efore her death," wrote
Mr. Hale, "she directed her son to write emphatically that every poem in
her book of eighteen hundred and thirty was of her own composition."
Although rarely seen in print, "Mary had a Little Lamb" has outlived
all other nursery rhymes of its day; perhaps because it had most truly
the quality, unusual at the time, of being told directly and simply--a
quality, indeed, that appeals to every generation.

Miss Leslie, like Mrs. Hale, did much editing, beginning on adult
gift-books and collections of housewife's receipts, and then giving most
of her attention to juvenile literature. As editor Miss Leslie did good
work on the "Violet" and the "Pearl," both gift-books for children. She
also abridged, edited, and rewrote "The Wonderful Traveller," and the
adventures of Munchausen, Gulliver, and Sindbad, heroes often
disregarded by this period of lack of imagination and over-supply of
educational theories. Also, as a writer of stories for little girls and
school-maidens, Eliza Leslie met with warm approval on both sides of the
Atlantic.

Undoubtedly the success of Eliza Leslie's "American Girls' Book,"
modelled after the English "Boy's Own Book," and published in 1831,
added to the popularity attained by her earlier work, although of this
she was but the compiler.

The "American Girls' Book" was intended for little girls, and by
dialogue, the prevailing mode of conveying instruction or amusement,
numerous games and plays were described. Already many of the pastimes
have gone out of fashion. "Lady Queen Anne" and "Robin's Alive," "a
dangerous game with a lighted stick," are altogether unknown; "Track the
Rabbit" has changed its name to "Fox and Geese;" "Hot Buttered Beans"
has found a substitute in "Hunt the Thimble;" and "Stir the Mush" has
given place to "Going to Jerusalem."

But Miss Leslie did more than preserve for us these old-fashioned
games. She has left sketches of children's ways and nature in her
various stories for little people. She shared, of course, in the habit
of moralizing characteristic of her day, but her children are childish,
and her heroines are full of the whims, and have truly the pleasures and
natural emotions, of real children.

Miss Leslie began her work for children in eighteen hundred and
twenty-seven, when "Atlantic Stories" were published, and as her
sketches of child-life appeared one after another, her pen grew more
sure in its delineation of characters and her tale