VI
AMERICAN CHILDREN’S BOOKS
A young man who recently came into my library in New York looked about at the high walls entirely lined with rare books, then sank into a chair. He was the very picture of dejection. For a moment he sat quietly staring into space, then said, with a melancholy sigh, “It’s no use!”
“What’s the matter?” I inquired. “Bad news?”
“No!” He turned upon me with a quick blaze of temper. “How can anyone collect books after seeing all these rarities?” He waved in accusatory circles toward the walls. “I have very little money. Why, I can’t even begin to collect!”
Now this was really a very nice young man. He was in his early twenties, loved books, and had brains too. Then what was the matter with him? Alas, he had very little money and very, very little imagination. He was minus the latter asset, the very foundation of successful book collecting. He allowed himself to be blinded by the high prices of a few old volumes. He either could not, or would not, visualize anything beyond that which he actually saw before him. He had no vision.
People do not always have to invest in high-priced books to form an interesting collection. Many unusual collections have been made through small but exceedingly careful and, of course, thoughtful expenditure. Yet this is a fact very difficult to thump into the young collector’s head. It has taken some men I know—men with slender purses—several years to realize this. Meanwhile they lose both time and bargains. But vision in book buying does not come so readily when you are first suffering from the febrile mania of collecting. Yet be not dismayed! Just because Gutenberg Bibles and Shakespeare folios jolt the auction rooms with their stupendous prices is no reason why you should ignore the works of a comparatively obscure writer who appeals to you, someone in whom you believe.
MANUSCRIPT TITLE PAGE OF HAWTHORNE’S
“WONDER BOOK”
Keep your eyes on his books, his manuscripts, his letters, when you are browsing in bookshops; ask yourself a few leading questions concerning his future and answer them honestly. Do you believe your author has an intrinsic value that is likely to increase with the years? How scarce are these books or manuscripts or letters of his? Think back. If you have the real collecting instinct you have kept all your sales catalogues. Check them over.
Just remember that Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, and Joseph Conrad first editions could have been bought a few years ago for almost nothing, in fact at their published prices.
This reminds me of a remarkable prophecy made by Uncle Moses in 1895. He was complaining of the high prices he had just paid for several books. He said he didn’t see how rare volumes could possibly go any higher. Then he amended this by naming three men in English letters whose works he thought would advance to almost unbelievable values—Shelley, Keats, and Poe. If only I had taken advantage of Uncle Moses’ significant foresight and vision!
“When prices are high,” Uncle Moses advised me, “don’t forget that there are new fields for the collector. There’s no need to grumble. You can always spend your money wisely on the things which are not so much in demand.”
I realized, even then, that these were words of wisdom in the book game. Many times I have thought of his oft-repeated, laconic statement: “There are always books to fit every purse.”
There are hundreds of types of books to collect: volumes as yet unnoticed in the auction room, which lie neglected year in, year out, upon the bookseller’s shelf, and which are disregarded by the conventional collector. They are waiting for the man with imagination to discover them. And many of them will eventually come into their own. My uncle and others of his day could not foresee the slavish manner in which some collectors would in later years pursue, with neither rhyme nor reason, every volume on any arbitrary list. Imagine buying books other than those of your own taste and inclination! It seems the veriest joke to have signposts on the way, indicating the books you should buy—just as though one or two men are able to choose fifty or even one hundred of the most outstanding books in English or any other literature. The difference of opinion is too great. To me such buying is about as thrilling as going to a doctor to have him dictate your diet.
“I have collected,” said my uncle, as we talked together a few years before he died, “along a path untrodden in my day—early American children’s books.” He walked about his dusty old shop for a few moments, then selected a diminutive volume, the Dying Sayings of Hannah Hill, Junior, published in Philadelphia in 1717. “Now,” he observed, “I will show you an example. I would have you know that this little book is damn rare.” He always hated and made fun of the stereotyped expressions in booksellers’ catalogues, such as “excessively rare,” “extremely rare,” “of utmost rarity,” “very rare,” and “rare.” He said it reminded him of the man who had eggs to sell, offering them as newly laid eggs, fresh eggs, and eggs. Uncle Moses described his books more colorfully. First of all they were “infernally rare,” then “damn, damn rare,” followed by “damn rare,” and finally “rare.”
This and similar picturesque language fitted his rugged personality and endeared him to everyone. How much more interesting it would be if modern cataloguers used their imagination when describing the degree of rarity of an old book.
In his younger days Uncle Moses had had a most unusual opportunity to gather together many early books published expressly for children. When he succeeded to the business of the Philadelphia publishers, McCarthy and Davis, in 1851, the stock included a number of early American juveniles. You see, McCarthy and Davis were successors to Johnson and Warner, who succeeded the original firm established by Jacob Johnson in 1780. It was noted for its children’s books, so you can imagine the varied juvenile curiosities my uncle inherited.
