"Little JACK HORNER sat in a corner."

Here we hare the subject gracefully introduced without unnecessary
palaver or reference to family antecedents--the simple name given
without a long rigmarole of dazzling titles or senseless adjectives. The
Muse is neither pathetically invoked nor anathematically abused, but the
author proceeds at once to describe his hero's present situation, which,
it strangely appears, is in "a corner." The indefiniteness of the
locality--_a_ corner--is not of the slightest moment; for it does not
concern the general reader to know in what corner little JACK was
stationed. Suffice it, as is apparent from the context, that it was not
a corner in Erie, nor in grain; but rather an angle formed by the
juxtaposition of two walls of an apartment or chamber.

Now, truly the subject of the poem must have been possessed either of an
extraordinary modicum of modesty or of a bitter misanthropy; or possibly
he had been guilty of a misdemeanor, and was cornered to expiate the
punishment justly due; yet conjecture is at once made certainty in the
second line, by which all doubts as to the reasons for his being in a
corner are immediately cleared up:

"Eating his Christmas-pie."

The occasion was indubitably the universal annual holiday, and his
object in going to the corner was manifestly to eat the pie. Perhaps the
object had an antecedent. Perhaps he _stole_ the pie, and therefore
wished to avoid observation; or, more possibly, supreme selfishness was
his ruling passion, and he wished to eat it all by himself. As to this,
however, we are left slightly in the fog.