Thomas White wrote a book for children which certainly comes under the head of religious books, though its pages held also those frivolous lines "A was an archer who shot at a frog," etc. This dreary volume was entitled a _Little Book for Little Children_. It contained accounts of short-lived and morbid young Christians, much like those of James Janeway's book. One child of eight wept bitter and inconsolable tears for his sins. One wicked deed was lying. His mother asked him whether he were cold. He answered "Yes" instead of "Forsooth," and afterward doubted whether he really was cold or not. Another sin was whetting his knife on the Sabbath day. Poor Nathaniel Mather whittled on the Lord's day--and hid behind the door while thus sinning. A boy's jack-knife was a powerful force then as now. This book also had accounts of the Christian martyrs and their tortures. This was an English book, first reprinted in Boston in 1702. An edition of _Pilgrim's Progress_ was printed in Boston in 1681, another in 1706, and an illustrated edition in 1744, but I doubt that these were the complete book. Many shortened copies and imitations appeared. One was called _The Christian's Metamorphosis Unfolded_. Another _The Christian Pilgrim_. Dr. Neale edited it for children, making, says a modern critic, "a most impudent book." Bunyan also wrote _Divine Emblems_, which the young were enjoined to read, and he also "bowed his pen to children" and wrote _Country Rhimes for Children_. For many years no copy of this was known to exist, but one was found in America in recent years, and is now in the British Museum. It is an uncouth mixture of religious phrases and similes and very crude natural history. [Illustration: And the serpent [f.]aid unto the woman, Ye [f.]hall not [f.]urely die. GENESIS iii. 4. THE HOLY BIBLE ABRIDGED: OR, THE HISTORY OF THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT. Illu[f.]trated with NOTES, and adorned with CUTS, For the U[f.]e of CHILDRENS. _Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not._ LUKE xviii. 16. THE SECOND _WORCESTER_ EDITION. WORCESTER, (MASSACHUSETTS) FROM THE PRESS OF THOMAS, SON & THOMAS, AND SOLD AT THEIR BOOKSTORE. MDCCXCVI. The Holy Bible Abridged] _Pilgrim's Progress_ was the first light reading of Benjamin Franklin. Other books of his boyhood were Plutarch's _Lives_, Defoe's _Essays upon Projects_, Cotton Mather's _Essays to do Good_, and Burton's _Historical Collections_. Another patriot, at a later day--Abraham Lincoln--learning little but the primer at school, read slowly and absorbed into his brain, his heart, and his everyday speech the Bible, _Pilgrim's Progress_, Æsop's _Fables_ and Plutarch's _Lives_,--a good education,--to which a _Life of Washington_ added details of local patriotism. [Illustration: Illustration from _Original Poetry for Young Minds_]