Note:

[23] Cf. "Attorney Case" in the story of "Simple Susan."


Of the first issue of the _Parent's Assistant_ in 1796, a sufficient
account has already been given. In the "Preface" the practical intention
of several of the stories is explicitly set forth. "Lazy Lawrence," we
are told, illustrates the advantages of industry, and demonstrates that
people feel cheerful and happy whilst they are employed; while
"Tarleton" represents "the danger and the folly of that weakness of
mind, and that easiness to be led, which too often pass for good
nature"; "The False Key" points out some of the evils to which a
well-educated boy, on first going to service, is exposed from the
profligacy of his fellow-servants; "The Mimic," the drawback of vulgar
acquaintances; "Barring Out," the errors to which a high spirit and the
love of party are apt to lead, and so forth. In the final paragraph
stress is laid upon what every fresh reader must at once recognise as
the supreme merit of the stories, namely, their dramatic faculty, or (in
the actual words of the "Preface"), their art of "keeping alive hope and
fear and curiosity, by some degree of intricacy."[24] The plausibility
of invention, the amount of ingenious contrivance and of clever
expedient in these professedly nursery stories, is indeed extraordinary;
and nothing can exceed the dexterity with which--to use Dr. Johnson's
words concerning _She Stoops to Conquer_--"the incidents are so prepared
as not to seem improbable." There is no better example of this than the
admirable tale of "The Mimic," in which the most unlooked-for
occurrences succeed each other in the most natural way, while the
disappearance at the end of the little sweep, who has levanted up the