of the old-fashioned mothers preferred to keep
such tales out of children's hands, and to read over and over again the
adventures of the Pilgrim, Christian. Mrs. Eliza Drinker of Philadelphia
in seventeen hundred and ninety-six was re-reading for the third time
"Pilgrim's Progress," which she considered a "generally approved book,"
although then "ridiculed by many." The "Legacy to Children" Mrs. Drinker
also read aloud to her grandchildren, having herself "wept over it
between fifty and sixty years ago, as did my grandchildren when it was
read to them. She, Hannah Hill, died in 1714, and ye book was printed in
1714 by Andrew Bradford."

But Mrs. Drinker's grandchildren had another book very different from
the pious sayings of the dying Hannah. This contained "64 little stories
and as many pictures drawn and written by Nancy Skyrin," the mother of
some of the children. P. Widdows had bound the stories in gilt paper,
and it was so prized by the family that the grandmother thought the fact
of the recovery of the book, after it was supposed to have been
irretrievably lost, worthy of an entry in her journal. Careful inquiry
among the descendants of Mrs. Drinker has led to the belief that these
stories were read out of existence many years ago. What they were about
can only be imagined. Perhaps they were incidents in the lives of the
same children who cried over the pathetic morbidity of Hannah's dying
words; or possibly rhymes and verses about school and play hours of
little Philadelphians; with pictures showing bait-the-bear, trap-ball,
and other sports of days long since passed away, as well as "I Spie
Hi" and marbles, familiar still to boys and girls.

[Illustration: _Foot Ball_]

From the fact that these stories were written for the author's own
children, another book, composed less than a century before, is brought
to mind. Comparison of even the meagre description of Mrs. Skyrin's book
with Cotton Mather's professed purpose in "Good Lessons" shows the
stride made in children's literature to be a long one. Yet a quarter of
a century was still to run before any other original writing was done in
America for children's benefit.

Nobody else in America, indeed, seems to have considered the question of
writing for nursery inmates. Mrs. Barbauld's "Easy Lessons for Children
from Two to Five Years old," written for English children, were
considered perfectly adapted to gaining knowledge and perhaps amusement.
It is true t