Even when my brothers and sisters and I were very small children, Uncle Moses remembered our birthdays and other anniversaries always with a pretty little book. Although we were all taught to care for and really honor our books from the time we could hold them in our hands, it was to my eldest sister, Rebecca, and to me that he gave the most valuable and entertaining volumes. I have kept every one of them; each bears his inscription in beautiful, finely printed letters, “From Uncle Mo.”
My sister was early imbued with the book-hunting spirit, and I have often found her in some little secondhand store in Philadelphia quietly looking through piles of books in the hope of securing something quaint, something unusual and perhaps hitherto unknown. Her searches were not fruitless either.
These book-hunting expeditions were adventures for us. We thought it great fun to add to our little library so charming and tiny a pamphlet as, for instance, The History of Ann Lively and her Bible, which was sold in 1830 for one half cent, and issued in New York in a somewhat proselyting manner by the American Tract Society. It was a red-letter day in our lives if we could find some curious example to flaunt before the amused face of Uncle Moses. But the occasion was rare, indeed, when we found a book which he did not already own.
It was many years ago that I took Uncle Moses’ tip to start collecting early American children’s books. Hence I am some leagues ahead of those who got a later start. Many collectors are only now beginning to rub their eyes and to wake up to the fascination which these tiny volumes offer to book lovers. Early American juveniles are unusually interesting for several reasons. To begin with, they give such naïve samples of the mental food our poor ancestors lived upon in the dim days of their childhood.
Take, for instance, a small volume published in 1738 by Samuel Phillips, called History of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, Epitomized; for the Use of Children in the South Parish at Andover. The author says that “his great Lord and Master had commanded his Ministers to feed his Lambs as well as his Sheep.” But what anæmic feeding! He sets before his particular lambs sixty pages of the most indigestible food ever concocted, consisting of questions on and answers to the most abstruse metaphysical, philosophical, and controversial subjects! Subjects which are no nearer solution to-day than when the Rev. Samuel Phillips propounded them for the benefit of his bewildered little lambs of Andover Parish one hundred and eighty-nine years ago!
You will find early American children’s books difficult to obtain. There are but few left in good condition to-day, but it is great fun tracking them. In the first place, very few were published by our Colonial presses. Such venerable gentlemen as Cotton Mather and Governor Winthrop kept the printers too busily occupied issuing theological works or acts of provincial assemblies; too seriously engaged with statutes, laws, almanacs, prayer books, catechisms, and sermons, to print many books for children. Lost in a theological web of their own weaving, the leaders of the day cared little about the intellectual amusement of their girls and boys.
But most of the young book fanciers, lucky enough to obtain the few books issued, mauled them about or destroyed them entirely. They are generally found with torn and missing leaves—these charming atrocities have made many copies quite worthless to the collector. I have been told that it is but normal for a bouncing bibliophile of twelve months to teethe on the hard board corners of, for instance, a copy of Cinderella. Indeed, a young child’s attitude toward a book is not unlike that of a cannibal toward a missionary. Very young children—this is on record, if you doubt me—have been known to eat their books, literally devouring their contents.
When I was about seven years old another little boy of the same age came from a suburb of Philadelphia to spend the day with me. We quickly struck up a friendship. Although it was raining and we were forced to remain indoors, we played together quite happily. Everything went smoothly until late in the afternoon, when our inventive faculties began to give out. It was then, after we had taken apart most of my toys, that my little friend’s eyes lighted upon my books. I watched him cross the room to the low shelf which held them so neatly, and I remained quiet even as he began to paw them over. But when I saw him take a pencil from his pocket to write crude letters of the alphabet along the margins, I flew at him like a wildcat. Only the immediate intervention of our combined families saved him from annihilation. We have met many times since, and we always laugh at the story of my juvenile wrath.
He still insists, after forty years, that his was a perfectly normal action in a child. I believed in treating a book as something sacred, even at that age. The germ had evidently entered my system with my first vaccination!
In 1902 my uncle gave me his wonderful collection of children’s books.
Among them was his “damn rare” pamphlet, A Legacy for Children, being Some of the Last Expressions and Dying Sayings of Hannah Hill, Junr. Of the City of Philadelphia in the Province of Pennsylvania, in America, Aged Eleven Years and near Three Months, which was printed by Andrew Bradford, at the sign of the Bible, in Philadelphia, in 1717. Little Hannah took several days to die, and she insisted upon having the undivided attention of every member of her family. She gave them moral advice, told them what they should do and what they should not do after she had departed. “The Council which she gave, to her Dear and only Sister and Cousin Loyd Zachary, whom she dearly loved, was very grave and pithy....”
To-day I have nearly eight hundred volumes, which date from 1682 to 1840. They reveal with amazing fidelity the change in juvenile reading matter, the change, too, in the outward character of the American child. They depict the slow but determined growth from the child of Puritan New England to that of our own day. It is a delightful change from Virtuous William the Obedient Prentice, and Patty Primrose, to Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, Penrod, and Winnie-the-pooh. If Robert Louis Stevenson had had the temerity to publish Treasure Island in the good old days of Governor Winthrop he would have been a fit subject for the common hangman! I do not mean to imply that the New England boy of the seventeenth century was the goody-goody thing which his parents tried to make him. If he was choked with the Bible and threatened with the catechism and the prayer book, if the creed and Bunyan were ruthlessly thrust down his innocent young throat, he nevertheless could think of Captain Kidd, Sir Henry Morgan, the Indians, and the whole machinery of the boyhood imagination. Free thought was permitted him because there was no way to suppress it.
The little Puritans! My heart aches for them when I read an example such as The Rule of the New-Creature. To be Practiced every day in all the Particulars of which are Ten. This is the earliest book in my collection. It was published in Boston for Mary Avery, who sold books near the Blue Anchor, 1682. Imagine the weary little child who had to listen throughout a long Sunday afternoon to the contents of a book which started off in this manner:—
“Be sensible of thy Original Corruption daily, how it inclines thee to evil, and indisposeth thee to good; groan under it, and bewail it as Paul did.... Also take special notice of your actual sins, or daily infirmities, in Thought, Word, Deed. Endeavor to make your peace with God for them before you go to bed.”
There is, too, one of the most famous of all juveniles, the equally inspiriting and nourishing Spiritual Milk for Boston Babes. In either England: Drawn out of the breasts of both Testaments for their Souls nourishment. But may be of like use to any Children. Printed at Boston, 1684. My copy is the only one known of this date. John Cotton, the great and influential Puritan minister, had written this many years before, and it was first published in England in 1646, to settle a growing dissension among the Puritans, who could not decide which catechism of the many then in use was best for their children. This volume grew very popular and from it the little ones learned to die with much grace, and, therefore, eternal glory. Yet it was found very difficult to teach the young of New England the proper way to die; of all knowledge it is the most difficult to impart, as there are no really good textbooks.
TITLE PAGE OF “SPIRITUAL MILK FOR BOSTON BABES”
Spiritual
MILK
FOR
Boston Babes.
In either ENGLAND:
Drawn out of the breasts of both
TESTAMENTS for their
Souls nourishment.
But may be of like use to any
CHILDREN.
By John Cotton, B. D. Late
Teacher to the Church of Boston in
New England.
Printed at BOSTON,
1684.
The ecstasy over the departure of a pure young child is one of the most remarkable manifestations of the Puritan spirit. No book shows this more clearly than the Rev. James Janeway’s A Token for Children, being an Exact Account of the Conversion, Holy and Exemplary Lives and Joyous Deaths of several Young Children. This book passed through edition after edition in England and her colonies, and was the certain means of saving many children from hell and damnation. My copy is the only one extant from Benjamin Franklin’s press, and is dated 1749. Janeway states in his Preface, which is addressed “to all Parents, School Masters and School Mistresses or any who have any Hand in the Education of Children:—
“Remember the Devil is at work hard, wicked Ones are industrious, and corrupt Nature is a rugged, knotty Piece to hew. But be not discouraged.”
The author then goes on to relate the wicked bringing into this world of little children, and dwells lovingly and tenderly upon their wise and glorious deaths at the age of six or seven or even ten years. An early death in purity and virtue was a thing to be coveted and desired, and Janeway requests in his Preface that the teacher should impress upon the little ones the advisability of imitating the early demise of these sweet children whose short and devout lives are narrated by him. Cotton Mather, who wrote a continuation of Janeway, and described the brilliant, joyous, matchless deaths of New England children—Janeway described the demise of the children of Old England—died at the age of sixty-five years, thus prudently neglecting to follow the example of his beautiful and obedient pupils who passed away, in all holiness, at the hoary age of six. We shall select a passage from the celebrated little book, which bears this title:—
A Token for the Children of New England, or some Examples of Children, in whom the Fear of God was remarkably budding before they died; in several parts of New England. Preserved and Published for the Encouragement of Piety in other children.
The selected passage is as follows:—
Elizabeth Butcher, Daughter of Alvin and Elizabeth Butcher, of Boston, was born July 14th, 1709. When she was about Two Years and half Old; as she lay in the Cradle she would ask her self that Question, What is my corrupt Nature? and would make answer again to herself, It is empty of Grace, bent unto Sin, and only to Sin, and that continually. She took great delight in learning her Catechism, and would not willingly go to Bed without saying some Part of it.
She being a weakly Child, her Mother carried her into the Country for Health; And when she was about Three Years old, and at Meeting, she would set with her Eyes fix’d on the Minister, to the Admiration of all that Sat about her, who said that grown up People might learn and take Example of her. She took great Delight in reading, and was ready and willing to receive Instruction.
She was not contented with the bare reading of God’s Word, but would frequently ask the meaning of it. And when she was at her work, she would often ask where such and such Places in Scripture were, and would mention the Words that she might be directed to find them.
It was her Practice to carry her Catechism or some other good Book to Bed with her, and in the Morning she would be sitting up in her Bed reading before any of the Family were awake.
