d cuts for some books in the
juvenile libraries of S. Wood and Mahlon Day of New York.

Of the engravers on copper, many tried their hands on these toy-books.
Among them may be mentioned Amos Doolittle of New Haven, James Poupard,
John Neagle, and W. Ralph of Philadelphia, and Rollinson of New York,
who is credited with having engraved the silver buttons on the coat
worn by Washington on his inauguration as President.

But of the copper-plate engravers, perhaps none did more work for
children's books than William Charles of Philadelphia. Charles, who is
best known by his series of caricatures of the events of the War of 1812
and of local politics, worked upon toy-books as early as eighteen
hundred and eight, when in Philadelphia he published in two parts "Tom
the Piper's Son; illustrated with whimsical engravings." In these books
both text and pictures were engraved, as will be seen in the
illustration. Charles's plates for a series of moral tales in verse were
used by his successors, Mary Charles, Morgan & Yeager, and Morgan &
Sons, for certainly fifteen years after the originals were made. To
William Charles the children in the vicinity of Philadelphia were also
probably indebted for the introduction of colored pictures. It is
possible that the young folks of Boston had the novelty of colored
picture-books somewhat before Charles introduced them in Philadelphia,
as we find that "The History and Adventures of Little Henry exemplified
in a series of figures" was printed by J. Belcher of the Massachusetts
town in 1812. These "figures" exhibited little Henry suitably attired
for the various incidents of his career, with a movable head to be
attached at will to any of the figures, which were not engraved with the
text, but each was laid in loose on a blank page. William Charles's
method of coloring the pictures engraved with the text was a slight
advance, perhaps, upon the illustrations inserted separately; but it is
doubtful whether these immovable plates afforded as much entertainment
to little readers as the separate figures similar to paper dolls
which Belcher, and somewhat later Charles also, used in a few of their
publications.

[Illustration: _Tom the Piper's Son_]

The "Peacock at Home," engraved by Charles and then colored in
aqua-tint, is one of the rare early colored picture-books still extant,
having been first issued in eighteen hundred and fourteen. The coloring
of the illustrations at first doubled the p