wood engraver and is perhaps most well known for his work on the
"Farmer's Almanac."]

[+][Note from Brett: Nathanial Dearborn (1786-1852) was with the
Holland Printing Company and is perhaps most well known (in 2002)
for the difficulty he had in setting plates for a 13 cent stamp
used in Hawaii (second issue). He also was a printer and author
of "The American Textbook for Making Letters." He would have been
well remembered in Boston at the time of this book.]

[&][Note from Brett: "Chicket" is terribly obscure and the
only reference I could possibly find was to a Mr. Chicket who was
apparently murdered in a bar (the Brushmakers Arms) in Upham, New
Hampshire and supposedly haunts the bar. Whether this has anything
to do with the Chicket in the text is highly questionable, but
would make for a great story.]

This question I have asked again and again, and no man and no woman
has answered it. But the chances seem to be that we owe them also
to Abel Bowen, the first wood engraver recorded among the engravers
in the period after the Revolution. We have specimens of his work
more in pictures of landscape or of buildings than in drawings of
men and women. But there can be but little doubt that most of the
blocks from which the Mother Goose of our childhood were printed
were engraved by him, and there seems to be good reason to believe
that the designs were by him as well. The pity is that no old
portfolio can be found with other designs from his pencil. But,
alas, the chances are that they have gone where so many other
manuscripts have gone, which would delight the antiquaries.