COBWEBS TO CATCH FLIES 52
In another part of the fair the boys ſaw ſome children toſſed about thus.
They were ſinging merrily the old nurſe's ditty.
"Now we go up, up, up,
"Now we go down, down, down;
"Now we go backward and forward,
"Now we go round, round, round."
Page from Cobwebs to Catch Flies
It was the constant effort of the artists, authors, and teachers of olden times to imbue youth with the notion that no harm could possibly come to the good—unless early death could be counted an evil. Children were taught that virtue and each good action was ever, immediately, and conspicuously rewarded. The pictures repeated and emphasized the didactic teachings; and morality, industry, and good intentions were made to triumph over things animate and inanimate. That the old illustrations were a delight to children cannot be doubted; they were so easily comprehended. The bad boys of the story always bore a miserable countenance and figure, and the good boys were smugly prosperous. The prim girls are shown the beloved of all, and the tomboys equally the misery and embarrassment. All this is lacking in modern picture books, which so truly represent real life and things that the naughty boy is not blazoned at first glance as a different being from the pious delight.
I am inclined to believe that the old-time grotesqueness was more amusing and impressive to children than modern realism; that there was a stronger association of ideas with the emphasis of disproportion; the absurdities and anachronisms of scenery and costume were unnoted by the juvenile reader because he knew no better.
In the children's books which I have examined, the colored illustrations are all of dates later than 1800 (when dated at all). Mr. Andrew W. Tuer, in the preface to his most interesting collection entitled Pages and Pictures from Forgotten Children's Books, says that the coloring was done by children in their teens who worked with great celerity. Each child had a single pan of water-color, a brush, a properly colored guide, and a pile of printed sheets. One child painted in all the red required by the copy, another the green, another the blue, and so on till the coloring was finished.