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350
LETTERS OF LIFE.

too young to read for themselves, taking a single chapter, or perhaps part of one at a time, and showing only the pictures appertaining to the portion read, until the whole series should be completed; thus avoiding to tax the infant intellect, yet keeping its appetite of curiosity in exercise for the next set of pictures. By mothers and intelligent nurses, who have observed these directions, its use has been commended.

The New York publishers, in stereotyping it, gave it a square form, as agreeable to the little ones, and liberally endowed it with more than a hundred cuts, some of them very small, but generally appropriate. It bore the title of "The Pictorial Reader," and I was exulting over it as one who findeth great spoil, when I received through the post-office the following fulminating letter:


"Sir:—You have unwarrantably taken the title of my book for yours, and are liable to prosecution."


Knowing as little of the irascible author as he of my sex, I made haste to relinquish what he characterized as a purloined possession, and adopted the nomenclature of "Child's Book," by which it still holds its course among the lambs of the flock.


1844.

34. "Scenes in my Native Land."

A transcript in prose and poetry, in somewhat more than three hundred pages, of some interesting spots