ther in the afternoon for an hour and a
half. The Bible was used as a reader, and the teaching was done regularly
by paid instructors.

The first Sunday-school library owed its origin to a wish to further the
instruction given in the school, and hence contained books thought
admirably adapted to Sunday reading. Among the somewhat meagre stock
provided for this purpose were Doddridge's "Power of Religion," Miss
More's tracts and the writings of her imitators, together with "The
Fairchild Family," by Mrs. Sherwood, "The Two Lambs," by Mrs. Cameron,
"The Economy of Human Life," and a little volume made up of selections
from Mrs. Barbauld's works for children. "The Economy of Human Life,"
said Miss Sedgwick (who herself afterwards wrote several good books for
girls), "was quite above my comprehension, and I thought it unmeaning
and tedious." Testimony of this kind about a book which for years
appeared regularly upon booksellers' lists enables us to realize that
the average intelligent child of the year eighteen hundred was beginning
to be as bored by some of the literature placed in his hands as a child
would be one hundred years later.

To increase this special class of books, Hannah More devoted her
attention. Her forty tracts comprising "The Cheap Repository" included
"The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain" and "The Two Shoemakers," which, often
appearing in American booksellers' advertisements, were for many years a
staple article in Sunday-school libraries, and even now, although pushed
to the rear, are discoverable in some such collections of books. Their
objective point is best given by their author's own words in the preface
to an edition of "The Search after Happiness; A Pastoral Drama," issued
by Jacob Johnson of Philadelphia in eighteen hundred and eleven.

Miss More began in the self-depreciatory manner then thought modest and
becoming in women writers: "The author is sensible it may have many
imperfections, but if it may be happily instrumental in producing a
regard to Religion and Virtue in the minds of Young Persons, and afford
them an innocent, and perhaps not altogether unuseful amusement in the
exercise of recitation, the end for which it was originally composed ...
will be fully answered." A drama may seem to us above the comprehension
of the poor and illiterate class of people whose attention Miss More
wished to hold, but when we feel inclined to criticise, let us not
forget that the author was one who had w