The authors are never wanting in advice. If children are good, what need is there to introduce them to evil in their stories? Evil is here meant in its mildest sense. They should be kept from all contagion. But bad boys and girls should be told to read, in “The Children’s Friend,” tales like “The Little Gamblers” and “Honesty is the Best Policy,” which will teach them, by examples of wickedness, to correct their ways. Such strange classification suggests that literature was to be used as a species of moral reformatory. Two significant facts are to be noted in this chapter on books: there is an attempt to grade the literature by some age standard, bringing to light a gap between four and seven years which may be offset by a similar gap to-day; so, too, does there seem to have been, then as now, a great lack of history and biography. The idea upon which the “Parent’s Assistant” was founded began to shape itself in Miss Edgeworth’s mind early in life. Left alone for a short period with her younger brothers and sisters, she manufactured tales for their edification, many of which, in after years, she utilised. In 1796 she gathered together and published some of her best stories, among them “The Purple Jar” and “Lazy Laurence.” “Simple Susan” would probably not be so widely emphasised were it not for the fact that Sir Walter Scott recorded “that when the boy brings back the lamb to the little girl, there is nothing for it but to put down the book and cry.” Miss Edgeworth and her father had much preferred that the book be called “The Parent’s Friend,” for lodged in the former’s memory were disagreeable thoughts of an old-time arithmetic which had plagued her early years, and was named “The Tutor’s Assistant.” The theatricals performed in the Edgeworth household afforded much pleasure. It is very likely that the custom was gleaned from Madame de Genlis. Plays were written for every festive season. The publication of the “Parent’s Assistant” suggested the acting of some of the playlets contained in the book. There seem to have been two theatres, one fitted up just over Richard Lovell’s study, and another temporary stage erected in the dining-room. Here, one evening, was enacted the exemplary dialogue of “Old Poz,” where a poor man is suspected, by a Justice, of stealing what a magpie has in reality secreted. Lucy, the good little daughter, clears the innocent fellow, upon whom her father sits in very stern, very unreasonable, and most unnatural judgment. Irritable to a degree, the Justice, who is positive about everything, shuts up any one who gainsays a word contrary to his obstinacy, but “Oh, darling,” he remarks to his daughter, after her excellent deed, “_you_ shall contradict me as often as you please.” This method is neither more nor less than poisonous; it is polluted with a certain license which no good action ever sanctions. There is small doubt that children see the absurdity of it, for it cheapens right-doing in their eyes.