The matter read by those children is clearly indicated by their commonplace books. One entry shows

I hope aunt wont let one

wear the black hatt with the red Dominic for the people will aft one what I have got to fill as I go along foreet if I do. or how the folk at Newgue nie do!? Dear mamma, you don't know the fation here I beg to look like other folk. You dont kno what a fter would be onade in fudbury street were I to make ony appearance there in my red Domi nue & black Hatt. But the old cleats & bonnett together will make me a decent Bonnet for common ocation I like that aunt says, it's a pitty some of the ribbin `you fint won't do for the Bonnet I must close up this Journal. With Duty, Love, & Compli ments as due, perticularly to my Dear little brother, (I long to for him)]) & M. Law, I will write to her foor I am Hon. Popra & mama,

N.M.

my aunt Deming

don't approve of my English.

now

Y. evor Dutiful Daughter

Anna Goren Winflow

It has not the year that you will thanks her concerned in the

Page from Diary of Anna Green Winslow

Diction

evidence of light reading. It is of riddles which are headed "GUESSES"; they are the ones familiar to us all in Mother Goose's Melodies to-day. The

answers

answers are written in a most transparent juvenile shorthand. Thus the answer, "Well," is indicated by the figures 23, 5, 12, 12, referring to the position of the letters in the alphabet.

The usual entries are of a religious character; extracts from sermons, answers from the catechism, verses of hymns, accompany stilted religious aspirations and appeals. In them a painful familiarity with and partiality for quotations bearing on hell and the devil show the religious

teaching of the

times.

CHAPTER IX

T

CHILDISH PRECOCITY

Where babies, much to their surprise,
Were born astonishingly wise;
With every Science on their lips,

And Latin at their finger-tips.

- Bab Ballads. W. S. Gilbert, 1877.

HE seventeenth century was in Europe a period of eager development and hasty harvesting; English boys were made seriousminded by the conditions they saw around them, as well as by a forcing-house system of education, begun at very early years. This early ageing is reflected in the writings of the times. The Religio Medici, apparently the composition of a man of the large experience and serene contemplation of extreme age, was written by Sir Thomas Browne when he was but thirty.

There are many records of the precocity of children, preserved for us many times, alas! through the sad recounting of early deaths. One of the