Such goodness could not last, and on the thirteenth of June, 1718, poor little Elizabeth departed this life, “being eight years and just eleven months old.”
It is related of another child, Daniel Bradley, the son of Nathan and Hester Bradley of Guilford, Connecticut, that when the said child was about three years old, “he had one Night an Impression of the Fears of Death, which put him into Crying; his Mother told him, if he died he would go to Heaven; unto which he replied, He knew not how he would like that Place, where he would be acquainted with no body!”
It is curious how you run unexpectedly upon things which you have long desired. I always wanted a copy of George Fox’s Instructions for Right Spelling, printed by Reinier Jansen, in Philadelphia, in 1702. One day I stopped at Travers’s Bookshop in Trenton, New Jersey. Now Clayton L. Travers is a true bookman; he knows the business thoroughly. In fact he was an old crony of my uncle. I said to him that I had been looking several years for Fox’s book. When I told him the title, he thought for a moment, then disappeared to the back of the shop. Two minutes later he returned with a little volume which was in an old sheep binding, the title page decorated with an elaborate woodcut border. I opened it and read the great Friend’s simple description of a comma:—
“Comma,” wrote George Fox, “is a little stop or breathing; as Behold O Lord.” Please note that he placed no comma after Behold! The discovery of Fox’s old spelling book was a delight to me, but what made it still more pleasant was Travers’s generosity in letting me have it for about one quarter its worth. Collector’s luck!
“They be darned small, but the flavor am delicious,” said an old Southerner to me of the quail in his part of the country. The same can also be applied to these children’s books. I suppose many people will wonder why I, an old bachelor, prefer them? I can only answer with another question. Why is it that old bachelors also write the best children’s stories? There is no answer. But, thank heaven, I am not alone in my crime. Another confirmed bachelor, a dear friend of mine, is quite as enthusiastic on this youthful theme. Dr. Wilberforce Eames, of New York, one of the greatest students of books this country ever had, abets me; especially when he casually informs me of the probable whereabouts of some rarity that I have been seeking for years.
WILBERFORCE EAMES
Another bookman, my genial colleague, Mr. Lathrop C. Harper, also of New York, and a great specialist in Americana, has been as much interested in these little books as I myself. Instead of selling them to me, Mr. Harper gives me all the tiny juveniles that he can find. He has just presented to me a little book published in Boston in 1714, which contains embedded in a waste of theological discussion for infants, the following priceless gem:—
“O Children of New England, Poor Hearts; You are going to Hell indeed: But will it not be a dreadful thing to go to Hell from New England?”
TITLE OF “THE GLASS OF WHISKEY”
THE
GLASS OF WHISKEY.
PHILADELPHIA:
AMERICAN SUNDAY-SCHOOL UNION,
No. 146 Chestnut Street.
Mr. Eames, with generosity equaling Mr. Harper’s, has filled many of the crevices of my collection with the most interesting gifts. I can’t say that I altogether approve of the generous impulses of these two gentlemen—except when it applies to myself! It is very bad for the book business. If bookmen were encouraged to go about giving away their precious finds, what would we poor booksellers do?
This reminds me of the long chase I had for Heavenly Spirits for Youthful Minds some time ago. A customer in Yonkers wrote to me saying he had this very rare book, supposed to have been issued by an old Kentucky press in 1800. I was very keen to see it, so I motored to his home at my first opportunity. When I arrived he pointed toward the shelves at one end of his library. I saw with delight and envy the long-sought volume, but when I took hold of it I was chilled. It felt decidedly clammy. Then, as my friend burst out laughing, I realized it was a porcelain jug made in the exact shape of a book! The joke was on me.
My disappointment was not too great, however, as the Heavenly Spirits was filled with mundane ones—Old Crow whiskey. I accepted it as gracefully as I could, but I no longer use this imitation volume for whiskey—I want something larger. Nor would I want to fill it from the Glass of Whiskey, a tract published for youthful minds in Philadelphia in 1830. This tiny yellow-covered pamphlet is but two inches square. The artist who drew the illustrations indicated, with his picture of a bunch of grapes beneath the title, that he knew little or nothing of the inspirational sources of whiskey. Perhaps his innocence secured him the job. Small boys freely imbibing, and the resultant fruits thereof, are neatly portrayed. With what fascination and horror little children must have read:—
There is a bottle. It has something in it which is called Whiskey. Little reader, I hope you will never taste any as long as you live. It is a poison. So is brandy, so is rum, so is gin, and many other drinks. They are called strong drink. They are so strong that they knock people down and kill them. They are sometimes called ardent spirits, that is burning spirits. They burn up those who drink them.
The appropriate ending must have sent many a tot in search of a pencil to sign the pledge: “O, how shall I keep from being a drunkard? I will tell you. Never drink a drop of anything that makes people drunk.”
