. At all events, the thorough
approval by parents and clergy of this small school-book soon brought to
many a household the novelty of a real picture-book.

Hitherto little children had been perforce content with the few
illustrations the adult books offered. Now the printing of this tiny
volume, with its curious black pictures accompanying the text of
religious instruction, catechism, and alphabets, marked the milestone on
the long lane that eventually led to the well-drawn pictures in the
modern books for children.

It is difficult at so late a day to estimate correctly the pleasure this
famous picture alphabet brought to the various colonial households. What
the original illustrations were like can only be inferred from those in
"The Holy Bible in Verse," and in the later editions of the primer
itself. In the Bible Adam (or is it Eve?) stands pointing to a tree
around which a serpent is coiled. By seventeen hundred and thirty-seven
the engraver was sufficiently skilled to represent two figures, who
stand as colossal statues on either side of the tree whose fruit had
such disastrous effects. However, at a time when art criticism had no
terrors for the engraver, it could well have been a delight to many a
family of little ones to gaze upon

"The Lion bold
The Lamb doth hold"

and to speculate upon the exact place where the lion ended and the lamb
began. The wholly religious character of the book was no drawback to its
popularity, for the two great diaries of the time show how absolutely
religion permeated the atmosphere surrounding both old and young.

Cotton Mather's diary gives various glimpses of his dealing with his own
and other people's children. His son Increase, or "Cressy," as he was
affectionately called, seems to have been particularly unresponsive to
religious coercion. Mather's method, however, appears to have been more
efficacious with the younger members of his family, and of Elizabeth and
Samuel (seven years of age) he wrote: "My two younger children shall
before the Psalm and prayer answer a Quaestion in the catechism; and have
their Leaves ready turned unto the proofs of the Answer in the Bible;
which they shall distinctly read unto us, and show what they prove. This
also shall supply a fresh matter for prayer." Again he tells of his
table talk: "Tho' I will have my table talk facetious as well as
instructive ... yett I will have the Exercise continually intermixed. I
will set before them