Remark:
This book, originally sold for $.06, is charming evidence of what fables meant for children in the middle of the nineteenth century. The fables here are long and heavily didactic. The first and longest of the seven fables is the Aesopic fable of the axe, here with Honestus Woodman and Cheathim. Further fables focus on: the animals' argument over greatness, led by orator hog; the bird's three lessons (also Aesopic); the sundial and the weed; the complaining dove (a parable for little girls); the foolish lamb who stays out at night and is devoured by the wolf family; the thief of a bird nest (boo, hiss). Simple engravings. I am glad both to have this little booklet and not to have been born in 1840!
