d a
bad word and was vexed when he heard any other person do it." He also,
although himself "saved by grace," as the phrase then ran in evangelical
circles, was chronically anxious lest he should offend the Lord. To
quote verbatim from this relic of the former religious life would savor
too much of ridiculing those things that were sacred and serious to the
people of that day. Yet the main incidents of the story were these:
Henry's conversion took place after a year and a half of hard work on
the part of a missionary, who finally had the satisfaction of bringing
little Henry "from the state of grossest heathen darkness and ignorance
to a competent knowledge of those doctrines necessary to salvation."
This was followed immediately by the offer of Henry to give all his toys
for a Bible with a purple morocco cover. Then came the preparations for
the teacher's departure, when she called him to her room and catechized
him in a manner worthy of Cotton Mather a century before. After his
teacher's departure the boy, mindful of the lady's final admonition,
sought to make a Christian of his bearer, Boosy. Like so many story-book
parents, Henry's mother was altogether neglectful of her child; and
consequently he was left much to the care of Boosy--time which he
improved with "arguments with Boosy concerning the great Creator of
things." But it is not necessary to follow Henry through his ardent
missionary efforts to the admission of the black boy of his sinful
state, nor to the time when the hero was delivered from this evil world.
Enough has been said to show that the religious child of fiction was not
very different from little Elizabeth Butcher or Hannah Hill of colonial
days, whose pious sayings were still read when "Little Henry" was
introduced to the American child.

Indeed, when Mrs. Sherwood's fictitious children were not sufficiently
religious to come up to the standard of five-year-old Henry, their
parents were invariably as pious as the father of the "Fairchild
Family." This was imported and reprinted for more than one generation as
a "best seller." It was almost a modernized version of Janeway's "Token
for Children," with Mather's supplement of "A Token for the Children of
New England," in its frequent production of death-bed scenes, together
with painful object lessons upon the sinfulness of every heart. To
impress such lessons Mr. Fairchild spared his family no sight of horror
or distress. He even took them to see a