her description, enumerates, as was meet, the peculiarities, and, I
might say, dogmatic tendencies, of the hero of the tail, Herr Dog! [He
(not H.D., but the Author) says "Old Mother HUBBARD."] Here is
simplicity for you! Here is brevity! "Old Mother HUBBARD!" How sweetly
it sounds; how nicely the words fit each other! What an immense range of
thought he must have who first said "Old Mother HUBBARD." Less gifted
authors of the present would rejoice exceedingly, could they do
likewise. Ah!--and a spark of enthusiasm lightens up your countenance,
[Highfalutin,]--they have no HUBBARD. And if they had they would
commence with a minute detail of how old she was, how venerable she was,
what kind of a mother she was, whose mother she was, and all about her
aunt's family.

Alas! for the fallen state of our Literature, which tells you
everything, and leaves you nothing to guess at, lest you might not guess
correctly. Well, as I previously observed, the author says "Old Mother
HUBBARD." He must have been correct. You know how it is yourself.

This felicitous writer then proceeds, and in the next line gives vent to
his pent-up feelings thusly: "Went to the Cupboard." "Went!" What a
happy expression! How appropriate! Besides, it supplies a deficiency
which would have occurred had it been left out. "Went!" There's Saxon
for you. Our happy author, overburdened by his transcendent imagination,
has not the evil propensity of thrusting upon his reader the mode of how
she went; but, noble and manly as he was, he leaves it to you and to me
how she went!

Here is a vast range for your imagination. Give your fancy wings. One
may think she waddled; another that she rambled. One may say she
preambulated; another that she pedalated.[B] One may remark that she