One of the most widely read children's books in the early days of our Republic was Ann and Jane Taylor's Hymns for Infants Minds. By our standards the hymns seem grim and inappropriate for young minds, but in an earlier age when death of children was the rule rather than the exception, children were constantly forced to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest morbid accounts of dying children. Almost every child living in New England a century and a half ago knew this hymn by heart and would have recited it aloud if death was imminent.