12mo. 71pp. With an engraved frontispiece. Original publisher’s printed olive green wrappers. Extremities marked and worn, loss to spine. Near contemporary inked ownership inscription of Mary Watkeys to verso of upper panel, scattered spotting.

The apparently unrecorded second edition of an anonymous conduct of life tale for children centred upon the ecclesiastical festival of rushbearing, a ceremony in which a cart laden with rushes is paraded through town before the contents are strewn along the aisles of the local church 'supposed to be a relic of those early times when rushes were used to cover the floors of even the most splendid palaces'. The narrative itself concerns a group of children unjustly accused of stealing from the vicarage garden the flowers intended to be used as decoration during the event. First published in 1829, a third edition of the work appeared in 1835, and a fourth in the 1840s; all are remarkably scarce.