IV. General principles of Government and Commerce.

V. Farmers' Catechism containing plain rules of husbandry.

Bennington, Vermont, contributed in "The Little Scholar's Pretty Pocket Companion in Rhyme and Verse," this indirect allusion to political affairs:

"'Twas a toy of royalty, of late almost forgot, 'Tis said she represented France On English Monarchies arms, But lately broke his chains by chance And widely spread alarms."

But the most naive attempt to inculcate patriotism together with a lesson in obedience is found in "The Child's Instructor," published about seventeen hundred and ninety-one, and written by a Philadelphian. Philadelphia had become the residence of the President—a fact that may account for one of the stories in this book about an infant prodigy called Billy. "The child at five years of age was always good and obedient, and prone to make such a remark as, 'If you would be wise you must always attend to your vowels and consonants.' When General Washington came to town Billy's mama asked him to say a speech to the ladies, and he began, 'Americans! place constantly before your eyes, the deplorable scenes of your servitude, and the enchanting picture of your deliverance. Begin with the infant in his cradle; let the first word he lisps be Washington.' The ladies were all delighted to hear Billy speak so well. One said he should be a lawyer, and another said he should be President of the United States. But Billy said he could not be either unless his mama gave him leave."[123-A]

Another Philadelphian attempted to embody political sentiment in "A Tale—The Political Balance; or, The Fate of Britain and America Compared." This juvenile has long since disappeared, but it was advertised by its printer, Francis Bailey, in seventeen hundred and ninety-two, together with "The History of the Little Boy found under a Haycock," and several other books for children. One year later a "History of the American Revolution" for children was also printed in Philadelphia for the generation who had been born since the war had ended. This was written in the Biblical phraseology introduced and made popular by Franklin in his famous "Parable against Persecution."

This enthusiasm over the results of the late war and scorn for the defeated English sometimes indeed cropped out in the Newbery reprints. An edition (1796) of "Goody Two-Shoes" contains this footnote in reference to the tyranny of the English landlord over Goody's father:

"Such is the state of things in Britain. AMERICANS prize your liberty, guard your rights and be happy."[123-B]

In this last decade of the century that had made a nation of the colonial commonwealths, the prosperity of the country enabled more printers to pirate the generally approved Newbery library. Samuel Hall in Boston, with a shop near the court-house, printed them all, using at times the dainty covers of flowery Dutch or gilt paper, and again another style of binding occasionally used in England. "The Death and Burial of Cock Robin," for instance, has a quaint red and gilt cover, which according to Mr. Charles Welsh was made by stamping paper with dies originally used for printing old German playing-cards. He says: "To find such a cover can only be accounted for by the innocence of the purchasers as to the appearance of his Satanic Majesty's picture cards and hence [they] did not recognize them." In one corner of the book cover is impressed the single word "Muench," which stamps this paper as "made in Germany." Hall himself was probably as ignorant of the original purpose of the picture as the unsuspecting purchaser, who would cheerfully have burned it rather than see such an instrument of the Devil in the hands of its owner, little Sally Barnes.



Of Samuel Hall's reprints from the popular English publications, "Little Truths" was in all probability one of the most salable. So few books contained any information about America that one of these two volumes may be regarded as of particular interest to the young generation of his time. The author of "Little Truths," William Darton, a Quaker publisher in London, does not divulge from what source he gleaned his knowledge. His information concerning Americans is of that misty description that confuses Indians ("native Americans") with people of Spanish and English descent. The usual "Introduction" states that "The author has chose a method after the manner of conversations between children and their instructor," and the dialogue is indicated by printing the children's observations in italics. These volumes were issued for twenty years after they were introduced by Hall, and those of an eighteen hundred Philadelphia edition are bound separately. Number one is in blue paper with copper-plate pictures on both covers. This volume gives information regarding farm produce, live-stock, and about birds quite unfamiliar to American children. But the second volume, in white covers, introduces the story of Sir Walter Raleigh and his pipe-smoking incident, made very realistic in the copper-plate frontispiece. The children's question, "Did Sir Walter Raleigh find out the virtues of tobacco?" affords an excellent opportunity for a discourse upon smoking and snuff-taking. These remarks conclude with this prosaic statement: "Hundreds of sensible people have fell into these customs from example; and, when they would have left them off, found it a very great difficulty." Next comes a lesson upon the growth of tobacco leading up to a short account of the slave-trade, already a subject of differing opinion in the United States, as well as in England. Of further interest to small Americans was a short tale of the discovery of this country. Perhaps to most children their first book-knowledge of this event came from the pages of "Little Truths."

Hall's books were not all so proper for the amusement of young folks. A perusal of "Capt. Gulliver's Adventures" leaves one in no doubt as to the reason that so many of the old-fashioned mothers preferred to keep such tales out of children's hands, and to read over and over again the adventures of the Pilgrim, Christian. Mrs. Eliza Drinker of Philadelphia in seventeen hundred and ninety-six was re-reading for the third time "Pilgrim's Progress," which she considered a "generally approved book," although then "ridiculed by many." The "Legacy to Children" Mrs. Drinker also read aloud to her grandchildren, having herself "wept over it between fifty and sixty years ago, as did my grandchildren when it was read to them. She, Hannah Hill, died in 1714, and ye book was printed in 1714 by Andrew Bradford."

