an who in his choice of a wife was influenced by
strict religious principles; the other boy inherited his disposition
from his mother, a lady of bland manners and fine external appearance,
but who failed to establish in her offspring "correct principles of
virtue, religion, and morality." The author paused at this point in the
narrative to discuss the frailties of the lady, before resuming its
slender thread. Who to-day could wade through with children the
good-goody books of that generation?

Happily, many of the writers for little ones chose to be unknown, for it
would be ungenerous to disparage by name these ladies who considered
their productions edifying, and in their ingenuousness never dreamed
that their stories were devoid of every quality that makes a child's
book of value to the child. They were literally unconscious that their
tales lacked that simplicity and directness in style, and they
themselves that knowledge of human nature, absolutely necessary to
construct a pleasing and profitable story. The watchwords of these
painstaking ladies were "religion, virtue, and morality," and heedless
of everything else, they found oblivion in most cases before they gained
recognition from the public they longed to influence.

The decade following eighteen hundred and thirty brought prominently to
the foreground six American authors among the many who occasioned brief
notice. Of these writers two were men and four were women. Jacob Abbott
and Samuel G. Goodrich wrote the educational tales, Abbott largely for
the nursery, while Goodrich devoted his attention mainly to books for
the little lads at school. The four women, Mrs. Sarah J. Hale, Miss
Eliza Leslie, Miss Catharine Sedgwick, and Mrs. Lydia H. Sigourney,
wrote mainly for girls, and took American life as their subject. Mrs.
Hale wrote much for adults, but when editor of the "Juvenile
Miscellany," she made various contributions to it. Yet to-day we know
her only by one of her "Poems for Children," published in Boston in
eighteen hundred and thirty--"Mary had a Little Lamb."

Mary's lamb has travelled much farther than to school, and has even
reached that point when its authorship has been disputed. Quite recently
in the "Century Magazine" Mrs. Hale's claim to its composition has been
set forth at some length by Mr. Richard W. Hale, who shows clearly her
desire when more than ninety years of age to be recognized as the
originator of these verses, In fact, "shortly b