A Child's Book of Saints

Produced by Al Haines
This is fairy gold, boy; And I will prove it so. —Shakespeare
Every man I will go with thee, be thy guide in thy most need to go by thy side.
A Child's Book of Saints was first published in 1898, when Mr. Canton had already found his audience. The book is a near successor indeed to his W. V.: Her Book, and to The Invisible Playmate ; and W. V. again acts as guardian elf and guide to this new region of the child's earthly paradise. The Saints are here treated with a simplicity that is almost or altogether childlike, and with an unforced imagination which is only to be learnt by becoming as a child. And this is perhaps why, although comparatively a new book, it has the air of something pleasantly old, and written long ago; and thus wins its way into the children's library of old favourite authors.
Mr. Canton's published works, up to January 1906, comprise:— A Lost Epic, and other Poems, 1887. The Invisible Playmate: a Story of the Unseen, 1894, 1897. W. V., Her Book and Various Verses, 1896. A Child's Book of Saints, 1898, 1902. Children's Sayings, Edited, with a Digression on the Small People, 1900. The True Annals of Fairyland (The Reign of King Herla), 1900, &c. In Memory of W. V. (Winifred Vida Canton), 1901. The Comrades: Poems, Old and New, 1902. What is the Bible Society? 1903. The Story of the Bible Society, 1904. A History of the British and Foreign Bible Society, 1904. Little Hands and God's Book: a Sketch of the Bible Society, 1804-1904, 1905.
A saint, whose very name I have forgotten, had a vision, in which he saw Satan standing before the throne of God; and, listening, he heard the evil spirit say, Why hast Thou condemned me, who have offended Thee but once, whilst Thou savest thousands of men who have offended Thee many times? God answered him, Hast thou once asked pardon of me?
Behold the Christian mythology! It is the dramatic truth, which has its worth and effect independently of the literal truth, and which even gains nothing by being fact. What matter whether the saint had or had not heard the sublime words which I have just quoted! The great point is to know that pardon is refused only to him who does not ask it.