I made my first find in children’s books when I was but a child myself. A playmate of mine had an aunt who lived on Broad Street in Philadelphia. We passed her house daily, on the way to and from school. Sometimes we were invited to stop for lunch. One day I happened to notice a pile of small books on her sitting-room table. She said she kept them there to amuse the younger children of her family. Although she knew I came from bookish people, she seemed surprised that I, a boy of twelve, should be interested in old volumes. As I could hardly put them down, she was evidently impressed; she offered them to me. You may well believe that I took them and rushed out of the house, lest she change her mind. When I reached home and my uncle saw what I had been lucky enough to receive, he exclaimed at their rarity. My treasure trove comprised three wonderful little volumes. They were Black Giles, The Cries of Philadelphia, and a rare edition of Babes in the Wood.
For thirty years I tried to obtain Benjamin Franklin’s The Story of a Whistle. “Le grand Franklin,” as they called him abroad, wrote and published this fascinating story in 1779, when he had his press at Passy, just outside of Paris. He had printed it in French and in English, on opposite pages, in a charming pamphlet which he presented to his friends. He used the little Passy press mainly to run off official documents and other matters connected with his mission as the American Minister to the Court of France. In 1923, I bought one of the two copies that have survived, at an auction sale in London. It had been briefly catalogued—lucky for me!—as A printed sheet in French and English, “On Paying too much for a Whistle.” Although I would have gladly paid £1000 for it, it was knocked down to me for less than one tenth of this sum.
When discussing printing in this country, it is impossible not to refer to Benjamin Franklin. He originated almost everything original in America. His projects are more talked about to-day than when he lived. Franklin, as a child in Boston, had had a taste of the dull literary offering of the Pilgrim Fathers. The New England Primer was then the best seller. When he became a printer he published edition after edition of it. Although Franklin himself records the sale of 37,100 of these primers, there is but one copy known to exist to-day. Mr. William S. Mason, of Evanston, Illinois, is the owner of this unique copy. Surely, in some New England attic there must be another. The collector can but hope! I have the only one known printed by his successor, David Hall—shall I ever obtain one from Benjamin’s own press?
In 1749 Franklin wrote and published Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pensilvania. This work greatly interests me and all those who claim the University of Pennsylvania as their Alma Mater. It was soon after Franklin issued this that he and twenty-three other citizens of Philadelphia banded together as an association which soon completed plans to establish an academy for young men. It opened in 1751. So this little book is a part of the actual foundation of the University of Pennsylvania. When he was an old man, eighty-two, to be exact, Franklin was still keenly interested in new books for children. He had already given his favorite grandson, Benjamin Franklin Bache, a fine printing press with types, and set him up as a printer. Under the guidance of his celebrated grandfather, young Bache printed Lessons for Children from Two to Five Years Old.
The older man was so delighted with his efforts that he decided, with a business acumen not diminished with the years, to market the books for him. Believing Boston to be a good commercial outlet, he wrote, on November 26, 1788, to his nephew Jonathan Williams:—
Loving Cousin:—
I have lately set up one of my grandchildren, Benja. F. Bache, as a Printer here, and he has printed some very pretty little books for children. By the sloop Friendship, Capt. Stutson, I have sent a Box address’d to you, containing 150 of each volume, in Sheets, which I request you would, according to your wonted goodness, put in a way of being dispos’d of for the Benefit of my dear Sister. They are sold here, bound in marbled Paper at 1 s. a volume; but I should suppose it best, if it may be done, to Sell the whole to some Stationer, at once, unbound as they are; in which case, I imagine that half a Dollar a Quire may be thought a reasonable price, allowing usual Credit if necessary.
My love to your Family, and Believe me ever,
Your affectionate Uncle
B. Franklin.
The original of this letter is in the collection of Miss Rosalie V. Halsey.
Competitors and collectors have often complained that I have frequently purchased at auction rare books that they especially desired and that I did not give them a chance. Quite true! But I have often tasted the same bitter medicine myself. I recall, very vividly, a certain day in May 1913, when the Crane sale was being held in New York and there was a tiny Royal Primer included among the items, which I felt belonged to my collection of children’s books. Printed in Philadelphia in 1753 by James Chattin, this Royal Primer was the only one of its kind in existence. In the good old days when George D. Smith was czar of the auction rooms, all other dealers and collectors were under a terrific strain the moment he appeared. We knew it was almost hopeless to bid against him.
At that time Mr. Smith represented Mr. Henry E. Huntington. He entered the auction room armed with as many unlimited bids as a porcupine has quills. Mr. Smith seemed to take a peculiar delight in running up bids on the little juvenile books I craved. And I had set my heart on the Royal Primer from the moment it was shown to the audience—a beautiful copy in its original sheep cover. I was prepared to pay as high as $200 for it, but as I watched Smith, the very shadow and auction voice of Mr. Huntington himself, I had serious doubts of obtaining it. The bidding started at ten dollars. Imagine my emotion when it rose rapidly to $1000! I felt a complete bankrupt. It was no small task to bid against this octopus of the game, and when the Royal Primer was finally mine at the absurdly high sum of $1225 I arose quickly and went out for air.
