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[Illustration: FANNY'S BIRTHDAY]

   PRETTY TALES

   FOR THE

   NURSERY.

   [Illustration]

   LONDON:
   THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY:

   Depositories:
   56, PATERNOSTER ROW; 65, ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD; AND 164, PICCADILLY:
   AND SOLD BY THE BOOKSELLERS.

[Illustration: PRETTY TALES FOR THE NURSERY.]




FANNY'S BIRTHDAY.


Here is a nice new book! It is mine. Papa has just given it to me, for
this is my birth-day, and I am five years old. Oh, how pretty it is!
Here are boys and girls at play, like Willie and me; and here is nurse,
with baby on her knee.

They will call me a dunce if I do not learn to read well, so I will try
my very best; for what is the use of a nice book like this, if I cannot
read it? It is not of a bit more use than my wax doll would be to puss.

What, Miss Puss, you hear your own name, do you? and think we are going
to have a game of play. On no, puss, no such thing. It will not do for
me to mind only play, for mamma says that, if I live, I shall be a woman
in time, and there are many things that I must learn before then.

Look, puss, here is my new book. Ah, I see you do not care for books.
You like to lie on the warm rug before the fire, and there you sleep
away half your time. That may do very well for a puss, but it will not
do for me. If I am as idle as you, I shall grow up a dunce, and what
would papa say then? No, no, pussy, you may do as you like, but for my
part I am not going to be a dunce.

[Illustration]

Sometimes I sit upon mamma's knee, and she tells me the story about a
young king, who lived many years ago, and who loved the Bible better
than any other book in the world, and how God took him to wear a crown
of gold in heaven. Or else she talks to me about Jesus, who came down
from his glory above to die for us upon the cross. I love to hear about
him when he was a baby, and his mother laid him in a manger, for there
was no room for him in the inn. Oh! how glad I shall be when I can read
these things in books.

Mamma says that when I can read, I shall have books that will teach me
about many things which are to be seen in places a long way off, far,
far over the sea. About lions and tigers, that live in the woods, and
about black boys and girls, like the poor man who came to beg at the
door. Willie and I ran away from him, but nurse called us back, and
said he would not hurt us; and mamma told us to pity him and be kind to
him, if we saw him again. I should like to see the little black boys and
girls. Some of them go to school, I am told, but others are never taught
anything that is good: I am very sorry for them.

Let me look again at my new book. Papa was very kind to buy it