Excerpt from The Juvenile Instructor and Companion When the Editor of this Magazine was a little boy, he used to get halfpence given him by his friends; most of these he invested in such small books as he could get, and the rest in candies. The books were, he is ashamed to say, such as Jack the Giant Killer, Mother Hubbard, Goodie two-shoes, and the like. The candies were better than the books; and he is not sure but it would have been wiser to have spent all his halfpence on candies, and let the books alone. But if the candies were sweet the books made him wonder, and that was some gain to a child; for wonder is the opening of the eyes to outward things, and without it there can be little food for the imagination or little motive to inquiry. He believed in these books firmly, and hid his head under the blankets every night, for fear of the monsters and evil Spirits of which they informed him. This was wrong; but what was he to do? There were no other or better children's books to be had in those days, and they could only read such books, or none. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.