But Mrs. Drinker's grandchildren had another book very different from the pious sayings of the dying Hannah. This contained "64 little stories and as many pictures drawn and written by Nancy Skyrin," the mother of some of the children. P. Widdows had bound the stories in gilt paper, and it was so prized by the family that the grandmother thought the fact of the recovery of the book, after it was supposed to have been irretrievably lost, worthy of an entry in her journal. Careful inquiry among the descendants of Mrs. Drinker has led to the belief that these stories were read out of existence many years ago. What they were about can only be imagined. Perhaps they were incidents in the lives of the same children who cried over the pathetic morbidity of Hannah's dying words; or possibly rhymes and verses about school and play hours of little Philadelphians; with pictures showing bait-the-bear, trap-ball, and other sports of days long since passed away, as well as "I Spie Hi" and marbles, familiar still to boys and girls.



From the fact that these stories were written for the author's own children, another book, composed less than a century before, is brought to mind. Comparison of even the meagre description of Mrs. Skyrin's book with Cotton Mather's professed purpose in "Good Lessons" shows the stride made in children's literature to be a long one. Yet a quarter of a century was still to run before any other original writing was done in America for children's benefit.

Nobody else in America, indeed, seems to have considered the question of writing for nursery inmates. Mrs. Barbauld's "Easy Lessons for Children from Two to Five Years old," written for English children, were considered perfectly adapted to gaining knowledge and perhaps amusement. It is true that when Benjamin Bache of Philadelphia issued "Easy Lessons," he added this note: "Some alterations were thought necessary to be made in this ... American edition, to make it agree with the original design of rendering instruction easy and useful.... The climate and the familiar objects of this country suggested these alterations." Except for the substitution of such words as "Wheat" for "Corn," the intentions of the editor seem hardly to have had result, except by way of advertisement; and are of interest merely because they represent one step further in the direction of Americanizing the story-book literature.

All Mrs. Barbauld's books were considered excellent for young children. As a "Dissenter," she gained in the esteem of the people of the northern states, and her books were imported as well as reprinted here. Perhaps she was best known to our grandparents as the joint author, with Dr. Aikin, of "Evenings at Home," and of "Hymns in Prose and Verse." Both were read extensively for fifty years. The "Hymns" had an enormous circulation, and were often full of fine rhythm and undeserving of the entire neglect into which they have fallen. Of course, as the fashion changed in the "approved" type of story, Mrs. Barbauld suffered criticism. "Mrs. and Miss Edgeworth in their 'Practical Education' insisted that evil lurked behind the phrase in 'Easy Lessons,' 'Charles wants his dinner' because of the implication 'that Charles must have whatever he desires,' and to say 'the sun has gone to bed,' is to incur the odium of telling the child a falsehood."[128-A]

But the manner in which these critics of Mrs. Barbauld thought they had improved upon her method of story-telling is a tale belonging to another chapter. When Miss Edgeworth's wave of popularity reached this country Mrs. Barbauld's ideas still flourished as very acceptable to parents.

A contemporary and rival writer for the English nursery was Mrs. Sarah Trimmer. Her works for little children were also credited with much information they did not give. After the publication of Mrs. Barbauld's "Easy Lessons" (which was the result of her own teaching of an adopted child), Mrs. Trimmer's friends urged her to make a like use of the lessons given to her family of six, and accordingly she published in seventeen hundred and seventy-eight an "Easy Introduction into the Knowledge of Nature," and followed it some years after its initial success by "Fabulous Histories," afterwards known as the "History of the Robins." Although Mrs. Trimmer represents more nearly than Mrs. Barbauld the religious emotionalism pervading Sunday-school libraries,—in which she was deeply interested,—the work of both these ladies exemplifies the transitional stage to that Labor-in-Play school of writing which was to invade the American nursery in the next century when Parley and Abbott throve upon the proceeds of the educational narrative.

Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe" and Thomas Day's "Sanford and Merton" occupied the place in the estimation of boys that the doings of Mrs. Barbauld's and Mrs. Trimmer's works held in the opinion of the younger members of the nursery. Edition followed upon edition of the adventures of the famous island hero. In Philadelphia, in seventeen hundred and ninety-three, William Young issued what purported to be the sixth edition. In New York many thousands of copies were sold, and in eighteen hundred and twenty-four we find a Spanish translation attesting its widespread favor. In seventeen hundred and ninety-four, Isaiah Thomas placed the surprising adventures of the mariner as on the "Coast of America, lying near the mouth of the great river Oroonoque."

Parents also thought very highly of Thomas Day's "Children's Miscellany" and "Sanford and Merton." To read this last book is to believe it to be possibly in the style that Dr. Samuel Johnson had in mind when he remarked to Mrs. Piozzi that "the parents buy the books but the children never read them." Yet the testimony of publishers of the past is that "Sanford and Merton" had a large and continuous sale for many years. "'Sanford and Merton,'" writes Mr. Julian Hawthorne, "ran 'Robinson Crusoe' harder than any other work of the eighteenth century particularly written for children." "The work," he adds, "is quaint and interesting rather to the historian than to the general, especially the child, reader. Children would hardly appreciate so amazingly ancient a form of conversation as that which resulted from Tommy [the bad boy of the story] losing a ball and ordering a ragged boy to pick it up:

"'Bring my ball directly!'