The contents of the primers are generally the same. They begin with a rhymed alphabet with illustrations, words, and syllables for spelling lessons. Many of the earliest ones contain verses which were supposed to have been written by the English martyr, John Rogers, just before his execution, for the benefit of his “nine small children, and one at the breast.” Mrs. Rogers and the children are depicted calmly watching the head of the family at the stake as he is about to go up in flames. Their little faces are like so many cranberries.
Later primers are equally amusing, sometimes with frontispieces of George III, and others have dubious likenesses of Our President. Not even the mother of George Washington could have recognized her boy’s features in these crude pictures. But the primers were very popular, and the Puritans continued to issue them. The Beauties of the Primer was followed by the Primer Improved and the Progressive Primer, a more elaborate departure, which boasts colored illustrations.
It was during the early part of the eighteenth century that the Puritan taste began to broaden a bit. In addition to the early primers and catechisms, children were encouraged to read the Holy Bible in verse and semireligious books which had come into fashion. A friend—Mr. Thomas E. Streeter, of New York, a most discriminating collector—found in a volume of pamphlets, Some Excellent Verses for the Education of Youth, to which is added Verses for Little Children, by a Friend, Boston, printed by Bartholomew Green, 1708. It was the only copy extant, having miraculously escaped the rough usage of tiny hands. I despaired of obtaining it, when one day Mr. Streeter generously sent it to me with his compliments. Here is a sample of the Biblical verse as it was written to impress the small reader. Imagine the youth of New England, born with all the lively desires of a modern child, spending a Sunday afternoon memorizing such rhythms as:—
Though I am Young, yet I may Die,
And hasten to Eternity.
Another melancholy book of poetry for children was printed in 1740 in New Haven by T. Green. My copy is the only one known to-day. Its pleasant beginning must have charmed the small reader; thus: “Children, you must die in a short time. You will soon go to a Heaven of Joy or a burning Hell.” There are seven poems in each. The author cannot resist depicting a lugubrious future. Imagine your own child memorizing this sample, called “The Play”:—
Now from School I haste away,
And joyful rush along to play;
Eager I for my marbles call,
The whistling top or bouncing Ball.
The changing marbles to me show,
How mutable all things below.
My fate and theirs may be the same
Dasht in an instant from the Game.
The Hoop, swift rattling on the Chase,
Shows me how quick Life runs its Race.
My hoop and I like turnings have.
So fast Death drives me to my Grave.
TWO PAGES FROM “THE INFANT’S GRAMMAR”
THE VERBS.
Some Actors of eminence made their appearance,
And the servants, Nouns common, with speed made a clearance
Of tables, chairs, stools, and such moveable things,
As, wherever it goes, the Noun always brings.
And these actors the Verbs, when they’d room to DISPLAY,
Both WRESTLED and TUMBLED; and GAMBOL’D away;
They PLAY’D and they RAN, they JUMP’D and they DANC’D,
FRISK’D, AMBLED, and KICK’D, LAUGH’D, CHATTER’D and PRANC’D.
VERBS ACTIVE AND PASSIVE.
The company, laughing, now stood up in ranks,
Whilst the Active Verbs play’d on the Passive their pranks.
But some were so lazy they SLEPT on the floor,
And some were so stupid they STOOD by the door.
In short, all the actions that mortals can DO,
Were DONE by these Verbs, and ENDUR’D by them too.
Among all the books I have seen that were published at this period in the Colonies, I have found but one which might be taken seriously if issued to-day. It treats upon an international problem, good behavior, which, alas, is the bugaboo of children the world over. Personally I have always felt that it is the most terrible and obnoxious of all the moralities—but then, I’m only an old bachelor! The School of Good Manners Composed for the Help of Parents in teaching their Children how to carry it in their places during their Minority was brought out in Boston, reprinted and sold by T. and J. Fleet at the Heart and Crown, in Cornhill, 1772. It begins with “Twenty mixt Precepts,” such as “Honour the Magistrates,” and tells little children plainly what and what not to do. Under a heading of “Behaviour at the Table,” it admonishes: “Spit not, cough not, nor blow thy nose at the table, if it may be avoided.” “Behaviour When in Company” is a little less stringent, perhaps, than one might expect. It reads: “Spit not in the room, but in the corner.” Further: “Let thy countenance be moderately cheerful, neither laughing nor frowning.” “For Behaviour at School” one must “Bawl not aloud in making complaints,” and “Jog not the table or desk on which another writes.”
It is not probable that these righteously exemplary books could be all things to all children. What a welcome change the Prodigal Daughter must have been! Isaiah Thomas, of Worcester, printed her history in 1771, in Boston, before he became famous as the publisher of simpler children’s books such as Goody Two Shoes. In many of these early books the title page relates practically the entire story in scenario form. A case in point is the Prodigal Daughter, or a strange and wonderful relation, shewing how a gentleman of vast estates in Bristol, had a proud and disobedient Daughter, who, because her parents would not support her in all her extravagance, bargained with the Devil to poison them. How an Angel informed her Parents of her design. How she lay in a trance four days; and when she was put in the grave, she came to life again. Quite a happy ending for an eighteenth-century prodigal!
