the Nursery; or, Mother Goose's Melodies for Children." On the title
page was the picture of a goose with a very long neck and a mouth wide
open, and below this, "Printed by T. Fleet, at his Printing House in
Pudding Lane, 1719. Price, two coppers."

Mr. Wm. A. Wheeler, the editor of Hurd & Houghton's elaborate edition
of Mother Goose, (1870), reiterated this assertion, and a writer in
the Boston Transcript of June 17, 1864, says: "Fleet's book was partly
a reprint of an English collection of songs (Barclay's), and the new
title was doubtless a compliment by the printer to his mother-in-law
Goose for her contributions. She was the mother of sixteen children
and a typical 'Old Woman who lived in a Shoe.'"

We may take it to be true that Fleet's wife was of the Vergoose
family, and that the name was often contracted to Goose. But the rest
of the story is unsupported by any evidence whatever. In fact, all
that Mr. Eliot knew of it was the statement of the late Edward A.
Crowninshield, of Boston, that he had seen Fleet's edition in the
library of the American Antiquarian Society. Repeated researches at
Worcester having failed to bring to light this supposed copy, and no
record of it appearing on any catalogue there, we may dismiss the
entire story with the supposition that Mr. Eliot misunderstood the
remarks made to him. Indeed, as Mr. William H. Whitmore points out in
his clever monograph upon Mother Goose (Albany, 1889), it is very
doubtful whether in 1719 a Boston printer would have been allowed to
publish such "trivial" rhymes. "Boston children at that date," says
Mr. Whitmore, "were fed upon Gospel food, and it seems extremely
improbable that an edition could have been sold."

Singularly enough, England's claim to the venerable old lady is of