in 1785.

What I want to tell, is of Mother Goose in the nineteenth Century--the
Mother Goose on which the old Boston line was brought up--a line
now nearly forgotten. But there were days, Gentle Reader, when an
excellent body of people in this little Town of Boston grew up all
together loving and loved, brought up their children here, loving
and loved, and amused those children from babyhood in their own
way. The centre of the baby life of this race was Mother Goose's
Melodies in the dear little quarto edition, of which a precise copy
is in the reader's hands.

It is this Mother Goose of which the New Englander, if his age be
more than three score years and ten, speaks when he speaks of Mother
Goose at all. The historical ear marks in it are rather curious.
Perhaps the printing of this very edition may raise up some antiquary
who can tell us how it came into existence. I wish I knew. I hope
some reader of these lines may know. What I know is this, that
when the nineteenth century began, in the years from 1800 to 1820,
the impression of what we still called the "Mother Country" upon
Boston was very strong. The old nurse who took care of me in my
babyhood spoke of "weal" and "winegar," where my father and mother
spoke of veal and vinegar, just as if she had been a London Cockney.
Children played the games of English origin,


"Lady Queen Anne, she sits on her throne,"


though it were fifty years after the Declaration of Independence.