I never think or speak of the ``New England Primer’’ that I do not recall Captivity Waite, for it was Captivity who introduced me to the Primer that day in the springtime of sixty-three years ago.  She was of my age, a bright, pretty girl—­a very pretty, an exceptionally pretty girl, as girls go.  We belonged to the same Sunday-school class.  I remember that upon this particular day she brought me a russet apple.  It was she who discovered the Primer in the mahogany case, and what was not our joy as we turned over the tiny pages together and feasted our eyes upon the vivid pictures and perused the absorbingly interesting text!  What wonder that together we wept tears of sympathy at the harrowing recital of the fate of John Rogers!

Even at this remote date I cannot recall that experience with Captivity, involving as it did the wood-cut representing the unfortunate Rogers standing in an impossible bonfire and being consumed thereby in the presence of his wife and their numerous progeny, strung along in a pitiful line across the picture for artistic effect—­even now, I say, I cannot contemplate that experience and that wood-cut without feeling lumpy in my throat and moist about my eyes.

How lasting are the impressions made upon the youthful mind!  Through the many busy years that have elapsed since first I tasted the thrilling sweets of that miniature Primer I have not forgotten that ``young Obadias, David, Josias, all were pious’’; that ``Zaccheus he did climb the Tree our Lord to see’’; and that ``Vashti for Pride was set aside’’; and still with many a sympathetic shudder and tingle do I recall Captivity’s overpowering sense of horror, and mine, as we lingered long over the portraitures of Timothy flying from Sin, of Xerxes laid out in funeral garb, and of proud Korah’s troop partly submerged.

               My Book and Heart
               Must never part.

So runs one of the couplets in this little Primer-book, and right truly can I say that from the springtime day sixty-odd years ago, when first my heart went out in love to this little book, no change of scene or of custom no allurement of fashion, no demand of mature years, has abated that love.  And herein is exemplified the advantage which the love of books has over the other kinds of love.  Women are by nature fickle, and so are men; their friendships are liable to dissipation at the merest provocation or the slightest pretext.

Not so, however, with books, for books cannot change.  A thousand years hence they are what you find them to-day, speaking the same words, holding forth the same cheer, the same promise, the same comfort; always constant, laughing with those who laugh and weeping with those who weep.

Captivity Waite was an exception to the rule governing her sex.  In all candor I must say that she approached closely to a realization of the ideals of a book—­a sixteenmo, if you please, fair to look upon, of clear, clean type, well ordered and well edited, amply margined, neatly bound; a human book whose text, as represented by her disposition and her mind, corresponded felicitously with the comeliness of her exterior.  This child was the great-great-granddaughter of Benjamin Waite, whose family was carried off by Indians in 1677.  Benjamin followed the party to Canada, and after many months of search found and ransomed the captives.