The River Falls journal. (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1857-1861, 1860-05-23

ious feeling in their hearts. But tb an,
God be thanked, neither the children
nor, for the most part. their parents un-
derstood the CatechisIn; SO the harm
was small; rather in the good they did
not get than in the harm they did.
"But las sadly there were compensa-
tons for the little people. For the
younger ones the primer, which contain
ed the catechisni, contained many things
hesidos; things that young and healthy
minds could contrive to grow upon.-
There was that wonderful alphabet with
its pictures aad couplet of verses to each
letter, of which l remember nothing bad
but the opening:
In Adams Fall,
We sinned all.
, This might have done the children
harm if they understood and believed, or
tried to believe the meaning it was franz
ed to convey, orat least it might have
perpiexed and troubled their yorng
thoughts. But don't think they got
any insight of that meaning, and so no
harm; nor would they, | think if the coup
let had been turned into quaItrain by
adding, what might with equal truth be
added:
In Cain his Murther,
We sinned further.
There 100 was the moving ballad of
the burning of John Rogers, and the still
more mo~ing pictures of his wife and
nine small children around him at the
stake; the children's heads going down
just like the steps of stairs from biggest
to least, except the littlest one that was
carried at tho mothers breast. Other
things there were too in that primer
which (witheut any purpose or conscious
ness, you may be sore on the part of its
makors) had the genial effect of good
fiction on the childish mind and heart.
"Tben, too, the children, both young
and older, had the range of the Bible,
perhaps the great Family Bible, contain
ing sometimes most remarkable wood
cuts or engrayings, and even perhaps the
Apocrypha, a marvellous addition to
their treasures, although some of them
were not allowed to read it on the Sab
bath. The Bible! full of stories, all nov
els and tales to children. some OF them in
decd not so suitable and salutary for child
rem as Robinson Crusoe aud other nov
els that might be named, Int very many
of them of such beauty and interest as no
other book can surpass: the stories Of
Joseph; of Ruth; of little Samuel; or
David and Goliath; of Daniel; of Jonah
and those parallels Of our Lord, the Good
Samaritan and the Prodigal Son.
which makes little peoples eyes fill up
and run over with sympathetic tears, SO
much do they quicken the imaginative
faculty and touch the heart.
Then for weekdays there was the
blessed nonsense of Mother Goose's Nc
lodies, which the good Lord Il cannot
but think) took special care, through his
hold on the instincts of mother hearts,
that no black doctrines of pre- destination
and DEGREES, and no puiitanical sourness
of sanctimony should deprive the little
ones of; and as they grew bigger, there
were '-Esop's Fables with those wonder
full wood-cuts, in the spelling books, where
were stories too, such as the story of Poor
Joseph (who had so many children to
feed and so little to feed them witty and
his little boy, who thought he would not
eat his share of the bread, bit die and
go to God, that there might be more for
his brothers and sisters; story that has
drawn many tear from eyes: and other
stories, more than | can mention; all of
them novels and tales and romances to
the young. Besides this, and it seems
to have been special 'dispensation Of
Providence in favor of the young, it al
most always happened, in some mysteri-
Gus way, by nobody's procurement in
par icular, there went circulating through
ever neishborhood, stray copies, of Gin
,lerella, or the Glass Slipper Beauty and
Beast the Transformation of Indus
.Aladdin's Wonderful Lamp and Sin
bad's Voyages which somehow the pious
fathers and mother failed to see belonged
to the class of books prohibited; and SO
the little ones got those ideas ofthe won
derful and supernatural which, entering
the childish mind through the imagina-
ton, in the garb offction, prepare it for
divine eternal truths. Then too, God be
there were but few children, in
at least, that did not in
some way, through His contrivances, get
hold of Robinson Crusoe, the most fas-
cinating of human books to children at
a proper age; Of the reading whereof OBJ
persons would find proof in num-
berless islands, not surrounded by water
where shipwreckod little people built l,uts
and played at 'Crusoe' and his imam
Friday with great delight, while their
minds unfolded and grew in the joyous
activity Of their play.
$50 itmay be seen what propidences
and what compensations there were for
children in those days story-books were
few. and good peoples thoughts restric-
tive and austere."