This theory had a practical result in the introduction to many households of “The Child’s New Play-thing.”  This book, already mentioned, was printed in England in seventeen hundred and forty-three, and dedicated to Prince George.  In seventeen hundred and forty-four we find through the “Boston Evening Post” of January 23 that the third edition was sold by Joseph Edwards, in Cornhill, and it was probably from this edition that the first American edition was printed in seventeen hundred and fifty.  From the following description of this American reprint (one of which is happily in the Lenox Collection), it will be seen that the “Play-thing” was an attempt to follow Locke’s advice, as well as a connecting link between the primer of the past and the story-book of the near future.

The title, which the illustration shows, reads, “The Child’s New Play-thing being a spelling-book intended to make Learning to read a diversion instead of a task.  Consisting of Scripture-histories, fables, stories, moral and religious precepts, proverbs, songs, riddles, dialogues, &c.  The whole adapted to the capacities of children, and divided into lessons of one, two, three and four syllables.  The fourth edition.  To which is added three dialogues; 1.  Shewing how a little boy shall make every body love him. 2.  How a little boy shall grow wiser than the rest of his school-fellows. 3.  How a little boy shall become a great man.  Designed for the use of schools, or for children before they go to school.”

[Illustration:  Title-page from “The Child’s new Play-Thing"]

Coverless and faded, hard usage is written in unmistakable characters upon this play-thing of a whole family.  Upon a fly-leaf are the autographs of “Ebenezer Ware and Sarah Ware, Their Book,” and upon another page these two names with the addition of the signatures of “Ichabod Ware and Cyrus Ware 1787.”  One parent may have used it when it was fresh from the press of Draper & Edwards in Boston; then, through enforced economy, handed it down to the next generation, who doubtless scorned the dedication so eminently proper in seventeen hundred and fifty, so thoroughly out of place thirty-seven years later.  There it stands in large black type: 

To his ROYAL HIGHNESS PRINCE GEORGE This Little
Play-thing is most humbly dedicated
By
His ROYAL HIGHNESS’S
Devoted Servant

Of especial interest are the alphabets in “Roman, Italian, and English Names” on the third page, while page four contains the dear old alphabet in rhyme, fortunately not altogether forgotten in this prosaic age.  We recognize it as soon as we see it.

“A Apple-Pye
B bit it
C cut it,”

and involuntarily add, D divided it.  After the spelling lessons came fables, proverbs, and the splendid “Stories proper to raise the Attention and excite the Curiosity of Children” of any age; namely, “St. George and the Dragon,” “Fortunatus,” “Guy of Warwick,” “Brother and Sister,” “Reynard the Fox,” “The Wolf and the Kid.”  “The Good Dr. Watts,” writes Mrs. Field, “is supposed to have had a hand in the composition of this toy book especially in the stories, one of which is quite in the style of the old hymn writer.”  Here it is: