op's Fables, nor four Ainsworth's Dictionaries, so it is probable
that Deborah Franklin's far from ready pen put down the book order for
the spring, and that Sally herself was only to be supplied with the
"Perceptor," the "Fables," and the "one good Quarto Bibel."

As far as it is now possible to judge, the people of the towns soon
learned the value of Newbery's little nursery tales, and after seventeen
hundred and fifty-five, when most of his books were written and
published, they rapidly gained a place on the family book-shelves in
America.

By seventeen hundred and sixty Hugh Gaine, printer, publisher, patent
medicine seller, and employment agent for New York, was importing
practically all the Englishman's juvenile publications then for sale. At
the "Bible and Crown," where Gaine printed the "Weekly Mercury," could
be bought, wholesale and retail, such books as, "Poems for Children
Three Feet High," "Tommy Trapwit," "Trip's Book of Pictures," "The New
Year's Gift," "The Christmas Box," etc.

Gaine himself was a prominent printer in New York in the latter half of
the eighteenth century. Until the Revolution his shop was a favorite one
and well patronized. But when the hostilities began, the condition of
his pocket seems to have regulated his sympathies, and he was by turn
Whig and Tory according to the possession of New York by so-called
Rebels, or King's Servants. When the British army evacuated New York,
Gaine, wishing to keep up his trade, dropped the "Crown" from his sign.
Among the enthusiastic patriots this ruse had scant success. In
Freneau's political satire of the bookseller, the first verse gives a
strong suggestion of the ridicule to follow:

"And first, he was, in his own representation,
A printer, once of good reputation.
He dwelt in the street called Hanover-Square,
(You'll know where it is if you ever was there
Next door to the dwelling of Mr. Brownjohn,
Who now to the drug-shop of Pluto is gone)
But what do I say--who e'er came to town,
And knew not Hugh Gaine at the _Bible_ and _Crown_."

A contemporary of, and rival bookseller to, Gaine in seventeen hundred
and sixty was James Rivington. Mr. Hildeburn has given Rivington a
rather unenviable reputation; still, as he occasionally printed (?) a
child's book, Mr. Hildeburn's remarks are quoted:

"Until the advent of Rivington it was generally possible to tell from an
American Bookseller's advertisement in the curren