THE PARENT'S ASSISTANT OR STORIES FOR CHILDREN

by Maria Edgeworth




Preface Addressed to Parents.

Our great lexicographer, in his celebrated eulogium on Dr. Watts, thus
speaks in commendation of those productions which he so successfully
penned for the pleasure and instruction of the juvenile portion of the
community.

"For children," says Dr. Johnson, "he condescended to lay aside the
philosopher, the scholar, and the wit, to write little poems of devotion,
and systems of instruction adapted to their wants and capacities, from
the dawn of reason to its gradation of advance in the morning of life.
Every man acquainted with the common principles of human action, will
look with veneration on the writer, who is at one time combating Locke,
and at another time making a catechism for CHILDREN IN THEIR FOURTH YEAR.
A voluntary descent from the dignity of science is perhaps the hardest
lesson which humility can teach."

It seems, however, no very easy task to write for children. Those only
who have been interested in the education of a family, who have patiently
followed children through the first processes of reasoning, who have
daily watched over their thoughts and feelings--those only who know with
what ease and rapidity the early association of ideas are formed, on
which the future taste, character and happiness depend, can feel the