his son, as late as eighteen hundred and thirteen, still used pieces of large patterned wall-paper for six-penny books, such as “Tom Thumb,” “Old Mother Hubbard,” and “Cock Robin.”

The change in the appearance of most toy-books, however, was due largely to the increased use of illustrations. The work of the famous English engraver, Thomas Bewick, had at last been successfully copied by a physician of New York, Dr. Alexander Anderson.

Dr. Anderson was born in New York in seventeen hundred and seventy-five, and by seventeen hundred and ninety-three was employed by printers and publishers in New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, and even Charleston to illustrate their books. Like other engravers, he began by cutting in type-metal, or engraving upon copper. In seventeen hundred and ninety-four, for Durell of New York, he undertook to make illustrations, probably for “The Looking Glass for the Mind.” Beginning by copying Bewick’s pictures upon type-metal, when “about one-third done, Dr. Anderson felt satisfied he could do better on wood.”166-* In his diary we find noted an instance of his perseverance in the midst of discouragement: “Sept. 24. This morning I was quite discouraged on seeing a crack in the wood. Employed as usual at the Doctor’s, came home to dinner, glued the wood and began again with fresh hopes of producing a good wood engraving.” September 26 found him “pretty well satisfied with the impression and so was Durell.” In eighteen hundred he engraved all the pictures on wood for a new edition of the same book, and from this time he seems to have discontinued the use of type-metal, which he had employed in his earlier work as illustrator of the “Pilgrim’s Progress” issued by Hugh Gaine, and of “Tom Thumb’s Folio” printed by Brewer. After eighteen hundred and twelve Anderson almost gave up engraving on copper also, and devoted himself to satisfying the great demand for his work on wood. For Durell of New York, an extensive reprinter of English books, from toy-books to a folio edition of Josephus, he reproduced the English engravings, never making, according to Mr. Lossing, more than a frontispiece for the larger volumes.

Although Samuel Wood and Sons of New York also gave Dr. Anderson many orders for cuts for their various juvenile publications, he still found time to engrave for publishers of other cities. We find his illustrations in the toy-books printed in Boston and Philadelphia; and for Sidney Babcock, a New Haven publisher of juvenile literature, he supplied many of the numerous woodcuts required. The best of Anderson’s work as an engraver coincided with the years of Babcock’s very extensive business of issuing children’s books, between 1805 and 1840. His cuts adorned the juvenile duodecimos that this printer’s widely extended trade demanded; and even as far south as Charleston, South Carolina, Babcock, like Isaiah Thomas, found it profitable to open a branch shop.

Anderson’s illustrations are the main features of most of Babcock’s little blue, pink, and yellow paper-covered books; especially of those printed in the early years of the nineteenth century. We notice in them the changes in the dress of children, who no longer were clothed exactly in the semblance of their elders, but began to assume garments more appropriate to their ages, sports, and occupations. Anderson also sometimes introduced into his pictures a negro coachman or nurse in the place of the footman or maid of the English tale he illustrated.

While the demand for the engraver’s work was constant, his remuneration was small, if we are to judge by Babcock’s payment of only fifty shillings for fifteen cuts.

For these toy-books Anderson made many reproductions from Bewick’s cuts, and although he did not equal the Englishman’s work, he so far surpassed his pupils and imitators of the early part of the century that his engravings are generally to be recognized even when not signed. In eighteen hundred and two Dr. Anderson began to reproduce for David Longworth Bewick’s “Quadrupeds,” and these “cuts were afterwards made use of, with the Bewick letter-press also, for a series of children’s books.”168-*

In eighteen hundred and twelve, for Munroe & Francis of Boston, Dr. Anderson made after J. Thompson a set of cuts, mainly remarkable “as the chief of his few departures from the style of his favorite, Bewick.”169-*

The custom of not signing either text or engravings in the children’s books has made it difficult to identify writers and illustrators of juvenile literature. But some of the best engravers undoubtedly practised their art on these toy-books. Nathaniel Dearborn, who was a stationer, printer, and engraver in Boston about eighteen hundred and eleven, sometimes signed the full-page illustrations on both wood and copper, and Abel Bowen, a copper-engraver, and possibly the first wood-engraver in Boston, signed a very curious publication entitled “A Metamorphosis”—a manifold paper which in its various possible combinations transformed one figure into another in keeping with the progress of the story.