The gradual change which took place in juvenile literature was brought about partly by the captivating whimsicalities of Oliver Goldsmith. The finest collection of Goldsmith’s books is in the beautiful library of my dear friend, William M. Elkins, but I have a few of Goldsmith’s juveniles that even he has been unable to obtain. Goldsmith’s delightful books for children, which his publisher, John Newbery, had bound in gilt paper and adorned with woodcuts, were sent over here from his far-famed shop at the corner of Saint Paul’s Churchyard in London. When they were reprinted in staid New England, they were a startling innovation to the book trade. Then old ballads began to return to the market, each with some striking change also. Contrast the stern outpourings of the learned Cotton Mather with Doctor Goldsmith’s “Elegy on that Glory of her Sex, Mrs. Mary Blaize”:—
Good people, all, with one accord
Lament for Madame Blaize,
Who never wanted a good word—
From those who spoke her praise....
She strove the neighborhood to please
With manners wondrous winning;
And never followed wicked ways—
Unless when she was sinning!...
The Royal Battledoor, the Mother Goose Melodies, A Pretty Book for Children, and some of the best verse ever written for juveniles then came into being. “Bah, Bah, Black Sheep,” “Pease-Porridge Hot,” “Little Tommy Tucker”—have they since been improved upon? I doubt it.
Bah, Bah, Black Sheep
Bah, bah, black sheep, have you any wool?
Yes, sir; yes, sir, I have three bags full.
One for my master, one for his dame,
But none for the little boy who cries in the lane.
Pease-Porridge Hot
Pease-porridge hot,
Pease-porridge cold,
Pease-porridge in the pot,
Nine days old.
Can you spell that with four letters?
Yes, I can: T-H-A-T.
Little Tommy Tucker
Little Tommy Tucker
Sings for his supper;
What song will he sing?
White bread and butter.
How will he cut it
Without e’er a knife?
How will he be married
Without e’er a wife?
I was spending a week-end last summer with some friends who have a large library consisting chiefly of the classical English authors. I had been out one afternoon, and as I returned to the house, was met halfway by my hostess. She had a distraught look, and before I could inquire what had happened, she said, “I am frightfully upset! What do you think I found Tommy doing just now in the library? Reading that nasty old book, Fielding’s Tom Jones!”
Her son Tommy was twelve years old. “What have you done about it?” I asked, trying to suppress a smile.
“I took it from him and put it in the stove!”
She refused to believe me when I told her that Tom Jones, Clarissa Harlowe, and Pamela were read aloud in the evening to all members of the family in Puritan New England, and Miss Rosalie V. Halsey relates that when certain passages became too affecting, the more sensitive listeners retired to their rooms to weep! Sometime later I showed her my copy of Tom Jones, abridged especially for youthful reading, with its crude little woodcut facing the title page, and this explanatory verse beneath:—
This print describes a good man’s heart
Who meant to take the orphan’s part,
And may distress forever find
A friend like him to be so kind.
TITLE PAGE OF “THE UNCLE’S PRESENT”
The Uncle’s Present,
A NEW BATTLEDOOR.
Published by Jacob Johnson, 147 Market Street Philadelphia.
The moral of Tom Jones, as translated for its youthful readers, seems to boil down to this: If you are a good child you will never annoy your neighbors! Fancy Henry Fielding’s amusement when Tom Jones appeared abridged for children! What a marvelous leap this was from the dry-as-dust New England primers and Protestant Tutors, from austere catechisms to—Tom Jones!
Printers early discovered that books for children should be made in proportion to their little clients—small. Miniature volumes have always held a great fascination for children of all ages. Their very neatness and compactness make them seem the more precious and desirable. Perhaps it was with a view to making Bible stories valued more highly by their small readers that they were printed in tiny volumes called Thumb Bibles. These adorable wee volumes, illustrated with crude woodcuts, are extremely rare. Not long ago a lady came to my Philadelphia office with an old-fashioned hand bag—the silk gathered sort, roomy if not beautiful. I noticed that it stuck out in little points, and wondered what on earth she could have brought in it. My curiosity was more than gratified when she emptied it upon my desk—some twenty Thumb Bibles! When I asked her what she wanted for these little charmers she shook her head and said that anything I cared to offer would be acceptable. I suggested $300. She looked at me aghast.
“Why,” she said, “I would have been willing to take twenty-five!”
