A century of children's books

by Florence V. Barry

Bewick’s beasts and birds forsook their natural haunts and danced in the most carefully preserved parterres. They came in their thousands, of all sizes and nationalities. “W. B.” followed Mrs. Dorset with The Elephant’s Ball, and the Season was extended till all “the Children of Earth and the Tenants of Air” were exhausted. Children ran out of the Lambs’ quiet parlour into a garden of perpetual Feasts. What could come better after the Butterfly’s Ball than a Wedding Among the Flowers?

But there was still an old-fashioned lady, one Miss Elizabeth Turner, who held aloof, wielding the rod of Dr. Watts. With the perversity of their race, the Lilliputians fell into step as they approached her, and listened to her warnings with a fearful joy. She told them, in simple numbers, how Miss Sophia would not wait for the garden gate to be opened, and demonstrated by her fall, that “little girls should never climb”; she expected them to believe that every little boy with a craving for adventure must share the fate of one who

“Once was pretty Jack

And had a kind Papa;

But, silly child! he ran to play

Too far from home, a long, long way,

And did not ask Mama.

So he was lost, and now must creep

Up chimneys, crying, Sweep! Sweep! Sweep!”