437

The Strait Gate and the Broad Way 444

Parley the Porter 456

The Grand Assizes; or General Jail Delivery 470

The Servant Man turned Soldier, or the Fair-weather
Christian 479

TALES

FOR THE COMMON PEOPLE.

"Religion is for the man in humble life, and to raise his nature,
and to put him in mind of a state in which the privileges of
opulence will cease, when he will be equal by nature, and may be
more than equal by virtue."--_Burke on the French Revolution._

ADVERTISEMENT.

To improve the habits, and raise the principles of the common
people, at a time when their dangers and temptations, moral and
political, were multiplied beyond the example of any former period,
was the motive which impelled the author of these volumes to devise
and prosecute the institution of the "Cheap Repository." This plan
was established with an humble wish not only to counteract vice and
profligacy on the one hand, but error, discontent, and false
religion on the other. And as an appetite for reading had, from a
variety of causes, been increased among the inferior ranks in this
country, it was judged expedient, at this critical period, to supply
such wholesome aliment as might give a new direction to their taste,
and abate their relish for those corrupt and inflammatory
publications which the consequences of the French Revolution have
been so fatally pouring in upon us.

The success of the plan exceeded the most sanguine expectations of
its projector. Above two millions of the tracts were sold within the
first year, besides very large numbers in Ireland; and they continue
to be very extensively circulated, in their original form of single
tracts, as well as in three bound volumes.

As these stories, though _principally_, are not calculated
_exclusively_ for the middle and lower classes of society, the
author has, at the desire of her friends, selected those which were
written by herself, and presented them to the public in this
collection of her works, in an enlarged and improved form.

THE

SHEPHERD OF SALISBURY PLAIN.

Mr. Johnson, a very worthy charitable gentleman, was traveling some
time ago across one of those vast plains which are well known in
Wiltshire. It was a fine summer's evening, and he rode slowly that
he might have leis