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Primary Readers 239
chance which thus ftrangely recruited his purfe; that it might not lack fomething to give to the poor.
Bleft is the man whofe bowels move, And melt with pity to the poor; Whofe foul with fympathizing love, Feels what his fellow faints endure. His heart contrives for their relief, More good than his own hands can do: He in the time of general grief, Shall find the Lord hath bowels too.
A book very like the one I have been describing, both in title and text, was the Child's Instructer and Moral Primer, published at Portland, Maine, in 1822. The stories in it have to do mostly with such children as Timothy Trusty, who " is very desirous to learn"; Patty Primp, whose notion is that " to be a lady one must be idle, careless, proud, scorn inferiors, calumniate the absent, read novels, play at cards, and excel in fine dress " ; John Pugg, whose "face and hands you would think were not washed once in a fortnight" ; and Tom Nummy, who " hates his book as bad as the rod." Some of the other suggestively named characters are Tim Delicate, Charles Mindful, Caroline Modesty, Susy Pertinence, Cynthia Spindle, and Jack Fisty-Cuff. Except for Cynthia, you know what to expect of each without further details.
To indicate how scarce elementary readers were in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, I quote from the preface to Leavitt's Easy Lessons in Reading, Keene, New Hampshire, 1823 : — |
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