a coach, ye gods!'"

is comparatively a very Spartan for brevity. This may be a cheap way of
writing books; but the books are a dear bargain to the buyer.

A book is not necessarily ill adapted to a child because its ideas and
expressions are over his head. Some books, that were not written for
children and would shock all Mr. Abbott's most dearly cherished ideas,
are still excellent reading for them. Walter Scott's poems and novels
will please an intelligent child. Cooper's Leatherstocking tales will
not be read by the lad of fourteen more eagerly than by his little
sister who cannot understand half of them. A child fond of reading can
have no more delightful book than the "Faerie Queene," unless it be the
"Arabian Nights," which was not written as a "juvenile." There are pages
by the score in "Robinson Crusoe" that a child cannot understand,--and
it is all the better reading for him on that account. A child has a
comfort in unintelligible words that few men can understand. Homer's
"Iliad" is good reading, though only a small part may be comprehended.
(We are not, however, so much in favor of mystery as to recommend the
original Greek.) Do our children of the year 1860 ever read a book
called "The Pilgrim's Progress"? Hawthorne's "Wonder-Book" is good for
children, though better for adults.

Then look at our second rule. What, after all, constitutes a "good
moral"? We say that no book has a good moral which teaches a child that
goodness and effeminacy, laziness and virtue, are convertible terms; no
book is good that is "goody," no book is moral that moralizes. The
intention may be good, but the teaching is not. Have as much as you will
of poetical justice, but beware of making your books mere vehicles for
conveying maxims of propriety. You cannot so deceive a child. You may
talk _at_ him, while pretending to tell him a story, but he will soon be
shy of you. He has learned by bitter experience too much of the
falseness of this world, and has been too often beguiled by sugared
pills, to be slow in detecting the sugared pills of your
literature,--especially, O Jacob Abbott! when the pills have so little,
so very little, sugar.

Our notion of a good moral is a strong, breezy, open-air moral, one that
teaches courage, and therefore truth. These are the most important
things for a child to know, and a book which teaches these alone is
moral enough. And these can be taught without offending the mind of the
young reader,