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. Crude and badly drawn as they now seem, they were surely
sufficient to attract the child of their generation.

About the same time old Zechariah Fowle, who apprenticed Isaiah Thomas,
and both printed and vended chap-books in Back Street, Boston,
advertised among his list of books "Lately Publish'd" this same small
book, together with "A Token for Youth," the "Life and Death of
Elizabeth Butcher," "A Preservative from the Sins and Follies of
Childhood and Youth," "The Prodigal Daughter," "The Happy Child," and
"The New Gift for Children with Cuts." Of these "The New Gift" was
certainly a real story-book, as one of a later edition still extant
readily proves.

Thus the children in both countries were prepared to enjoy Newbery's
miniature story-books, although for somewhat different reasons: in
England the literature had reached a point too artificial to be
interesting to little ones; in America the product of the press and the
character of the majority of the juvenile importations, the reprints, or
home-made chap-books, has been shown to be such as would hardly attract
those who were to be the future arbiters of the colonies' destiny.

The reasons for the coming to light of this new form of infant
literature have been dwelt upon in order to show the necessity for some
change in the kind of reading-matter to be put in the hands of the