T Copyright 1897 by F. Warne & Co. O read the old Nursery Rhymes brings childhood. One seems to see the loose floppy picture-books of long ago, with their boldly coloured pictures. The books were tattered and worn, and my first library consisted of a wooden box full of these volumes. And I can remember being imprisoned for some crime in the closet where the box was, and how my gaolers found me, happy and impenitent, sitting on the box, with its contents all round me, reading. There was "Who Killed Cock Robin ?" which I knew by heart before I could read, and I learned to read (entirely "without tears") by picking out the letters in the familiar words. I remember the Lark dressed as a clerk, but what a clerk might be I did not ask. Other children, who are little now, will read this book, and remember it well when they have forgotten a great deal of history and geography. We do not know what poets wrote the old Nursery Rhymes, but certainly some of them were written down, or even printed; three hundred years ago. Grandmothers have sung then to their grandchildren, and they again.to theirs; for many centuries. In Scotland an old fellow will take a child on his knee for a ride, and sing "This is the way the ladies ride, a smooth ride, then a rough trot, This is the way the cadgers ride, Creels and a'!" |