"'I don't choose it,' said the boy.

"'Sirrah,' cried Tommy, 'if I come to you I will make you choose it.'

"'Perhaps not, my pretty master,' said the boy.

"'You little rascal,' said Tommy, who now began to be very angry, 'if I come over the hedge I will thrash you within an inch of your life.'"

The gist of Tommy's threat has often been couched in modern language by grandsons of the boys from whom the Socratic Mr. Day wrote to expose the evils of too luxurious an education. His method of compilation of facts to be taught may best be given in the words of his Preface: "All who have been conversant in the education of very young children, have complained of the total want of proper books to be put in their hands, while they are taught the elements of reading.... The least exceptional passages of books that I could find for the purpose were 'Plutarch's Lives' and Xenophon's 'History of the Institution of Cyrus,' in English translation; with some part of 'Robinson Crusoe,' and a few passages from Mr. Brooke's 'Fool of Quality.' ... I therefore resolved ... not only to collect all such stories as I thought adapted to the faculties of children, but to connect these by continued narration.... As to the histories themselves, I have used the most unbounded licence.... As to the language, I have endeavored to throw into it a greater degree of elegance and ornament than is usually to be met with in such compositions; preserving at the same time a sufficient degree of simplicity to make it intelligible to very young children, and rather choosing to be diffuse than obscure." With these objects in mind, we can understand small Tommy's embellishment of his demand for the return of his ball by addressing the ragged urchin as "Sirrah."

Mr. Day's "Children's Miscellany" contained a number of stories, of which one, "The History of Little Jack," about a lost child who was adopted by a goat, was popular enough to be afterwards published separately. It is a debatable question as to whether the parents or the children figuring in this "Miscellany" were the more artificial. "Proud and unfeeling girl," says one tender mother to her little daughter who had bestowed half her pin money upon a poor family,—"proud and unfeeling girl, to prefer vain and trifling ornaments to the delight of relieving the sick and miserable! Retire from my presence! Take away with you trinket and nosegay, and receive from them all the comforts they are able to bestow!" Why Mr. Day's stories met with such unqualified praise at the time they were published, this example of canting rubbish does not reveal. In real life parents certainly did retain some of their substance for their own pleasure; why, therefore, discipline a child for following the same inclination?

In contrast to Mr. Day's method, Mrs. Barbauld's plan of simple conversation in words of one, two, and three syllables seems modern. Both aimed to afford pleasure to children "learning the elements of reading." Where Mrs. Barbauld probably judged truly the capacity of young children in the dialogues with the little Charles of "Easy Lessons," Mr. Day loaded his gun with flowers of rhetoric and overshot infant comprehension.

Nevertheless, in spite of the criticism that has waylaid and torn to tatters Thomas Day's efforts to provide a suitable and edifying variety of stories, his method still stands for the distinct secularization of children's literature of amusement. Moreover, as Mr. Montrose J. Moses writes in his delightful study of "Children's Books and Reading," "he foreshadowed the method of retelling incidents from the classics and from standard history and travel,—a form which is practised to a great extent by our present writers, who thread diverse materials on a slender wire of subsidiary story, and who, like Butterworth and Knox, invent untiring families of travellers who go to foreign parts, who see things, and then talk out loud about them."

Besides tales by English authors, there was a French woman, Madame de Genlis, whose books many educated people regarded as particularly suitable for their daughters, both in the original text and in the English translations. In Aaron Burr's letters we find references to his interest in the progress made by his little daughter, Theodosia, in her studies. His zeal in searching for helpful books was typical of the care many others took to place the best literature within their children's reach. From Theodosia's own letters to her father we learn that she was a studious child, who wrote and ciphered from five to eight every morning and during the same hours every evening. To improve her French, Mr. Burr took pains to find reading-matter when his law practice necessitated frequent absence from home. Thus from West Chester, in seventeen hundred and ninety-six, when Theodosia was nine years old, he wrote:

I rose up suddenly from the sofa and rubbing my head—"What book shall I buy for her?" said I to myself. "She reads so much and so rapidly that it is not easy to find proper and amusing French books for her; and yet I am so flattered with her progress in that language, that I am resolved that she shall, at all events, be gratified." So ... I took my hat and sallied out. It was not my first attempt. I went into one bookseller's after another. I found plenty of fairy tales and such nonsense, for the generality of children of nine or ten years old. "These," said I, "will never do. Her understanding begins to be above such things." ... I began to be discouraged. "But I will search a little longer." I persevered. At last I found it. I found the very thing I sought. It is contained in two volumes, octavo, handsomely bound, and with prints and reprints. It is a work of fancy but replete with instruction and amusement. I must present it with my own hand.

Yr. affectionate A. BURR.

