Another book for young people--which might be termed a story-book, though its lesson was deemed deeply religious--was called, _A Small Book in Easy Verse Very Suitable for Children, entitled The Prodigal Daughter or the Disobedient Lady Reclaimed_. It was a poem of about a hundred stanzas, relating the story of a very wilful young woman who, on being locked up in her room by her father to check her extravagance, made a league with the Devil, attempted to poison her father and mother, dropped dead apparently on her wickedness being discovered, was carried to the grave, but revived just as the sexton was about to lower her coffin in the ground. She recovered, repented, related her experiences with unction, and lived ever after happy. The title-page bears a picture of the devil as a fine gentleman wearing his tail as a sword, and having one high-topped cloven-footed boot. This book enjoyed unbounded popularity even during the early years of this century. It was similar in teaching to a chap-book which was entitled _The Afflicted Parents, or the Undutiful Child Punished_. In this tale the daughter gave some very priggish advice to her wicked brother, who promptly knocks her down and kills her. He is captured, tried, condemned, sentenced, and at last executed by two pardoned highwaymen. But upon being cut down he comes to life, pompously discourses at much length, and then is executed a second time, as a warning to all disobedient children. Death-bed scenes continued to be full of living interest. _The Good Child's Little Hymnbook_ represents the taste of the times. One poem is on the death and burial of twins, and thus is doubly interesting. Another is on "Dying." The child asks whether he is going to die and "look white and awful and be put in the pithole with other dead people." And yet the preface runs:-- "Mamma See what a Pretty Book At Day's Pappa has bought, That I may at the pictures look And by the words be taught." After a time some attempts were made to render the Bible in a form specially for children's reading. There was a rhymed adaptation called the _Bible in Verse._ This was not the Bible versification of Samuel Wesley, printed in 1717, of which he says condescendingly, "Some passages here represented are so barren of Circumstances that it was not easy to make them shine in Verse." Older hands had essayed to rhyme the Bible; one was called _A Briefe Somme of the Bible_. These Bible abridgments were literally little books, usually three or four inches long, covered with brown or mottled paper. One tiny, well-worn book of Bible stories was but two inches long and an inch wide. It had two hundred and fifty pages, each of about twenty words.