Pinafore Palace Part 1

Pinafore Palace.

by Various.

PREFACE

TO THE MOTHER

_"A Court as of angels, A public not to be bribed, Not to be entreated, Not to be overawed."_

_Such is the audience--in long clothes or short frocks, in pinafores or kilts, or in the brief trousers that bespeak the budding man--such is the crowing, laughing court, the toddling public that awaits these verses._

_Every home, large or small, poor or rich, that has a child in it, is a Pinafore Palace, and we have borrowed the phrase from one of childhood's most whimsical and devoted poets-laureate, thinking no other words would so well express our meaning._

_If the two main divisions of the book--"The Royal Baby" and "Little Prince and Princess"--should seem to you a trifle sentimental it will be because you forget for the moment the gayety and humor of the t.i.tle with its delightful a.s.sumptions of regal dignity and state.

Granted the Palace itself, everything else falls easily into line, and if you cannot readily concede the royal birth and bearing of your neighbor's child you will see nothing strange in thinking of your own nursling as little prince or princess, and so you will be able to accept gracefully the sobriquet of Queen Mother, which is yours by the same invincible logic!_

_Oh, yes, we allow that instead of being gravely editorial in our att.i.tude, we have played with the t.i.tle, as well as with all the sub-t.i.tles and cla.s.sifications, feeling that it was the next pleasantest thing to playing with the babies themselves. It was so delightful to re-read the well-loved rhymes of our own childhood and try to find others worthy to put beside them; so delicious to imagine the hundreds of young mothers who would meet their old favorites in these particular pages; and so inspiring to think of the thousands of new babies whose first hearing of nursery cla.s.sics would be a.s.sociated with this red-covered volume, that we found ourselves in a joyous mood which we hope will be contagious. Nothing is surer than that a certain gayety of heart and mind const.i.tute the most wholesome climate for young children. "The baby whose mother has not charmed him in his cradle with rhyme and song has no enchanting dreams; he is not gay and he will never be a great musician," so runs the old Swiss saying._

_Youthful mothers, beautifully and properly serious about their strange new duties and responsibilities, need not fear that Mother Goose is anything but healthful nonsense. She holds a place all her own, and the years that have rolled over her head (some of the rhymes going back to the sixteenth century) only give her a firmer footing among the immortals. There are no real subst.i.tutes for her unique rhymes, neither can they be added to nor imitated; for the world nowadays is seemingly too sophisticated to frame just this sort of merry, light-hearted, irresponsible verse which has mellowed with the years. "These ancient rhymes," says Andrew Lang, "are smooth stones from the brook of time, worn round by constant friction of tongues long silent."_

_Nor is your use of this "light literature of the infant scholar" in the nursery without purpose or value. You are developing ear, mind, and heart, and laying a foundation for a later love of the best things in poetry. Whatever else we may do or leave undone, if we wish to widen the spiritual horizon of our children let us not close the windows on the emotional and imaginative sides. "There is in every one of us a poet whom the man has outlived." Do not let the poetic instinct die of inanition; keep it alive in the child by feeding his youthful ardor, strengthening his insight, guarding the sensitiveness and delicacy of his early impressions, and cheris.h.i.+ng the fancies that are indeed "the trailing clouds of glory" he brings with him "from G.o.d who is his home."_

_The rhythm of verse will charm his senses even in his baby days; later on he will feel the beauty of some exquisite lyric phrase as keenly as you do, for the ear will have been opened and will be satisfied only with what is finest and best._

_The second division of the book "Little Prince and Princess" will take the children out of the nursery into the garden, the farmyard, and the world outside the Palace, where they will meet and play with their fellows in an ever-widening circle of social activity. "Baby's Hush-a-byes" in cradle or mother's lap will now give place to the quiet cribside talks called "The Palace Bed Time" and "The Queen Mother's Counsel"; and in the story hour "The Palace Jest-Book" will furnish merriment for the youngsters who laughed the year before over the simpler nonsense of Mother Goose._

_When the pinafores themselves are cast aside Pinafore Palace will be outgrown, and you can find something better suited to the developing requirements of the nursery folk in "The Posy Ring." Then the third volume in our series--"Golden Numbers"--will give boys and girls from ten to fifteen a taste of all the best and soundest poetry suitable to their age, and after that they may enter on their full birthright, "the rich deposit of the centuries."_