C. Gilbert, a pupil of Mason, who had introduced the art of wood-engraving in Philadelphia from Boston, engraved on wood certainly the two full-page illustrations for “A Present for a Little Girl,” printed in eighteen hundred and sixteen for a Baltimore firm, Warner & Hanna.

Adams and his pupils, Lansing and Morgan, also did work on children’s books. Adams seems to have worked under Anderson’s instruction, and after eighteen hundred and twenty-five did cuts for some books in the juvenile libraries of S. Wood and Mahlon Day of New York.

Of the engravers on copper, many tried their hands on these toy-books. Among them may be mentioned Amos Doolittle of New Haven, James Poupard, John Neagle, and W. Ralph of Philadelphia, and Rollinson of New York, who is credited with having engraved the silver buttons on the coat worn by Washington on his inauguration as President.

But of the copper-plate engravers, perhaps none did more work for children’s books than William Charles of Philadelphia. Charles, who is best known by his series of caricatures of the events of the War of 1812 and of local politics, worked upon toy-books as early as eighteen hundred and eight, when in Philadelphia he published in two parts “Tom the Piper’s Son; illustrated with whimsical engravings.” In these books both text and pictures were engraved, as will be seen in the illustration. Charles’s plates for a series of moral tales in verse were used by his successors, Mary Charles, Morgan & Yeager, and Morgan & Sons, for certainly fifteen years after the originals were made. To William Charles the children in the vicinity of Philadelphia were also probably indebted for the introduction of colored pictures. It is possible that the young folks of Boston had the novelty of colored picture-books somewhat before Charles introduced them in Philadelphia, as we find that “The History and Adventures of Little Henry exemplified in a series of figures” was printed by J. Belcher of the Massachusetts town in 1812. These “figures” exhibited little Henry suitably attired for the various incidents of his career, with a movable head to be attached at will to any of the figures, which were not engraved with the text, but each was laid in loose on a blank page. William Charles’s method of coloring the pictures engraved with the text was a slight advance, perhaps, upon the illustrations inserted separately; but it is doubtful whether these immovable plates afforded as much entertainment to little readers as the separate figures similar to paper dolls which Belcher, and somewhat later Charles also, used in a few of their publications.

The “Peacock at Home,” engraved by Charles and then colored in aqua-tint, is one of the rare early colored picture-books still extant, having been first issued in eighteen hundred and fourteen. The coloring of the illustrations at first doubled the price, and seems to have been used principally for a series of stories belonging to what may be styled the Ethics-in-Play type of juvenile literature, and entitled the “History and Adventures of Little William,” “Little Nancy,” etc. These tales, written after the objective manner of Miss Edgeworth, glossed over by rhyme, contained usually eight colored plates, and sold for twenty-five cents each instead of twelve cents, the price of the picture-book without colored plates. Sometimes, as in the case of “Cinderella,” we find the text illustrated with a number of “Elegant Figures, to dress and undress.” The paper doll could be placed behind the costumes appropriate to the various adventures, and, to prevent the loss of the heroine, the book was tied up with pink or blue ribbon after the manner of a portfolio.

With engravers on wood and copper able to make more attractive the passion for instruction which marked the first quarter of the nineteenth century, the variety of toy-book literature naturally became greater. Indeed, without pictures to render somewhat entertaining the Labor-in-Play school, it is doubtful whether it could have attained its widespread popularity.

