The Child's Story Book

Chapbook, 3.75 x 2.5 inches. 16pp, lacking front cover; stitched along the spine and for 1" into the rear cover, small tape remnant to lower spine. Faint pencil signature to front (Salome B. Willis). A hodgepodge chapbook of eclectic collected woodcuts, some ominously-inclined, like a boy running from a swarm of bees and a weeping woman. Captions include, "Poor girl, she is weeping for the loss of her husband, perhaps he may return and bless her for a long number of years;""David's horse, says Billy Gray, is only fit to eat up hay; to eat up hay, make a disaster, and kill his poor and worthy master;" "Chanticleer is a fellow of the first rate spunk, and will sustain his ground against all opposition, unless I am very much mistaken," and "Captain John Blue Nose will in all probability become a smart man, if nothing unusual takes place to trouble him." A nod to resentment for the British via "The Lion and the unicorn:" "So doth the powerful oppress the feeble, and weak, and make them submit to their tyranical (sic) power."

Scarce. Not the same as the eponymous 1840 chapbook published by Kiggins & Kellogg, but possibly matching A Natural History of Animals (1839) published in Concord by Boyd & White, based on a description in Harry Weiss' Book About Chapbooks citing the same odd collection of images with the remark, "It is apparent that sometimes children's chapbooks were put together hurriedly by very thoughtless persons." (139)