I am inclined to believe that the old-time grotesqueness was more amusing and impressive to children than modern realism; that there was a stronger association of ideas with the emphasis of disproportion; the absurdities and anachronisms of scenery and costume were unnoted by the juvenile reader because he knew no better. In the children's books which I have examined, the colored illustrations are all of dates later than 1800 (when dated at all). Mr. Andrew W. Tuer, in the preface to his most interesting collection entitled _Pages and Pictures from Forgotten Children's Books_, says that the coloring was done by children in their teens who worked with great celerity. Each child had a single pan of water-color, a brush, a properly colored guide, and a pile of printed sheets. One child painted in all the red required by the copy, another the green, another the blue, and so on till the coloring was finished. [Illustration: "William and Amelia," from _The Looking Glass for the Mind_] There was one book which children loved, that every little child loves to-day--_Mother Goose's Melodies_. Attempts have been made to show that the name and collection were both American; that the former referred to one Mrs. Goose or Vergoose, a Boston goodwife. The name Mother Goose is believed by most folk to be of French, not of English or American origin. A collection of nursery rhymes was printed for John Newbery about 1760, under the popular name _Mother Goose's Melodies_; about 1785 Isaiah Thomas issued at Worcester, Massachusetts, an edition of _Mother Goose's Melodies_ with the songs from Shakespeare, and certainly this must have been an oasis in the desert of dull books for New England children. There is no pretence in this edition of Thomas' that the book had any American origin; it is said to be a collection of rhymes by "old British nurses"; and such it really was. Halliwell says many of these nursery rhymes are fragments of old ballads. Mr. Whitmore deems the great popularity of "Mother Goose" due to the Boston editions issued in large numbers from 1824 to 1860. The preface to the Worcester edition of 1785 _circa_ is said to be written by a very great writer of very little books. Could this have been Oliver Goldsmith? Irving, in his _Life of Goldsmith_, refers to the poet's love of catches and simple melodies, and tells of his singing "his favorite song about An old woman tossed in a blanket seventeen times as high as the moon." A Miss Hawkins boasted late in life that Goldsmith taught her to play Jack and Jill with bits of paper on his fingers just as we show the trick to children to-day. Included in these melodies are the verses "Three children sliding on the ice," which we know were written by Goldsmith. Here is an example of one of the melodies and its note:--