What speculation there must have been in the Burr family as to the name of the gift, and what joy when Mr. Burr presented the two volumes upon his return! From a letter written later by Mr. Burr to his wife, it appears that he afterward found reason to regret his purchase, which seems to have been Madame de Genlis's famous "Annales." "Your account," he wrote, "of Madame Genlis surprises me, and is new evidence of the necessity of reading books before we put them in the hands of children." Opinion differed, of course, concerning the French lady's books. In New York, in Miss Dodsworth's most genteel and fashionable school, a play written from "The Dove" by Madame de Genlis was acted with the same zest by little girls of ten and twelve years of age as they showed in another play taken from "The Search after Happiness," a drama by the Quakeress and religious writer, Hannah More. These plays were given at the end of school terms by fond parents with that appreciation of the histrionic ability of their daughters still to be seen on such occasions.

No such objection as Mrs. Burr made to this lady's "Annales" was possible in regard to another French book, by Berquin. Entitled "Ami des Enfans," it received under the Rev. Mr. Cooper's translation the name "The Looking Glass for the Mind." This collection of tales supposedly mirrored the frailties and virtues of rich and poor children. It was often bound in full calf, and an edition of seventeen hundred and ninety-four contains a better engraved frontispiece than it was customary to place in juvenile publications. For half a century it was to be found in the shop of all booksellers, and had its place in the library of every family of means. There are still those among us who have not forgotten the impression produced upon their infant minds by certain of the tales. Some remember the cruel child and the canary. Others recollect their admiration of the little maid who, when all others deserted her young patroness, lying ill with the smallpox, won the undying gratitude of the mother by her tender nursing. The author, blind himself to the possibilities of detriment to the sick child by unskilled care, held up to the view of all, this example of devotion of one girl in contrast to the hard-heartedness of many others. This book seems also to have been called by the literal translation of its original title, "Ami des Enfans;" for in an account of the occupations of one summer Sunday in seventeen hundred and ninety-seven, Julia Cowles, living in Litchfield, Connecticut, wrote: "Attended meeting all day long, but do not recollect the text. Read in 'The Children's Friend.'" Many children would not have been permitted to read so nearly secular a book; but evidently Julia Cowles's parents were liberal in their view of Sunday reading after the family had attended "meeting all day long."

In addition to the interest of the context of these toy-books of a past generation, one who handles such relics of a century ago sees much of the fashions for children of that day. In "The Looking Glass," for instance, the illustrations copied from engravings by the famous English artist, Bewick, show that at the end of the eighteenth century children were still clothed like their elders; the coats and waistcoats, knee breeches and hats, of boys were patterned after gentlemen's garments, and the caps and aprons, kerchiefs and gowns, for girls were reproductions of the mothers' wardrobes.

Again, the fly-leaf of "The History of Master Jacky and Miss Harriot" arrests the eye by its quaint inscription: "Rozella Ford's Book. For being the second speller in the second class." At once the imagination calls up the exercises in a village school at the end of a year's session: a row of prim little maids and sturdy boys, standing before the school dame and by turn spelling in shrill tones words of three to five syllables, until only two, Rozella and a better speller, remain unconfused by Dilworth's and Webster's word mysteries. Then the two children step forward with bow and curtsey to receive their tiny gilt prizes from a pile of duodecimos upon the teacher's desk. Indeed, the giving of rewards was carried to such an extent as to become a great drain upon the meagre stipend of the teacher. Thus when in copper-plate handwriting we find in another six-penny volume the inscription: "Benjamin H. Bailey, from one he esteems and loves, Mr. Hapgood," we read between its lines the self-denial practised by Mr. Hapgood, who possibly received, like many other teachers, but seventy-five cents a week besides his board and lodging.

Other books afford a glimpse of children's life: the formal every-day routine, the plays they enjoyed, and their demonstration of a sensibility as keen as was then in fashion for adults. The "History of a Doll," lying upon the writer's table, is among the best in this respect. It was evidently much read by its owner and fairly "loved to pieces." When it reached this disintegrated stage, a careful mother, or aunt, sewed it with coarse flax thread inside a home-made cover of bright blue wall-paper. Although the "History of the Pedigree and Rise of the Pretty Doll" bears no date, its companion story in the wall-paper wrapper has the imprint seventeen hundred and ninety-one, and this, together with the press-work, places it as belonging to the eighteenth century. It offers to the reader a charming insight into the formality of many an old-fashioned family: the deportment stiff with the starched customs of that day, the seriousness of their fun, and the sensibility among little maidens akin to that exhibited in the heroines of fiction created by Richardson and Fielding.

The chapter concerning "The Pedigree of the Doll" treats of finding a branch of a tree by a carver, who was desired by Sir John Amiable to make one of the best dolls in his power for his "pretty little daughter who was as good as she was pretty." The carver accordingly took the branch and began carving out the head, shoulders, body, and legs, which he soon brought to their proper shape. "He then covered it with a fine, flesh-colored enamel and painted its cheeks in the most lively manner. It had the finest black and sparkling eyes that were ever beheld; its cheeks resembled the blushing rose, its neck the lilly, and its lips the coral." The doll is presented, and the next chapter tells of "an assembly of little female gossips in full debate on the clothing of the doll." "Miss Polly having made her papa a vast number of courtesies for it, prevailed on her brother to go round to all the little gossips in the neighborhood, begging their company to tea in the afternoon, in order to consult in what mode the doll should be dressed." The company assembled. "Miss Micklin undertook to make it a fine ruffled laced shift, Miss Mantua to make it a silk sacque and petticoat; and in short, every one contributed, in some measure, to dress out this beautiful creature."

