“When I was a boy, I said to my uncle one day, ’How did you
    get your finger cut off?’ and he said, ’I was chopping a
    stick one evening, and the hatchet cut off my finger.’”

Blessings, blessings on the man who thus embalmed this touching incident!  Who does not see that the reign of fiction is over!

That the parental portion of the public may judge what the future has in store for their little ones (who, we hope, will be men and women far sooner than their ancestors were,) we present them with a fragrant nosegay (pshaw! we mean, a shovel-full) of samples, commending them, should they wish for more, to the nearest Sabbath-school library.

Ah, it is a touching thing, to see some great philanthropist come forward, at the call of Duty and his Publisher (perhaps also quickened by the hollow sound emitted by his treasure-box), and compress himself into the absurdly small compass of a few pages 18mo., in order to afford himself the exalted pleasure of holding simple and godly converse with children at large!

“All truth—­no fiction.”  What further guarantee would you have?  How replete with useful matter must not a book with that assurance be!  Let us read: 

    “The Indians cannot build a ship.  They do not Know how to get
    iron from the mines, and they do not know enough.

    “Besides, they do not like to work, and like to fight
    better than to work.

    “When they want to sail, they burn off a log of wood, and
    make it hollow by burning and scraping it with sharp stones.”

Now we ask, does not this satisfy your ideal of food for the youthful mind?  Observe that it is simple, direct, graphic, satisfying.  It cannot enfeeble the intellect.  It will be useful.  There is something tangible about it.  The child at once perceives that if the Indians knew how to “get iron from the mines,” and “knew enough” in general, they would build ships, in spite of their distaste for work.  There can be no doubt that this is “all truth—­no fiction,” for Indians are sadly in want of ships.  They like to sail; for we learn that “when they want to sail” they are so wild for it, that they even go to the length of “burning off a log of wood, and making it hollow by burning and scraping it with sharp stones.”  We thus perceive the significance of the apothegm, “Truth is stranger than fiction.”  The day is not far distant when children will think as much of the new literature as they formerly did of certain worm-lozenges, for which they were said to “cry.”

And where everything has been inspired by the love of Truth, even the cuts may teach something.  If “a canoe,” contrary to the general impression, is at least as long as “a ship,” it is very important that children should so understand it; and if “a pin-fish” is really as big as “a shark,” no mistaken deference to the feelings of the latter should make us hesitate to say so.