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!