“I, in the Burying Place may See
    Graves Shorter than I;
    From Death’s Arrest no age is free
    Young Children too may die;
    My God, may such an awful Sight
    Awakening be to me! 
    Oh! that by Grace I might
    For Death prepared be.”

When the younger members of the family are otherwise mentioned in the Judge’s diary, it is perhaps to note the parents’ pride in the eighteen-months-old infant’s knowledge of the catechism, an acquirement rewarded by the gift of a red apple, but which suggests the reason for many funerals.  Or, again, difficulties with the alphabet are sorrowfully put down; and also deliquencies at the age of four in attending family prayer, with a full account of punishments meted out to the culprit.  Such details are, indeed, but natural, for under the stern conditions imposed by Cotton and the Mathers, religion looms large in the foreground of any sketch of family life handed down from the first century of the Massachusetts colony.  Perhaps the very earliest picture in which a colonial child with a book occupies the centre of the canvas is that given in a letter of Samuel Sewall’s.  In sixteen hundred and seventy-one he wrote with pride to a friend of “little Betty, who though Reading passing well, took Three Moneths to Read the first Volume of the Book of Martyrs” as she sat by the fire-light at night after her daily task of spinning was done.  Foxe’s “Martyrs” seems gruesome reading for a little girl at bedtime, but it was so popular in England that, with the Bible and Catechism, it was included in the library of all households that could afford it.

Just ten years later, in sixteen hundred and eighty-one, Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress” was printed in Boston by Samuel Green, and, being easily obtainable, superseded in a measure the “Book of Martyrs” as a household treasure.  Bunyan’s dream, according to Macaulay, was the daily conversation of thousands, and was received in New England with far greater eagerness than in the author’s own country.  The children undoubtedly listened to the talk of their elders and gazed with wide-open eyes at the execrable plates in the imported editions illustrating Christian’s journey.  After the deaths by fire and sword of the Martyrs, the Pilgrim’s difficulties in the Slough of Despond, or with the Giant Despair, afforded pleasurable reading; while Mr. Great Heart’s courageous cheerfulness brought practically a new characteristic into Puritan literature.

To Bunyan the children in both old and New England were indebted for another book, entitled “A Book for Boys and Girls:  or, Country Rhimes for Children.  By J.B.  Licensed and Entered according to Order."[11-A] Printed in London, it probably soon made its way to this country, where Bunyan was already so well known.  “This little octavo volume,” writes Mrs. Field in “The Child and his Book,” “was considered a perfect child’s book, but was in fact only the literary milk of the unfortunate babes of the period.”  In the light of modern views upon juvenile reading and entertainment, the Puritan ideal of mental pabulum for little ones is worth recording in an extract from the preface.  The following lines set forth this author’s three-fold purpose: