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.
VII
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