lve Caesars.

Such was the assortment of penny-dreadfuls and religious tracts offered
in seventeen hundred and eighty-one to the Philadelphia public for
juvenile reading. It is typical of the chapmen's library peddled about
the colonies long after they had become states. "Valentine and Orson,"
"The Seven Wise Masters," "The Seven Wise Mistresses," and "Winter
Evening Entertainment" are found in publishers' lists for many years,
and, in spite of frequent vulgarities, there was often no discrimination
between them and Newbery's far superior stories; but by eighteen hundred
and thirty almost all of these undesirable reprints had disappeared,
being buried under the quantities of Sunday-school tales held in high
favor at that date.

Meanwhile, the six years of struggle for liberty had rendered the
necessaries of life in many cases luxuries. As early as seventeen
hundred and seventy-five, during the siege of Boston, provisions and
articles of dress had reached such prices that we find thrifty Mrs. John
Adams, in Braintree, Massachusetts, foreseeing a worse condition,
writing her husband, who was one of the Council assembled in
Philadelphia, to send her, if possible, six thousand pins, even if they
should cost five pounds. Prices continued to rise and currency to
depreciate. In seventeen hundred and seventy-nine Mrs. Adams reported in
her letters to her husband that potatoes were ten dollars a bushel, and
writing-paper brought the same price per pound.

Yet family life went on in spite of these increasing difficulties. The
diaries and letters of such remarkable women as the patriotic Abigail
Adams, the Quakeress, Mrs. Eliza Drinker, the letters of the Loyalist
and exile, James Murray, the correspondence of Eliza Pinckney of
Charleston, and the reminiscences of a Whig family who were obliged to
leave New York upon the occupation of the town by British forces, abound
in those details of domestic life that give a many sided picture. Joys
derived from good news of dear ones, and family reunions; anxieties
occasioned by illness, or the armies' depredations; courageous efforts
on the part of mothers not to allow their children's education and
occupations to suffer unnecessarily; tragedies of death and ruined
homes--all are recorded with a "particularity" for which we are now
grateful to the writers.

It is through these writings, also, that we are allowed glimpses of the
enthusiasm for the cause of Liberty, or King, which was im