It is, of course, possible to name but a few titles typical of the various kinds of instruction offered as amusement. “To present to the young Reader a Little Miscellany of Natural History, Moral Precept, Sentiment, and Narrative,” Dr. Kendall wrote “Keeper’s Travels in Search of his Master,” “The Canary Bird,” and “The Sparrow.” “The Prize for Youthful Obedience” endeavored to instill a love for animals, and to promote obedient habits. Its story runs in this way:

“A kind and good father had a little lively son, named Francis; but, although that little boy was six years old, he had not yet learned to read.

“His mama said to him, one day, ‘if Francis will learn to read well, he shall have a pretty little chaise.’

“The little boy was vastly pleased with this; he presently spelt five or six words and then kissed his mama.

“‘Mama,’ said Francis, ‘I am delighted with the thoughts of this chaise, but I should like to have a horse to draw it.’

“‘Francis shall have a little dog, which will do instead of a horse,’ replied his mama, ‘but he must take care to give him some victuals, and not do him any harm.’”

The dog was purchased, and named Chloe. “She was as brisk as a bee, prettily spotted, and as gentle as a lamb.” We are now prepared for trouble, for the lesson of the story is surely not hidden. Chloe was fastened to the chaise, a cat secured to serve as a passenger, and “Francis drove his little chaise along the walk.” But “when he had been long enough among the gooseberry trees, his mama took him in the garden and told him the names of the flowers.” We are thus led to suppose that Francis had never been in the garden before! The mother is called away. We feel sure that the trouble anticipated is at hand. “As soon as she was gone Francis began whipping the dog,” and of course when the dog dashed forward the cat tumbled out, and “poor Chloe was terrified by the chaise which banged on all sides. Francis now heartily repented of his cruel behaviour and went into the house crying, and looking like a very simple boy.”

“I see very plainly the cause of this misfortune,” said the father, who, however, soon forgave his repentant son. Thereafter every day Francis learned his lesson, and was rewarded by facts and pictures about animals, by table-talks, or by walks about the country.

Knowledge offered within small compass seems to have been a novelty introduced in Philadelphia by Jacob Johnson, who had a juvenile library in High Street.

In eighteen hundred and three he printed two tiny volumes entitled “A Description of Various Objects.” Bound in green paper covers, the two-inch square pages were printed in bold type. The first volume contained the illustrations of the objects described in the other. The characterizations were exceedingly short, as, for example, this of the “Puppet Show:” “Here are several little boys and girls looking at a puppet show, I suppose you would like to make one of them.”

Four years later Johnson improved upon this, when he printed in better type “People of all Nations; an useful toy for Girl or Boy.” Of approximately the same size as the other volumes, it was bound with stiff sides and calf back. The plates, engraved on copper, represent men of various nationalities in the favorite alphabetical order. A is an American. V is a Virginian,—an Indian in scant costume of feathers with a long pipe,—who, the printed description says, “is generally dressed after the manner of the English; but this is a poor African, and made a slave of.” An orang-outang represents the letter O, and according to the author, is “a wild man of the woods, in the East Indies. He sleeps under trees, and builds himself a hut. He cannot speak, but when the natives make a fire in the woods he will come and warm himself.” Ten years later there was still some difficulty in getting exact descriptions of unfamiliar animals. Thus in “A Familiar Description of Beasts and Birds” the baboon is drawn with a dog’s body and an uncanny head with a snout. The reader is informed that “the baboon has a long face resembling a dog’s; his eyes are red and very bright, his teeth are large and strong, but his swiftness renders him hard to be taken. He delights in fishing, and will stay for a considerable time under water. He imitates several of our actions, and will drink wine, and eat human food.”

Another series of three books, written by William Darton, the English publisher and maker of toy-books, was called “Chapters of Accidents, containing Caution and Instruction.” Thrilling accounts of “Escapes from Danger” when robbing birds’-nests and hunting lions and tigers were intermingled with wise counsel and lessons to be gained from an “Upset Cart,” or a “Balloon Excursion.” With one incident the Philadelphia printer took the liberty of changing the title to “Cautions to Walkers on the Streets of Philadelphia.” High Street, now Market Street, is represented in a picture of the young woman who, unmindful of the warning, “Never to turn hastily around the corner of a street,” “ran against the porter’s load and nearly lost one of her eyes.” The change, of course, is worthy of notice only because of the slight effort to locate the story in America.

