“A kind and good father had a little lively son, named Francis; but, although that little boy was six years old, he had not yet learned to read.

“His mama said to him, one day, ’if Francis will learn to read well, he shall have a pretty little chaise.’

“The little boy was vastly pleased with this; he presently spelt five or six words and then kissed his mama.

“‘Mama,’ said Francis, ’I am delighted with the thoughts of this chaise, but I should like to have a horse to draw it.’

“‘Francis shall have a little dog, which will do instead of a horse,’ replied his mama, ’but he must take care to give him some victuals, and not do him any harm.’”

The dog was purchased, and named Chloe.  “She was as brisk as a bee, prettily spotted, and as gentle as a lamb.”  We are now prepared for trouble, for the lesson of the story is surely not hidden.  Chloe was fastened to the chaise, a cat secured to serve as a passenger, and “Francis drove his little chaise along the walk.”  But “when he had been long enough among the gooseberry trees, his mama took him in the garden and told him the names of the flowers.”  We are thus led to suppose that Francis had never been in the garden before!  The mother is called away.  We feel sure that the trouble anticipated is at hand.  “As soon as she was gone Francis began whipping the dog,” and of course when the dog dashed forward the cat tumbled out, and “poor Chloe was terrified by the chaise which banged on all sides.  Francis now heartily repented of his cruel behaviour and went into the house crying, and looking like a very simple boy.”

[Illustration:  A Kind and Good Father]

“I see very plainly the cause of this misfortune,” said the father, who, however, soon forgave his repentant son.  Thereafter every day Francis learned his lesson, and was rewarded by facts and pictures about animals, by table-talks, or by walks about the country.

Knowledge offered within small compass seems to have been a novelty introduced in Philadelphia by Jacob Johnson, who had a juvenile library in High Street.

In eighteen hundred and three he printed two tiny volumes entitled “A Description of Various Objects.”  Bound in green paper covers, the two-inch square pages were printed in bold type.  The first volume contained the illustrations of the objects described in the other.  The characterizations were exceedingly short, as, for example, this of the “Puppet Show:”  “Here are several little boys and girls looking at a puppet show, I suppose you would like to make one of them.”