oison for that part which is to last forever? poison for
the soul?" "Poison?" said the terrified girl, throwing down the
book, and shuddering as people do who are afraid they have touched
something infectious. "Poison!" echoed the farmer's daughters,
recollecting with horror the ratsbane which Lion, the old house-dog,
had got at the day before, and after eating which she had seen him
drop down dead in convulsions. "Yes," said Mr. Simpson to the woman,
"I do again repeat, the souls of these innocent girls will be
poisoned, and may be eternally ruined by this vile trash which you
carry about."

"I now see," said Mrs. Jones to the farmer, "the reason why you
think learning to read does more harm than good. It is indeed far
better that they should never know how to tell a letter, unless you
keep such trash as this out of their way, and provide them with what
is good, or at least what is harmless. Still, this is not the fault
of reading, but the abuse of it. Wine is still a good cordial,
though it is too often abused to the purpose of drunkenness."

The farmer said that neither of his maids could read their
horn-book, though he owned he often heard them singing that song
which the parson thought so bad, but for his part it made them as
merry as a nightingale.

"Yes," said Mrs. Jones, "as a proof that it is not merely being
able to read which does the mischief, I have often heard, as I have
been crossing a hay-field, young girls singing such indecent
ribaldry as has driven me out of the field, though I well knew they
could not read a line of what they were singing, but had caught it
from others. So you see you may as well say the memory is a wicked
talent because some people misapply it, as to say that reading is
dangerous because some folks abuse it."

While they were talking, the fiddler and his woman were trying to
steal away unobserved, but Mr. Simpson stopped them, and sternly
said, "Woman, I shall have some further talk with you. I am a
magistrate as well as a minister, and if I know it, I will no more
allow a wicked book to be sold in my parish than a dose of poison."
The girls threw away all their songs, thanked Mr. Simpson, begged
Mrs. Jones would take them into her school after they had done
milking in the evenings, that they might learn to read only what was
proper. They promised they would never more deal with any but sober,
honest hawkers, such as sell good little books, Christmas carols,
and harmless songs