An attempt to familiarize children with flowers resulted in two tales, called “The Rose’s Breakfast” and “Flora’s Gala,” in which flowers were personified as they took part in fêtes. “Garden Amusements, for Improving the Minds of Little Children,” was issued by Samuel Wood of New York with this advertisement: “This little treatise, (written and first published in the great emporium of the British nation) containing so many pleasing remarks for the juvenile mind, was thought worthy of an American edition.... Being so very natural, ... and its tendency so moral and amusing, it is to be hoped an advantage will be obtained from its re-publication in Freedonia.”

Dialogue was the usual method of instruction employed by Miss Edgeworth and her followers. In “Garden Amusements” the conversation was interrupted by a note criticising a quotation from Milton as savoring too much of poetic license. Cowper also gained the anonymous critic’s disapproval, although it was his point of view and not his style that came under censure.

In still another series of stories often reprinted from London editions were those moral tales with the sub-title “Cautionary Stories in Verse.” Mr. William James used these “Cautionary Verses for Children” as an example of the manner in which “the muse of evangelical protestantism in England, with the mind fixed on the ideas of danger, had at last drifted away from the original gospel of freedom.” “Chronic anxiety,” Mr. James continued, “marked the earlier part of this [nineteenth] century in evangelical circles.” A little salmon-colored volume, “The Daisy,” is a good example of this series. Each rhyme is a warning or an admonition; a chronic fear that a child might be naughty. “Drest or Undrest” is typical of the sixteen hints for the proper conduct of every-day life contained in the innocent “Daisy:”

Two other sets of books with a like purpose were brought out by Charles about eighteen hundred and sixteen. One began with those familiar nursery verses entitled “My Mother,” by Ann Taylor, which were soon followed by “My Father,” all the family, “My Governess,” and even “My Pony.” The other set of books was “calculated to promote Benevolence and Virtue in Children.” “Little Fanny,” “Little Nancy,” and “Little Sophie” were all held up as warnings of the results of pride, greed, and disobedience.

The difference between these heroines of fiction and the characters drawn by Maria Edgeworth lies mainly in the fact that they spoke in rhyme instead of in prose, and that they were almost invariably naughty; or else the parents were cruel and the children suffered. Rarely do we find a cheerful tale such as “The Cherry Orchard” in this cautionary style of toy-book. Still more rarely do we find any suspicion of that alloy of nonsense supposed by Miss Edgeworth to make the sense work well. It is all quite serious. “Little Nancy, or, the Punishment of Greediness,” is representative of this sort of moral and cautionary tale. The frontispiece, “embellishing” the first scene, shows Nancy in receipt of an invitation to a garden party:

However, the mother consents with the caution:

Arrived at the party, Nancy shared the games, and

The disastrous consequences attending Nancy’s disregard of her mother’s admonition are displayed in a full-page illustration, which is followed by another depicting the sorrowful end in bed of the day’s pleasure. Then the moral:

Perhaps of all the toy imprints of the early century none are more curious in modern eyes than the three or four German translations printed by Philadelphia firms. In eighteen hundred and nine Johnson and Warner issued “Kleine Erzählungen über ein Buch mit Kupfern.” This seems to be a translation of “A Mother’s Remarks over a Set of Cuts,” and contains a reference to another book entitled “Anecdoten von Hunden.” Still another book is extant, printed in eighteen hundred and five by Zentler, “Unterhaltungen für Deutsche Kinder.” This, according to its preface, was one of a series for which Jacob and Benjamin Johnson had consented to lend the plates for illustrations.

