Children’s catechisms

A few entries from the 1899 ABCs for Baby Patriots .

C is for colonies

Rightly we boast,

That of all the great nations

Great Britain has the most.

D is for daring

We show in the field

Which makes every enemy

Vanish or yield.

E is for empire

Where sun never sets;

The larger we make it

The bigger it gets.

Not to be outdone, one Thomas Stevens wrote a Babes of the Empire: An Alphabet for Young England , which begins:

A is an Australian born in the bush,

An A.1 ally when it comes to a push.

He can ride well and choose; his gun and his horse

Are the flower of the Empire’s irregular force.

Next
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

The Classroom Heals the Wounds of Generations

Peter J. Leithart

“Hope,” wrote the German-American polymath Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, “is the deity of youth.” Wholly dependent on adults, children…

Still Life, Still Sacred

Andreas Lombard

Renaissance painters would use life-sized wooden dolls called manichini to study how drapery folds on the human…

Letters

I am writing not to address any particular article, but rather to register my concern about the…