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                           GREAT MYSTERIES

                         AND LITTLE PLAGUES.

                            BY JOHN NEAL.


    BOSTON:
    ROBERTS BROTHERS.
    1870.

    Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by
    ROBERTS BROTHERS,
    In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Dist. of
    Massachusetts.

    STEREOTYPED BY REGAN & LEADBEATER,
    55 Water Street.



[Illustration: CHILDREN--WHAT ARE THEY GOOD FOR?

"I'll give oo a _kith_ if oo want one!"]




PREFACE.


I hate prefaces; and the older I grow, the more I hate them, and the
more unwilling I am to transgress--in that way--with my eyes open.

But something must be said, I suppose, if only by way of an
advertisement, or warning.

When I had finished what one of my daughters persists in calling my
"NAUGHTY-BIOGRAPHY," and the other, "PERSONALITIES"--while my hair has
grown visibly thinner, I will not say under what kind of domestic
remonstrance from another quarter, and a very amiable, though witty
somebody writes it "_Maundering_ Recollections"--I had an idea that, if
I went further, I might be found "painting the lily, gilding refined
gold," etc., etc., and so I pulled up--for the present.

But this little book was already under way. I had promised it, and such
promises I always keep--and for the best of reasons: I cannot afford to
break them.

When I turned out the original of "Children--What are they good for?"
some forty years ago, or thereabouts, I had never met with, nor heard
of, anything in that way. Children were overlooked. Their droppings were
unheeded--out of the nursery. But now, and in fact very soon after my
little essay appeared in the "Atlantic Souvenir," if I do not mistake,
the papers and magazines, both abroad and at home, were continually
brightened up with diamond-sparks and with Down-easterly or "Orient
pearls, at random strung," which seemed to have been picked up in
play-grounds, or adrift, or along the highway; and itemizers were seen
dodging round among the little folks, wherever they were congregated, or
following them as the Chinese follow a stranger, if they see him make
wry faces.

For amusement only, and to keep myself out of mischief--I hope I have
succeeded--just after the fire, not having much to do beyond twirling my
thumbs, and trying to whistle "I cares for nobody, and nobody cares for
me," I began collecting such as fell in my way.

My first idea was to call them "KINDLING-STUFF," or

"OVEN-WOOD," as characteristic, if not of them, at least of the
compiler; but finding the collection grew upon me, and myself growing
serious, I adopted "PICKINGS AND STEALINGS," which, on the whole, I
think still more characteristic, beside being both suggestive and
descriptive.

"GOODY GRACIOUS, A FAIRY STORY," I wrote for the purpose of showing--and
_proving_--that fairy stories need not be crowded with extravagant
impossibilities, to engage the attention of our little folks; and that
if they are so contrived as to seem true, or at least possible, they
need not be unwholesome. Am I wrong?

And furthermore saith not, as Jacob Barker used to write, at the bottom
of his letters,

"Your respected friend,"

J. N.




CONTENTS.


I.--CHILDREN--WHAT ARE THEY GOOD FOR?

II.--GOODY GRACIOUS! AND THE FORGET-ME-NOT.

III.--PICKINGS AND STEALINGS.




CHILDREN--WHAT ARE THEY GOOD FOR?


The child is father of the man. Men are but children of a larger growth.
How often do we meet with this array of words! Yet how insensible we are
to the profound philosophy they enwrap. Sublime and astonishing truths!
Uttered every day in our hearing, set before our eyes at every step of
our journey through life, written over all the monuments of Earth, upon
the pages and banners of all History, upon the temples and the pyramids,
the palaces and the sepulchres of departed Nations, upon all the doings
of the Past and the Present, as with unextinguishable fire, and sounding
forever and ever in the unapproachable solitudes of the Future! Yet
heard with indifference, read without emotion, and repeated from mouth
to mouth, day after day and year after year, without a suspicion of
their deep meaning, of their transcendent importance, of their
imperishable beauty. And why? The language is too familiar, the apparent
