“For the lads, there were tales of action, of adventure, sometimes truculently sensational; for the girls were stories of a more domestic character; for the tradesmen, there was the ‘King and the Cobbler,’ or ‘Long Tom the Carrier’; for the soldier and the sailor, ‘Admiral Blake,’ ‘Johnny Armstrong,’ and ‘Chevy Chase’; for the lovers, ‘Patient Grissil’ and ‘Delights for Young Men and Maids’; for the serving-lad, ‘Tom Hickathrift’[19] and ‘Sir Richard Whittington’; while the serving-maid then, as now, would prefer ‘The Egyptian Fortune Teller,’ or ‘The Interpretation of Dreams and Moles.’” Every phase of human nature was thus served up for a penny. In those days, people were more apt to want tales with heroes and heroines of their own rank and station; a certain appropriateness in this way was satisfied. Such correspondence was common as early as 1415, when a mystery play was presented by the crafts, and the Plasterers were given the “Creation of the World” to depict, while the Chandlers were assigned the “Lighting of the Star” upon the birth of Christ. There were to be had primers, song-books, and joke-books; histories, stories, and hero tales. Printed in type to ruin eyes, pictured in wood-cuts to startle fancy and to shock taste--for they were not always suited to childhood--these pamphlets, 2½″ × 3½″, sometimes 5½″ × 4¼″ in size, and composed of from four to twenty-four pages, served a useful purpose. They placed literature within reach of all who could read. Queer dreams, piety of a pronounced nature, jests with a ribald meaning, and riddles comprised the content of many of them. A child who could not buy a horn-book turned to the “battle-dore” with his penny--a crude sheet of cardboard, bicoloured and folded either once or twice, with printing on both sides; the reading matter was never-failingly the same in these horn-books and “battle-dores,” although sometimes the wood-cuts varied. A horn-book is recorded with a picture of Charles I upon it.