Children began to assert themselves, beginning with the last quarter of the eighteenth century. They became individuals rather than so much parental property. Thomas Bradford must have realized this when, in 1775, he placed such juvenile delights upon the market as The Scotch Rogue, Moll Flanders, Lives of Highwaymen, Lives of Pirates, The Buccaneers of America, and The Lives of the Twelve Cæsars.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century shockers began to appear. Lurid tales of dastardly deeds were read by children who hitherto knew life through such stories as The Prize for Youthful Obedience, The Search After Happiness, Little Truths, and other edifying concoctions. The colorful experiences of Motherless Mary, A Young and Friendless Orphan who was eventually Decoyed to London, appearing from the presses of a New York house in 1828, interpreted life in a new if less safe way. John Paul Jones’s Life was issued with a terrifying frontispiece and in a dress to attract small boys with an admiration and envy for buccaneers and their fierce and bloody lives. Even Noah Webster, that staid dictionarist, wrote The Pirates, A Tale for Youth.
The interest in American history began at the close of the Revolution. The scenes of all the juvenile histories were formerly laid in foreign countries. The American Colonies now had their own history, and some of the rarest, and perhaps the most attractive to the student, are those dealing with this subject. The History of America abridged for the use of Children of all Denominations, adorned with cuts, Philadelphia, Wrigley and Berriman, 1795, is engaging and wonderful. The little illustrations are marvelous examples of the illustrator’s skill. On account of the expense, the publisher duplicated the portraits, and one cut served for several worthies. Thus Christopher Columbus, General Montgomery, and His Excellency Richard Howel, Governor of New Jersey, were depicted exactly alike, the American eighteenth-century military costume looking picturesque and fearful on Columbus.
The New York Cries, printed and sold by Mahlon Day in 1826, is particularly entertaining. According to the introduction of this little book: “New York island is 15 miles long, and from one to two miles broad. It is laid out in spacious streets and avenues, with large squares and market places. The circuit of the city is about eight miles, and the number of buildings which it contains is estimated at 30,000, and the inhabitants at about 172,000.”
I cannot resist quoting the cry of Sand, as it is a reflection of the time when New Yorkers used sand on their floors, instead of costly Oriental rugs:—
Sand! Here’s your nice white Sand!
Sand, O! white Sand, O!
Buy Sand for your floor;
For so cleanly it looks
When strew’d at your door.
This sand is brought from the seashore in vessels, principally from Rockaway Beach, Long Island. It is loaded into carts, and carried about the streets of New York, and sold for about 12½ cents per bushel. Almost every little girl or boy knows that it is put on newly scrubbed floors, to preserve them clean and pleasant.
But since people have become rich, and swayed by the vain fashions of the world, by carpeting the floors of their houses, there does not appear to be so much use for Sand as in the days of our worthy ancestors.
Peter Piper’s Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation was published in Philadelphia by W. Johnson in 1836. Issued nearly a century ago, it is still enshrined in our hearts. Although there were many editions issued in America, few have survived the tooth of time and the voracity of these youthful readers. The Philadelphia edition had perfect pictures properly painted, and it is one of the most charming morsels ever devised “to please the palates of Pretty, Prattling Playfellows.” Two quotations are given in order to bring us all back to the time long ago when Peter Piper meant so much to us.
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers;
Did Peter Piper pick a peck of pickled peppers?
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
Where’s the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?
Villiam Veedon vip’s his Vig and Vaistcoat;
Did Villiam Veedon vipe his Vig and Vaistcoat?
If Villiam Veedon vip’d his Vig and Vaistcoat,
Vhere are the Vig and Vaistcoat Villiam Veedon vip’d?
The publisher’s excuse of presenting Peter Piper to the public is worthy of the book itself:—
He Prays parents to Purchase this Playful Performance, Partly to Pay him for his Patience and Pains; Partly to Provide for the Printers and Publishers; but Principally to Prevent the Pernicious Prevalence of Perverse Pronunciation.
PAGE FROM “PETER PIPER’S PRACTICAL PRINCIPLES OF PLAIN
AND PERFECT PRONUNCIATION”
P p
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled Peppers;
Did Peter Piper pick a peck of pickled Peppers?
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled Peppers,
Where’s the peck of pickled Peppers Peter Piper picked?
The book will always remain attractive to us, but when we think of the youthful minds it has mixed, the jaws it has dislocated, the tongues it has tied, we can only remark that we love it for its faults!
When I look into these old editions, these picturesque little volumes, which reveal so charmingly the quickening change from the days of the Pilgrim Fathers, I am surprised that some enterprising publisher does not reissue them to-day. Such stories as Pug’s Visit to Mr. Punch, Who Killed Cock Robin, The History of Little Fannie, Little Eliza and Little Henry, as well as the droll Old Dame Trudge and Her Parrot, would go as well now as one hundred years ago. I think they would make a fortune for someone—although I do not guarantee it!
Two specially made miniature bookcases house my whole collection of children’s books. On either side of a large sixteenth-century Spanish bookcase they hang against the wall, and visitors to my Philadelphia home take delight in looking at their quaint illustrations and the still quainter text. But alas, my library is now like a nursery without children. The whole family—eight hundred—have traveled to New York and are on exhibition in the New York Public Library, where they may be seen by all who are interested.