own; in short, she was a mother to the poor, a physician to the sick, and a friend to all who were in distress.

Her life was the greatest blessing, and her death the greatest calamity, that ever was felt in the neighborhood.

THE WAY TO BE HAPPY.

By Jane and Ann Taylor.

How pleasant it is at the end of the day,
No follies to have to repent;

But reflect on the past and be able to say,
That my time has been properly spent.

When I've done all my bus'ness with patience and care,
And been good and obliging and kind,

I lay on my pillow and sleep away care,
With a happy and peaceable mind.

But instead of all this, if it must be confest,
That I careless and idle have been,

I lay down as usual and go to my rest,

But feel discontented within.

Then as I don't like all the trouble I've had,
In future I'll try to prevent it,

For I never am naughty without being sad,
Or good without being contented.

lic

NOTES.

PAGE 1. -"The Three Bears" was written by Robert Southey and was printed in "The Doctor," vol. iv., London, 1837. It is probably a reduction to writing of a current folk-tale, but Mr. Joseph Jacobs has been able to furnish no parallels. The incident of sitting in the three chairs, etc., is in Grimm's "Sneewitchen." The girl with the golden hair is a naughty old woman in the original, and was introduced in a metrical version by G. W., which Southey much commended. Professor Dowden says that Southey's memory is kept alive more by "The Three Bears" than by anything else he wrote. The traditional American version here given differs slightly from Southey's.

PAGE 6. -"Little lamb, who made thee?" is from "The Lamb," which appeared in Songs of Innocence, the author and printer W. Blake, 1789.

PAGE 9. The full title is "Dame Wiggins of Lee, and her Seven Wonderful Cats: A humorous tale written principally by a lady of ninety [Mrs. Sharpe]. Edited with additional verses, by John Ruskin, LL.D., Honorary Student of Christ Church, and Honorary Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. And with new illustrations by Kate Greenaway. With twenty-two woodcuts. George Allen, Sunnyside, Orpington, Kent, 1885." The third, fourth, eighth, and ninth stanzas are by Mr. Ruskin. "But my rhymes do not ring like the real ones," he writes in the preface; and in Fors Clavigera" (vol. v, pp. 37-8): "I aver these rhymes to possess the primary virtue of rhyme, - that is, to be rhythmical, in a pleasant and exemplary degree."

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PAGES 16, 53, 82, 96, 111. 15 Cinderella, "Diamonds and Toads," "Little Red Riding Hood," "Puss in Boots," and "Sleeping Beauty" are first found in print in French in a magazine entitled, Recueil de pièces curieuses et nouvelles tant en prose qu'en vers, which was published by Adrian Moetjens at the Hague in 1696–7.

Among the many translations the purest and simplest English has been found in a little book containing both the English and French, and

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entitled, "Tales of Passed Times, by Mother Goose. With Morals. Written in French by M. [Charles] Perrault, and Englished by R. S. Gent. To which is added a new one, viz. The Discreet Princess. The Seventh Edition, Corrected and Adorned with fine Cuts. New York: Printed for J. Rivington, Bookseller and Stationer, No. 56 Pearl Street, 1795."

Who R. S. was and where he made his translation we can only conjecture.

The germs of these stories are to be found in the oldest literatures; they are among the oldest folk-tales in the world.

They were orally current in France and the neighboring countries long before Perrault wrote them down, and an interesting account of the various forms in which they are found in the literature and folk-lore of other nations before Perrault's time is given in Les Contes de ma mere L'oye avant Perrault, by Charles Deulin, Paris, E. Dentu, 1878.

In this book Mr. Deulin inclines to the view that the stories as first published by Perrault were not really written by him, but by his little son of ten or eleven to whom Perrault told the stories as he had gathered them up with the intention of rendering them in verse after the manner of La Fontaine. The lad had an excellent memory, much natural wit, and a great gift of expression. He loved the stories his father told him, and thoroughly enjoyed the task his father set him, of re-writing them from memory, as an exercise. This was so happily done, in such a fresh, artless and engaging style exactly befitting the subjects of the stories, that the father deemed the son's version better than any which he could make, and published it under his own name.

The translation made its way slowly in England at first, but in the end the stories nearly eclipsed the native fairy tales and legends of that land, — which owing to Puritan influence had been frowned upon and discouraged until they were hardly remembered except in the remoter districts. Indeed, the Puritanical objection to all nursery lore still lingers in some corners of England. Emerson says, "What Nature at one time provides for use, she afterwards turns to ornament," and Herbert Spencer, developing this idea, remarks that "the fairy lore which in times past was matter of grave belief, and held sway over people's conduct has since been transformed into ornament for The Midsummer Night's Dream,'The Tempest,' The Fairy Queen,' and endless small tales and poems; and still affords subjects for children's story books . . . amuses boys and girls, . . . and becomes matter for jocose allusion." Thus, also, Sir Walter Scott, in a note to "The Lady of the Lake": "The mythology of one period would appear to pass into the romance of the next, and that into the nursery tales of subsequent ages;" and Max Muller, in his “Chips from a German Bookshop," says, "The