by one Sunday-school society alone.[204-A] There are few things more
remarkable in the history of juvenile literature than the growth of the
business of the American Sunday School Union. By eighteen hundred and
twenty-eight it had issued over seven hundred of these religious
trifles, varying from a sixteen-page duodecimo to a small octavo volume;
and most of these appear to have been written by Americans trying their
inexperienced pens upon a form of literature not then recognized as
difficult. The influence of such a flood of tiny books could hardly have
been other than morbid, although occasionally there floated down the
stream duodecimos which were grasped by little readers with eagerness.
Such volumes, one reader of bygone Sunday-school books tells us,
glimmered from the dark depths of death and prison scenes, and were
passed along with whispered recommendation until their well-worn covers
attracted the eye of the teacher, and were quickly found to be missing
from library shelves. Others were commended in their stead, such as
described the city boy showing the country cousin the town sights, with
most edifying conversation as to their history; or, again, amusement of
a light and alluring character was presumably to be found in the story
of a little maid who sat upon a footstool at her mother's knee, and
while she hemmed the four sides of a handkerchief, listened to the
account of missionary enterprises in the dark corners of the earth.

To us of to-day the small illustrations are perhaps the most interesting
feature, preserving as they do children's occupations and costumes. In
one book we see quaintly frocked and pantaletted girls and much buttoned
boys in Sunday-school. In another, entitled "Election Day," are pictured
two little lads watching, from the square in front of Independence Hall,
the handing in of votes for the President through a window of the famous
building--a picture that emphasizes the change in methods of casting the
ballot since eighteen hundred and twenty-eight.

That engravers were not always successful when called upon to embellish
the pages of the Sunday-school books, many of them easily prove. That
the designers of woodcuts were sometimes lacking in imagination when
obliged to depict Bible verses can have no better example than the
favorite vignette on title-pages portraying "My soul doth magnify the
Lord" as a man with a magnifying glass held over a blank space. Perhaps
equal in lack of im