s his great lack of
self-control by exclaiming, "The everlasting whipcord, I declare," and
thereupon Patty, Mr. Gresham's only child, who has suffered from Hal's
defects of character, openly rejoices when the prize is given to Ben. As
is usual with Miss Edgeworth's badly behaved children, the reader now
sees the error of Hal's ways, and perceives also that in the lad's
acknowledgment of the truth of the formerly scorned motto, "Waste not,
want not," the era of his reformation has begun.

Perpetual action was the key to the success of Miss Edgeworth's
writings. If to us her fictitious children seem like puppets whose
strings are too obviously jerked, the monotonous moral cloaked in the
variety of incident was liked by her own generation,

Miss Edgeworth not only pleased the children, but received the applause
of their parents and friends. Sir Walter Scott, the prince of
story-tellers, found much to admire in her tales, and wrote of "Simple
Susan:" "When the boy brings back the lamb to the little girl, there is
nothing for it but to put down the book and cry." Susan was the pattern
child in the tale, "clean as well as industrious," while Barbara--a
violent contrast--was conceited and lazy, and a _lady_ who "could
descend without shame from the height of insolent pride to the lowest
measure of fawning familiarity." Therefore it is small wonder that Sir
Walter passed her by without mention.

However much we may value an English author's admiration for Miss
Edgeworth's story-telling gifts, it is to America that we naturally turn
to seek contemporary opinion. In educational circles there is no doubt
that Miss Edgeworth won high praise. That her books were not always easy
to procure, however, we know from a letter written from Washington by
Mrs. Josiah Quincy, whose life as a child during the Revolution has
already been described. When Mrs. Quincy was living in the capital city
in eighteen hundred and ten, during her husband's term as Congressman,
she found it difficult to provide her family with books. She therefore
wrote to Boston to a friend, requesting to have sent her Miss
Edgeworth's "Moral Tales," "if the work can be obtained in one of the
bookstores. If not," she continued, "borrow one ... and I will replace
it with a new copy. Cut the book out of its binding and enclose the
pages in packets.... Be careful to send the entire text and title page."
The scarcity in Washington of books for young people Mrs. Quincy though