"Everything went on with great harmony till they came to the head-dress of the doll; and here they differed so much in opinion, that all their little clappers were going at once.... Luckily, at this instant Mrs. Amiable happened to come in, and soon brought the little gossips to order. The matter in dispute was, whether it should have a high head-dress or whether the hair should come down on the forehead, and the curls flow in natural ringlets on the shoulders. However, after some pretty warm debate, this last mode was adopted, as most proper for a little miss." In chapter third "The doll is named:—Accidents attend the Ceremony." Here we have a picture of a children's party. "The young ladies and gentlemen were entertained with tea and coffee; and when that was over, each was presented with a glass of raisin wine." During the christening ceremony an accident happened to the doll, because Master Tommy, the parson, "in endeavouring to get rid of it before the little gossips were ready to receive it, made a sad blunder.... Miss Polly, with tears in her eyes, snatched up the doll and clasped it to her bosom; while the rest of the little gossips turned all the little masters out of the room, that they might be left to themselves to inquire more privately into what injuries the dear doll had received.... Amidst these alarming considerations Tommy Amiable sent the ladies word, that, if they would permit him and the rest of the young gentlemen to pass the evening among them in the parlour, he would engage to replace the nose of the doll in such a manner that not the appearance of the late accident should be seen." Permission was accordingly granted for a surgical operation upon the nose, but "as to the fracture in one of the doll's legs, it was never certainly known how that was remedied, as the young ladies thought it very indelicate to mention anything about the matter." The misadventures of the doll include its theft by a monkey in the West Indies, and at this interesting point the only available copy of the tale is cut short by the loss of the last four pages. The charm of this book lies largely in the fact that the owner of the doll does not grow up and marry as in almost every other novelette. This difference, of course, prevents the story from being a typical one of its period, but it is, nevertheless, a worthy forerunner of those tales of the nineteenth century in which an effort was made to write about incidents in a child's life, and to avoid the biographical tendency.

Before leaving the books of the eighteenth century, one tale must be mentioned because it contains the germ of the idea which has developed into Mr. George's "Junior Republic." It was called "Juvenile Trials for Robbing Orchards, Telling Tales and other Heinous Offenses." "This," said Dr. Aikin—Mrs. Barbauld's brother and collaborator in "Evenings at Home"—"is a very pleasing and ingenious little Work, in which a Court of Justice is supposed to be instituted in a school, composed of the Scholars themselves, for the purpose of trying offenses committed at School." In "Trial the First" Master Tommy Tell-Truth charges Billy Prattle with robbing an orchard. The jury, after hearing Billy express his contrition for his act, brings in a verdict of guilty; but the judge pardons the culprit because of his repentant frame of mind. Miss Delia, the offender in case Number Two, does not escape so lightly. Miss Stirling charges her with raising contention and strife among her school-fellows over a piece of angelica, "whereby," say her prosecutors, "one had her favorite cap torn to pieces, and her hair which had been that day nicely dressed, pulled all about her shoulders; another had her sack torn down the middle; a third had a fine flowered apron of her own working, reduced to rags; a fourth was wounded by a pelick, or scratch of her antagonist, and in short, there was hardly one among them who had not some mark to shew of having been concerned in this unfortunate affair." That the good Dr. Aikin approved of the punishment decreed, we are sure. The little prisoner was condemned to pass three days in her room, as just penalty for such "indelicate" behaviour.

By the close of the century Miss Edgeworth was beginning to supersede Mrs. Barbauld in England; but in America the taste in juvenile reading was still satisfied with the older writer's little Charles, as the correct model for children's deportment, and with Giles Gingerbread as the exemplary student. The child's lessons had passed from "Be good or you will go to Hell" to "Be good and you will be rich;" or, with the Puritan element still so largely predominant, "Be good and you will go to Heaven." Virtue as an ethical quality had been shown in "Goody Two-Shoes" to bring its reward as surely as vice brought punishment. It is to be doubted if this was altogether wholesome; and it may well be that it was with this idea in mind that Dr. Johnson made his celebrated criticism of the nursery literature in vogue, when he said to Mrs. Piozzi, "Babies do not want to be told about babies; they like to be told of giants and castles, and of somewhat which can stretch and stimulate their little minds."[141-A]

The learned Doctor, having himself been brought up on "Jack the Giant Killer" and "The History of Blue Beard," was inclined to scorn Newbery's tales as lacking in imaginative quality. That Dr. Johnson was really interested in stories for the young people of his time is attested by a note written in seventeen hundred and sixty-three on the fly-leaf of a collection of chap-books: "I shall certainly, sometime or other, write a little Story-Book in the style of these. I shall be happy to succeed, for he who pleases children will be remembered by them."[141-B]

