Evening star., 1928-12-25
NEW BOOKS
AT RANDOM
l. C.. NJ.
MOTHER GOOSE'S MELODIES. Moth
| er Goose, Boston: Thomas Fleet,
| fret r,rhliSher

MOTHER GoOSE'S MELODIES. Moth
| er Goose, Boston: Thomas Fleet,
first publisher.
| Thomas had something on his mind.
! Any one could have seen that. The
! johnny-cakes. piping hot upon his plate.
were disappearing in a plain case of
absent treatment. The warm low kitch-
! en-. dark save for the glowing flrelog and
| the single lit candle on the table, was
at that moment long way off from
| Thomas.
Now when anybody, anywhere. fails
to consecrate the whole of his being
! to the simon-p pure Yankee johnny-cakes
for breakfast, why that person is surely
gone-evanished. vamoosed
j "Ma"-Thomas talking out Of the
distance into which he had moved
Ma, I'm going to put all these tunes
you sing tc the children into book"
Now, Thomas Fleet, have you lost
your mind entirely? Don't throw away
any money like that. Yoy know as we'll
as do that you can't make book out
| of tunes that are good for nothin at all
but to sing the young ones to sleep or
make EN- forget they've got the stom-
| ach-ache from Suckin' In lot of wind.
| Don't be fool. ThomaS!"
well. I'm figuring that what's so
! good for our young ones might be good
for other folkses', too. Anyway, I'm
goin' to try it," And, getting into his
big overcoat and pulling his woolen cap
down to meet 1t, Thomas went out into
! the bleak New England morning and
on down to his shop in Pudding Lane.
| No, you might hunt the city over to-
| day, but you'd not find Pudding Lane
For, as Boston grew bigger she grew
| prouder as well, discarding such savory
names as Pudding Lane for others. more
sounding perhaps, but not half so tasty
on the tongue.
long way from here and now. 1t Is
nearer-a good deal nearer, in fact-to
that Mayf1ower Plymouth Rock adven-
| ture than to our own Christmas of 1928.
Thomas Fleet, printer by trade. had
a cubbyhole of shop in the Lane.
| His stock in trade was made up of
ballads and songs, pamphlets and little
books for children. So it was only
| natural, after all, that into his head
should pop the plan of making book
| out of his mother -in-laws rhymes.
wifes mother? Well, she was, and very
good friends indeed were Thomas
| and MA"
(This was long before the day when
| that young smart-alec with the wTy
mouth invented the modern joke about
| the mother-in-law as pestilence and
| plague.)
Now Thomas and his wife were of
the fecund sort proper to their day and
generation. And to them seven chill
dren came along in the regular timeli-
! IF lofa ,toI ofG nj Ac
| matter of course these became in large
| part the care of their grandmother.
Mother Goose. 1t was she who soothed
them. in turn, to the drowsiness of early
| bedtime. or in many a daylight hour led
( them along paths of Joy and laughter
| by way of the jingles that she made up
| out of nothing at ALL And because
Thomas himself was in secret child,
| Just as each of us is, these songs
| touched his own heart and then tapped
| softly at the window of his mind with
| that hint about the book. And that is
not bad way for anything to come to
! pass.
| So. the book was printed, christened,
| its price set, place secured for 1t in
the Boston stores. Maybe there was
notice running something like this:
| l7l9 by Thomas Fleet. Price. 20 cop
| pers" To be found In the Boston book
stalls.
That was the beginning, but by no
means the end. Indeed the end is not
| yet iris sight. From the start delighted
still seeing to it in an undiminished
zeal. Likely it is that as long as chill
dren are turned out in the immemorial
pattern of babyhood, just so long will
Mother Gooses Melodies" continue to
hold the record of best seller for a
longer period of time than any other
book printed in the United States. Two
hundred and nine years of active life
with not a sign of old age upon it Is a
very MethuSelah of q book, it seems
| to me.
In not so long time Thomas Fleet,
! publisher, had plenty of company. Other
publishers, ambitious and prosperous
ones, were in increasing numbers glad,
| finally, to put the best of their book
making skill upon the Melodies" Art
lists were more than willing to try out
| in pictures the spirit and action of such
| a theme as, say, "the COW jumped over
the moon" or 1.-The man in the moon
| came down too soon," or, in more sub
| lunary vein, "the dish ran away with
the SPOON" with hundreds of other ap-
peals to the powers of the artist. AS
| the Melodies" grew in beauty and the
cost of making, the book as matter of
course, increased in price. The original
80 coppers" has run up to SIS or more,
with many stopping places in between
| to fit the purse of every small buyer.
More than 30 editions of Mother
| Goose's Melodies" are today ready for
| little customers of every degree of 1inan-
cial standing.
One publisher dedicates the edition
put out by his house to John Fleet Ell
lot, the. Great-great-grandson of Eliza
beth Goose, known Wherever the Eng
Goose"
| Now is the time, it seems to me. for
a word about the real Mother Goose.
To most of us she has been fairy. an
| elf, sprite-certainly has she belonged
to the being created by the fancy OF
genius. But, it turns out that Mother
Goose was real-real-er, after all, than
| the most of us. Born little girl up
| in New England. she was christened,
when the day came around, Elizabeth
| Foster. In the course OF time. and
nature Elizabeth became the wife OF
Isaac Vergoose of Boston AT so she
| began singing to her grandchildren as
they with fine regularity fell into her
arms. An early start, it seems to us
now, but what tremendous ending!
| No ending at ALL however, since. by Vir-
| tue of the Melodies" Mother Goose
circumvented time and remains today
the beautiful friend. alive and laughing,
of every little child who shouts in
glee as he rides "a cockhorse to Ban
bury cross" or adventures otherwhere
at the height of good humor and hap
| piness.
About these rhymes. You have Won
dered no doubt, why the books vary.
Not all the same, as one would ex-
pect them to be- There are only in
truth, so we are told, about $50 rhymes