behaviour; thus _Good Children_ are portrayed in cuts, which accompany
the directions for attaining perfection. Proverbs, having been hitherto
introduced into school-books, appear again quite naturally in this
source of diversion, which closes--at least in the American
edition--with sixty-three "Rules for Behaviour." These rules include
those suitable for various occasions, such as "At the Meeting-House,"
"Home," "The Table," "In Company," and "When abroad with other
Children." To-day, when many such rules are as obsolete as the tiny
pages themselves, this chapter affords many glimpses of the customs and
etiquette of the old-fashioned child's life. Such a direction as "Be not
hasty to run out of Meeting-House when Worship is ended, as if thou
weary of being there" (probably an American adaptation of the English
original), recalls the well-filled colonial meeting-house, where weary
children sat for hours on high seats, with dangling legs, or screwed
their small bodies in vain efforts to touch the floor. Again we can see
the anxious mothers, when, after the long sermon was brought to a close,
they put restraining hands upon the little ones, lest they, in haste to
be gone, should forget this admonition. The formalism of the time is
suggested in this request, "Make a Bow always when come Home, and be
instantly uncovered," for the ceremony of polite manners in these
bustling days has so much relaxed that the modern boy does all that is
required if he remembers to be "instantly uncovered when come Home."
Among the numerous other requirements only one more may be cited--a rule
which reveals the table manners of polite society in its requisite for
genteel conduct: "Throw not anything under the Table. Pick not thy teeth
at the Table, unless holding thy Napkin before thy mouth with thine
other Hand." With such an array of intellectual and moral contents, the
little "Pocket-Book" may appear to-day to be almost anything except an
amusement book. Yet this was the phase that the English play-book first
assumed, and it must not be forgotten that English prose fiction was