It is possible
that the success attending a book printed in Boston shortly after the
original "Country Rhimes" was written, made the colonial printers feel
that their profit would be greater by devoting spare type and paper to
the now famous "New England Primer." Moreover, it seems peculiarly in
keeping with the cast of the New England mind of the eighteenth century
that although Bunyan had attempted to combine play-things with religious
teaching for the English children, for the little colonials the first
combination was the elementary teaching and religious exercises found in
the great "Puritan Primer." Each child was practically, if not verbally,
told that
"This little Catechism learned by heart (for so it ought)
The Primer next commanded is for Children to be taught."
The Primer, however, was not a product wholly of New England. In sixteen
hundred and eighty-five there had been printed in Boston by Green, "The
Protestant Tutor for Children," a primer, a mutilated copy of which is
now owned by the American Antiquarian Society.
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