_No greater love for a task nor happiness in doing it, no more ardent wish to please a child or meet a mother's need, ever went into a book than have been wrought into this volume and its three predecessors. We hope that it will find its way into the nurseries where wealth has provided every means of ministering to the young child's growth in body, mind, and soul; and if some of the Pinafore Palaces should be neat little kitchens, what joy it would be to think of certain young queen-mothers taking a breath between tasks to sit by the fire and read to their royal babies while the bread is baking, the kettle boiling, or the potatoes bubbling in the pot._

_"Where does Pinafore Palace stand?

Right in the middle of Lilliput Land."_

_And Lilliput Land is (or ought to be) the freeest country in the universe. Its s.h.i.+ning gates open wide at dawn, closing only at sunset, and toddling pilgrims with eager faces enter and wander about at will.

Decked in velvet or clad in rags the friendly porter pays no heed, for the pinafores hide all cla.s.s distinctions._

_"We're bound for Pinafore Palace, sir,"

They say to the smiling gatekeeper.

"Do we need, if you please, an entrance ticket Before we pa.s.s through your magic wicket?"

"Oh, no, little Prince and Princess dear, All pinafores freely enter here!"_

KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN.

_ACKNOWLEDGMENTS are herewith made to the following publishers for permission to include in this volume selections from their copyrighted publications:_

_Houghton, Mifflin & Co.: "A Dewdrop" and "Bees," from Little Folk Lyrics, by Frank Dempster Sherman; "The Brown Thrush," from Childhood Songs, by Lucy Larcom; "Bossy and Daisy," from The Old Garden, by Margaret Deland; "Lost," from Poems for Children, by Celia Thaxter; "Clothes," "A Music Box," and "Learning to Play," from A Pocketful of Posies, by Abbie Farwell Brown._

_Lothrop, Lee & Shepard: "How they Sleep" and "The Darling Birds,"

from Babyland; "Follow Me," "Annie's Garden," "Good Mooly Cow," "The New Moon," "Do You Guess it is I," and "Baby's Birthday," from Little Songs, by Eliza Lee Follen; "Who Likes the Rain" and "Spring Questions," by Clara Doty Bates; and five poems by Emilie Poulsson as follows: "Chickens in Trouble" (Translated from the Norwegian) and "A Puppy's Problem," from Through the Farmyard Gate; "The Story of Baby's Blanket," "The Story of Baby's Pillow," and "Baby's Breakfast," from Child Stories and Rhymes._

_Little, Brown & Company: "The Owl, the Eel and the Warming Pan" and "The Difference," from Sundown Songs, by Laura E. Richards_.

_Milton Bradley Company: "The Five Little Fairies," "The Pigeons,"

"The Barnyard," from Rhymes for Little Hands, by Maud Burnham._

_New England Publis.h.i.+ng Company: "Our Mother," from the American Primary Teacher._

_Small, Maynard & Company: "Hospitality," "The Child's Star," "Foot Soldiers," from Child Verse, by John B. Tabb._

_The Outlook: "Baby's Journey," by Mary F. b.u.t.ts._

_And our thanks and tribute to the shade of "Mother Goose," beloved nurse of all who lisp the English tongue._

PUBLIC NOTICE.--_This is to state, That these are the specimens left at the gate Of Pinafore Palace, exact to date, In the hands of the porter, Curlypate, Who sits in his plush on a chair of state, By somebody who is a candidate For the Office of Lilliput Laureate._

_William Brighty Rands._

_PART I_

THE ROYAL BABY

I

BABY'S PLAYS

Brow bender, Eye peeper, Nose smeller, Mouth eater, Chin chopper.

Knock at the door--peep in, Lift up the latch--walk in.

Eye winker, Tom Tinker, Nose smeller, Mouth eater, Chin chopper, Chin chopper.

Here sits the Lord Mayor, Here sit his two men, Here sits the c.o.c.k, And here sits the hen; Here sit the chickens, And here they go in, Chippety, chippety, chippety chin.