Patriotism, rather than diversion, still characterized the very little original work of the first quarter of the century for American children. A book with the imposing title of “Geographical, Statistical and Political Amusement” was published in Philadelphia in eighteen hundred and six. “This work,” says its advertisement, “is designed as an easy means of uniting Instruction with Pleasure ... to entice the youthful mind to an acquaintance with a species of information [about the United States] highly useful.”

“The Juvenile Magazine, or Miscellaneous Repository of Useful Information,” issued in eighteen hundred and three, contained as its only original contribution an article upon General Washington’s will, “an affecting and most original composition,” wrote the editor. This was followed seven years later by the well-known “Life of George Washington,” by M. L. Weems, in which was printed the now famous and disputed cherry-tree incident. Its abridged form known to present day nursery lore differs from the long drawn out account by Weems, who, like Thomas Day, risked being diffuse in his desire to show plainly his moral. The last part of the story sufficiently gives his manner of writing:

“Presently George and his hatchet made their appearance. ‘George,’ said his father, ‘do you know who killed that beautiful little cherry tree yonder in the garden?’ That was a tough question; and George staggered under it for a moment; but quickly recovered himself, and looking at his father, with the sweet face of youth brightened with the inexpressible charm of all conquering truth, he bravely cried out, ‘I can’t tell a lie, Pa; you know I can’t tell a lie. I did cut it with my hatchet!’ ‘Run to my arms, you dearest boy,’ cried his father in transports, ‘run to my arms; glad am I, George, that you killed my tree; for you have paid me for it a thousand fold. Such an act of heroism is worth more than a thousand trees, though blossomed with silver, and their fruits of purest gold.’”

Franklin’s “Way to Wealth” was considered to be perfectly adapted to all children’s comprehension, and was issued by various publishers of juvenile books. By eighteen hundred and eight it was illustrated and sold “with fine engravings for twenty-five cents.”

Of patriotic poetry there was much for grown folks, but the “Patriotic and Amatory Songster,” advertised by S. Avery of Boston about the time Weems’s biography was published, seems a title ill-suited to the juvenile public for whom Avery professed to issue it.

Among the books which may be cited as furnishing instructive amusement with less of the admixture of moral purpose was the “London Cries for Children,” with pictures of street peddlers. This was imitated in America by the publication of the “Cries of New York” and “Cries of Philadelphia.”

In the Lenox Collection there is now one of the various editions of the “Cries of New York” (published in 1808), which is valuable both as a record of the street life of the old-fashioned town of ninety-six thousand inhabitants, and as perhaps the first child’s book of purely local interest, with original woodcuts very possibly designed and engraved by Alexander Anderson.

The “Cries of New York” is of course modelled after the “London Cries,” but the account it gives of various incidents in the daily life of old New York makes us grateful for the existence of this child’s toy. A picture of a chimney-sweep, for instance, is copied, with his cry of “Sweep, O, O, O, O,” from the London book, but the text accompanying it is altered to accord with the custom in New York of firing a gun at dawn:

“About break of day, after the morning gun is heard from Governor’s Island, and so through the forenoon, the ears of the citizens are greeted with this uncouth sound from figures as unpleasant to the sight, clothed in rags and covered with soot—a necessary and suffering class of human beings indeed—spending their childhood thus. And in regard to the unnecessary bawling of those sooty boys; it is admirable in such a noisy place as this, where every needless sound should be hushed, that such disagreeable ones should be allowed. The prices for sweeping chimneys are—one story houses twelve cents; two stories, eighteen cents; three stories, twenty-five cents, and so on.”

“Hot Corn” was also cried by children, whose business it was to “gather cents, by distributing corn to those who are disposed to regale themselves with an ear.” Baked pears are pictured as sold “by a little black girl, with the pears in an earthen dish under her arm.” At the same season of the year, “Here’s your fine ripe water-melons” also made itself heard above the street noises as a street cry of entirely American origin. Again there were pictured “Oyster Stands,” served by negroes, and these were followed by cries of