of the tobacco crops, a safer
method of payment than any that then existed between the northern and
southern towns. In the regular orders sent by George Washington to
Robert Carey in London, twice we find mention of the children's needs
and wishes. In the very first invoice of goods to be shipped to
Washington after his marriage with Mrs. Custis in seventeen hundred and
fifty-nine, he ordered "10 Shillings worth of Toys, 6 little books for
children beginning to read and a fashionable dressed baby to cost 10
Shillings;" and again later in ordering clothes, "Toys, Sugar, Images
and Comfits" for his step-children he added: "Books according to the
enclosed list to be charged equally to John Parke Custis and Martha
Parke Custis."

But in Boston the people bought directly from the booksellers, of whom
there were already many. One of these was John Mein, who played a part
in the historic Non-Importation Agreement. In seventeen hundred and
fifty this Englishman had opened in King Street a shop which he called
the "London Book-Store." Here he sold many imported books, and in
seventeen hundred and sixty-five, when the population of Boston numbered
some twenty thousand, he started the "earliest circulating library,
advertised to contain ten thousand volumes."[73-A] This shop was both
famous and notorious: famous because of its "Very Grand Assortment of
the most modern Books;" notorious because of the accusations made
against its owner when the colonials, aroused by the action of
Parliament, passed the Non-Importation Agreement.

Before the excitement had culminated in this "Agreement," John Mein's
lists of importations show that the children's pleasure had not been
forgotten, and after it their books singularly enough were connected
with this historic action.

In 1766, in the "Boston Evening Post," we find Mein's announcement that
"Little Books with Pictures for Children" could be purchased at the
London Book-Store; in December, 1767, he advertised through the columns
of the "Boston Chronicle," among other books, "in every branch of polite
literature," a "Great Variety of entertaining Books for CHILDREN, proper
for presents at Christmas or New-year's day--Prices from Two Coppers to
Two Shillings." In August of the following year Mein gave the names of
seven of Newbery's famous gilt volumes, as "to be sold" at his shop.
These "pretty little entertaining and instructive Books" were "Giles
Gingerbread," the "Adventures of little T