This, it seems, is no fanciful name got up to please children. There was a real Mrs Goose, or as she was familiarly called, Mother Goose, who signalised herself by her literature for the nursery. We learn this rather curious fact from an American newspaper, the Congregationalist, which, in describing a Christmas festival at the Old South Street Church, Boston, enters pretty largely into a biography of the lady. Her maiden name was Elizabeth Foster. She was born at Charlestown, where she resided until her marriage with Isaac Goose, when she became step-mother to ten children. As if that was not a sufficient family to look after, she by-and-by added six children of her own to the number, making sixteen 'goslings' in all. It was rather a heavy handful, and we do not wonder that she poured out her feelings in the celebrated lines—

To entertain her young flock, Mrs Goose was in the habit of telling little stories in prose and verse, and singing songs, which were highly relished. Though tasked, she spent on the whole an agreeable existence. Her children having grown up, she was very much at her ease. Her daughter Elizabeth became the wife of Thomas Fleet, a printer in a small way in Boston. With this daughter, Mrs Goose, now a widow, went to live, and had the satisfaction of singing her old songs to an infant grandson. Now begins the literary history of Mother Goose. Fleet, the son-in-law, was a shrewd fellow, and, as a printer, he thought he might turn the penny by noting down granny's nursery songs, and selling them in a cheap and attractive form. They were issued in a book under the title, 'Songs for the Nursery; or Mother Goose's Melodies for Children. Printed by T. Fleet, at his Printing House, Pudding Lane, 1719. Price two coppers.' This title-page also bore a large cut of a veritable goose, with wide open mouth, shewing that the proverbial irreverence of sons-in-law is not a thing of recent origin. We are told that old Mother Goose did not resent the pictorial illustration, but took it just as sweetly as she had taken all the other trials of life. Possessing her soul in patience, and gladdening the hearts of grandchildren, she lived until 1757, dying at the advanced age of ninety-two. There, then, as we are assured, is the true history of Mother Goose. How the little books which she originated have spread over the world, need not be specified.