impression produced upon their infant minds by
certain of the tales. Some remember the cruel child and the canary.
Others recollect their admiration of the little maid who, when all
others deserted her young patroness, lying ill with the smallpox, won
the undying gratitude of the mother by her tender nursing. The author,
blind himself to the possibilities of detriment to the sick child by
unskilled care, held up to the view of all, this example of devotion of
one girl in contrast to the hard-heartedness of many others. This book
seems also to have been called by the literal translation of its
original title, "Ami des Enfans;" for in an account of the occupations
of one summer Sunday in seventeen hundred and ninety-seven, Julia
Cowles, living in Litchfield, Connecticut, wrote: "Attended meeting all
day long, but do not recollect the text. Read in 'The Children's
Friend.'" Many children would not have been permitted to read so nearly
secular a book; but evidently Julia Cowles's parents were liberal in
their view of Sunday reading after the family had attended "meeting all
day long."

In addition to the interest of the context of these toy-books of a past
generation, one who handles such relics of a century ago sees much of
the fashions for children of that day. In "The Looking Glass," for
instance, the illustrations copied from engravings by the famous English
artist, Bewick, show that at the end of the eighteenth century children
were still clothed like their elders; the coats and waistcoats, knee
breeches and hats, of boys were patterned after gentlemen's garments,
and the caps and aprons, kerchiefs and gowns, for girls were
reproductions of the mothers' wardrobes.

Again, the fly-leaf of "The History of Master Jacky and Miss Harriot"
arrests the eye by its quaint inscription: "Rozella Ford's Book. For
being the second speller in the second class." At once the imagination
calls up the exercises in a village school at the end of a year's
session: a row of prim little maids and sturdy boys, standing before the
school dame and by turn spelling in shrill tones words of three to five
syllables, until only two, Rozella and a better speller, remain
unconfused by Dilworth's and Webster's word mysteries. Then the two
children step forward with bow and curtsey to receive their tiny gilt
prizes from a pile of duodecimos upon the teacher's desk. Indeed, the
giving of rewards was carried to such an extent as to become a great
drai