e_ entertaining to
their offspring. Such an idea put into words upon paper and advertised
in so well-read a sheet as the "Boston Evening Post," must surely have
impressed fathers and mothers really solicitous for the family welfare
and anxious to provide harmless pleasure. This pictorial element was
further encouraged by Franklin, when, in 1747, he reprinted, probably
for the first time in this country, "Dilworth's New Guide to the English
Tongue." In this school-book, after the alphabets and spelling lessons,
a special feature was introduced, that is, illustrated "Select Fables."
The cuts at the top of each fable possess an added interest from the
supposition that they were engraved by the printer himself; and the
constant use of the "Guide" by colonial school-masters and mistresses
made their pupils unconsciously quite ready for more illustrated and
fewer homiletic volumes.

Indeed, before the middle of the century pictures had become an accepted
feature of the few juvenile books, and "The History of the Holy Jesus"
versified for little ones was issued by at least two old Boston printers
in 1747 and 1748 with more than a dozen cuts. Among the rare extant
copies of this small chap-book is one that, although torn and disfigured
by tiny fingers and the century and a half since it pleased its first
owner, bears the personal touch of this inscription "Ebenezer ... Bought
June ... 1749 ... price 0=2=d." Was the price marked upon its page as a
reminder that two shillings was a large price to pay for a boy's book?
Perhaps for this reason it received the careful handling that has
enabled us to examine it, when so many of its contemporaries and
successors have vanished.

The versified story, notwithstanding its quaintness of diction, begins
with a dignified directness:

"The glorious blessed Time had come,
The Father had decreed,
Jesus of _Mary_ there was born,
And in a Manger laid."

At the end are two _Hymns_, entitled "Delight in the Lord Jesus," and
"Absence from Christ intolerable." The final stanza is typical of one
Puritan doctrine:

"The Devil throws his fiery Darts,
And wicked Ones do act their parts,
To ruin me when Christ is gone,
And leaves me all alone."

The woodcuts are not the least interesting feature of this old-time
duodecimo, from the picture showing the mother reading to her children
to the illustration of the quaking of the earth on the day of the
crucifixion. Cru