In America, however, it is doubtful whether any true critical spirit regarding children's books had been reached. Fortunately in England, at the beginning of the next century, there was a man who dared speak his opinion. Mrs. Barbauld and Mrs. Trimmer (who had contributed "Fabulous Histories" to the juvenile library, and for them had shared the approval which greeted Mrs. Barbauld's efforts) were the objects of Charles Lamb's particular detestation. In a letter to Coleridge, written in 1802, he said:

"Goody Two Shoes is almost out of print. Mrs. Barbauld's stuff has banished all the old classics of the nursery, and the shopman at Newbery's hardly deigned to reach them off an old exploded corner of a shelf, when Mary asked for them. Mrs. Barbauld's and Mrs. Trimmer's nonsense lay in piles about. Knowledge insignificant and vapid as Mrs. Barbauld's books convey, it seems, must come to a child in the shape of knowledge; and his empty noddle must be turned with conceit of his own powers when he has learned that a horse is an animal and Billy is better than a horse, and such like, instead of that beautiful interest in wild tales, which made the child a man, while all the time he suspected himself to be no bigger than a child. Science has succeeded to poetry no less in the little walks of children than of men. Is there no possibility of arresting this force of evil? Think what you would have been now, if instead of being fed with tales and old wives' fables in childhood, you had been crammed with geography and natural history. Hang them! I mean the cursed Barbauld crew, those blights and blasts of all that is human in man and child."[142-A]

To Lamb's extremely sensitive nature, the vanished hand of the literary man of Grub Street could not be replaced by Mrs. Barbauld's wish to instruct by using simple language. It is possible that he did her some injustice. Yet a retrospective glance over the story-book literature evolved since Newbery's juvenile library was produced, shows little that was not poor in quality and untrue to life. Therefore, it is no wonder that Lamb should have cried out against the sore evil which had "beset a child's mind." All the poetry of life, all the imaginative powers of a child, Mrs. Barbauld, Mrs. Trimmer, and Mr. Day ignored; and Newbery in his way, and the old ballads in their way, had appealed to both.

In both countries the passion for knowledge resulted in this curious literature of amusement. In England books were written; in America they were reprinted, until a religious revival left in its wake the series of morbid and educational tales which the desire to write original stories for American children produced.

FOOTNOTES:

[123-A] Miss Hewins, Atlantic Monthly, vol. lxi, p. 112.

[123-B] Brynberg. Wilmington, 1796.

[128-A] Miss Repplier, Atlantic Monthly, vol. lvii, p. 509.

[141-A] Hill, Johnsonian Miscellany, vol. i, p. 157.

[141-B] Ibid.

[142-A] Welsh, Introduction to Goody Two Shoes, p. x.



CHAPTER VI

1800-1825



Her morals then the Matron read, Studious to teach her Children dear, And they by love or Duty led, With Pleasure read. A Mother's Remarks, Philadelphia, 1810

Mama! see what a pretty book At Day's papa has bought, That I may at its pictures look, And by its words be taught.



CHAPTER VI

1800-1825

Toy-Books in the Early Nineteenth Century

On the 23d of December, 1823, there appeared anonymously in the "Troy (New York) Sentinel," a Christmas ballad entitled "A Visit from St. Nicholas." This rhymed story of Santa Claus and his reindeer, written one year before its publication by Clement Clarke Moore for his own family, marks the appearance of a truly original story in the literature of the American nursery.

We have seen the somewhat lugubrious influence of Puritan and Quaker upon the occasional writings for American children; and now comes a story bearing upon its face the features of a Dutchman, as the jolly old gentleman enters nursery lore with his happy errand.

Up to this time children of wholly English extraction had probably little association with the Feast of St. Nicholas. The Christmas season had hitherto been regarded as pagan in its origin by people of Puritan or Scotch descent, and was celebrated only as a religious festival by the descendants of the more liberal adherents to the Church of England. The Dutch element in New York, however, still clung to some of their traditions; and the custom of exchanging simple gifts upon Christmas Day had come down to them as a result of a combination of the church legend of the good St. Nicholas, patron of children, and the Scandinavian myth of the fairy gnome, who from his bower in the woods showered good children with gifts.[148-A] But to celebrate the day quietly was altogether a different thing from introducing to the American public the character of Santa Claus, who has become in his mythical entity as well known to every American as that other Dutch legendary personage, Rip Van Winkle.

In the "Visit from St. Nicholas" Mr. Moore not only introduced Santa Claus to the young folk of the various states, but gave to them their first story of any lasting merit whatsoever. It is worthy of remark that as every impulse to write for juvenile readers has lagged behind the desire to write for adults, so the composition of these familiar verses telling of the arrival in America of the mysterious and welcome visitor on

"The night before Christmas, when all through the house Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse,"

fell at the end of that quarter of the nineteenth century to which we are accustomed to refer as the beginning of the national period of American literature.

