"Not a word more," interrupted the chair; "here I close my lips for the next hundred years. At the end of that period, if I shall have discovered any new precepts of happiness, better than what Heaven has already taught you, they shall assuredly be given to the world."
In the energy of its utterance, the oaken chair seemed to stamp its foot, and trod, (we hope unintentionally) upon Grandfather's toe. The old gentleman started, and found that he had been asleep in the great chair, and that his heavy walking stick had fallen down across his foot.
"Grandfather," cried little Alice, clapping her hands, "you must dream a new dream, every night, about our chair!"
Laurence, and Clara, and Charley, said the same. But the good old gentleman shook his head, and declared that here ended the history, real or fabulous, of Grandfather's Chair.
Biographical Stories
BENJAMIN WEST,
SIR ISAAC NEWTON,
SAMUEL JOHNSON
OLIVER CROMWELL,
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,
QUEEN CHRISTINA.
This small volume, and others of a similar character, from the same hand, have not been composed without a deep sense of responsibility. The author regards children as sacred, and would not, for the world, cast any thing into the fountain of a young heart, that might embitter and pollute its waters. And, even in point of the reputation to be aimed at, juvenile literature is as well worth cultivating as any other. The writer, if he succeed in pleasing his little readers, may hope to be remembered by them till their own old age—a far longer period of literary existence than is generally attained, by those who seek immortality from the judgments of full grown men.