The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-11-02
THE MEETING SHOW
Some of It's Facts and Fancies.

Written for the JOURNAL AND COURIER.l
 A REWARD OF MERIT.
 Children's looks are made wonderfully attractive nowadays. Many of the stories written for them are charming; the little songs and poems sweet and playful and fanciful. The childs imag- ination is stimulated by them, taste is developed, and poetic ideals created. The most gifted of authors are proud to write a successful book for young people, and artists give of their best to illustrate them. Then the printer and the binder display their skill, and of the result elder people, for whom they were not written say with a sigh, half of envy and half of appreciative pleas ure-"We had no such books when I was young"
 Even school books are made as at tractive as possible with good paper, clear type, and handsomely reproduced illustrations. The children of to-day are favored far more than those of twenty years ago. When then of the children of sixty years ago and more? Books were few and dear, and there was little of catering to their tastes. As for papers and magazines prepared es- pecially for young people, they had not been thought of. There were the books their elders read if they could not un- derstand them there was little else to offer.
 Here before me lies 8 prize book, won by a school girl of thirteen, away back in 1923. It is only a little book with reading matter. The paper is coarse, but the print is fairly good. Two wood-cuts embellish it; one on the cov- CT represents traveller marching sturd- fly before a buffeting gale and long slant lines of rain. The frontispiece represents cocoanut palms with scantily draped Africans shining up ptheir trunks. These illustrations" have nothing whatever to do with the text Thus reads the title page: "A Fathers Seri- ous Advice to His Children, Respecting Their Conduct in the World; Civil Mor- al, and Religious. Recommended to Parents and Guardians, to Governors of Seminaries, and to Teachers of Sun day Schools. Sidney's Press. For John Babcock and Son, New Haven, etc., etc., 1920" Across the top of the little page is written the name of the girl. who doubtless received this "prize" with rapture, the name of her instructor, /" and the date. On the next page, as on the back of the cover, John tBabcock and Son, Church street, advertise school books for sale: the English Reader, the American Preceptor; Murray's Cram mar, Daboll's Arithmetic, Webster's Spelling Book, and Morse's Geography with several others; dictionaries bibles, and catechisms. Serious Advice. &c,' D is the heading of the next page, and ser ious enough it is; solemn and didactic and rather gloomy, and thickly sprin- kled with texts and Scripture references. The discourse begins, after a brief intro duction, with that which is the origin of all true wisdom and happiness: the holy fear of God" Then follows page after page of admonition, sensible enough, but very grave and weighty reading it is for child. Here are some of it's solemn sentences:
 'Cultivate self possession and be free; live at home, for in yourselves lie greater treasures hid, than in the Indies. The pomps and luxuries of the world are lying vanities and the minimizing and inconsiderate are captivated by them: but the man who lives at home stands on higher ground, he sees the delusion, contemns the fol- ly and pitiee the deluded''
 "In whatever station divine provi- dence may place you. be humble. Sure ly this becomes creatures who are en- tirely dependent for life and all things on the great Lord of heaven and earth. In order to excite this spirit in you, live as under the eye of the omni- present God; this will afford you a sense of His Excellency and your vile ness, of His Majesty and your mean ness" Marriage, the training of chil- dren, the treatment of servants, the guidance of business affairs, manners, morals, ethics, all are summed up in this treatise. The young readers who formed their lives upon it must have been remarkable for piety and pros perity. But perhaps most of them