the second WORCESTER Edition.
WORCESTER, (MASSACHUSETTS),
From the PRESS of
THOMAS, SON & THOMAS,
and sold at their Bookstore.
MDCCXCVI.
The Holy Bible Abridged
Pilgrim's Progress was the first light reading of Benjamin Franklin. Other books of his boyhood were Plutarch's Lives, Defoe's Essays upon Projects, Cotton Mather's Essays to do Good, and Burton's Historical Collections. Another patriot, at a later day—Abraham Lincoln—learning little but the primer at school, read slowly and absorbed into his brain, his heart, and his everyday speech the Bible, Pilgrim's Progress, Æsop's Fables and Plutarch's Lives,—a good education,—to which a Life of Washington added details of local patriotism.
Illustration from Original Poetry for Young Minds
Another book for young people—which might be termed a story-book, though its lesson was deemed deeply religious—was called, A Small Book in Easy Verse Very Suitable for Children, entitled The Prodigal Daughter or the Disobedient Lady Reclaimed. It was a poem of about a hundred stanzas, relating the story of a very wilful young woman who, on being locked up in her room by her father to check her extravagance, made a league with the Devil, attempted to poison her father and mother, dropped dead apparently on her wickedness being discovered, was carried to the grave, but revived just as the sexton was about to lower her coffin in the ground. She recovered, repented, related her experiences with unction, and lived ever after happy. The title-page bears a picture of the devil as a fine gentleman wearing his tail as a sword, and having one high-topped cloven-footed boot. This book enjoyed unbounded popularity even during the early years of this century.
It was similar in teaching to a chap-book which was entitled The Afflicted Parents, or the Undutiful Child Punished. In this tale the daughter gave some very priggish advice to her wicked brother, who promptly knocks her down and kills her. He is captured, tried, condemned, sentenced, and at last executed by two pardoned highwaymen. But upon being cut down he comes to life, pompously discourses at much length, and then is executed a second time, as a warning to all disobedient children.
Death-bed scenes continued to be full of living interest. The Good Child's Little Hymnbook represents the taste of the times. One poem is on the death and burial of twins, and thus is doubly interesting. Another is on "Dying." The child asks whether he is going to die and "look white and awful and be put in the pithole with other dead people." And yet the preface runs:—
"Mamma See what a Pretty Book
At Day's Pappa has bought,
That I may at the pictures look
And by the words be taught."