It is, of course, true that the older children of that period had already begun to enjoy some of the writings of Irving and Cooper, and to learn the fortunately still familiar verses by Hopkinson, Key, Drake, and Halleck. School-readers have served to familiarize generation after generation with "Hail Columbia," "The Star Spangled Banner," and sometimes with "The American Flag." It is, doubtless, their authors' jubilant enthusiasm over the freedom of the young Republic that has caused the children of the more mature nation to delight in the repetition of the patriotic verses. The youthful extravagance of expression pervading every line is reechoed in the heart of the schoolboy, who likes to imagine himself, before anything else, a patriot. But until "Donder and Blitzen" pranced into the foreground as Santa Claus' steeds, there was nothing in American nursery literature of any lasting fame. Thereafter, as the custom of observing Christmas Day gradually became popular, the perennial small child felt—until automobiles sent reindeer to the limbo of bygone things—the thrill of delight and fear over the annual visit of Santa Claus that the bigger child experiences in exploding fire-crackers on the Fourth of July. There are possibilities in both excitements which appeal to one of the child's dearest possessions—his imagination.

It is this direct appeal to the imagination that surprises and delights us in Mr. Moore's ballad. To re-read it is to be amazed that anything so full of merriment, so modern, so free from pompousness or condescension, from pedantry or didacticism, could have been written before the latter half of the nineteenth century. Not only its style is simple in contrast with the labored efforts at simplicity of its contemporaneous verse, but its story runs fifty years ahead of its time in its freedom from the restraining hand of the moralist and from the warning finger of the religious teacher, if we except Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Wonder Book."

In our examination of the toy-books of twenty years preceding its publication, we shall find nothing so attractive in manner, nor so imaginative in conception. Indeed, we shall see, upon the one hand, that fun was held in with such a tight curb that it hardly ever escaped into print; and upon the other hand that the imagination had little chance to develop because of the prodigal indulgence in realities and in religious experience from which all authors suffered. We shall also see that these realities were made very uncompromising and uncomfortable to run counter to. Duty spelled in capital letters was a stumbling-block with which only the well-trained story-book child could successfully cope; recreation followed in small portions large shares of instruction, whether disguised or bare faced. The Religion-in-Play, the Ethics-in-Play, and the Labor-in-Play schools of writing for children had arrived in America from the land of their origin.

The stories in vogue in England during this first quarter of the nineteenth century explain every vagary in America. There fashionable and educational authorities had hitched their wagon to the literary star, Miss Edgeworth, and the followers of her system; while the religiously inclined pinned their faith also upon tracts written by Miss Hannah More. In this still imitative land the booksellers simply reprinted the more successful of these juvenile publications. The changes, therefore, in the character of the juvenile literature of amusement of the early nineteenth century in America were due to the adoption of the works of these two Englishwomen, and to the increased facilities for reproducing toy-books, both in press-work and in illustrations.

Hannah More's allegories and religious dramas, written to cooeperate with the teachings of the first Sabbath Day schools, are, of course, outside the literature of amusement. Yet they affected its type in America as they undoubtedly gave direction to the efforts of the early writers for children.

Miss More, born in seventeen hundred and fifty-four, was a woman of already established literary reputation when her attention was attracted by Robert Raikes's successful experiment of opening a Sunday-school, in seventeen hundred and eighty-one. During the religious revival that attended the preaching of George Whitefield, Raikes, already interested in the hardships and social condition of the working-classes, was further aroused by his intimate knowledge of the manner of life of some children in a pin factory. To provide instruction for these child laborers, who, without work or restrictions on Sundays, sought occupation far from elevating, Raikes founded the first "Sabbath Day school."

The movement spread rapidly in England, and ten years later, in seventeen hundred and ninety-one, under the inspiration of Bishop White, the pioneer First Day school in America was opened in Philadelphia. The good Bishop was disturbed mentally by the religious and moral degeneracy of the poor children in his diocese, and annoyed during church services by their clamor outside the churches—a noise often sufficient to drown the prayers of his flock and the sermons of his clergy. To occupy these restless children for a part of the day, two sessions of the school were held each Sunday: one before the morning service, from eight until half-past ten o'clock, and the other in the afternoon for an hour and a half. The Bible was used as a reader, and the teaching was done regularly by paid instructors.

The first Sunday-school library owed its origin to a wish to further the instruction given in the school, and hence contained books thought admirably adapted to Sunday reading. Among the somewhat meagre stock provided for this purpose were Doddridge's "Power of Religion," Miss More's tracts and the writings of her imitators, together with "The Fairchild Family," by Mrs. Sherwood, "The Two Lambs," by Mrs. Cameron, "The Economy of Human Life," and a little volume made up of selections from Mrs. Barbauld's works for children. "The Economy of Human Life," said Miss Sedgwick (who herself afterwards wrote several good books for girls), "was quite above my comprehension, and I thought it unmeaning and tedious." Testimony of this kind about a book which for years appeared regularly upon booksellers' lists enables us to realize that the average intelligent child of the year eighteen hundred was beginning to be as bored by some of the literature placed in his hands as a child would be one hundred years later.

To increase this special class of books, Hannah More devoted her attention. Her forty tracts comprising "The Cheap Repository" included "The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain" and "The Two Shoemakers," which, often appearing in American booksellers' advertisements, were for many years a staple article in Sunday-school libraries, and even now, although pushed to the rear, are discoverable in some such collections of books. Their objective point is best given by their author's own words in the preface to an edition of "The Search after Happiness; A Pastoral Drama," issued by Jacob Johnson of Philadelphia in eighteen hundred and eleven.

