Black Beauty

Black Beauty by Anna Sewell. H. M. Caldwell Company, New York, 1894. 227 p. 4.5 x 6.5". Binding olive green with silver design, plus pink 5-petal flowers. Illustrated. Bookplate: Private Library of C. E. Weybright [my grandparents]. There's no information inside on who used this book, but it is in good condition with no loose pages or wear.

When I was a girl, I read primarily horse and dog stories. Never read those children's titles in series (Nancy Drew, Bobbsey Twins, Elsie Dinsmore*), with the exception of the "Little House" books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, which my mother first read aloud to my brother and me as we curled up with her in the big overstuff chair. But today, I don't know if I could do it. Animal stories are always so sad and the older ones contain a lot of moralizing. Poor Black Beauty had a tough life. But Anna Sewell has messages for children in it, plus a strong appeal to treat animals kindly as other creatures made by God:

"One day when there was a good deal of kicking, my mother whinnied to me to come to her, and then she said: "I wish you to pay attention to what I am going to say to you. The colts who live here are very good colts, but they are cart-horse colts, and of course they have not learned manners. You have been well-bred and well-born; your father has a great name in these parts, and your grandfather won the cup two years at the Newmarket races; your grandmother had the sweetest temper of any horse I ever knew, and I think you have never seen me kick or bite. I hope you will grow up gentle and good, and never learn bad ways; do your work with a good will, lift your feet up well when you trot, and never bite or kick even in play." I have never fogotten my mother's advice; I knew she was a wise old horse, and our master thought a great deal of her. Her name was Duchess, but he often called her Pet."

*My sister Carol received a set of Elsie books to pass the time when she was recovering from polio, and I think I did eventually read them in my early teens. Somehow the box of Elsie (a complete set, I think) got put in the trash and we lost her. I have one now that I bought in a sale just so I'd have the memory of the little girl all the educators and critics loved to hate because she was so goody-two-shoes.

A Book of Prayers for Boys and Girls

This little (5.5" x 4") book was purchased at the Acorn Used Book Store in Grandview and was published here in Columbus by Wartburg Press in 1943. Wartburg was one of the early names of Augsburg Press, which is now Augsburg-Fortress, reflecting a merger in 1988 of The American Lutheran Church and the Lutheran Church in America for form ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church of America). My children were grown by the time I bought this, so I probably bought it because of its local ties. I could use any of these prayers myself by adjusting the "thees, thous and hasts."

The Foreword says, "Your heavenly Father loves you and wishes to give you every blessing. But He wants you to talk to Him, to tell Him all your wants and hopes and sorrows: He wants you to pray to Him. . . Just in case little Lutherans didn't know what to say, this child size book has prayers for just about all situations and special days. Lots of morning prayers and evening prayers. Here's a sweet one.

Now the day's done,
For down is the sun
And angels are lighting
The stars one by one.

O Father, I pray:
Send an angel my way
To watch at my bed
Till the dawn of the day. Amen.

I don't recall giving thanks on my birthday, but then I wasn't a very religious kid. Here's a birthday prayer, which would make much more sense to me today than when I was 8 or 10:

Dear Father in heaven, out of Thy hand my life has come. For this gift do I thank Thee most heartily on my birthday. I pray Thee so to guide me by Thy Holy Spirit that from year to year I may learn to know Thee better and to thank Thee more heartily for Thy goodness. And may every added year, O Father, find me ever more ready to do Thy holy will. In His name do I pray who for me and for all Thy children died upon the cross so that we might rise from the grave and live with Thee forever. Amen.

I found a photo on the internet (a post card) of the old Wartburg Press building, which is where the Augsburg book store was in the 80s. I used to go there to buy books for the church library.

My Book House

My mother got a set of My Book House as a bonus buy when she bought a set of Book of Knowledge encyclopedias probably in the early 1940s. At least, I don't remember a time we didn't have both sets. Ours was probably the 1937 edition. Sometime in the mid-1970s, I walked into a little antique store in Lakeside, OH, and saw a set for $25, a 1953 printing. It was a lot of money for something my children had probably already outgrown, but one of my siblings (with the first grandchild) had been given the family set. Our very most favorite story to cuddle on the couch with was, 'Wee wee mannie and the big big coo," because we loved to hear Mom do the accent.

1. In the nursery
2. Story time
3. Up one pair of stairs
4. Through the gates
5. Over the hills
6. Through fairy halls
7. The magic garden
8. Flying sails
9. The treasure chest
10. From the tower window
11. In shining armor
12. Halls of fame
13. [unnumbered] In your hands; a practical guide for parents, rev. ed., 8th printing, 1951.

The covers/binding of my set are like the above photo [taken from the internet, but that is from the 60s], and the set I grew up with was dark blue. The illustrations seem unchanged. Fabulous. A child can look for hours at one painting or drawing. The early sets from the 20s had only 6 volumes. Google Olive Beaupre Miller, the editor, for her very interesting story. Her papers are at Smith College. She lived in Illinois and some years back I read a very nice biography of her in an Illinois magazine, but I can't seem to lay my hands on it.

My favorite story for Mother to read to us was "Wee wee mannie and the big big Coo," which is about a very cantankerous cow (Big Coo) that won't behave until told (by Wee Mannie) to misbehave, kick and bellow and then she does just the opposite. I don't think there was a political or pacifist subtext to it, but Mother was very smart, so who knows? She probably didn't know that in the traditional version, Big Coo is threatened with a knife and then she decides to cooperate. Olive B. Miller, the editor of My Book House, probably thought it was too violent an ending for children.



Some parts of this entry are cross posted at Collecting My Thoughts.