o see me.

RICHARD HENRY LEE.

[_G. Washington to R.H. Lee_]

DEAR DICKEY--I thank you very much for the pretty picture
book you gave me. Sam asked me to show him the pictures and I showed
him all the pictures in it; and I read to him how the tame Elephant
took care of the Master's little boy, and put him on his back and
would not let anybody touch his master's little son. I can read
three or four pages sometimes without missing a word.... I have a
little piece of poetry about the picture book you gave me but I
mustn't tell you who wrote the poetry.

G.W.'s compliments to R.H.L.
And likes his book full well,
Henceforth will count him his friend
And hopes many happy days he may spend.

Your good friend
GEORGE WASHINGTON.

In a note Mr. Lossing states that he had copies of these two letters,
sent him by a Mr. Lee, who wrote: "The letter of Richard Henry Lee was
written by himself, and uncorrected sent by him to his boy friend George
Washington. The poetical effusion was, I have heard, written by a Mr.
Howard, a gentleman who used to visit at the house of Mr. Washington."

It would be gratifying to know the titles of these two books, so
evidently English chap-book tales. It is probable that they were
imported by a shop-keeper in Alexandria, as in seventeen hundred and
forty-one there was only one press in Virginia, owned by William Sharps,
who had moved from Annapolis in seventeen hundred and thirty-six.
Luxuries were so much more common among the Virginia planters, and life
was so much more roseate in hue than was the case in the northern
colonies, that it seems most natural that two southern boys should have
left the earliest account of any real story-books. Though unfortunately
nameless, they at least form an interesting coincidence. Bought in
seventeen hundred and forty-one, they follow just one hundred years
later than the meeting of the General Court, which was responsible for
the preparation of Cotton's "Milk for Babes," and precede by a century
the date when an American story-book literature was recognized as very
different from that written for English children.

FOOTNOTES:

[6-A] _Records of Mass. Bay_, vol. i, p. 37 h.

[6-B] _Ibid._, vol. i, p. 37 e.

[6-C] Ford, _The New England Primer_, p. 83.

[6-D] _Records of Mass. Bay_, vol. i, p. 328.

[7-A] Ford, _The New England Primer_, p. 92.

[7-B] _