Miss More began in the self-depreciatory manner then thought modest and becoming in women writers: "The author is sensible it may have many imperfections, but if it may be happily instrumental in producing a regard to Religion and Virtue in the minds of Young Persons, and afford them an innocent, and perhaps not altogether unuseful amusement in the exercise of recitation, the end for which it was originally composed ... will be fully answered." A drama may seem to us above the comprehension of the poor and illiterate class of people whose attention Miss More wished to hold, but when we feel inclined to criticise, let us not forget that the author was one who had written little eight-year-old Thomas Macaulay: "I think we have nearly exhausted the epics. What say you to a little good prose? Johnson's 'Hebrides,' or Walton's 'Lives,' unless you would like a neat edition of Cowper's poems or 'Paradise Lost.'"

Miss More's influence upon the character of Sunday-school books in England undoubtedly did much to incline many unknown American women of the nineteenth century to take up this class of books as their own field for religious effort and pecuniary profit.

Contemporary with Hannah More's writings in the interest of religious life of Sunday-school scholars were some of the literary products of the painstaking pen of Maria Edgeworth.

Mention of Miss Edgeworth has already been made. About her stories for children criticism has played seriously, admiringly, and contemptuously. It is not the present purpose, however, to do other than to make clear her own aim, and to try to show the effect of her extremely moral tales upon her own generation of writers for American children. It is possible that she affected these authors more than the child audience for whom she wrote. Little ones have a wonderful faculty for seizing upon what suits them and leaving the remainder for their elders to discuss.

Maria Edgeworth's life was a long one. Born in seventeen hundred and sixty-seven, when John Newbery's books were at the height of their fame, she lived until eighteen hundred and forty-nine, when they were scarcely remembered; and now her own once popular tales have met a similar fate.

She was educated by a father filled with enthusiasm by the teachings of Rousseau and with advice from the platitudinous family friend, Thomas Day, author of "Sanford and Merton." Only the truly genial nature and strong character of Miss Edgeworth prevented her genius from being altogether swamped by this incongruous combination. Fortunately, also, her busy practical home life allowed her sympathies full sway and counteracted many of the theories introduced by Mr. Edgeworth into his family circle. Successive stepmothers filled the Edgeworth nursery with children, for whom the devoted older sister planned and wrote the stories afterward published.

In seventeen hundred and ninety-one Maria Edgeworth, at her father's suggestion, began to note down anecdotes of the children of the family, and later these were often used as copy to be criticised by the little ones themselves before they were turned over to the printer. Her father's educational conversations with his family were often committed to paper, and these also furnished material from which Miss Edgeworth made it her object in life to interweave knowledge, amusement, and ethics. Indeed, it has been most aptly said that between the narrow banks of Richard Edgeworth's theories "his daughter's genius flowed through many volumes of amusement."



Her first collection of tales was published under the title of "The Parent's Assistant," although Miss Edgeworth's own choice of a name had been the less formidable one of "The Parent's Friend." Based upon her experience as eldest sister in a large and constantly increasing family, these tales necessarily struck many true notes and gave valuable hints to perplexed parents. In "The Parent's Assistant" realities stalked full grown into the nursery as

"Every object in creation Furnished hints for contemplation."

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,

Miss Edgeworth not only pleased the children, but received the applause of their parents and friends. Sir Walter Scott, the prince of story-tellers, found much to admire in her tales, and wrote of "Simple Susan:" "When the boy brings back the lamb to the little girl, there is nothing for it but to put down the book and cry." Susan was the pattern child in the tale, "clean as well as industrious," while Barbara—a violent contrast—was conceited and lazy, and a lady who "could descend without shame from the height of insolent pride to the lowest measure of fawning familiarity." Therefore it is small wonder that Sir Walter passed her by without mention.

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 fete 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:

"My Book and Heart Shall never part."

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-A] 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-A]

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-A]

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 fetes. "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:"

"When children are naughty and will not be drest, Pray what do you think is the way? Why, often I really believe it is best To keep them in night-clothes all day!

"But then they can have no good breakfast to eat, Nor walk with their mother and aunt; At dinner they'll have neither pudding nor meat, Nor anything else that they want.

"Then who would be naughty and sit all the day In night-clothes unfit to be seen! And pray who would lose all their pudding and play For not being drest neat and clean."

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:

"Now the day soon appear'd But she very much fear'd She should not be permitted to go. Her best frock she had torn, The last time it was worn; Which was very vexatious, you know."

However, the mother consents with the caution:

"Not to greedily eat The nice things at the treat; As she much wished to break her of this."

Arrived at the party, Nancy shared the games, and

"At length was seated, With her friends to be treated; So determin'd on having her share, That she drank and she eat Ev'ry thing she could get, Yet still she was loth to forbear."

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:

"My young readers beware, And avoid with great care Such excesses as these you've just read; For be sure you will find It your interest to mind What your friends and relations have said."

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 Erzaehlungen ueber 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 fuer 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."